Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1875 — The Baby at the Theater. [ARTICLE]

The Baby at the Theater.

She brought the darling with her to see the play. Her entire devotion to the active infant and total indifference to observation proclaimed her its mother. She tickled the baby under the chin until it crowed again. She seized its foot and shook it tulthe infant suffocated itself with delight. This had a bad effect, for when the baby recovered its wind it yelled with fright. Then, such a kissing and dandling. It was tossed and playfully shaken, and grinned at and chirruped to until it began another alarming laugh. An artificial rose in the maternal bonnet caught the infantile eye, and the delighted mamma suffered her offspring to bob weakly up and down on its limber legs and jabber earnestly at the floral ornament. People in the vicinity grew nervous. Such a lively infant was sure to make things disagreeable before the evening was over. Several young men got up and changed their seats to the other side ot the theater. Gentlemen contracted their brows and unmarried ladies assumed fixed smiles of unnatural sweetness as they cast their fine eyes toward the playful infant and its proud and happy mother. The lights were turned up and bulged out the infant’s eyes with surprise. One feeble little hand, with all the tiny fingqrs working, was stretched convulsively toward the glittering gas-jets on the other side of the auditorium. The orchestra began with a crash. The baby fell upon its back in the maternal lap ana set up a shriek so loud that the old German doing a little solo on the comet between crashes had his sound quite drowned. It was noticed that when it came to the bass-drum man’s turn to chime in he did so with a thundering vigor that would have covered the screeches of a foundling hospital. Baby got used to it, and when the curtain rang up sat in a state of stupefaction, staring at the actors. An amiable old gentleman in eye-glasses and a white vest, sitting immediately in front of the baby, wearied of the play, and, in the most grandfatherly manner possible, turned, and, poking a fat forefinger into the infant’s ribs, jocosely clicked his tongue. The consequence of this advance was maty just as a young gentleman on the stage, who was on his knees before a young lady with averted head, remarked in an impassioned manner: “And, Edith, darling; should - Heaven bless our union and give us ” baby gave a howl of supernatural loudness. The confused and mortified old gentleman blew his nose with prodigious, vigor and looked straight before him with a very red lace. The gentleman on the stage was startled out of his speech, and the young lady, overcome with emotion, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth. Everyman in the house scowled at the mother, who seemed more calmly delighted with her darling than ever, and made loving faces at it for full five minutes. She was really and truly unconscious that she and her pet annoyed anyone, and throughout the whole evening smiled serenely* and looked upon the infant’s screams and kicks as marks of a precocity which must excite the admiration of the public.— Salt Lake Herald.