Gents:—How d'ye do? I've just had a good long pull at the titty, and have got on a clean warm diaper; and feeling pretty comfortable, I think I'll give you another small epistle. I'm going to get into trouble—I feel it in my bones. My Ma has quarreled with her old physician, and has employed a new one, young Dr. Pliant—between you and me, I think they should have named him Verdant. This new doctor wants to please, so anything the women propose is exactly right. “Don't you think, Doctor,” says one, “that Mrs. T———— will destroy her health, nursing that fat child?”
“Certainly, maam, most unquestionably, Mrs. Helpalong; the strength of the mother being inadequate to the sufficient indevelopment of the ponderous system of meat-gather-upon-its-bones-ativeness of the infant, it consequently follows that the thin-down-to-a-light-alti-tudity of the fill-up-and-get-strong-ative powers of the mother naturally must result.”
“I thought so, Doctor,” says Mrs. Helpalong, and this clear-as-mud evidence against my comfort is reiterated to my mother. “Do you really think, Dr. P., that I am endangering my health?”
“That depends upon how you feel,” says the doctor. “Why,” says Ma, “I feel as well as ever I did in my life.”
“Your system, then,” says the doctor, “is what we call in the south sui generis—that is, you can stand nursing, and, consequently, the babe having a tendency to the natural milk which surreptitiously flows, I might say, from the secretive portion of the female os frontis of the breast, it must follow, as a result from these multifarious and indigenous effects, that no danger can ensue from your nursing.” I'm safe as long as my mother keeps in good health; but Lord bless me, should she get ill, I'm a gone sucker—this new physician would dose her and me into kingdom come in about a week. I heard quite a discussion about his merits yesterday. Mrs. Enquiry says that he used to be a fiddler about two years ago, but Mrs. Helpalong says it is no such thing—that he always was a gentleman, and taught school before he took up the profession—that he studied regularly a whole season, and took his diploma in the spring;—she sticks to that, Mrs. Helpalong does, and I guess she is about right. Aint my case critical? Bub.
NO. VI.-bub's RECEPTION OF A SILVER PAP SPOON.
I'm here again:—Important events having transpired since I last wrote to you, it has been deemed proper to send a synopsis of them to you for publication, in order that the world in general may know western babies are some, and when well nursed a good deal more than some. A most gratifying reformation has been effected in certain circles by my letters, and, indeed, wherever they have been read, nigger nurses, paregoric, sucking-bottles, coarse diapers, and sundry other abuses have entirely disappeared. The effect has been a corresponding improvement in babies, generally, and your correspondent in particular, who is now admitted to be a whapping child for a small family.
On last Christmas, a number of our parents having met together to celebrate the day, all of us youngsters were put into the nursery together, and the clatter of discussion which followed would have thrown a peevish nurse into hysterics. Charley Wilgus proposed that a meeting should be held upon the spot, and a silver pap spoon voted to me for my able letters in defence of infantile rights. Asa Keemle seconded the motion, and it was unanimously carried. Charley Wilgus was thereupon chosen chairman, and Asa Keemle, secretary. The president mounted a pillow, and called the meeting to order by ringing the bells on his coral. On motion, a committee was then appointed to draft resolutions expressive of the sense of the meeting, and the following boys, having cut their eye-teeth, were selected to draft said resolutions:
Augustus Vinton, Edward Shade, John Charless, Christopher Wigery, John Dalrymple and Wallace Finney.
The committee having retired, Colton A. Presbury, Jr., offered the following resolution, which he prefaced by some very pertinent remarks: