The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1915-09-08
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER s, 1915
THE oLD-FAsHIoNED BABY-sHow

If you are getting along pretty we'll
in years and have reached the age of
discretion or the vague one that is
alphabetically discreet, and if you
used to have the jolly habit of going
around to state and county fairs, you
do not need to be told anything about
the old-fashioned baby shows and
what lark they were for the amused
and tolerant grand stand patrons and
what exquisite torture for the proud,
determined mothers, the wriggling
babies, and the blushing, wretched
judges.
You remember how the management
used to erect a great platform right
over the race tracks in front of the
grand stand and how, when the band
began to blare it's very loudest, all
the mothers came up on the platform
carrying the most intricately wrapped
bundles OF humanity, attended by
dozens of relatives who, by their
antics and speeches were quite as
much a show, Ca holy show as the
unsuspecting babes themselves. You
recall how inadvertently or patroniz
ingly all the mothers looked at one
another and at one another's offspring
and how dehantly they grazed up into
each judges carmine face as much as
to say, Vote against this treasure if
you dare. You remember how the
management made you serve as judge !
when you were bachelor and how |
you vowed that if nothing else would |
ever drive you to matrimony the prom
Used exemption from such narrowing |
experiences would do so. All the
married men were afraid to judge for
fear the papas and the mammas who
owned the sighted babies would go
somewhere else to some competitor
to buy their coffee or their shoes or
to have their teeth pulled. You recall
how they used to work one poor bach
elor tailor in your town over time.
The managers figured that he could
the married men were never his
patrons, anyway for after they took
to themselves wives they forsook
dandified ways and wore cheap,
ready-made hand-me-downs So the
little rotund tailor grew year by year
a sadder and wiser and more awkward
dandler of SOLDERING, or squalling, or
gurgling, as the case might be, in
fants. The chance to see his red,
perspiring face and his desperate,
hunted looked was one of the reasons
for your forking over two-bits on
Friday afternoon of Fair week to sit
on the grand-stand where you could
get a good view of his waddling pro-
gress around the charmed circle.
In those good old days the babies
that got the prizes were very likely
masters and misses who were smart
enough to smile at the judges, to
reach a fat little paw out to grab an
beard, and to show off to
advantage the tatting and corchetlng
and pink or blue ribboning that had
been fond mothers chief occupation
for months past 1t didn't matter
much whether angel child was deaf
in both ears and lame in the off hind
foot; if it had skin of peaches and
cream, friendly eye, and mother
that looked sufficiently dangerous, it
got the prize Many and many blue
ribbon has been pinned on the front
of a baby dress because the owner
of it did not yell like all get out when
the palpitating judge poked it in the
ribs and elevated it energetlcally to
his unaccustomed shoulder Many a
little baby so decorated has turned
out to be as homely as the proverblal
mud fence, always half ailing, and
notably dull at his books. Perhaps
YOU were a prize winner once and
xnow Just how it goes-or went.
Well, they have changed all that
low. The public is coldly snubbed;