Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
I like names. I collect them: names, origins, meanings. They’re an easy thing to collect. They don’t cost anything and they don’t really take up any space. I like to look at them and pretend that they mean something; and maybe they don’t, but the pretending is nice. I keep most of them on the walls of my bedroom at home—home where I used to live. I keep the ones that echo. Good names with significance. Not the crap everyone seems to be using these days. I like foreign names, too; the unusual ones that you rarely see. If I ever had a baby, I’d pick one of those, but babies aren’t really something I see in my future, even the far off one.
~Printing.~--Things printed can never be stopped; they are like babies baptized, they have a soul from that moment, and go on forever.--_George Meredith._
There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the “Welfare State.” The slave states of Western world are an outgrowth of monopolistic capitalism — an economic system which is opposed to the wide distribution of private property in many hands. Instead, monopolistic capitalism concentrates productive wealth among a few men, allowing the rest to become a vast proletariat. Some representatives of monopolistic capitalism, sensing this evil in their system, have tried to silence criticism by pointing to the diffused ownership in the great corporations. They advertise, “No one owns more than 4 percent of the stock of this great company.” Or they print lists of stockholders, showing that these include farmers, schoolteachers, baseball players, taxi drivers, and even babies. But there is a catch to this argument, and it is this: although it is true that individuals of small means own shares in the company, it is not true that they run the company. Their responsibility for its policies is nil. Possession properly has two faces, two aspects: we all have a right to private property, but this is accompanied by our responsibility for its righteous use. These two things (which should be inseparable) are frequently divided today. Everyone admits that the farmer who own a horse is obligated to feed and care for it, but in the case of stocks and bonds, we often forget that the same principle should prevail. Monopolistic capitalism is to blame for this; it sunders the right to own property from responsibility that owning property involves. Those who own only a few stocks have no practical control of any industry. They vote by postcard proxy, but they have rarely even seen “their” company. The two elements which ought to be inextricably joined in any true conception of private property — ownership and responsibility — are separated. Those who own do not manage; those who manage; those who manage and work do not control or own. The workmen in a factory may have a shadowy, unknown absentee “employer” — the thousands of individual owners of stock — whom “management” represents and tries to please by extra dividends. The workman’s livelihood is at the disposition of strangers who make a single demand of their representatives: higher profits. Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms. One way of remedying the situation would be through a profound alternative of our political and economic life, with the aim of distributing the means of production more widely by giving every workman a share in profits, management, and ownership, all three. The other alternative which is not a constructive solution is confiscation: this may take the violent form of communism, or the less noticeable form of bureaucratic encroachment through taxation, as favored by the welfare state. [and/or outright confiscation likened to General Motors, AIG, and Banks, etc. etc. etc.] Confiscation in any form is an unhealthy solution for a real disease. It amounts to telling men that because they are economically crippled, they must abandon all efforts to get well and allow the state to provide them with free wheelchairs. The denial of the right of ownership to a man is a denial of his basic freedom: freedom without property is always incomplete. To be “secured” — but with no accompanying responsibility – is to be the slave of whatever group provides the security. A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the “slave state” disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free. [“New Slavery: Freedom without Property is Incomplete,” originally published in On Being Human: Reflections, On Life and Living , New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982.]
When a new baby laughs for the first time a new fairy is born, and as there are always new babies there are always new fairies.
It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars. -- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
Troubles are like babies; they only grow by nursing.
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad. -- Leo Rosten, on W. C. Fields
PEGGY FLEMMING is stealing BASKET BALLS to feed the babies in VERMONT.
Article the Third: Where a crime of the kidneys has been committed, the accused should enjoy the right to a speedy diaper change. Public announcements and guided tours of the aforementioned are not necessary. Article the Fourth: The decision to eat strained lamb or not should be with the "feedee" and not the "feeder". Blowing the strained lamb into the feeder's face should be accepted as an opinion, not as a declaration of war. Article the Fifth: Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize, whether it be in church, a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have to last a lifetime and must be conserved. -- Erma Bombeck, "A Baby's Bill of Rights"
If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper folding, or something. -- C. Philip Wood
As I was walking down the street one dark and dreary day, I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay, The words were torn and tattered, From the storm the night before, The wind and rain had done its work and this is how it goes, Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, chew Wrigleys Spearmint beer, Ken-L-Ration dog food makes your complexion clear, Simonize your baby in a Hershey candy bar, And Texaco's a beauty cream that's used by every star. Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigedaire, Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear, Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three, And people over sixty-five should bathe in Lipton tea.
I hate babies. They're so human. -- H. H. Munro
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
"Not long ago a servant girl in Finland was suspected of having secretly given birth to a child. She was watched, and a box of which no one knew anything was found in the corner of the loft, behind some bricks. It was opened and inside was found the body of a new-born child which she had killed. In the same box were found the skeletons of two other babies which, according to her own confession, she had killed at the moment of their birth.
Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day told her of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of her husband himself-- who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious--she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her babies herself.
But supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at the first rush of the harem's lord, then is it very diverting to watch that lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and revels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario, like pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines. Granting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the sons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must take care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For like certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my Lord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower; and so, being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all over the world; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as the ardour of youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as reflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude overtakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the love for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant, admonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to an exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians and parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from his amorous errors.
When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs--and that till then they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them, including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they could best handle the master for their own ends.
Mr. Pocket got his hands in his hair again, and this time really did lift himself some inches out of his chair. "Hear this!" he helplessly exclaimed to the elements. "Babies are to be nut-crackered dead, for people's poor grandpapa's positions!" Then he let himself down again, and became silent.
"I shall never, never believe," Nastya prattled, "that the old women find babies among the cabbages in the kitchen-garden. It's winter now and there are no cabbages, and so the old woman couldn't have taken Katerina a daughter."
And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to him with evident pleasure.
Then gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its numerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered: "Foolish toy! babies' plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores, and Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but what after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where thou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that holds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of water or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy impotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy; and cursed be all the things that cast man's eyes aloft to that heaven, whose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now scorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth's horizon are the glances of man's eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as if God had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou quadrant!" dashing it to the deck, "no longer will I guide my earthly way by thee; the level ship's compass, and the level deadreckoning, by log and by line; THESE shall conduct me, and show me my place on the sea. Aye," lighting from the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"
"By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them--all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say."
For milk and bread and sugar and tobacco one had to stand in _queue_ long hours in the chill rain. Coming home from an all-night meeting I have seen the _kvost_ (tail) beginning to form before dawn, mostly women, some with babies in their arms.... Carlyle, in his _French Revolution,_ has described the French people as distinguished above all others by their faculty of standing in _queue._ Russia had accustomed herself to the practice, begun in the reign of Nicholas the Blessed as long ago as 1915, and from then continued intermittently until the summer of 1917, when it settled down as the regular order of things. Think of the poorly-clad people standing on the iron-white streets of Petrograd whole days in the Russian winter! I have listened in the bread-lines, hearing the bitter, acrid note of discontent which from time to time burst up through the miraculous goodnature of the Russian crowd....
"Or perhaps they do bring babies from somewhere, but only to those who are married."
Week by week food became scarcer. The daily allowance of bread fell from a pound and a half to a pound, then three quarters, half, and a quarter-pound. Toward the end there was a week without any bread at all. Sugar one was entitled to at the rate of two pounds a month--if one could get it at all, which was seldom. A bar of chocolate or a pound of tasteless candy cost anywhere from seven to ten rubles--at least a dollar. There was milk for about half the babies in the city; most hotels and private houses never saw it for months. In the fruit season apples and pears sold for a little less than a ruble apiece on the street-corner....
INFANT SCHOOLS. The provision in modern times of systematized training for children below the age when elementary education normally begins may be dated from the village school at Waldbach founded by Jean Frédéric Oberlin in 1774. Robert Owen started an infant school at New Lanark in 1800, and great interest in the question was taken in Great Britain during the early years of the 19th century, leading to the foundation in 1836 of the Home and Colonial School Society for the training of teachers in infant schools; this in turn reacted upon other countries, especially Germany. Further impetus and a new direction were given to the movement by Friedrich W. A. Froebel, and the methods of training adopted for children between the ages of three and six have in most countries been influenced by, if not based on, that system of directed activities which was the foundation of the type of "play-school" called by him the _Kinder Garten_, or "children's garden." The growing tendency in England to lay stress on the mental training of very young children, and to use the "infant school" as preparatory to the elementary school, has led to a considerable reaction; medical officers of health have pointed out the dangers