VI The population of this town on yesterday was seven thousand nine hundred and twenty; today it is seven thousand, nine hundred and twenty-_one_. The inhabitants of the globe are enriched by the same stupendous unit; the solar system must adjust itself to new laws of equilibrium; the choir of angels is sweetened by the advent of another musician. During the night Georgiana bore a son--not during the night, but at dawn, and amid such singing of birds that every tree in the yard became a dew-hung belfry of chimes, ringing a welcome to the heir of this old house and of these old trees--to the dispenser of seed during winters to come--to the proprietor of a whole race of seed-scatterers as long as nature shall be harsh and seasons shall return. I had already bought the largest family Bible in the town as a repository for his name, Adam Cobb Moss, which in clear euphony is most fit to be enrolled among the sweetly sounding vocables of the Hebrew children. The page for the registration of later births in my family is so large and the lines ruled across it are so many that I am deeply mortified over this solitary entry at the top. But surely Georgiana and I would have to live far past the ages of Abraham and Sarah to fill it with the requisite wealth of offspring, beginning as we do, and being without divine assistance. When the name of our eldest-born is inscribed in this Bible, not far away will be found a scene in the home of his first parents, Georgiana and I being only the last of these, and giving, as it were, merely the finishing Kentucky touch to his Jewish origin. But I gambol in spirit like a hawk in the air. Let me hood myself with parental cares: I have been a sire for half a day. I am speechless before the stupendous wisdom of my son in view of his stupendous ignorance. Already he lectures to the old people about the house on the perfect conduct of life, and the only preparation that he requires for his lectures is a few drops of milk. By means of these, and without any knowledge of anatomy, he will show us, for instance, what it is to be master of the science of vital functions. When he regards it necessary to do anything, he does it instantly and perfectly, and the world may take the consequences and the result. He forthwith addresses himself to fresh comfort and new enterprises for self-development. Beyond what is vital he refuses to go; things that do not concern him he lets alone. He has no cares beyond his needs; all space to him is what he can fill, all time his instant of action. He does not know where he came from, what he is, why here, whither bound; nor does he ask. My heart aches helplessly for him when he shall have become a man and