Baby’s Compliment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 13, 1916

Baby’s Compliment

His father and mother were both away, And baby and I had been friends all day; Many and gay were the games we played; Baby ordered, and I obeyed; We cared not at all for the rainy sky. We built up a block house three feet high; We threw pine knots on the nursery fire, And watched the flames mount higher and higher. We hid in the most improbable nooks; We looked at the pictures in all his books; We ran in “tag” till his cheeks were red And his curls were tangled about his head; So when the twilight was closing down Over the fields and the woodlands brown, And nurse declared we must say good night, He clung to me still in the bright firelight— He trampled my gown with his rough little feet, He climbed on my lap and kissed me sweet, And, as he scrambled from off my knee, “You’d make a good mamma,” said baby to me.

I have had compliments, now and then, From grown-up women and grown-up men. Some were commonplace, some were new; Never was one of them rung so true, Never was one seemed half so real— Baby compared me to his ideal.

— Selected.