BRITTLE BABIES.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1242, 28 February 1878, Page 3

BRITTLE BABIES.

[From the “New York Times.”] Formerly the lamp chimney vexed the souls alike of the righteous and of the wicked because of its exceeding brittleness. It broke whenever an effort was made to clean it, and frequently it Hew into pieces when no man was touching it, and merely of its own wicked will. Mon with small salaries were often brought to the brink of ruin by the constant drain upon their pockets which resulted from the effort to keep two or three lamps supplied with chimneys, and it is believed that Mr GHltnan was induced to steal 200,C00d01., chiefly because his pride led him to use none but unbroken lamp-chimneys —although in his pathetic and veracious confession he unaccountably fails to mention the fact. Now, however, the invention of Bastio glass has rendered the chimney no longer a grief and a burden. The new Bastie chimney cannot be broken with anything short of a sledgehammer. It can be used as a hammer wherewith to drive nails and to loosen the bungs of beer-barrels, or as a club for the accommodation of burglars, or for the purpose of instilling great moral lessons into the minds of youth. Thus the lamp chimney is cured of its brittleness, and no longer exhausts the pocket and ruins tho temper of the householder.

The human baby is, of course, far more complicated in its structure than is the simple lamp-chimney, but it shares with the oldfashioned type of the latter the fault of extreme brittleness. It is true that the baby does not break in consequence of unequal expansion or contraction, and can be submitted to extremes of heat and cold without cracking ; neither does it fly in pieces when left to itself, even when bent and twisted by the severest colic. Nevertheless, a baby is almost certain to break when dropped, even from a very small height. This can be demonstrated by a very simple experiment. If we take a baby of say six months old, and of the weight of about thirty pounds, and drop it from a height of four feet to the floor, it will break into from two to eight pieces. Of course, the pieces remained attached to each other by clothing and pins, bqf that its frame' work is broken a very superficial inspection will show. |t ia this extreme liability to, bi;oak which renders careful men so reluctant to hold babies. A man who accidentally breaks a baby always finds himself in an unpleasant position, and tho baby’s mother is sure to show by her manner that she regards him as careless and awkward. The worst feature of the case is that a broken baby can rarely be repaired so as to be in all respect s as strong and beautiful as it originally was, and in case it is hopelessly broken, it is impossible to replace it in a way that will prove satisfactory to its owners. Hence, the wise man carefully abstains from handling babies, whether ho lias any share in their ownership or not. The brittleness of babies is, moreover, a source of much trial to nurses, and debars the small boy from mpeh -.nnouent amusement. Were the ‘ baby firmer and tougher in texturp, it would be Very useful as aclulj ia. driving away strange dogs and objccchildren—both of which constantly molest nurses in our public parks, and it could also lie used by the small hoy, precisely as a pillow is now used, ns a weapon of de*fence in the deadly pillow fights which lay low so many stout clocks and gallant bronze statuettes.

The discovery that the brittleness of lampchimneys can bo overcome lias stimulated: a St. Louis parent to invent a style of baby that cannot bo readily broken. ife recently tried an experiment with a novel baby which appeals to ’have established very thoroughly its remarkable toughness. The baby in question was of the girl pattern, and outwardly resembled all other babies of the same age and sex. It was publicly dropped from the fourth story of a building on Ashley street, and struck a hard stone pavement, after a fall of at least fifty feet. Those who saw the supposed accident were filled with horror, and had not the slightest doubt that the bany was smashed in a thousand fragments. A philanthropic man hastened the spot with a basket, and coroner who had been hunting unsuccessfully for corpses since the early dawn gave a triumphant whoop and proceeded to empannel a jury without delay. To the unminglcd astonishment of every ope and the unspeakable disgust of 1 Ho coroner, tne baby was found to b.o unhurt, and wdien picked up waa in the act of playfully swaß ..owing a horse-shoe that happened to lie vrithiu its teach, ifhe pgoA Ihfivcgh iu-

spection failed to find a bruise or. a break anywhere on the surface or in the interior of the infant. Its toughness was demonstrated, and it is hardly necessary to say that, although the public and the local press re* garded the baby’s fall as an accident, there can be little doubt that it was dropped as an experiment by its confident inventor.

If the process by which this St. Louis baby was deprived of its natural brittleness proves to be applicable to nil infants, it will be of immense service to mankind. The minds of mothers will be relieved from constant apprehensions in regard to windows and stairs. The fall of a baby from the topmost story of an apartment building to the street pavement will not create the slightest uneasiness, except, of course, in the man on whose new hat it may fall, and the gate which is now placed at the head of the stairs in houses infested with infants will become entirely obsolete. It is not probable that babies will ever be used as hammers, inasmuch os they will be less convenient than the Bastie lamp chimneys, but for heavier work, such as driving wedges into logs, or for packing earth tightly around newly set posts, a medium sized baby will be invaluable. Confidence betw ecu man and woman will be vastly increased when the former can handle a baby without any fear of breaking it, and it may be taken for granted that unbreakable babies will be in far greater demand than the present variety has been. Tims does science by steady stops remove the obstacles to the comfort and happiness of mankind. Now that unbreakable infants have been invented, the only further improvement that can be desired is the invention of an elastic and compressible child, that can be made to fit clothing of any size, and it is not probable that we shall hare to wait very long before this desired invention is patented and brought before the public.