BIRTH 



VEN the wisest of men can tell us nothing 

 of the dim dependent life between concep- 

 tion and birth, save that there is every- 

 where a marvellous uniformity of growth, 

 and that apparently there is little or no 

 difference in its conditions ; or indeed in 

 the mental or physical development of every warm- 

 blooded creature that is by and by to leave its soft, warm, 

 sheltered sleep and be born into hard, cold, individual 

 existence. 



And at the moment of birth itself all things both to 

 mother and child seem equal so far as Nature can compass 

 equality. 



The very birth cry of the young creature — that curious 

 cry, half wail, half welcome, as the unfamiliar world breath 

 claims the empty lungs — is often so strangely similar that 

 few human mothers can hear it from a puppy or a kitten 

 without feeling a remembered tug at the heart-strings, and 

 the like sound from a new-born babe has often set a cat or 

 a dog mother scratching wildly at closed doors for admit- 

 tance to something it recognises as a call to motherhood. 



And afterwards again when the new-come are glued by 

 wide mouths edged with a rim of red tongue to the milk- 

 distended breast, while toes or fingers curl and uncurl in a 



