COMMUTER'S THANKSGIVING 225 



send the stable-man after it. But not a baby. Not 

 even the doctor can fetch it. The mother must go 

 herself after her baby to Heaven it may be ; 

 but she will carry it all the way through Hell be- 

 fore she brings it to the earth, this earth of sunlit 

 fields and stormy skies, so evidently designed to 

 make men of babies. A long perilous journey 

 this, across a whole social season. 



Certainly the little dog is a great convenience, 

 and as certainly he is a great negation, the sub- 

 stitution, as with most conveniences, of a thing 

 for a self. 



Our birth may be a sleep and a forgetting, 

 but life immediately after is largely an inconven- 

 ience. That is the meaning of an infant's first 

 strangling wail. He is protesting against the in- 

 convenience of breathing. Breathing is an incon- 

 venience ; eating is an inconvenience ; sleeping is 

 an inconvenience ; praying is an inconvenience ; 

 but they are part and parcel of life, and nothing 

 has been done yet to relieve the situation, except 

 in the item of prayer. From prayer, and from a 

 multitude of other inconveniences, not mentioned 

 above, that round out life (death excepted), we 

 have found ways of escape by borrowing, rent- 



