John Davys Beresford - The Wonder

The diminutive lungs were as readily open to suggestion as the wee heart: a few movements of the twigs they called arms, and the breath came. O'Connell closed the mouth and it remained closed, adjusted the limbs, and they stayed in the positions in which they were placed. At last he gently lifted the lids of the eyes.

The nurse shivered and drew back. Even O'Connell was startled, for the eyes that stared into his own seemed to be heavy with a brooding intelligence....

Stott came back at ten o'clock, after a morose trudge through the misty rain. He found the nurse in the sitting-room.

"Doctor gone?" he asked.

The nurse nodded.

"Dead, I suppose?" Stott gave an upward twist of his head towards the room above.

The nurse shook her head.

"Can't live though?" There was a note of faint hope in his voice.

The nurse drew herself together and sighed deeply. "Yes! we believe it'll live, Mr. Stott," she said. "But … it's a very remarkable baby."

How that phrase always recurred!

There were no complications, but Mrs. Stott's recovery was not rapid. It was considered advisable that she should not see the child. She thought that they were lying to her, that the child was dead and, so, resigned herself. But her husband saw it.

He had never seen so young an infant before, and, just for one moment, he believed that it was a normal child.

"What an 'ead!" was his first ejaculation, and then he realised the significance of that sign. Fear came into his eyes, and his mouth fell open. "'Ere, I say, nurse, it's … it's a wrong 'un, ain't it?" he gasped.

"I'm sure I can't tell you, Mr. Stott," broke out the nurse hysterically. She had been tending that curious baby for three hours, and she was on the verge of a break-down. There was no wet-nurse to be had, but a woman from the village had been sent for. She was expected every moment.

"More like a tadpole than anything," mused the unhappy father.

"Oh! Mr. Stott, for goodness' sake, don't ," cried the nurse. "If you only knew...."

"Knew what?" questioned Stott, still staring at the motionless figure of his son, who lay with closed eyes, apparently unconscious.

"There's something—I don't know," began the nurse, and then after a pause, during which she seemed to struggle for some means of expression, she continued with a sigh of utter weariness, "You'll know when it opens its eyes. Oh! Why doesn't that woman come, the woman you sent for?"

"She'll be 'ere directly," replied Stott. "What d'you mean about there bein' something … something what?"

"Uncanny," said the nurse without conviction. "I do wish that woman would come. I've been up the best part of the night, and now …"

"Uncanny? As how?" persisted Stott.

"Not normal," explained the nurse. "I can't tell you more than that."

"But 'ow? What way?"

He did not receive an answer then, for the long expected relief came at last, a great hulk of a woman, who became voluble when she saw the child she had come to nurse.

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A relatively easy task for the baseball thrower, but one very difficult of accomplishment for the English bowler, who is not permitted by the laws of cricket to bend his elbow in delivering the ball.

See the Teutsche Bibliothek and Schoneich's account of the child of Lubeck.

A study of genius shows that in a percentage of cases so large as to exclude the possibility of coincidence, the exceptional man, whether in the world of action, of art, or of letters, seems to inherit his magnificent powers through the female line. Sir Francis Galton, it is true, did not make a great point of this curious observation, but the tendency of more recent analyses is all in the direction of confirming the hypothesis; and it would seem to hold good in the converse proposition, namely, that the exceptional woman inherits her qualities from her father.