Part 3

And to think there was once a time when me and Marthy thought a kid was more bother than it was worth! There ain't no child, nowhere, that ain't worth more than everything else in the world all put together. No, sir! A baby has got more human nature in it than a man has, even. You take your big, rough hand to it, and you chastise it, so that it screams out, and the next minute it takes time in between sobs to hug its soft little arms around your neck, and kiss you. Ain't that the reallest kind of human nature? Why, that's the kind that makes the world worth livin' in at all.

I don't seem to recollect ever hearin' that Heaven was set aside as a sort of place where married folks could hang about by twos. Them that has had experience knows that that would be a mighty poor kind of heaven--one without children in it. It's the child kind of human nature that sweetens up the world. The “give and take” kind--take your spankin' when it comes, and give back love in return for it.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Confessions of a Daddy, by Ellis Parker Butler