THE FIRST BABY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 385, 3 September 1869, Page 3

THE FIRST BABY.

I have had one of those interesting animals at my house. It came when it rained like blazes, dark as pitch, and my umbrella at the store, no cars running. The doctor lived miles duo west, the nurse six miles due east; and when I got home to tho bosom of my family, the milkman was at tho door. It’s a funny little chap, that baby; Solferino color, and the length of a Bologna sausage. Cross ? I guess not. Cm, urn; it commenced chasing me down the valley of life just when muslin, linen, and white flannel were at the highest they had been since Adam built a hen-house lor Mrs. Eve’s chickens. Doctors charge two dollars a squint, four dollars a grunt, and •on the scarcity of rain in the country take what is left in a man’s pocket; no discount for cash, and send hill for the balance on Ist January. A queer little thing that baby; a speck of ariose like a wart; head as bald as a squash, and no place to Hitch a waterfall; a mouth just suited to come the gum game and chew milk. O crikey ! you should hear it sing. I have bumped it, given it tho smoothing iron to play with, but that little red lump looks as if it couldn’t hold blood enough to keep a mosquito from fainting, and persists in yelling like thunder. It shows a great desire to swallow its fists, and tho other day they cropped down his throat, and all that prevented them from going clean through was the crook in his elbows. It stopped its music, and was happy for one minute and a half. It’s a pleasant thing to have a hahy in your house one of your colicky kind. Think of the pleasures of a father in deshabille, trembling in the midnight hour, with his warm feet upon a square yard of cold oil-cloth, dropping paragoric in a tea-spoon by moonlight, thumping ou the floor, wife oi your bosom crying “hurry” and the baby yelling till the iresco drops from the ceiling. It’s a nice time to think of dress coats* pants, ties, and white kids ! Shades of departed cocktails! AV hat a picture for an artist in plaster of Paris ! Its mother says the curling is troubled with wind on the stomach : it beats ail the wind instruments you ever heard of. 1 have to get up and shiver while the milk warms : it uses the bottle. I have a cradle, with the representation of miraculous soothing syrup bottle on the dashboard. I tried to stop its breath tho other night- it was no go ! I rocked it so hard that I missed stays, and sent it clear across the room, upsetting a jar of preserves. It didn’t make any noise then ! Uh, no ! Its mother says, only wait till it’s breeched (it’s been vaccinated) and old enough to crawl about and feed on pins. Yes, i’m going to wait. AVon’t it be dclightlul! John, run for the doctor ; Sis has swallowed the tack hammer ; Sis fell into tho slop-pail, and is choking with a potato skin; ibis has fell down stairs ; shows signs of mumps, measles, croup, whoopingcough, small-pox, colie, dyseutry, choleia intaiitnin, or some other darned thing, to take all the money laid by for my winter’s corned-beef. And all this comes of my shampooing and curling my hair, wearing nice clothes and looking handsome, going a-eourting, and making my wife fall in love with and marry me.—American paper.