IN the life of man fatherhood is so likely to happen, that I wonder Shakespeare did not select father as a natural, and indeed inevitable, successor to lover in his well-known seven ages. He chose the soldier, “full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,” presumably because such soldiers were common in Elizabethan London. But fathers must have been more so: they must have gone in droves past the tavern window where Shakespeare (as what we now call the “wets” so like to think) sat at his ale-stained table, dipping now his quill in an inkwell, and again his nose in a tankard; but they seem to have made no impression. Indeed this unromantic, necessary figure, composite as it is of all sorts and conditions of men, has never appealed strongly to the poets; perhaps it is their revenge because fathers so seldom read poetry.

Whatever else a man does, whether he lives by banking or burglary, ascends to the presidency or descends to the gutter, he is likely to be a father: they are as countless as the pebbles on a beach or the leaves in Vallombrosa, and the few who evade paternity evade also the purpose for which nature evidently created them, and go through life thumbing their noses, so to speak, at Divine Providence. So taken for granted is this vocation of fatherhood, and so little considered in comparison with other masculine employments, that no correspondence school offers a course, and many a young man undertakes to raise children with less hesitation than he would start in to raise chickens. Some accept fatherhood with joy, others with resignation, like a recently wedded young Italian who cobbles my shoes, and spoke the other day of his own new little one. “Zee fadder and zee modder,” he said, “zey work and zey slave for zee leetle one. But what-a good? When he is grow up, he say, ‘To hell wiz zee fadder and zee modder!’” And so, as Shakespeare may have decided, there is no universal type of fatherhood, nor has the imagination of mankind created one, as in the case of mothers, for convenient literary and conversational use. The lines of the balladist,—

were, to be sure, something in this direction; but they have become so wholly associated with humor, that even the late Mr. Rogers, had he known the ballad, could hardly have found inspiration therein for a group; nor Shakespeare adapted the lines to describe seriously one of his seven ages. He might have scribbled experimentally,—

but that would have been the end of it. He would have crossed out the experiment, and taken another drink.

Father, in fact, follows Mother, in the mind of the general, so far behind that he is almost invisible, a tiny object on red wheels at the end of a string. But the little fellow carries a pocketbook: when Mother needs money she pulls in the string, and he comes up in a hurry. And, as is usually the case with popular conceptions, this odd, erroneous notion, which most fathers seem cheerfully enough to accept, has no doubt its historic foundation, and derives from the unquestionable supremacy of Mother in the beginning. At that period, indeed, it is hardly to be expected that any father should feel immediately en rapport with his new-born child, or become intimately associated with its helpless, flower-like life. Ever since the idea, which has now so long lost its original element of bewildering surprise, yet remains always somewhat surprising, first dawned upon a human father and mother that this baby belonged to them, conditions have inexorably consigned the infant to the care of its mother, while its father pursued elsewhere the equally necessary business of providing sustenance for the family. A division of labor was imperative: somebody must stay at home in the cave and tend the baby, somebody must go out in the woods and hustle for provisions. Maternity was, as it must have been, already a feminine habit, but paternity was something new and unexpected; and although I suspect, in many cases, this astonishing discovery was followed by speedy flight. Trueheart the First took up his responsibilities and his stone axe together.

The horror is recorded with which Dr. Johnson regarded the idea of being left alone in a castle with a new-born child; and this feeling in so civilized a man was no doubt an echo of the emotion with which poor, bewildered, primitive, but faithful Trueheart would have envisaged being left alone in the cave with his new-born baby: the sense of relief, of gayety, of something definite and within his capabilities to do, with which the young father nowadays takes his hat and starts for the office, must be much the same as that with which Trueheart took his stone axe and started for the woods.

Thus, in the very inception of the human family, fatherhood became subordinate to motherhood; and so, because conditions after all have not fundamentally changed, it has ever since continued. “Mothers’ Day,” for example, is celebrated with enthusiasm; “Fathers’ Day” remains a mere humorous suggestion, a kind of clown in the editorial circus. Then as now, moreover, in the earlier life of the child, Father, although not quite as useless as a vermiform appendix, was and is of very little importance.

I am not forgetting—for I do them an honor I can hardly express—those fathers who walk, all through the night, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, across an otherwise silent room, that the motion incidental to their perambulation may soothe a mysteriously afflicted babe to sleep; nor am I unaware that Father sometimes pushes baby’s wicker chariot, pausing ever and anon to pick up and restore some article of infant use or pleasure that the little rascal has mischievously thrown overboard, and in many other touching ways patiently tries to make himself useful. These offices are almost impersonal. Any father could perform them for any baby: a mechanical father, ingeniously contrived to walk back and forth, push, or pick up and restore, according as the operator wound him up and pressed the proper button, would do as well. Only in proportion as the child begins to sit up and take intelligent notice does Father’s position become responsible, important, and precarious. From that time on, his behavior has consequences.

Fatherhood, in fact, is a mighty serious business—yet even to-day many a father seems to have made no more conscious preparation for it than had our astonished ancestor, Trueheart. My friend Mr. Todd, for example, meets Miss Margaret Lemon at an afternoon tea. A blind attachment (I am putting the case with unimpassioned simplicity, for this is no novel) springs up (God knows why) between them. If Harvey Todd had been Faust, Mephistopheles would have wasted time trying to tempt him with any Margaret but a Lemon; and if Miss Lemon had been that other Margaret, Mephistopheles would have had to produce Harvey Todd, who, I am glad to believe, would have promptly told him to go to the Devil.

And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; and after a decent interval, he becomes a husband; and after another decent interval he becomes a father—and who more surprised than he! Even as we congratulate him, clinking together the long-handled spoons that come in the ice-cream sodas with which all good fellows now celebrate such an occasion, it is perfectly evident that Harvey Todd has given hardly more thought to the tremendously important and interesting relation of father and son than might reasonably have been expected of little Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do not attempt to say how he shall conduct himself: that is his business; but as he begins, so is he likely to go on to the end of the chapter, when little Harvey is no longer a roly-poly human plaything but a great big man like himself. And according as he has conducted himself, that great big man will bless him or curse him or regard him with varying degrees of affection or contumely. If he has never thought of it before, it is something for him to think about now, seriously, in the brief respite while his duties are perambulatory, and a mechanical father, cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, would do just as well. Fill the glasses again, O white-coated Dispenser, and make mine chocolate. For this man is a father! He has created new life, or clothed in mortality an immortal spirit (though he doesn’t know which), and here he stands,—I said chocolate,—and Solomon, with all his wisdom and all his experience, could not tell him what to do about it.

So we clink our long-handled spoons.

For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have advanced materially since he was a father. “He that spareth his rod,” said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, “hateth his son: But he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes.” And again, “The rod and the reproof giveth wisdom.” We know better nowadays: the rod has become a figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is something objective for a father to do—an occasion when Mother pulls in the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons. Hamlet’s father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young Hamlet, and never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no better than follow the elder Hamlet’s example; and in so doing he will show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fashioned insistence on proverbs and a stout stick. “He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck,” said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to “get it in the neck”), “shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond remedy”; which is an attitude of mind that the best thought certainly no longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon’s Book of Proverbs but Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to his Children.

If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact that even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may compose a proverb myself—

But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friendship, which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and truthful speech, is here especially difficult. “To speak truth,” says Stevenson, “there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child’s character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth.”

Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his jolly old father’s opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. “Foolishness,” said Solomon, “is bound up in the heart of the child”—and there he stopped, after adding his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr. Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with.

And so the father plays his unapplauded part—“tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited,” as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants no “Father’s Day.” He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a Great Father.