THE FIRST BABY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 82, 4 September 1869, Page 3

THE FIRST BABY.

I tave Tia.cl one of those intcre^t'in"" animate 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 0 miles due west, the nurse six miles due east ; and when I got to the bo3om of my family, the milkman was at the door. It's a funny little chap, that baby; Solferino colour, and tho length oi' a Bologna sausage. Cross? I guess not. Urn, urn ; ifc commenced chasing me down the valley of life just when muslin, linen, and white flannel wero at the highest they had been since Adam built a hen-house for 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 bill for balance on Ist of January. A A queer little thing, that baby ; a speck of a nose like a wart ; head as bald as a squash, and no place to hitch a waterfall ; a mouth just suited to come tho gutn game and chew milk. 0 crikey ! you should hear it sing. I have bumped it, given it the smoothing iron to play with, but that little red lump looks as if ifc 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 the other day they dropped down his throat, and all that prevented them from going clean through was the crook in hi 3 elbows. Its stopped its music and was happy for one and a half minute. It's a. pleasant thing to have a baby in your house — one of your colicky kind. Think of the pleasures of a father in deshabille, trembling in the midnight I hour, with his warm feet upon a square yard of cold oil cloth, dropping paregoric in a tea-spoon by moonlight, thumping on the door, wife of your bosom shouting " hurry," and the baby yelling till the fresco drops from the ceiling. It's a nice time to think of dress-coats, pants, ties, and white kids. Shades of departed cocktails. ! What a picture for an article in plaster of Paris ! Its mother says the darling is troubled with wind on the stomach ; it beats all the wind instruments you ever heard of. I have to get up in the cold and shiver while the milk warms j it uses the bottle. I have a cradlo 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 rooked 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 ! Oh, no ! Its mother say?, only wait till it's breeched (it's been vaccinated) and old enough to crawl about and feed on pins. Yes, I am going to wait. Won't it be delightful! John, run for the doctor; Sis fell in the slop-pail, and is choking with a potato skin ; Sis has fell down stairs ; Sis has swallowed the tack hammer; shows signs of niuinps, measles, croup, whooping-cough, smallpox, colic, dy sentry, cholera infantum, or some other darned thing, to let tl c doctor 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-courting, and making my wife fall in lore with and marry me. — American Paper.