"The hand that rocks the cradle"--but there is no such hand. It is bad to rock the baby, they would have us understand; So the cradle's but a relic of the former foolish days, When mothers reared their children in unscientific ways; When they jounced them and they bounced them, those poor dwarfs of long ago-- The Washingtons and Jeffersons, you know.

He is so little to be so large! Why, a train of cars, or a whale-back barge Couldn't carry the freight Of the monstrous weight Of all of his qualities, good and great. And tho' one view is as good as another Don't take my word for it. Ask his mother!

Kisses kept are wasted; Love is to be tasted. There are some you love, I know; Be not loath to tell them so. Lips go dry and eyes grow wet Waiting to be warmly met, Keep them not in waiting yet; Kisses kept are wasted.

It is not the weight of jewel or plate, Or the fondle of silk or fur; "Tis the spirit in which the gift is rich, As the gifts of the Wise Ones were, And we are not told whose gift was gold, Or whose was the gift of myrrh.

I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama.

But as for all the rest, There's hardly one (I may say none) who stands the Artist's test. The Artist is a rare, rare breed. There were but two, forsooth, In all me time (the stage's prime!) and The Other One was Booth.