Infant

“ When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see,
Heavenly face that smiles on thee.
Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are his own smiles,
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles. ”

“ While the bodily powers of the infant are nourished and preserved by observing Nature, as pointed out in the last chapter, the powers of the mind are growing from day to day. When an infant has once been pleased with the glitter of the sun upon the brass warming-pan, or with the sound of a rattle, it will kick and shake its little arms, and look eager, the next time it sees the rattle and the warming-pan. And having once remembered, it will remember more every day. ”

“ For when the infant first wakes to consciousness, and commences its converse with the world, the first ray of knowledge, and the earliest of its discriminations, beam from a mother’s eye; and the emotions of its little heart receive their modulation from the melody of a mother’s voice. ”

“ Now if we may take an illustration from the workings of an infant's mind, it is pretty clearly made out that as baby sits propped among his pillows and turns his eyes hither and thither in following his mother's movements to and fro in the room, she seems in coming toward him to enlarge and in going away to diminish in size, like Alice in Wonderland. ”

“ From the crib come whimpers, angry cries, yells, sobs, baby snarls and sniffles that die away in a sleepy infant growl. Silence, sleep, repose, and the building of life and nerve and muscle in the quiet and the darkness. The baby has been put in harmony with the laws of nature—the invigoration of fresh air, sleep, stillness—and the little one wakens and grows like a fresh, sweet rose. The mother, looking on, learns of the ways of God with men. ”

“ Every mother and real nurse knows that when the baby begins to be uneasy and gives a cry of dissatisfaction,—to come near with a smile, to make one's presence felt by a caressing tone, or to take the infant in their arms, will comfort it, bringing back the joyful sense of life—a word which signifies active relation;—and, in its highest sense, spiritual relation. ”

“ An infant in arms, when old enough to gaze at objects around with some vague recognition, smiles in response to the laughing face and soft caressing voice of its mother. Let there come some one who, with an angry face, speaks to it in loud, harsh tones. ”

“ A proud young mother was dandling her infant at a shop door, as if desirous that the whole street should be aware of the important fact of her maternity—to be sure, there never was such a beautiful baby before! ”

“ The tiny infant, on whose little lips the breath of life so doubtingly hovered, lived;—lived to a vigorous maturity, to a hale old age;—lived to become the boast of his country, the wonder of his time, and the "ornament of his species." ”

“ In the first instance, the infant cries out with a quick, short scream, rolls up its eyes, arches its body backwards, its arms become bent and fixed, and the fingers parted; the lips and eyelids assume a dusky leaden colour, while the face remains pale, and the eyes open, glassy, or staring. ”

“ An infant born in the smallest town of the most despised nation of the earth—an infant whose mother had not what the poorest and most wretched female in any one of our cities has, a room for birth—an infant born in a stable and laid in a manger!... ”

“ These people “believe that an infant is the child, not of its parents, but of the spirits, and in this belief they go through the following formalities. As soon as an infant is born it is bathed and dressed, laid upon a rice-sieve, and placed—by the grandmother if present, if not, by the next near female relative—at the head of the stairs or of the ladder leading to the house. ”

“ We see daily some new development of wonderful powers and faculties in every new-born infant. An infant has a natural and instinctive desire to exercise its limbs, its voice, and indeed all its bodily functions. How soon it begins to laugh and coo like a little dove, to show you that it is social in its disposition, asking for your sympathy in return. ”

“ An infant understands to a certain extent, and as I believe at a very early-period, the meaning or feelings of those who tend him, by the expression of their features. There can hardly be a doubt about this with respect to smiling; and it seemed to me that the infant whose biography I have here given understood a compassionate expression at a little over five months old. When 6 months and 11 days old he certainly showed sympathy with his nurse on her pretending to cry. ”

“ On the other hand, those who have lost an infant, are never, as it were, without an infant child. ”

“ This is a very simple amusement for infants. When the infant is sitting on the mother's, or nurse's knee, or in her arms, another touches the child's head or back to awaken attention. When the child looks round the one that touched it withdraws a little, or goes to the other side, and says, "teet!" ”

“ The infant should be left free, at least as to its chest and limbs, in order to breathe, kick, and expand. How happy the little fellows are at evening to get rid of the murderous clothes which have been bundled about them all day, and how they will fight and squirm to get down on the carpet all stripped, and creep, or, if old enough, run about in freedom! ”

“ Moreover if the infant is a well-developed and healthy one, as the ordinary baby of a healthy and beautiful young couple should naturally and rightly be, that infant’s head is larger in diameter than the circle of bone through which it has to pass. ”

“ He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mock'd in age and death.
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons. ”

“ The infant is carried by the mother almost continuously during the waking hours of its first year of life; it is generally suspended in a sling made of wood or of basket-work, resembling in shape the baby's swing familiar in our nurseries ”

“ When a fresh infant was published in a house, the critics would call in a body to pass their judgment upon it, and the young mother would bring it down for them to sample.
"Did you ever see a child anything like that in this world before?" she would say, holding it out to them. "Isn't it a wonderful baby? You never saw a child with legs like that, I know. Nurse says he's the most extraordinary baby she ever attended. ”

“ The nature of the infant is not just a new permutation-and-combination of elements contained in the natures of the parents. There is in the nature of the infant that which is utterly unknown in the natures of the parents, something which could never be derived from the natures of all the existent individuals or previous individuals. ”

