Whig and tribune. [volume] (Jackson, Tenn.) 1870-1877, 1873-04-26
Newly Married Men--What They
Have 10 Come To.

BY RELIABEL YOUNG
First. Just married; destined to
tnger IN clover, new-mown hay, and
such herbage, from nine to twelve
months. Then
Second. Some black, rascalIy,
stormy night you are turned out
into streets and ponds and mill
races or amid snow eighteen inches
deep, and drifting like blazes, and
told to run for the doctor. When
you get homo again, eight chances to
ten, little red flannel looking thing,
about the size of potato, awaits
you. They will call it baby, and
packed up with 1t you win find the
first squalls of married life-you can
bet on that.
Third Paregoric and soothing
syrup, and catnip tea, and long fan
mel, and diaper stuff, and baby
cholic-they will come along too
in fact, they will become just as
much at home in the house as din
nerl Then
Fourth. One of these nights, in
''The wee small hours ayont the twall,"
you will turn again. Barefoot, an
icy, disconsolate sense of dampness
all about you, only a cotton shirt or
such a matter, between you and the
distressed openness of a cane-seat
chair, you win distrsctedIy rock
that baby back and forth, and bob it
up and down, singing, meanwhile,
with a voice like q wild OK in a
slaughter yard: c
1'This thing is playing out, Mary,
Rock o'bye, baby, on tree top,n
or some such melody. And all the
time that baby yells. Oh, doesn't
he yell while Mary, up to her nose
under the warm bed covers, to help
out, every now and then impatient
ly puts in, just at the wrong place,
"Why don't you trot him faster,
Edw ardT" And you trot him-oh,
how you do trot himl If you could
only trot his wind out so far that he
never could get any of it back, or
break his back or neck, or some
thing, you would be immeasurably
happy. But no. The little inno-
cent seems tougher than an India
rubber car spring. Just as you are
about giving up, concluding that
you mast freeze, that there will GER
tainly have to be funeral in the
house inside Of thirty-six hours,
baby willis from sheer exhaustion,
and then, with teeth ehattering like
Mccormick reaper. you crawl in
by Mary and try to sleep again.
Fifth. Gradually you glide away
into tangled maze Of ice, chamo-
mile, more ice, skating. weather,
steam-whistle voiced babies, Jockey
club, sleigh rides, crinoline immense
as the old bell at Moscow, Indian
ambuscades, snow-storms, and forty
other equally cheerful things, sud-
denly
Sixth. A snort, a thrash, q wild
throwing upward of little arms and
legs, and then keen and shriIl comes
| that terrible "ah-waah ah-Waah, /"
again 81 guess you wake up, don't
you 2"
"Get the paregOric and a teaspoon
quick ~ says Mary, in q sharp, stAc-
cato tone, and "why don't you get
it?"
/ In just three-eighths of a(second
you are a Greeian bend ont there
on the cold floor, dropping paregor-
ic in teaspoon.
Hurry Gracious, little Ed. de-
scribing edfRbolical cnSyes with all
the NaERs and legs he's got, and
screaming one hundred pounds to
the square inch, and Mary rearing
around there in the bed making a
rocking chair of her back, and yell
ing, "By, by o." like wild Co
manche on the war path. Oh, no /;
circumstances are not such as to
make you hurry any. And then TO
think that as days and perhaps years
roll on, there, has got to be more and
more yet of just such distressed
work K