Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1878 — THE PRETTIEST BABY. [ARTICLE]

THE PRETTIEST BABY.

“To the baby show? No, indeed! God.bless me ! no indeed !” Had the youngest sister of Mr. John Trueax (very bright and pretty she was, with short, curly, black-as-the-raven’s-wing hair, and large, sparkling, dark-as-the-midnight-sky eyes) proposed that he should enter a cage of the wildest kind of wild animals—lions, tigers, leopards, and panthers, for instance—he could not have shown more consternation and horror. Mr. Trueax, albeit he only numbered some six-and-thirty years, was a misogynist anti a misogamist. He outbachelored all the bachelors of his acquaint ance ; and they were not few, as he associated with none but single men, never attended a wedding, shuddered when he heard of a birth, breaking off all communication with friends who plunged into matrimony, and carefully avoiding all women, rich and poor, proud and lowly, with the single exception of Winifred, his youngest sister, mentioned before, who had been left to his care when she was 12 years of age—being now 20—by a dearly loved dying mother. The reason? I’ll tell you. Once on a time John Trueax, then called Jack Trueax, a good-looking, jolly young fellow of five-and-twenty, was about to be married. The wedding day had arrived. The groomsmen and bridemaids, the parents of Jack and the parents of (as he fondly thought) his Lily, and a large number of Invited guests were present. A bell formed of lovely flowers hung from the ceiling, prepared to shed its sweets upon the heads of the happy lovers; the minister waited, book in hand; a hundred wax candles helped the gas jets to lend brightness to the scene; the wedding supper was laid—when the bride’s own maid, who had been sent to tell her all was ready (she had requested to be left alone a few moments before the ceremony, and, being an odd sort of girl, nothing strange was thought of rhis request), returned, pale and trembling, to the r om where the bridal party waited, with a note which she had found, instead of her mistress, and which read as follows: Dear Father and Dear Mother : - I do not love him. The feeling I mistook for love is only that of friendship. Since we were engaged I have met one whom 1 do love, and at the last moment I fly to meet him and become his wife, convinced that, dishonorable as my conduct may seem, it would be a thousand times more dishonorable to stand before the altar with a lie upon my lips, a lie which would condemn me to live a lie forever after. Tell Jack I wish him all prosperity and happiness. Lily. The bell of flowers was taken down, the wax candles were extinguished, the minister departed, the guests were disrn’ssed, and John Trueax left the house with a curse upon his lips—for he knew, in spite of her romantic note, that the girl had been won by the wealth of his rival—to become a hater of women, a foe to matrimony, Vice President of the “Stanch Old Bachelors’Club,” and a perfect Herod in regard to children. What wonder, then, that he shrunk back in alarm when Winnie proposed (they were on their way to the Academy of Music to hear some man make a speech) that they should stop a few moments at the baby show, whose flaming posters suddenly confronted them as they reached the corner of Fifth avenue? “ f)o come, brother,” said Winnie, coaxingly—and you never irf all your life saw any one who could be quite as coaxing as Winnie. * I won t!’ said brother, emphatically. “Just a wee, little while.” “ I will not,” with increased emphasis. “John, if you don’t, I’ll invite Cousin Mary and her twins, and Sister Lucy and her eldest boy, the one that is named after you, to the house to stav a week. ” “If you do, I’ll bum the house over their heads, collect the insurance and fly to Europe. ” “John, I love babies as much as vou dislike them ” J “ It’s no use.” “ John, dear John, I never wanted to go anywhere so much, never.” two diamond tears in her black eyes. “Five minutes, you said?” “Did I? I meant ten. ” • “Wall, ten; not an instant longer, remember.” And, grumbling to himself “ What a fool I am !” in they went. A large oblong room, around which ran raised platforms on which were to be seen many mothers and more babes. Some of the little ones were in baby wagons, some in chairs, some on hobbyhorses, some in swings, and some in the maternal lap. There were thrown babies, yellow babies, • rosy babies, cream-col-ored babies, and snow-white babies; blue-eyed, hazel-eyed, brown-eyed, graycyed, >lack-eyed and green-eyed babies; laughing, crying, pretty, ugly, bright, stupid, cross, jolly, serious and mischievous babies; babies of all shapes, all <wrte, all Hize g, and all ages—that is, frwi 1 mz nth to 5 years. f «haw ! said Mr. Trueax, with an expression of d sgrp-t on his expressive rxHintenanr/., he Altered the room and “ ril go no further, Winnie, but wait for you here;” and he retreated infz, a dark corner by-the-by, the only obw-rirc corner in the haP- -while bis sister tripped gaylv away < u i tour of inspection. But as he impatiently waited, frowning with all bis might, and hoping that Winnie would not exceed the ten minutes he had so ungraciously accorded her, suddenly it dawned on him that somebody not entirely unconnected with the show was in his immediate vicinity, for a not-unmusical murmur, a sweetvoiced mother’s croon to her baby, reached him, and, turning, he saw a joung and girlish creature in widow’s weeds with a tiny child on her lap.

