The Caxtons | Page 4

Mr. Squills, reseating himself, and, in his friendly emotion, wholly abstracted from all consciousness of the suffering he had inflicted; "he will be a dove of peace to your ark."
"I don't doubt it," said my father, ruefully; "only those doves, when they are small, are a very noisy sort of birds--non talium avium cantos somnum reducent. However, it might have been worse. Leda had twins."
"So had Mrs. Barnabas last week," rejoined the accoucheur. "Who knows what may be in store for you yet? Here's a health to Master Caxton, and lots of brothers and sisters to him."
"Brothers and sisters! I am sure Mrs. Caxton will never think of such a thing, sir," said my father, almost indignantly; "she's much too good a wife to behave so. Once in a way it is all very well; but twice--and as it is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last three days: I, too, who can only write cuspide duriuscula,--and the baker coming twice to me for his bill, too! The Ilithyiae, are troublesome deities, Mr. Squills."
"Who are the Ilithyiae?" asked the accoucheur.
"You ought to know," answered my father, smiling,--"the female daemons who presided over the Neogilos, or New-born. They take the name from Juno. See Homer, Book XI. By the by, will my Neogilos be brought up like Hector, or Astyanax--videlicet, nourished by its mother, or by a nurse?"
"Which do you prefer, Mr. Caxton?" asked Mr. Squills, breaking the sugar in his tumbler. "In this I always deem it my duty to consult the wishes of the gentleman."
"A nurse by all means, then," said my father. "And let her carry him upo kolpo, next to her bosom. I know all that has been said about mothers nursing their own infants, Mr. Squills; but poor Kitty is so sensitive that I think a stout, healthy peasant woman will be the best for the boy's future nerves, and his mother's nerves, present and future too. Heigh-ho! I shall miss the dear woman very much. When will she be up, Mr. Squills?"
"Oh, in less than a fortnight!"
"And then the Neogilos shall go to school,--upo kolpo,--the nurse with him, and all will be right again," said my father, with a look of sly, mysterious humor which was peculiar to him.
"School! when he's just born?"
"Can't begin too soon," said my father, positively; "that's Helvetius' opinion, and it is mine too!"

CHAPTER III.
That I was a very wonderful child, I take for granted; but nevertheless it was not of my own knowledge that I came into possession of the circumstances set down in my former chapters. But my father's conduct on the occasion of my birth made a notable impression upon all who witnessed it; and Mr. Squills and Mrs. Primmins have related the facts to me sufficiently often to make me as well acquainted with them as those worthy witnesses themselves. I fancy I see my father before me, in his dark-gray dressing-gown, and with his odd, half-sly, half- innocent twitch of the mouth, and peculiar puzzling look, from two quiet, abstracted, indolently handsome eyes, at the moment he agreed with Helvetius on the propriety of sending me to school as soon as I was born. Nobody knew exactly what to make of my father,--his wife excepted. The people of Abdera sent for Hippocrates to cure the supposed insanity of Democritus, "who at that time," saith Hippocrates, dryly, "was seriously engaged in philosophy." That same people of Abdera would certainly have found very alarming symptoms of madness in my poor father; for, like Democritus, "he esteemed as nothing the things, great or small, in which the rest of the world were employed." Accordingly, some set him down as a sage, some as a fool. The neighboring clergy respected him as a scholar, "breathing libraries;" the ladies despised him as an absent pedant who had no more gallantry than a stock or a stone. The poor loved him for his charities, but laughed at him as a weak sort of man, easily taken in. Yet the squires and farmers found that, in their own matters of rural business, he had always a fund of curious information to impart; and whoever, young or old, gentle or simple, learned or ignorant, asked his advice, it was given with not more humility than wisdom. In the common affairs of life he seemed incapable of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or, if taken unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe. But in those very affairs, if another consulted him, his eye brightened, his brow cleared, the desire of serving made him a new being,--cautious, profound, practical. Too lazy or too languid where only his own interests were at stake, touch his benevolence, and all the wheels of the clock-work felt the impetus of