of infection to which children up to the age of five are specially liable when congregated together--also the physical effects of badly ventilated class-rooms, and there is a consensus of opinion that formal mental teaching is directly injurious before the age of six or even seven years. At the same time the increase in the industrial employment of married women, with the consequent difficulty of proper care of young children by the mother in the home, has somewhat shifted the ground from a purely educational to a social and physical aspect. While it is agreed that the ideal place for a young child is the home under the supervision of its mother, the present industrial conditions often compel a mother to go out to work, and leave her children either shut up alone, or free to play about the streets, or in the care of a neighbour or professional "minder." In each case the children must suffer. The provision by a public authority of opportunities for suitable training for such children seems therefore a necessity. The moral advantages gained by freeing the child from the streets, by the superintendence of a trained teacher over the games, by the early inculcation of habits of discipline and obedience; the physical advantages of cleanliness and tidiness, and the opportunity of disclosing incipient diseases and weaknesses, outweigh the disadvantages which the opponents of infant training adduce. It remains to give a brief account of what is done in Great Britain, the United States of America, and certain other countries. A valuable report was issued for the English Board of Education by a Consultative Committee upon the school attendance of children below the age of five (vol. 22 of the _Special Reports_, 1909), which also gives some account of the provision of day nurseries or _crèches_ for babies. Entry: INFANT
In a healthy new-born infant the mouth is free from micro-organisms, and very few are found in a breast-fed baby, but _Bacillus lactis_ may be found where the child is bottle fed. If there is trouble with the first dentition and food is allowed to collect, staphylococci, streptococci, pneumococci and colon bacilli may be present. Even in healthy babies _Oidium albicans_ may be present, and in older children the pseudo-diphtheria bacillus. From carious teeth may be isolated streptothrix, leptothrix, spirilla and fusiform bacilli. Under conditions of health these micro-organisms live in the mouth as saprophytes, and show no virulence when cultivated and injected into animals. The two common pyogenetic organisms, _Staphylococcus albus_ and _brevis_, show no virulence. Also the pneumococcus, though often present, must be raised in virulence before it can produce untoward results. The foulness of the mouth is supposed to be due to the colon bacillus and its allies, but those obtained from the mouth are innocuous. Also to enable the _Oidium albicans_ to attack the mucous membrane there must be some slight inflammation or injury. The micro-organisms found in the stomach gain access to that organ in the food or by regurgitation from the small intestine. Most are relatively inert, but some have a special fermentative action on the food (see NUTRITION). Abelous isolated sixteen distinct species of organism from a healthy stomach, including Sarcinae, _B. lactis_, _pyocyaneus_, _subtilis_, _lactis erythrogenes_, _amylobacter_, _megatherium_, and _Vibrio rugula_. Entry: TABLE
The normal infant at birth weighs about 7 lb. During the two or three days following birth a slight decrease in weight occurs, usually 5 to 6 oz. When nursing begins the child increases in weight up to the seventh day, when the infant will have regained its weight at birth. From the second to the fourth week after birth (according to Camerer) an infant should gain 1 oz. daily or 1½ to 2 lb. monthly, from the fourth to the sixth month ½ to 2/3 of an oz. daily or 1 lb. monthly, from the sixth to the twelfth month ½ oz. daily or less than 1 lb. monthly. At the sixth month it should be twice the weight at birth. The average weight at the twelfth month is 20 to 21 lb. The increase of weight in artificially fed is less regular than in breast-fed babies. Entry: INFANCY
BASINET (a diminutive of "basin"), a form of helmet or headpiece. The original small basinet was a light open cap, with a peaked crown. This was used alternately to, and even in conjunction with, the large heavy heaume. But in the latter half of the 13th century the basinet was developed into a complete war head-dress and replaced the heaume. In this form it was larger and heavier, had a vizor (though not always a pivoted vizor like that of the later armet), and was connected with the gorget by a "camail" or mail hood, the head and neck thus being entirely covered. It is always to be recognized by its peaked crown. The word is spelt in various forms, "bassinet," "bascinet," "bacinet," or "basnet." The form "bassinet" is used for the hooded wicker cradle or perambulator for babies. Entry: BASINET
In the mythology and religion of the Algonkian tribes (particularly the Chippewa, &c.) is expressed "a firm belief in a cosmic mystery present throughout all nature, called _manitou_." This _manitou_ "was identified with both animate and inanimate objects, and the impulse was strong to enter into personal relation with the mystic power; it was easy for an Ojibwa to associate the _manitou_ with all forms of transcendent agencies, some of which assumed definite characters and played the rôle of deities" (Jones). There were innumerable _manitous_ of high or low degree. The highest development of this conception was in _Kitchi Manitou_ (Great Manitou), but whether this personification has not been considerably influenced by teachings of the whites is a question. The chief figure in the mythology of the Chippewa and related tribes is Nanabozho, who "while yet a youth became the creator of the world and everything it contained; the author of all the great institutions in Ojibwa society and the founder of the leading ceremonies" (Jones, _Ann. Arch. Rep. Ontario_, 1905; _Journ. Amer. Folk-Lore_, 1902, &c.). It is to this character that some of the most human of all Indian myths are attached, e.g. the Micmac legend of the origin of the crowing of babies and the story of Nanabozho's attempt to stick his toe into his mouth after the manner of a little child. Nanabozho is also the central figure in the typical deluge legend of the Algonkian peoples of the Great Lakes (_Journ. of American Folk-Lore_, 1891), which, in some versions, is the most remarkable myth of its kind north of Mexico. Entry: 1