Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1877 — A Boy’s Composition on Babies. [ARTICLE]

A Boy’s Composition on Babies.

There are four or five different kinds of babies. There is the big baby, the little baby, the white baby, and the poo lie dog, and there is the baby elephant. Most of these babies was born in a boarding-house, ’cept the baby elephant; I think he was born on a railroad train, ’cause he alius carries his trunk with him. A white baby is pootier nor a elephant baby, but he can’t eat so much hay. All the babies what I have ever seen were born very young, ’specially the gal babies, and they can’t none of them talk the United States language. Aly father had—l mean my mother had a baby once. It was not an elephant baby; it was a little white baby; it corned one day when there was nobody home; it was a funny-looking fellow, just like a lobster. I asked my father was it a boy or a girl, and he say he don’t know whether he was a father or a mother. This little baby has got two legs, just like a monkey. His name is Mariah. He don’t look like my father nor my mother, but he looks just like my Uncle Tom, ’cause the little baby ain't got no hair on his head. One day I asked my Uncle Tom what was the reason he ain’t got no hair, and the little baby ain’t got no hair. He says he don’t know, ’cept that the little baby was born so, and he was a married man. One day I pulled a feather out of the old rooster’s tail and stuck it up the baby nose and it tickled him so he almost died. It was only a bit of a feather, and I didn’t see what he wanted to make such a fuss about it for. Aly mother said I ought’er be ashamed of myself, and I didn’t get no bread on my butter for mor’n a week. One day the Sheriff come in the house for to collect a bill of $9 for crockery. Aly father says he “ can’t* pay the bill,” and the Sheriff’ he say, “ then I take something,” and he took a look around the room an’ he see’d the little baby and he say, “Ah, ha! I take this,” and he picked up the little baby, and he wrap him up in a newspaper, and he take him away to the station-house. Then my mother she commenced to cry, an’ my father say, “ Hush, Alary Ann, that was all right. Don’t you see how we fooled that fellow ? Don’t you see the bill for crockery was for $9, and the little baby was only worth two and a half.” I think I’d rather be a girl, not a boy, ’cause when a girl gets a whipping she gets it on her fingers, but when a boy gets a licking he gets it all over. I don’t like babies very much anyhow, ’cause they make so much noise. I never knew but one quiet baby, and he died.— Troy Budget.