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The next day the children continued the play they have never left it off of their grandmother's death-bed, and Hawthorne writes it all down in his journal with minute realism. His genius felt some appeal in it that let him go on unchecked in the transcript of baby-life mocking death in all innocence and unwitting: "Now Una is transformed into grandmamma, and Julian is mamma taking care of her.
Even the memories of baby-life come back the tricks, the pranks, the boyish dreams; and things that I did not remember at forty or fifty years old I recollect vividly now. But a boy of ninety and a boy of nine are very different things, none the less. I never felt better in my life except for twinges occasioned by my nitrogen experiment.
Many and grievous perils do environ baby-life by the Ganges, perils of dry nurses, perils by wolves, perils by crocodiles, perils by the Evil Eye, perils by kidnappers, perils by cobras, perils by devils. You are living at one of the up-country stations, where the freer air of the jungle imparts to babes and sucklings a voracious appetite.
He never hired a nurse the father had sold the lady's maid quite out of sight; so he brought her through all the little ills and around all the sharp corners of baby-life and childhood, without a human hand to help him, until one evening, having persistently shut his eyes to it for weeks and months, like one trying to sleep in the sunshine, he awoke to the realization that she was a woman.
But to dwell on these high mysteries would take us into depths beyond the present needs of mother or of infant, and it is better that the greater part of the baby-life should be that of an animated toy. Perhaps it is well for all of us that we should live mostly on the surfaces of things and should play with life, to avoid taking it too hard.
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