{"id":97839,"date":"2016-05-06T15:41:59","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T19:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=97839"},"modified":"2016-05-06T15:59:07","modified_gmt":"2016-05-06T19:59:07","slug":"a-toast-to-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/05\/06\/a-toast-to-babies\/","title":{"rendered":"A Toast to Babies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Master of baby jokes.<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;\u00a0
It rains, and the wind is never weary;\u00a0
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,\u00a0
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,\u00a0
And the day is dark and dreary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014Longfellow, \u201cThe Rainy Day\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In New York, the foreseeable future is unremittingly gray. (That\u2019s not strictly true; there\u2019s one lone \u201csunshine\u201d icon in the ten-day forecast, which otherwise is a vertical column of rain clouds and two midweek bashful suns.) In short, it\u2019s dirty weather. Weather that, in a perfect world, would find us turning to hot-water bottles and cozy reads and stupid movies and, I don\u2019t know, stews, but that more often means trudging through subways smelling of wet dog and never quite getting your feet warm. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Such a grim outlook calls for a lot of things. (Personally, I\u2019m a great believer in the palliative effects of a bright-orange towel, but then I also own a Feel-Good Candle<\/a>, so.) But one great reliable is Mark Twain. So if you\u2019re feeling dreary and blue and chilly, do yourself a favor and read his \u201cToast: The Babies<\/a>,\u201d which is exactly what it sounds like, and furthermore can be read from your desk.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Twain, of course, was much in demand as a humorous public speaker; in our time, he would unquestionably have hosted the White House Correspondents\u2019 dinner. In an age when formal occasions\u2014the meetings of clubs and societies, fund-raising dinners, salutes to great men\u2014called for portentous and\/or witty speeches, Twain was such a get, and such a ham, that he\u2019d often run himself ragged and hoarse with engagements. It took time: not just the writing (which was a meticulous process) but the preparation and memorization of sometimes lengthy pieces, performed at dinners that could run to eight hours and twenty speeches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The setting for Twain\u2019s \u201cBabies\u201d toast could hardly have been less congruous: it happened at three thirty in the morning\u00a0(there had been fourteen other speakers) at an 1879 gathering of Union veterans to honor Ulysses S. Grant at Chicago\u2019s Palmer House. After toasts like \u201cThe Officers and Soldiers of the Mexican War,\u201d \u201cThe Navy,\u201d \u201cThe Army of the Cumberland and its Leader, the Rock of Chickamauga: Their Glory Can Never Fade,\u201d and \u201cThe Volunteer Soldiers of the Union Army, whose valorous patriotism saved to the world a Government of the people, by the people and for the people,\u201d Twain\u2019s must have come as a pleasant shock.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is a shame that for a thousand years the world\u2019s banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn\u2019t amount to anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twain presents the baby in military terms: as the ultimate commanding officer, a brilliant tactician, a superior who demands complete obedience and inspires total devotion:<\/p>\n

\n

One<\/em>\u00a0baby can furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can\u2019t make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Babies aside, there\u2019s still a subtle gravitas to the speech, an ashes-to-ashes philosophical quality that acknowledges the passage of time, the march to the grave, the ignominious ends and beginnings we all share. After we are dead, he says, a current baby will be a distinguished leader. In one card a statesman, in another, an astronomer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

And in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious commander in chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth\u2014an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the illustrious guest of this evening turned\u00a0his<\/em>\u00a0entire attention to some fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt he\u00a0succeeded<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It killed; they loved it.\u00a0\u201c[Laughter and applause.]\u201d reported the\u00a0New York Times<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s true, Twain had a good slot\u2014relief, hysteria,\u00a0and considerable brandy must have increased the six hundred guests\u2019 appetite for hilarity\u2014but that\u2019s toast mastery. Not only did Twain entertain and engage, but he seems to have kept himself, as always, from getting bored. What\u2019s especially interesting (at least for those of us who think baby obsession is a product of our times) is to remember that parents\u2019 lives have\u00a0<\/em>always<\/em>\u00a0revolved around them, and we were all babies, and we\u2019ll all die. And in the meantime, the rain can drizzle and the wind can blow and we can take comfort in the fact that we\u2019re not at an eight-hour dinner listening to fifteen speakers, and can read only the best, and shortest, toast from the comfort of our own desks. (And if only Schadenfreude will cheer you up, remember: sometimes\u00a0Twain bombed, too<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review, and the\u00a0<\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;\u00a0 It rains, and the wind is never weary;\u00a0 The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,\u00a0 But at every gust the dead leaves fall,\u00a0 And the day is dark and dreary.\u00a0 \u2014Longfellow, \u201cThe Rainy Day\u201d In New York, the foreseeable future is unremittingly gray. (That\u2019s not strictly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[9489,22246,411,22247,1766,2257,12985,17597,7302,791],"class_list":["post-97839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-babies","tag-banquets","tag-humor","tag-literary-history","tag-mark-twain","tag-mothers-day","tag-nineteenth-century","tag-speeches","tag-toasts","tag-weather"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThree Cheers for Children: Mark Twain\u2019s Toast to Babies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"May 6, 2016 \u2013 The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;\u00a0 It rains, and the wind is never weary;\u00a0 The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,\u00a0 But at every gust the dead\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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