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Ah! dear mistress! do you see the troops of monkeys disporting in the higher branches, and the birds admiring themselves in the pellucid water!" "And the flowers half-opened on the surface," replied Minha, "and which the current dandles like the breeze!" "And the long lianas, which so oddly stretch from one tree to another!" added the young mulatto.
The decline of natural affection follows inevitably from the substitution of the fish relationship for that of the human. A father who never dandles his child on his knee cannot have a very keen sense of the responsibilities of paternity. In the rush and pressure of our competitive City life, thousands of men have not time to be fathers. Sires, yes; fathers, no.
Ay, lay down your arms and bend the suppliant knee, sheathe your useless sword, and hush to soothing whisper the voice that thundered in command a week agone; hide away with noiseless hand the heavy boot and clinking spur; off with belt and buckle and scratching shoulder-strap, and don your softest dressing-gown and creakless slipper; submit to search for pins and needles you never carried; promise you will only talk just so much, and stay only just so long, and will sit only just in such a place and won't attempt to agitate her, "for we must still be very, very careful," and at last you are admitted, and you kneel by the white bed and hear the rapturous ecstasy of welcome in her faint voice, and read of her sacred martyrdom in the white cheek and fragile hand, and glory in the pride and joy of that wondering, wonderful mother-look in the great, deep, lustrous eyes, and kiss again the warm, sweet lips that are heaven's nectar to the thirst of yours; and then and then there is revealed to you that little, wrinkled, ruddy head, all folds and puckers and creases, all the redder and uglier for contrast with the snowy bosom in which it twists and burrows, and those expressionless, saucer-blue, liquid, blinking little eyes, and tiny upturned nose, and puckering, gurgling, querulous mouth, all that is visible from the folds of the white blanket worn as only Indian and baby can wear one; and you are bidden to declare that he is the very, very image of you, bless his honeyed lips! and then you must take him one minute, nurse must let her see Jack with his baby boy in his arms! and though fearful, you assent, and with reverent, prayerful gratitude, you receive your first-born to your heart, and thank God for the infinite mercy that has brought her, the sweet young wife and mother, through her deadly peril, and then you would kiss the helpless, staring, blinking, little blanket-framed face; but at first touch of those bristling moustaches a powerful spasm has convulsed the tiny features, and a vehement, plaintive, wailing protest bursts from the contorted lips, and then your son and heir is snatched away, and you stand like convicted felon, while nursey dandles and tosses and condoles and condones and cuddles.
Immediately before his return to the field of battle, he has his last interview with Andromache, whom he meets with his infant son Astyanax, carried by a nurse. There occurs, upon this occasion, one of the most beautiful scenes in the Iliad, where Hector dandles the boy in his arms, and pours forth a prayer, that he may one day be superior in fame to his father.
Country wimin works all day an' as often as not dandles a babby all night, they've not got a minnit but what they aint a-troublin' an' a-worryin' 'bout 'usband or childer, an' their faces is all writ over wi' the curse o' the garden of Eden. Selfish? They aint got the time!
The fir was riding on his shoulder, its arms met fondly around his neck, its fingers were caressing his hair. And it whispered back jeeringly to her through the twilight: "Say farewell to him! He was once yours; he is yours no longer. He dandles the child of the forest on his shoulder instead of his children by you in the house.
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