He's like me. Let me hold him. Don't you go
out with him looking for food, and don't leave him alone while
I'm gone. I've got a bear located. No one can beat me killing
bears. I'll bring the bear's heart to you this evening. You can
give this baby some of the blood. It will do him good. Don't
have anything to say to that mammoth hunter in the next swamp. I
want you to stick to me. I'll look after you. I have taken a
fancy to that baby. He looks very much like me."
Off goes the father, and that savage mother, in a primitive way,
is a wife. Hereafter she is to be cared for. Bears will be
killed for her, even while she has children to keep her busy and
unattractive. Society takes a new turn and the red-haired baby
has done it.
To childhood, helpless and beautiful, we owe marriage and all
that growth of morality which is gradually making us really
civilized.
The basis of all real growth is altruism; and altruism, the
inclination to think more of others than of yourself, came into
the world through the cradle.
We owe such civilization as we have acquired to children.
"A softened pressure of an uncouth hand, a human gleam in an
almost animal eye, an endearment in an inarticulate voice--feeble
things enough. Yet in these faint awakenings lay the hope of the
human race.
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