Father's Daze.

One of the major ordeals of manhood is fatherhood. It is a poignant truism of life that you can't achieve fatherhood without becoming a father. The young father must pass through the fires of fatherhood before he can claim the glorious privilege of boring his friends to beers with accounts of the extraordinary qualities of his offspring.

His new status having been achieved and confirmed by the evidence, which reminds him of a sadly wrinkled chilli with a hooter in its chest, he

Shouldering His Responsiblity

“Drank the child into old age.”

staggers into the highways and byways to broadcast the news. The power of the Press is all right for disseminating such minor tidings as wars, earthquakes and the rights and wrongs of nations, but for the greater things of life it is appallingly inadequate. At least, that is what you, as a new-fledged father, feel. So you set out to blazen abroad, in person, news of your unique and peculiar prowess.

“It's a boy,” you simper. Friends do their darndest to look glad that it is a boy. By the time they have drunk to its success, to its childhood, to its boyhood, to its manhood and its old age they really do look glad. Some of them seem willing to drink it into its grave but it dawns on you that perhaps you are doing your child a wrong by allowing its future to be practically pickled in alcohol. So you turn your face to the nest. Wobbily winging your way you meet a father whose paternal record would look like a page out of the Year Book—a man who has been practically dogged by fatherhood. He receives your tidings in the manner of a hero of a hundred campaigns learning of a minor skirmish.

“So now I'm a father,” you babble. He looks at you more in sorrow than in alcohol. He squeezes your arm as one who says, “Brother, we all have our burdens, our sorrows and our trials; but we must be strong.” Then he brightens and says, “There is one thing to be thankful for, you can never be a mother.”