Note: Written and perhaps published c. 1870 1894 chapbook ed. reviewed Detroit Free Press 1894-09-24 p3, and briefly Hartford Courant -10-12 p9, and blurbed as received, Manchester Guardian -11-20 p9. • HC: "written [25] years ago, but here printed for the first time, with poorish illustrations by A. W. Van Deusen" • DFP: "written nearly a quarter of a century ago. It is republished not, as the publisher tells us, for its literary merit, but because of its philanthropic purpose and because it furnishes situations which can be used to advantage by a clever draughtsman. ... [AWvD] has done full justice to the lines of the narrative."

Synopsis: Presented as a dream from which the father and husband awakens. (DFP) "... finding that his many-childrened wife was becoming a mere machine for the producing and care-taking of the same, [he] introduced an automaton to rock, sing to and otherwise amuse the babies." (HC) "... he constructs an artificial mother, which holds the children, rocks them and 'croons' to them. These being the three essentials of a mother he feels that he has made a marvellous discovery." (DFP)