Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 197, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1910 — Law Can’t Suppress Babies’ Howls [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Law Can’t Suppress Babies’ Howls

BROOKLYN. —Anxiously awaiting the outcome of the important case of Tucker against Coch, tried in the Flatbush court, Brooklyn, Flatbush mothers learned with great relief that they would notbeforcedtothenexpense of equipping their teething babies with Maxim silencers, Coch lost and the babies of Flatbush were triumphant. Passing, Solomon-like, on the great issue, Magistrate Naumer ruled that even a Flatbush Infant must have teeth to go through the world with. Should jone be expected to worry through life with gums innocent of molars and incisors, missing the joys of sinking them into sirloin at 30 cents a pound? To be sure not. Was Mr. Coch a toothless b&>y? Of course he wasn’t. Didn’t he wy when the soothing syrup failed to* soothe? He did. Well, then, why should *thp Tucker baby be denied that worldold privilege of infancy? Mr. Coch could adduce nothing to overthrow this argument. ■ So it was ruled by the learned court

that it was well within the old Ro-‘ man, the English common, the revised or unrevised statutes, the city ordinances, Magna Charta, or even the plain or common variety of law for any Flatbush baby to howl and yowl and rip up the palpitating silence of the Flatbush night and turn it inside out while his “toofens” are pushing themselves out as a protest against a milk diet. This applies to both boy and girl babies hot only in Flatbush, but all over Brooklyn. Sumner Tucker and Arnold Coch live in adjoining cottages, or villas, as they obtain in Flatbush, in Martense street. All was well between them until the Tucker baby arrived. They had borrowed and loaned lawn mowers, exchanged garden seeds and talked radish, lettuce and other garden crops. But with the coming of the Tucker heir a gulf opened. Like most infants of its age, the Tucker one is busily engaged in bringing in teeth. Now, Mr. Coch has no objection to teeth. He owns a lot himself. But the day and night vocal demonstrations with which the Tucker baby accompanied their efforts to push through made Coch peevish. He suggested a motor boat muffler or something like that to Mr. Tucker and the latter was irritated. He had his neighbor summoned to court, saying he had abused him.