Fayetteville observer. [volume] (Fayetteville, Tenn.) 1850-1966, 1866-02-22
Babies.

The following is an amusing &C.
count of the idosyncracies of In
fancy. The writer is evidently
one who has suffered" in the good
cause of humanity, and he depicts
his woes with a force, and yet
good nature, that the family afec-
tons of the reader will readily
appreciate. "Babies," in the alb
stract, are delightful things. They
are poetic entities-hunlan buds
marvellous volumes, yet unread,
of events and fortunes yet unreal
lied. But babies, as babies, are
very different things. We doat
on them in books and pictures, but
some folks would "much rather
not" have them in the house.
But hear what our correspondent
says:
! Mr. Wallace Martin Farquhar
Upper, in his "Proverbial Philos-
ophy," Gan imposing citation, by
the-bye,) saith that GA babe in a
house is well-spring of pleasure. :"
Had he said his babe, it might
have been true; but a babe in
cludes the babe as race, and |
deny, most positively and unqual-
fiedly, that my babe is a well-spring
of pleasure. To be sure he's got
enough "spring" in him, but then
again he's never well-at least SO
my wife says; and indeed she ac-
counts for his numerous little &C.
centricities by the pathetic appeal
of "baby's SO sickp-and so am |.
If ever l were sick of anything
IN this world, it's of that con-
founded baby of mine. There he
sits, staring at me now with his
vacant eyes-a perfect well-spring
of slobber and inarticulate sounds.
Put him in the cradle, and he's
perpetually crying; and if he falls
out of it, he only cries the more.
He's never contented, either with
his lot or his cot.
My only consolation is in his
future growth. Notwithstanding
he's all groan now, they say that
when he's grown up he'll be more
pacific in his tendencies; that he
won't have SO many COLES, and
that [ won't have so many sleep
less nights. But, in the interim,
while the baby's growing, what
am | to do? Am / to be sacrificed
to his necessity of growth? Is
there no dollhouse bed, where he
may be forced into length, in place
of cradles, where he can't be
forced into supineness? If he were
girl, I'd make him ga daughter
of the regiment" but being a boy,
that of course is impossible. Eve
ry morning that boy wakes rae up
at four o'clock by sticking his fin
ger in my eye. If / spank him
for it, he cries; but if | don't, he
sits on my breast, grinning like
young hyena, shouts spa" and
then makes a dive for my nose
After sufficiently recreating him
self. in this pastime, he generally
winds up by pulling my hair out
by the roots, and spank him,
for there's limit to human endu-
rance. His mother, so far from
being my ally, smothers him with
kisses, and tells me am $50 cruel!
When I was bachelor, used to
smash the flies that bothered me in
the morning, and this human fly |
only spank; yet l am condemned
by its mother, who hugs the squall-
ing brat and delivers herself of an
idiotic address to the infant, the
burden of which is Naughty pa!
Did e naughty pa hip e little ba-
by? Naughty pa! Sail ma hip
naughty pa?" with similar inter-
esting interrogatories in a similar
dialect. Apretty example that to
set before child! I'm sick of sc
little baby" One day he falls
down stairs, another day he swal-
lows pin; sometimes he's got the
measles, sometimes the scarlet fe-
yer, and sometimes the mumps.-i
At present he's in daily expecta-
ton of the whooping-cough.-
What a hullaballo we'll have
then! Not content with whoop-
ing all through his hitherto short
career, he intends to introduce a
cough-probably a hollow, rever-
berating cough. A horrible idea
.I1c Nll b,o hoo,,