BABIES—BY ONE OF THE DADDIES.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 174, 23 July 1881, Page 1

BABIES— BY ONE OF THE DADDIES.

If there is one human being more important thau another, it is a baby — at least that is how it is in our family. When there's a baby on hand, I am nowhere. Moralists may talk about heads of families and lords of creation, and. all that sort of folks, but Maria Jane can take the snarls out of all their philospohy turn whole families bottom side up, and put the head where the tail ought to be. You, sir, may be a young man, and not posted in the ways of babies. But when you roll up 20 years of sleeping! on the outside bedrail, because the baby; must have room; when you've got up 1,000 nights and broken your shins an, equal number of times, over rocking- \ chairs, and other chairs, and when the lamp was lighted, have carried the baby: until he got over a fit of colic, and that : in the cold (for a right Bharp baby never has colic except on cold nights) ; until you can rise in the dead of night and pour out 3^ drops of paregoric i and keep- dreaming all the time; when you can make a dose of catnip tea on a > cold stove and warm a cloth on your shivering body; when you can humbly submit to have everybody say of the crossest baby you ever saw: " Ain't he just like his daddy?" when you have bought flannels and " domestics" enough to stock a young store, just for one little mortal; when, by practice, you can beat a quarter-horse running for the doctor; when you can give up all the soft words and soft pillows to the baby, and can make a meal out of stale bread and cold coffee — then, after all this, and more, you may begin to realize the importance of — a baby.