The daily Minnesota pioneer. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1854-1855, 1855-06-19
The Pioneer Correspondence.
FROM our Regular New York Correspondent
MATTERS and Things an New York.

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Look at the figures: on Tuesday, w ednesday
and Thursday, the three first days of the exhi-
bition, forty thousand tickets were sold. The
indications to-day are Of another ten thousand
at least, being fifty thousand admissions upon
tickets at Is cents each, which gives $l2, 500
as the proceeds. This is lower estimate
than the Treasurer. of The Museum himself
makes. Add to this the extra shilling per
head charged for admission to the lecture room
where the Moral Drama" Councilman Wild
and Mrs. Fowler are exhibited. and supposing
one-half the visitors witnessed them, the
amount is increased by three thousand, and
we have fifteen and half thousand dollars as
the gross receipts. AS a pecuniary enterprise
this will evidently pay, and is worthy the
teeming brain Of the protector, but to a refined
and sensitive nature the exhibition of these
infantine prodigies is most disgusting. I'm
agine an immense building redolent of the
Rhinoceros and Giraffi, packed to its full
cadacity with sweltering crowd of men,
women and children. Brazen faced ladies in
rouge, and fathers from Leonard aud Mercer
streets, elbow female innocents from the
country. Honest country farmers, to the loss
perhaps of the family watch or the well lined
wallet, jostle against pick-pockets and fancy
men. Misses and maidens, while their spec
tacled mammas are looking after the triplets, y
are put to the blush by the bold gaze of
lecherous roues, and compelled to hear the
coarse random remarks suggested by the occa-
sion. ......
Conspicuously elevated on raised platforms
running lengthwise through the middle of two
of the largest halls, are the model babies, in
most cases in the arms of their mothers,
labeled, and gaily dressed. Some of the more
remarkable specimens occupy the cases ere
while filled with wooden images of Daniel
Lambert, Joice Heath, the Gar Nicholas and
the Chinese Mandarins. Hard by the Maine
Giantess and the hairy Swiss child display
their rival attractions.
The greater number of the babies are inferior
to what one sees every day in the houses of
his acquaintance, and we can see from the
scornful lips Of each lady visitor, that she
imagines she has done or can do better Let
us, at the risk of our beavers and coat skirts,
push our way to the front of this platform.
Here is fatty deposite, with red, heavy
face, mumbling gingerbread with the most
stole Indifference. 1t is, as the proud mother
informs US, aged 3 years, and weighs IS pounds.
An enthusiastic gentleman lifts its frock, pin
ches its legs, and asks his wife to notice their
plumpness. Next are seated " triplets," three
very pretty little girls, five years old, as like
as three peas, and the slim, delicate mother
informs US that these are her only children,
and that she is a widow. Next is an interest
ing young lady, fifteen years old, with an arm
of the precise shape and size of smoked ham,
who weighs two hundred and fifty pounds, and
can give her own answers to questions.
Elbowing our way past numerous twins,
whom nothing but excessive maternal vanity
would have deemed worthy of exhibition, we
come to the central object of attraction, the
Prize Baby. He occupies sort of throne,
under purple canopy, is rather pretty, as is
his mother, who sits beside him, enduring with
much complacency the curious gaze of the myr-
lad eyes, and hearing from lips poison with
lust and rum the purposely audible remarks
She is deuced pretty woman; look at her
form what eyes she has !" and so on, until
all her good points are canvassed much after
the manner of crowd of horse fanciers COM
mending the dam of favorite foal at an Ag-
Fair. The shrewd Barnum, under
the pretext of eliciting important "physiologi-
cal truth" for the benefit of baby growers and
The human race in general, has list of eleven
questions to be propounded to the mothers of
model offspring, and applying these to the case
Of the prize baby, it appears that the mother
'lived free" for year previous to its birth,
that she took moderate exercise on level land
that she constantly bathed the infantine prize
,aker in cold water-and that the father is a
,oachman Important physiological relations.
Now we know the conditions essential to per-
ection of physical humanity. Father coach
nan mother handsome, and living free-ex-
.rcise on level land and plentiful cold water.
MORAL. All mothers should be handsome all
athers coachmen. But the pressure of moist
,uman bodies grows insufferable, and so through
. throng, as miscellaneous as the judgment
lay will assemble, we work our way into the
street, hot, dusty, hungry and thirsty, and firm
N the faith that Barnum is the prince of hum
Bugs, and that this is his last and greatest
see the show will not close to-day,as first an
but will continue indefinitely i. e.,
IS long as the coarse display will put money