THE FIRST BABY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 746, 13 October 1870, Page 4

THE FIRST BABY.

I have had one of these interesting animals at my house. It came when it rained like blazes, dark as pitch, and my umbrella at the store, no cars running. The doctor liTed six miles due west, and the nurse six miles due east, and when I got to the bosom of my family, the milkman was at the door. It's a funny little chap, that baby; Solferino colour, and the length of a Bologna sausage. Cross ? I guess not. Urn, urn; it commenced chasing me down the valley of life just when muslin, linen, and white flannel were 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 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 the gum game and chew milk. O crikey ! you should hear it sing. I have bumped it, given it the smoothingiron to play with, but thit little red lump looks as if it 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 his elbows. It stopped its music, and was happy for one and a half minutes. It's a pleasant thing to have a baby in your house — one of your collicky kind. Think of the pleasures of a father in dishabille, trembling in the midnight hour, with his warm feet upon a square yard of cold oilcloth, dropping paregoric in a teaspoon by moonlight, thumping on the door, wife of your bosom shouting " hurry," and the baby yelling till the fresco drop's from the ceiling. It's a nice time to think of dress-coats, pants, ties, and white kids. Shades of departed cocktails I "What a picture for an article in plaster of Paris I Its mother says the darling is troubled with wind on the stomach, but it beats all the wind instruments you ever heard of. I have to get up in the cold and shiver while the milk warms; it uses the bottle. I have a cradle with the representation of a miraculous seothing syrup on the dashboard. I tried to stop its breath the other night— it was no go. I rocked it so hard that I missed stays, and sent it clear across (he room, upsetting a jar of preserves. It didn't make any noise then ! Oh, no I Its mother says, only wait till its breeched (it's been vaccinated), and old enough to crawl about and feed on pins. Yes, lam going to wait. Wont it be delightful I John, run for the doctor; Sis fell' in the slop-pail, and is choking with a potatoskin; Sis has fell downstairs; Sis has swallowed the tack-hammer ; shows signs of mumps, measles, croup r whooping-cough, smallpox, colic, dysentery, cholera infantumj or Borne other darned thing, to let the 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, md looking handsome, going acourting, and making my wife fall in love with and marry me.