for a boy, but you never can tell. I'm offering up prayers and
oblations--both of us are. I make Zuleika pray every night. And say,
when it comes, no spoiling-the-kid stuff. No bawling or rocking it to
sleep nights permitted. Here's one kid that's going to be raised right.
I've worked out all the rules. No trashy baby-foods. Good old specially
brewed Culmbacher for the mother, and the kid afterwards if it wants it.
This is one family in which law and order are going to prevail--good old
'dichtig, wichtig' law and order."

I used to chuckle the while I verbally denounced him for his coarse,
plebeian point of view and tastes.

In a little while the child came, and to his immense satisfaction it was
a boy. I never saw a man "carry on" so, make over it, take such a
whole-souled interest in all those little things which supposedly made
for its health and well-being. For the first few weeks he still talked
of not having it petted or spoiled, but at the same time he was surely
and swiftly changing, and by the end of that time had become the most
doting, almost ridiculously fond papa that I ever saw. Always the child
must be in his lap at the most unseemly hours, when his wife would
permit it. When he went anywhere, or they, although they kept a maid the
child must be carried along by him on his shoulder. He liked nothing
better than to sit and hold it close, rocking in a rocking-chair
American style and singing, or come tramping into my home in New York,
the child looking like a woolen ball. At night if it stirred or
whimpered he was up and looking. And the baby-clothes!--and the
cradle!--and the toys!--colored rubber balls and soldiers the first or
second or third week!

"What about that stern discipline that was to be put in force here--no