As Mr. Trueax turned, this young creature raised a pair of the most wonderful blue eyes, fringed with the most wonderful golden lashes, and cast a halfshy, half-appealing glance at him. Mr. Trueax began to feel very uncomfortable. He, the hater of women, the despiser of babies, shut in, as it were, with a dangerous member of each species I For a moment he felt inclined to flee, but the thought of his pretty sister wandering disconsolately about in search of him nipped the inclination in the bud; and the next moment the girl was holding up the blue-eyed baby, arid saying in a low, timid voice, “ She’s very pretty, sir.” And the child was very pretty. Steeled as he was against the innocence and beauty of childhood, he could not deny that. A little angel, lacking only the wings, with bonnie blue eyes like its mother’s, faint golden hair, red rose-bud mouth, and chin and cheeks like the inmost petals of a pink-white rose. And just then Winnie came back, with two cards in het hand, commencing, eagerly, “Oh, John, we must vote. You’re to vote as I tell you. Let me see— ‘ the handsomest motner, the prettiest baby” and, her eyes falling upon the wee girl being held up for John’s approval, she pounced upon it at once. “You loveliest of darlings! Why, Brother John, this is the prettiest baby I ever saw, and— Good gracious I” dropping the baby back into its mother’s arms (from which she had taken it) with a precipitancy that must have astonished that loveliest of darlings—“ Little Bed Riding-hood.” “ Yety’ said the girlish mother, “Little Red Riding-hood. But, Winnie— Miss Trueax, I mean—l don’t expect you to recognize me now. Times have so changed for the worse with me (as you have guessed, no doubt, seeing me here) since we went to school together, and I wore the scarlet cloak which gained me my pet name, and you made me your own happy little friend.” “Oh, indeed!” said Winnie, arching her slender neck. And then, stooping suddenly and kissing the quivering red lips, “Allow me to decide that matter for myself, Miss Daisy Bower. But, of all places in the world, to meet you at a baby-show, and with a baby! Come, tell me all about it, dear. Brother John, you may go to the Academy and hear your great man, and I’ll stay here and listen to my small woman, and you can stop for me on your way back. ” But Brother John never stirred. The baby had reached out her dimpled hand and clutched his watch seal, and was examining it with exceeding interest, telling him, meanwhile, in a gurgling language, apparently founded on the one word “goo,” how much she admired it; and he didn’t want to rudely wrest it from the little fingers, “or something,” as Winnie would have remarked ; and so, as I said before, he never stirred. “Go on, dear,” said Winnie, seating herself beside her new-found friend. “Don’t mind John. He’s a regular wolf, I’ll confess, but I’ll take care he don’t hurt you. ” With a timid glance at the wolf, who stepped a few steps away—baby having turned her attention to the bird in Winnie’s hat—but not so far but that he caught every word uttered, in a soft, clear voice, Red Riding-hood began: “When you finished your education three years ago, and I was called home to Maryland by the death of my mother —my father, you know, died three years before—l was left with no relation in the whole world but my dear old grandmother. She had a comfortable income at the time, and for a year everything went well; and then the bank in which all her money was deposited broke, and we were penniless. Grandmother sank beneath her misfortune and became almost helpless, and I always was a spoiled, good-for-nothing—” “You always were a darling,” burst in Winnie, impetuously. “And—and I married grandmamma’s lawyer, and he was very, very kind to us both, and we were very comfortable until about three months ago—the day wee Daisy was half a year old—when he died, and oh ! Winnie, he left no will but one dated long before he knew me, which bequeathed all his fortune to a nephew in some far-distant country, and again we were left penniless. Grandmother grew weaker day by day, until she became utterly helpless, and now she lies from morning till night and from night till morning again on her bed unable to move; and we were almost starving, and I saw,” speaking slower and slower, “the advertisement calling for children for this show.” “ Yes, Daisy dear,” said Winnie, patting the thin white cheek encouragingly, “you saw the advertisement—” “And I think baby is just as pretty as a baby could be. ” “Lovely,” said Winnie, kissing the sweet, blue-eyed thing. “And it occurred to me that, if she could win a prize, poor old grandmamma and the darling herself might be kept from cold and want this winter, and so I came here. But I’m afraid very few people have noticed baby, for I’ve sat in this out-of-the-way corner all the time, I so dread a crowd, and—” The tears came into the wonderful blue eyes. “ Brother John,” said Winnie, as she paused. “Well, my dear?” said Mr. Trueax, coming a step forward. “Mrs. — By-the-by, what is your married name, Red Riding-hood ?” “Mulgrove.” “Bless my heart!” exclaimed John. “ Old Lawyer Mulgrove—old enough to have been her grandfather!” Then, recollecting himself, he stammered: “A good and clever man. I knew him well in years gone by. And he was your husband ?” “Yes, sir.” “Yes, sir!” muttered Mr. Trueax, “I wish she wouldn’t be so confoundedly respectful.” “I was about to say, Brother John,” continued Winnie, with decision, “that Mrs. Mulgrove mur.t not remain here.” “Of course not—being a friend of yours, Winnie.” “ My sweet-tempered, loving little pet she was at school, John.” “ That o n ly makes it the more imperative that she should leave this place at once,”said Mr. Trueax. “But what is to be done with the baby ?” “ Why, you stupidest of old fellows, that must go with its mother. Do you imagine she would leave it here ? Come, Little Red Riding-hood. Brother John—” lowering her voice to a whisper —“ she is faint with nervous agitation. I will assist her, and you will—oh ! you i/n7Z, dear John, just this once—carry the baby ?” And, before Mr. Trueax could say a word, baby was in his arms, tugging away at his long brown beard, and crowing with delight. And it was thus that two of the strictest members of “The Stanch Old Bachelors” beheld their Vice President that bright November day coming out of the baby-show—a baby in his arms and two lovely women following directly behind -beheld him, and turned to living statues on the spot. A year and nearly three months had passed away since Winifred Trueax found her old school friend at the babyshow, and it was St. Valentine’s day. The postmen, with twenty times their usual loads, were hurrying from house to house, leaving hearts, and Cupids,and posies, and true-lover knots, and doves, and sweet verses, and some verses anything hut sweet, behind them. But st the door of one small cottage on the outskirts of the city rangaspecial messenger this Valentine morning before any of the mail-carriers were about —so early, in f uit that the valentine he carried was handed in with the baker’s breakfast loaf. A snug little pottage it was. And the

parlor, which faced the south, and around whose walls still hung some Christmas greens, was the coziest, brightest room you could possibly imagine. In one corner on a crimson lounge, covered with an old-fashioned star quilt, lay a handsome old woman, her still-bright eyes dwelling with a look of fondness on the golden-haired 2-year-old girl who sat in her little rock-ing-chair softly singing her Santa Claus doll to sleep. And by the window, the blushes coming and going in her happy face, stood Daisy Mulgrove re-reading for the twentieth time fiie verses that came in with the morning bread. “ What is it, Daisy ?” at last asked the old woman, turning her eyes in the direction of the pretty reader. “A valentine ? May I see it, dear?” “ It’s something of the sort,” answered Daisy, with another blush; “but if you don’t mind very much, grandmamma, I’d rather not ” A gentle knock at the door interrupted her. “ Pull the bobbin and the latch will fly up,” called out Daisy, laughingly, sinking into a chair and hiding the valentine behind the window-curtain. “And, reversing the old story, the latch flew up and in walked the wolf,” said John Trueax, as he came into the room, where he was immediately clutched around the leg by the baby. “Such a terrible, terrible wolf!” laughed Red Riding-hood. “So terrible that he feels as though he could eat you this moment,” says the wolf, showing his strong, white teeth. Then unclasping wee Daisy’s hands, and putting a huge sugar-plum in each one, he went to the side of the couch on which the old woman lay—her wrinkled face lit up with pleasure at the sight of him—and laid a bouquet of fragrant flowers on the starry coverlet. Then, returning to the young mother, who had taken her little one upon her lap, he asked: “ Did you receive a valentine this morning ?” “ I did—instead of a pat of butter.” “ And what did the writer of it say?” “ You could never guess.” “ That is the reason I ask.” “ He says ” —speaking slowly, and with a bright smile dancing on her lips and in her eyes—“ that he loves my baby, and thinks her the prettiest baby in the world.” “Any thing else?” “And that, not content with having shamed her far-away cousin into giving her a part of what should have been her fortune, he wished to share his own with her if—” “If ?” “ Her mother will consent to be sister to darling Winnie, and mistress of his beautiful home.” “ Do you intend to reply to that valentine, Little Red Riding-hood?” “I do, Wolf.” “ Then reply immediately.” She put the prettiest baby off her knees, gave it a kiss on its sweet red mouth, and whispered, but not so low but that Jack Trueax caught the words, “ Darling, go give that kiss to papa.”— Harper's Weekly.