“ You take a wretched puling infant, just like fifty thousand other wretched infants, and you go and fix it for life with some sort of name that you think sounds pretty, or that its grandmother or its maiden aunt had, quite oblivious of the fact that Nature may not have intended it for anything of the kind. ”

“ The watchful mother tarries nigh,
Though sleep have closed her infant’s eye; ”

“ The glorified spirit of the infant, is as a star to guide the mother to its own blissful clime. ”

“ Those having much experience with young babies know that each infant has its own nature and disposition, and in which it differs from every other infant, although they may be classed into groups, of course. ”

“ To those who know not the sacredness of such tender connexions, or who feel not the delightful endearingness of children, the birth of an infant seems an event of little interest; but O! who that loves to contemplate the purest innocence under the purest and loveliest form, the unconscious trust and dependance of infancy, the charm of its smiles, its caresses and its slumbers, who that loves or pos{236}sesses a child can deem the mother’s and the father’s joy a trifling emotion? ”

“ We, for whose sake all nature stands "and stars their courses move," may need more frequent motherly attentions than the infant knows of. They will not be lacking, even if not sufficiently evident to the infant to be cried for. ”

“ Observe how soon, and to what a degree, this influence begins to operate. Her first ministration for her infant is to enter, as it were, the valley of the shadow of death, and win its life at the peril of her own. How different must an affection thus founded, be from all others. ”

“ It is true that the legal denotation of the term infancy is "the period front a person's birth to the attainment of the age of twenty-one years," but in common speech an infant is "a child during the first two or three years of life," whilst writers on infant mortality restrict the term to the sense employed in the text. ”

“ The infant is learning fundamental lessons, in the correlation of muscle, brain, and sense, through the almost incessant activity of his arms and legs—at first without purpose, afterward in reaching, grasping, or trying to move about, and also when it smiles back at its mother or is quieted by her voice ”

“ The first operations of the infant are to educate its senses, in order to become acquainted, through these organs, with surrounding objects. This, in the human species, is a process of very slow attain [Pg 2] ment; and our information concerning this subject, must be derived from attentively watching the progress of the infant itself; as of these early perceptions, for a reason which will be afterwards assigned, we retain no distinct recollection. ”

“ So mayst thou live, dear! many years,
In all the bliss that life endears,
Not without smiles, nor yet from tears
Too strictly kept:
When first thy infant littleness
I folded in my fond caress,
The greatest proof of happiness
Was this—I wept. ”

“ Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. ”

“ at the couch where infant beauty sleeps,
Her silent watch the mournful mother keeps;
She, while the lovely babe unconscious lies,
Smiles on her slumbering child with pensive eyes,
And weaves a song of melancholy joy—
“Sleep, image of thy father, sleep, my boy:
No lingering hour of sorrow shall be thine; ”

“ From the hour of birth the head of a child ought to be kept uncovered. Mothers will find that, even in the coldest night, when they lay their hands on an infant’s head, it is always warm.
Q. Children are eager to stare at every thing, particularly at the light ”

“ We shall see hundreds of small children, not more than five or six years of age, carrying, fast asleep on their shoulders, the baby of the household, its tiny smooth brown head swinging hither and thither with every movement of its small nurse, who walks, runs, sits, or jumps, flies kites, plays hop-scotch, and fishes for frogs in the gutter, totally oblivious of that infantile charge, whether sleeping or waking. If no young sister or brother be available, the husband, the uncle, the father, or grandfather hitches on his back the baby, preternaturally good and contented. ”

“ If we observe the life of an infant, we find it spent chiefly in sleeping, its short waking-time being principally occupied in feeding, in accumulating the material for its structural and functional growth. ”

“ Imperial babies are held in the arms of some one night and day, from the moment of birth until they have learned to walk, a custom which seems to render the lot of the high-born infant less comfortable in some ways than that of the plebeian child. ”

“ The infant is wholly controlled by its parents' belief; addressing the mother mentally, we have stopped the moaning and restlessness of her babe, but could not affect the child, except through its mother. ”

“ Many parents seem to take great pleasure in indulging the young infant in looking at these bright objects; especially a lamp or a candle. If the child is naturally strong and vigorous, no immediate perceptible injury may arise ”

“ For the celestials of the inmost heaven love infants much more than parents, — even than mothers ; yea they are present with infants, and have care of them.^ It was told me, indeed, that they are present and are watchful over them, that they may be nourished, in the maternal womb. They therefore preside over the womb during gestation. ”

“ Nor must we forget the peculiar manner in which human mothers must necessarily have carried their infants from a very early period in the development of our race. During the first eighteen months of life the human infant must always be held, or laid, more or less upon its back; and this position will probably tend to check the development of hair upon the dorsal and lateral regions. ”

“ Say, what is the spell, when her fledgelings are cheeping,
That lures the bird home to her nest?
Or wakes the tired mother, whose infant is weeping,
To cuddle and croon it to rest? ”

“ Whenever an infant begins to cry, without any apparent cause, by day or by night, let your first act be to examine its clothing; loosen it, remove the pins, or untie the strings, and see if the lungs have free space to expand, and the body a chance to move every limb and muscle. ”

“ Young infants, indeed, when ill often refuse to be put out of the arms, but over and over again I have found the experiment succeed of laying the baby on a bed, the nurse or mother lying down by its side, and soothing it to sleep. ”