The king got well. His first act was to proclaim
the sacredness and inviolability of the ass; his second
was to add this particular ass to his cabinet and
make him chief minister of the crown; his third was
to have all the statues and effigies of nightingales
throughout his kingdom destroyed, and replaced by
statues and effigies of the sacred donkey; and, his
fourth was to announce that when the little peasant
maid should reach her fifteenth year he would make
her his queen and he kept his word.
Such is the legend. This explains why the moldering
image of the ass adorns all these old crumbling walls
and arches; and it explains why, during many centuries,
an ass was always the chief minister in that royal
cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets
to this day; and it also explains why, in that little
kingdom, during many centuries, all great poems, all
great speeches, all great books, all public solemnities,
and all royal proclamations, always began with these
stirring words:
“Waw . . . he! waw . . . he!—waw
he! Waw-he!”
At the banquet, in Chicago,
given by the army of the
Tennessee to their first commander,
general U. S. Grant, November, 1879
The fifteenth regular
toast was “The Babies—as they comfort
us in
our sorrows, let us
not forget them in our festivities.”
I like that. We have not all had the good fortune
to be ladies. We have not all been generals,
or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down
to the babies, we stand on common ground. It
is a shame that for a thousand years the world’s
banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn’t
amount to anything. If you will stop and think
a minute —if you will go back fifty or
one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate
your first baby—you will remember that he
amounted to a great deal, and even something over.
You soldiers all know that when the little fellow
arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in
your resignation. He took entire command.
You became his lackey, his mere body servant, and
you had to stand around, too. He was not a commander
who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or
anything else. You had to execute his order whether
it was possible or not. And there was only one
form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that
was the double-quick. He treated you with every
sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest
of you didn’t dare to say a word. You
could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg,
and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your
whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose,
you had to take it. When the thunders of war
were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward
