MAN AND THE BABY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2785, 31 July 1907, Page 80

MAN AND THE BABY.

Under the above heading " Frances," the lady writer in T.P.s Yveekly, makes the following humorous allusions to the birth of the heir to the Spanish throne :—: — We were all very interested in the details given of the birth of the young Prince in Madrid. My readers need not be alarmed that at this late hour of the day I am going to recapitulate them. I shall only remark that I wish the woman j journalist had had a little more to do j with them. She surely would never run to the absurdities of description about a

baby a few minutes old In/ which the men writers indulged. We all know that even to a father a baby is something generic — it is a baby,* nothing more. That each baby is different from every other baby in the world is_ a fact that constant reiteration on the part of the mother may succeed in pegging into a man's head; but, all the same, were he candid, there would still arise on his lips a "I'm blessed if I see it." Women can see the difference in babies. A mother will tell you the traits of feature | and disposition of each of her children from the moment it was born. And there is no exaggeration in her descriptions. The idea that babies are all as alike as peas is entirely a masculine delusion. Every little being, on the first day of its life, shows characteristics that can be traced by the mother every day of its life after. — Excessive Observation. — Knowing this difference in the powers of observation between men and women where babies are concerned made, as I have said above, the descriptions of .the Spanish youngster very amusing. Every newspaper man in Madrid seemed suddenly to have had the gift of microscopic perception of babyhood conferred upon him. A professional beauty of several years' photographic celebrity could not have had her features and expression and complexion more graphically and minutely described than were those of the young Prince of the Asturias after his one squealing and hasty presentation in society. .Perhaps it was the thought that they had always hitherto been rather hazy as 'to whether it were infants or kittens that did not open their eyes for nine days which lent glowing colours to reporters' pens. We 'all know the power imagination has of throwing glamour round the things unknown. I can easily suppose a foolishly fond mother 6aying many ridiculous things about her first baby. Even Queen Victoria, who is by all accounts a very level-headed and sensible young woman, has brought smiles of incredulity to the faces of the experienced nursery matrons who surround her by descriptions of the amount of beauty and expression she has found in her son's face. Still, I hold newspaper men out-exaggerated all exaggerations of proud motherhood. — The Danger of Minuteness. — For instance, he who discovered that a baby could have " wide open " blue eyes at once gave away the limited quantity of his knowledge by adding that they were "lively." Now, that the young Prince blinked and twisted up his little Norman (?) nose at some over-inquisitive frandee I could well believe; but that c was able to call up a twinkle which seemed to say, " Glad to have met you, old fellow," I strenuously deny. No one ever saw a lively eye in a new-born baby since the world began. Then there was the conformation of the jaw-bone. By a curious contradiction all the Parisian journalists gave it as being distinctly Austrian in cut, while the Londoners would have it distinctly English. As a baby nine pounds in weight would be decidedly chubby, I had a wild wonder as to who amongst the journalists had had the enterprise to send his fingers among the wrinkles of fat to locate its race characteristics. — r Nursery Records. — That a Bourbon nose could be well developed and quite obvious to all who were privileged to have a peep at the infant is as credible as it is possible. Still, such preciseriess of description does not serve for much, since the shape of a baby's nose is as unstable as the colour of its eyes. Sterne himself could hardly exaggerate the injustice of Nature in this regard. The number of baby girls especially who have been launched forth on life possessing the delicately perfect Roman or sweetly fascinating Greek nose, and who afterwards find themselves with noses whose sole characteristic is ugliness, makes a doleful picture we all can dwell upon, either in regard to ourselves or some friend, if nursery records or traditions have been preserved. — A Nearer Acquaintance. — A dimple in the chin is another baby qualification that one can quite imagine attracting attention — it can also, alas ! be as fleeting as a Bourbon nose, being sometimes nothing more than an exaggerated wrinkle, which a few days of good sleep and wholesome food altogether removes. Another quickly passing charm of a baby is its complexion. His Royal Highness of Spain may now be as " fair as a lily," to quote an enthusiastic descriptive writer, yet be as dark-skinned and darkhaired as his father in three months' time. The information that he has a "curved upper " lip we may all receive with a hope of its permanency. Whatever about other features, a babyls lips tell a tale of character from the moment they are pursed up for their first cry. Curiously enough, until some man remarked them in the Spanish infant, I never thought of a baby possessing eye sockets. Of ocurse, they are always there, but somehow or other one gets into a habit of associating them with skulls and the dis-secting-room. Still, it was perhaps with a view to giving mothers yet another interest in their babies that a reporteisent forth the information to the world that the important little stranger who had arrived in Madrid possessed sockets of the Bourbon variety. In the future I can imagine paternal and maternal ancestors undergoing a thorough socket overhauling, in order to fix a grandson s or grand-daughter's type. After the socket discovery, it is very much of an anti-climax to find that the same writer thinks there is also something worth recording in the fact that the baby had a small head and (acme of penetration!) that it was round. Indeed, could his little Majesty have only read half that has been said about him he' would lirfc up in astonishment the " arched and salient eyebrows" which a newspaper man thought one of the greatest beauties of his half-hour old face. All this is

surely description run mad. I should like all the authors of it to be compelled to keep a day-old baby in their arms for a icouple of consecutive hours. Acquaintance with tbe realities of babyhood might prove a little curb to imagination. It might really be better for both if baby and the man knew each other better.