CHARLES BURR TODD.

THE DRAMA IN THE NURSERY.

A Darwinian might find evidence of the pedigree of our species in the inherent taste for mimicry which we share, at all events, with the anthropoid apes.  This instinct of mimicry I take to be the humble beginning from which dramatic art has sprung, and it appears in the individual at a very early stage.  Perhaps it is even expressed in the first squalls of infancy, though this possibility has been overlooked or obscured by philosophic pedantry.  Now anent these squalls.  Hegel gravely declares that they indicate a revelation of the baby’s exalted nature (oh!), and are meant to inform the public that it feels itself “permeated with the certitude” that it has a right to exact from the external world the satisfaction of its needs.  Michelet opines that the squalls reveal the horror felt by the soul at being enslaved to nature.  Another writer regards them as an outburst of wrath on the part of the baby at finding itself powerless against environing circumstances.  Some early theologians, on the other hand, pronounced squalling to be a proof of innate wickedness; and this view strikes one as being much nearer the mark.  But none of these accounts are completely satisfactory.  Innate wickedness may supply the conception; it is the dramatic instinct that suggests the means.  Here is the real explanation of those yells which embitter the life of a young father and drive the veteran into temporary exile.  It happens in this wise.  The first aim of a baby—­not yours, madam; yours is well known to be an exception, but of other and common babies—­is to make itself as widely offensive as possible.  The end, indeed, is execrable, but the method is masterly.  The baby has an a priori intuition that the note of the domestic cat is repulsive to the ear of the human adult.  Consequently, what does your baby do but betake itself to a practical study of the caterwaul!  After a few conscientious rehearsals a creditable degree of perfection is usually reached, and a series of excruciating performances are forthwith commenced, which last with unbroken success until the stage arrives when correction becomes possible.  This process may check the child’s taste for imitating the lower animals in some of their less engaging peculiarities, but his dramatic instincts will be diverted with a refreshing promptness to the congenial subjects of parent or nurse.

No sooner is your son and heir invested with the full dignity of knickerbockers than he begins to celebrate this rise in the social scale by “playing at being papa.”  The author of “Vice Versa” has drawn an amusing picture of the discomforts to papa which an exchange of environment with his school-boy son might involve.  But there is another side to the question; and at Christmas-time, for instance, most papas would probably be glad enough to exchange the joys and responsibilities of paternity for the simple taste which can tackle plum-pudding and the youthful digestion for which this delicacy has no terrors.  However, while it is impossible, or at least inexpedient, for papa to play at being his own urchin, the latter is restrained by no considerations, moral or otherwise, from attempting to personate his papa.