Baby’s Visitors

Open the window, wide. How serene and peaceful it is out yonder, where

the stars gleam and sparkle—some faint and small as a diamond speck,

others large, clear, and dazzling, as the eyes of angels gazing through

the dim void earthward to that little room where Baby sleeps the sleep

of death. It may have been the shadowing of that radiance, attendant on

the sinless ones, whom we call angels, which had cast athwart the

infant’s features a sheen of glory, and changed them into the seeming

of a sleeping cherub, or perchance the immortal glow that shimmered,

widening and circling as it fell, was but the forerunner of that

celestial band who bridge space and suffer little children to go unto

Him!

See the mother kneeling beside her dead babe, her slender frame

convulsed with agony. Not a tear, not a sob, that breaks forth for her

lost darling but freights its newly awakened soul and holds it backward

from the angels. How can it soar while the kindred spirit below wails

its absence, and every moan shouts, trumpet tongued, “Come back! Come

back!”

“It was my world,” she says, “my whole world, and it has gone from me

like a vision. Alas! Common things live on; earth’s mighty heart still

throbs! Creation lifts its voice in sea and air, and in the world’s

great mart. Music, life, and motion are everywhere, save in my babe.”

Alas! for thee, fond mother, whose vision mounts no higher than the

baby’s cot. Alas! for thee!

Frail, yet beautiful, were the creatures who entered at the open

window. Softly as kindly thoughts that gathered round the infant

sleeper in wonder, and laid a ring of flowers about it, until they

formed a rosy cradle. And then, as the sighing wind or those more

delicate strains heard in dreams, the voices of the elfins rose upon

the stillness of the night like silver bells.

Solemn was their chant, and weird and fanciful, which anon changed to

lighter vein and measure. The mourner heard the sounds, and wondered as

the cadence rose and fell upon her grief-dulled ears, but the singers

were invisible to her.

“Nurslings of the summer air

Buzz, buzz, here, there.

So we! quaint and gay,

Antic gambol,

Gnome and Fay.

“Whispering to the smiling moon,

Trill, trill, ‘Come soon.’

So we! quaint and gay,

Antic gambol,

Gnome and Fay.

“As the breezes come and go.

Hum, hum. Just so.

So we! quaint and gay,

Antic gambol,

Gnome and Fay.”

As a single drop of water contains things with life and being, which

cannot be seen with the naked eye, so in space dwell the creatures of

the imagination, both wise and beautiful, being full of love and

sympathy for mankind and goodwill towards women and young children.

Show me a selfish, disobedient boy, or a naughty girl, who ever saw a

fairy. You can’t. I defy you to produce one. But many a bright youth

and pretty maiden, who love truth and obedience better than play or

lollies, can testify that the lovely persons who came to them in dreams

were the same who now stood round the cradle of the dead baby.

How these wee people had loved it, and had kept watch and ward over it,

ever since they had espied it in its basket cradle downstairs! Fresh

from the mysterious star-world, of which they knew nothing, they had

marvelled at it, and had crowed and cooed and sung to it, until it had

begun to know them, and answer after its fashion, and laugh, and shake

its fat, dimpled fists and crow too.

How they had watched it when it slept, and filled its tiny brain with

innocent visions pure as the setting sun! How they had caused their

magic to mantle its slumber, and the little rosebud mouth to open out

in smiles! How silent and still now! No smile parts the pale lips. Not

all the witchcraft in Fairyland, nor all the songs sung by sprite or

fay to fretful babyhood, can lift but even one slender hair from those

drooping eyelids which shroud the dim, blue eyes.

“Baby’s dead,” said one, and “Dead, dead, dead,” repeated all the elfin

circle.

“Let us bear it hence unto the open glade. The bright beams of the

morning sun will bring back its look of gladness, and we shall hear its

voice again.”

“Ay, bear it hence,” replied the chorus.

Cradled in the wild flowers they had spread around it, the elfins

carried off their silent burden, and laid it gently within a scented

grove, and as the glorious morn broke forth to life and gladness, the

birds gathered together in the fairy haunt and sang a requiem.

Up rose the sun and filled the dell with golden splendour. Its shining

beams spread through the foliage in amber-coloured radiance, and played

about the fair head of the dead baby until the creatures around shrank

back in awe at the sight; but the sun brought no light to its eyes, nor

smile to its lips. And so they carried the infant back again within its

little room, and departed wondering.

Oh, weeping mother, whose bitter tears have drenched thy baby’s winding

sheet, had’st thou faith even as a grain of mustard seed in the Master,

thou couldst see above thee, beyond that cold, dead clay, the forms of

angels bearing thy little one to eternal rest.

Oh, ye parents, shall I preach to you, as well as to your children? Ye

who, when your daily task is done, sit brooding o’er the loss of some

fondly remembered child, now sleeping its long sleep in death, take

heart if ye have loved it; then it is not dead, but lives again within

you. Love cannot die, for it is as immortal as the soul. Like Jacob’s

ladder, it is the broad pathway from Paradise to earth, by which our

little ones come back to us in visions and in dreams to give us

assurance of the tender care of God.