CHAPTER XIV.
OF all the fools Nature produces with the help of Society, fathers of first-borns are about the most offensive.
The mothers of ditto are bores too, flinging their human dumplings at every head; but, considering the tortures they have suffered, and the anguish the little egotistical viper they have just hatched will most likely give them, and considering further that their love of their firstborn is greater than their pride, and their pride unstained by vanity, one must make allowances for them.
But the male parent is not so excusable.

His fussy vanity is an inferior article to the mother's silly but amiable pride.

His obtrusive affection is two-thirds of it egotism, and blindish egotism, too; for if, at the very commencement of the wife's pregnancy the husband is sent to India, or hanged, the little angel, as they call it--Lord forgive them!--is nurtured from a speck to a mature infant by the other parent, and finally brought into the world by her just as effectually as if her male confederate had been tied to her apron-string: all the time, instead of expatriated or hanged.
Therefore the Law--for want, I suppose, of studying Medicine--is a little inconsiderate in giving children to fathers, and taking them by force from such mothers _as can support them;_ and therefore let Gallina go on clucking over her first-born, but Gallus be quiet, or sing a little smaller.
With these preliminary remarks, let me introduce to you a character new in fiction, but terribly old in history-- THE CLUCKING COCK.
Upon the birth of a son and heir Mr.Richard Bassett was inflated almost to bursting.

He became suddenly hospitable, collected all his few friends about him, and showed them all the Boy at great length, and talked Boy and little else.

He went out into the world and made calls on people merely to remind them he had a son and heir.
His self-gratulation took a dozen forms; perhaps the most amusing, and the richest food for satire, was the mock-querulous style, of which he showed himself a master.
"Don't you ever marry," said he to Wheeler and others.