Clara D. Bates.
THE HEIR APPARENT.
A small boy who can adopt the air and demeanor of the “afflicted parent” will make this soliloquy very amusing.
A Baby! Yes—a baby—a real, definite, unquestionable baby! What of it? do you ask. Well, that’s queer. Don’t know what a baby is? I’m sorry for you. My advice is—go and get one.
Heigho! I’m weighted down with my responsibility. Solferino in color—no hair on its head—kicks—yowls—mews—whines-sneezes—squints—makes up mouths—it’s a singular circumstance—that baby is, and—but never mind.
Cross? I guess that’s a beginning of the truth, so far as it’s concerned, but, why did it happen along just at the moment when muslin, linen and white flannel were the highest they had been since Adam built a hen-house for Mrs. Eve’s chickens? when the doctors charge two dollars a squint, four dollars a grunt, and, on account of the scarcity in the country, take what is left in a man’s pocket, no discount for cash, and send bill for balance, Jan. 1st? Queer, isn’t it? (A pause.)
A queer little thing is 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 situated to come the gum-game and chew milk. Oh! you should hear her sing. I have stuffed my fur cap down its throat, given it the smoothing-iron to play with; but that little red lump that looks as if it couldn’t hold blood enough to keep a musketo from fainting, persists to swallow its fists, and the other day they dropped down its throat, to the crook in its elbows. That stopped its music, and I was happy for one and a half minutes.
It is a pleasant thing to have a baby in the house—one of your achy kind. Think of the pleasures of a father in his night costume, trembling in the midnight hour, with his warm feet upon a square yard of oilcloth, dropping paregoric in a teaspoon, by moonlight, the nurse thumping at the door, and the wife of your bosom crying “hurray,” 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.