Dressing the Baby.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4733, 8 March 1884, Page 1

Dressing the Baby.

When a woman goes to work to dross a two-year-old baby, she does it in a systematic, business-like manner, and without any noise or fuss; and before yon know it the youngster is slid out of her hands with his face wished and hair combed, his clothing in ship.shape order, and a 10 dollar chromo under his arm. This all comes from knowing how. With a man it is different. He makes elaborate pre*

parations and puts on the air of ono who . is getting an eighty-four gun ship ready for a two years' cruise. He collects the youngster's duds in a heap, gathering! them up from all over the house, and after a deal of bawling for this, and sharp, snapping inquiries for that, and an unlimited amount of getting down on his knees and looking round under the furniture for the other (all of which come from his having undressed the child the night before), he at length sits resignedly down in a chair, and, with a feeble attempt at good nature, says :—• Come, Charlie, come to papa, and hare your j coses on.' The child, who is just then travelling round in his nightdress, and playing with a damp towel and a stove- < wrench, makes a bee-line for the door, full of a desire to escape info the next room. 'Come, Charlie, come to papa, like a good boy,' says the father^ w,ith ; a brave effort at patience. The child keeps on its coarse. ' Charles!' This sounds so much like business that the youngster stops, (urns, and tacking slowly up to the sow stern-browed parent, gradually gets within reach, when a sudden grab of his arm brings him into position where the damp towel slaps round on the fathers clean shirt front, and the stove-wrench plumps solidly, down upon the very top of his foot. 'Oh, dear, dear!' he screams in agony, nursing his foot with one hand and shaking the poor innocent with the other, whereupon the innocent sets up an accompanying yell. A voice from below, where the wife and mother is busied with getting breakfast, joins in the chorus—' Olmstead Molleston, what on earth are you doing to that child ?' .' Oh, you keep quiet!' goes back the quick reply, in a short, ugly, desperate growl, that silences all further inquiry. Then the father after rubbing his foot and groaning awhile, squares the child round and begins the process of dressing him, which is mostly made up of dreadful struggles between clumsy fingers and smooth porcelain buttons, a general misplacing of garments hindside before and upside down, searches after the missing articles, and talk like the following:— . ' Turn round!' ' Stand still!' ' Hold your arm up!' ' Can't you let things be!' ' Btop reaching I' ' Hold your head up !' 'Up, I say I' 'Can't you keep still!' ' Where's that other skirt!' ' Let go !' ' Now, where is that pin ?' 'Stand up!' ' ' There now !' 'Why don't you fall down and be done with it ?' ' Stop your howling !' ' Stop!' 'Let that be !' • Behave 1' 'Say, why don't you have four or five thousand more buttons on your clothes ?' 'Now where's that stocking?' 'Keep your foot still 1' 'Say, keep—your—foot —still Y 'Gimme the other foot!' ' No, the other!' ' Can't you see ?' ' What do you want to spread your toes out for P How do you suppose I'm going to put your stockings on with your foot in that shape?' 'Stop it!' 'Stop it, I say!' ' Prow wow ! e—e—u! Who stuck that pin in that way ?' ' You, of course,' says a cold, thin, cutting voice, and he glances up and sees his wife looking down on him in a taunting exasperating sort of way •' I'd be ashamed of myself,' she continues' to go on in that way and get so out of patience with a little bit of a baby. You've been making noise enough to wake the dead, and his clothes look as if they'd been thrown on with a pitchfork. Gimme him !' And he gets up sheepishly and sullenly and after slamming and stamping round the house after the liniment bottle, and banging doors and making as big a noise as he can, he works himself up into such a state j of meanness and mortification that to spite himself, he goes off down-town with* out his breakfast.