BABY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1702, 23 February 1888, Page 3

BABY.

Everybody has seen a new papa trying to manage his primal offspring in a street car. The more primal it happens to be the harder it is to manage. If papa is a sort of a man he ought to be, his chief ambition is to prevent his fellow-passengers from getting on the'fact that he is new in the business. He particularly desires to pass for a veteran.

Baby, however, never for a moment overlooks the fact that he is only an amateur.

Its first move is to turn a somersault off the papa’s unaccustomed knees and stand on his little intellect in the aisle, thus bothering people about getting off and on the car and effectually preventing the sad-eyed conductor from collecting the fares. Then when papa dares to disagree with this original and startling flight of fancy and move the previous question, the (delights of baby farming suddenly materialize and become distinctly visible to the naked eye. With an intellectual whoop that causes the sad-looking passenger on the rear platform to drop the cigar from between his lips, baby throws itself flat on its back on papa’s knees and shoots eut like a telescope. Its dear little head plays a great batteringram, act on a, dyspeptic-looking passenger on papa’s right, and its cute little tootsies get all tangled up in the real point lace warn by a supercilious young lady on papa’s left, Its darling little hands are, of course, tangled up in papa’s whiskers. And j all the time baby is wailing a high and heartless air from the latest opera. Of course every eye in the car is fixed upon papa, and he suddenly becomes aware of the fact he is making history.

So is baby. 1 _By the time the little darling has kicked a hundred dollars worth of lace off the aristocratic dress, and loosened most of the digestive apparatus of the victim of dyspepsia, papa has succeeded in getting hold of the thread of the argument. He seems to hesitate between tossing his burden out of the car window and stuffing it under the seat. His face is about the color of a healthy lobster, and a wild yearning to go off somewhere and die and become a glorious care-free angel has laid violent hold of him. But through it all he never for a moment loses sight of the fact that he is a parent. Baby wont let him. At last he rises in a broken-hearted way, stumbles over the feet of everybody in the car, and in sheer desperation stops the car, and conducts the remainder of his kindergarten on foot. But through it all he is, of course, deliriously happy. He certainly looks it.—Rehoboth Sunday Herald.