infant is regarded merely in the light of a possible progenitor.
A boy is already potentially a father; whereas a girl, if she marry
at all, is bound to marry out of her own family into another, and is
relatively lost. The full force of the deprivation is, however,
to some degree tempered by the almost infinite possibilities of
adoption. Daughters are, therefore, not utterly unmitigable evils.

From the privacy of the domestic circle, the infant's entrance into
public life is performed pick-a-back. Strapped securely to the
shoulders of a slightly older sister, out he goes, consigned to the
tender mercies of a being who is scarcely more than a baby herself.
The diminutiveness of the nurse-perambulators is the most surprising
part of the performance. The tiniest of tots may be seen thus
toddling round with burdens half their own size. Like the dot upon
the little i, the baby's head seems a natural part of their childish
ego.

An economy of the kind in the matter of nurses is highly suggestive.
That it should be practicable thus to entrust one infant to another
proves the precociousness of children. But this surprising maturity
of the young implies by a law too well known to need explanation,
the consequent immaturity of the race. That which has less to grow
up to, naturally grows up to its limit sooner. It may even be
questioned whether it does not do so with the more haste; on the
same principle that a runner who has less distance to travel not
only accomplishes his course quicker, but moves with relatively
greater speed, or as a small planet grows old not simply sooner, but
comparatively faster than a larger one. Jupiter is still in his
fiery youth, while the moon is senile in decrepid old age, and yet
his separate existence began long before hers. Either hypothesis