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Tired Mother: Gestation takes 16 days; 7-15 in litter; young born pink, naked, and blind. Do not disturb young or mother for at least a week after birth; if disturbed mother will either kill and eat the young or neglect them and allow them to die. After 3 weeks, remove young from mother; otherwise, mother fights with them and often kills them. Sexes should be separated before young reach maturity at 43 days.
But if Roosevelt's charities began at home, they did not end there. His personal benefactions, never advertised, were legion. At the height of his fame, the man whom many of his contemporaries thought of as a roaring lion going about seeking whom he might devour was capable of taking a peevish baby from the arms of her tired mother on a train and walking the Floor with her until he had put her to sleep, of washing his companion's underwear on a hunting trip, of sharing the only drinking water available with a strange dog, and of carrying a bowl of goldfish out from New York to Oyster Bay in bitter winter weather because a little girl wanted them and the delivery people were not willing to accept responsibility for them.
After school, on their way home the child asked timidly, "Mother, chocolate malted?" and looked up at her mother beseechingly.
"No pea soup, no chocolate malted," her mother answered firmly.
At home the mother began to prepare dinner. The child stayed around, asked for water and got it. Seeing that she was going to get nothing else, she went to play quietly with her blocks. Sitting on the Floor she put the blocks one on top of another forming a tower and then suddenly she smashed them down on the floor. She did the same thing five times, perhaps as an expression of aggression that she dared not even feel toward her mother. |
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