The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1855-11-06
|Gge 4ailp gonrnal
Mrs. swisshelm on the BABY Show At psttsbbfes

L
Mrs. swisshelm on the Baby Show At psttsbofs.
As duty, we went to Barnum's baby show
and we hope our readers will be very much
Obliged to US fordoing thing so disagreeable
| in the hope of saving some of them the trouble.
Apart from its immoral tendencies it was
very stupid affair. All. down the center Of
| City Hall was platform about five feet high
and on this sat two rows of settees, back to.
back. These were filed on both sides, from
end to end, with a set of stupid looking women
and children, of all Sorts except fine looking or
well dressed. Among about twenty babies
under six months old, there was not one in
long clothes, and very few who looked as if they
lever had been thoroughly washed AL showed
some attempt at finery, and quite number of
three -months-old darlings had their limbs
dangling out below short wooden dresses
0gYlameated with coarse embroidery or braid
The mothers appeared mostly to belong to that
class of laborers wives who have desperate
longing for inery and frumples and who were
tempted by the hope Of money to get it; while
some of them looked too excessively stupid to
have any settled idea Of any kind.
One sat feeding her babe without any of
those contrivances of drapery which usually
vail the process in mystery; and with her per-
son exposed, her mouth partly open, and lack
luster eyes following the spectators lazily about
sat there the very embodiment of stupidity.
One little girl with doll-baby head and a
face which appeared to be painted, with pretty
dark curls and pert expression was perched
up on settee, in tog of pink brocade satin,
which was most likely intended for dress
Had she been standing on the floor, most like
lly it would have appeared to descend to the
knee. Her stockings came up to the ankle,
Ithe slips had become invisible, and from the
lcenter Of the pink below, her poor little, sun
burned, bony limbs hung out their full length,
Ia little thicker than a common chair leg, and
with less symmetry. We heard afterwards
that Col. Wood had brought her with him,
and that she took the first prize. To our eye
she was pitiable sight as she sat beside he1
pinched- faced mamma, endeayoring to monopo-
lie attention by singing Pop Goes the Weaael
We wished sincerely that all the fashionable
mothers who send their young daughters out
lon the street undressed could realize, as we
lido, the effect ofsuch exposure. 1t is common
i saying, "Oh, it makes them hardyh' 1t certain
lily is very effectual hardening process, and
1--WE fancy, hardens the face much more than
the health. We cannot imagine how mothers
expect their daughters to be modest women,
when, in childhood, they are taught 20 sense
On ttie platform sat the New York prize
baby and his mother He is pretty, active
4 boy with no appearance ofa large sleeping, un-
developed nature. We mistake his general ap-
pearance if he is ever greater man than he
, is to-day. He appears to have more tricks
E than an ordinary monkey now, if he ever gets
beyond that we mistake his type. His mother
lis handsome, bold looking woman, who sat
lin flll-dress with arms folded, to be stared at
without the slightest blanching, but with q
defiant, daring look in her eye.
, One woman sat beside three miserable-look-
ling little girls labeled 'trplets and as she sal
she sewed on an embroidered undersleeve
showing the secret of her exposure of herself;
the hope of gaining, not subsistence, but fnery.
Around walked the spectators, commenting
Ion the points of these human cattle just as a
set of jockeys discuss the properties of horses,
: or as a company of drovers talk Of specimen
: of COWS and calves.
The poor dupes of mothers are to be pitied
t rather than blamed; some of them are decent
innocent women, who have no definite idea OF
the light in which they place themselves, and
} most are too nearly idiotic to be accountable
But it is not right that humanity should be
degraded thus in these persons; nobody expects
lany respect for humanity from Barnum. The
parties really to blame for these exhibitions
. are city authorities who grant licenses, anc
people of ordinary sense who go to see any
' thing so totally devoid of attractions. Ugly
: stupid women, and ordinary, vulgarly dressed
children are no great rarity in this great he
< public, and anybody who gives quarter to set
la lot of them deserves a pair OF donkey's ears
The exhibitions akin to the old model-artls
shows. and when Barnum and Wood visit
CITY to bring shame on the mothers of it by
one of these shows, the sons of that city shoult
see them safely past the suburbs on pairo
e rails.