THE BABY NEWS.
VOL. 1.
Thursday, August 8, 1901.
No. 19.
“his royal highness.”
If we don’t fix our friend Capt.
Robert Smith if he keeps on
running at his Sunday night
gait it won’t be us. The idea of
a man coming in about 4:20 g. m.,
and shouting like a Comanche
chief in distress is enough to
raise the dead. Bob is full of
business and sometimes he gets
full of other things. On the oc
casion referred to he was full
of “Love’s Young Dream” and
other cadaverous songs fresh off
the wires and was “wasting their
sweetness on the morning air”
while leading the horse gently
home to the livery stable. Bob
is a good singer and there are
times for all things. He is none
of your cheap-John ten-cent
songsters, and he knows more
songs in one minute than a dig
ger Indian knows in a “scalping
season.” We admire his singing
all right but when he indulges
in his incantations at a time
when according to Shakespeare
“graveyards yawn and hell it
self breathes out contagion upon
the world” it is time something
was done.
Now we don’t want the people
to think we have it in for Bob or
for his singing. On the contrary
we think he must have it in for
us. We have been trying to
think what we could have done
to call for this tumult.
We think Bob is long on gall
and short on gratitude anyway.
There is certainly no reason why
a man, after seeing his best girl
and being filled with that happi
ness that comes only to one who
knows he’s next, to awake the
whole neighborhood with his
nocturnal enchantment. There
is a time when it is considered
a mortal sin to be merry. But
Bob appears to think that by
making everybody else unneces
sarily miserable in this world
his ecstacy will be enhanced
fifteen-fold. But as there still
are men who believe the earth is
flat we must allow Bob this pri
vilege.
Bob is a gentleman of most
benign aspect and cheerful dis
position. Last Sunday morning
he was all dressed up in his new
pair of socks, the first he has
had this year. They are lovely
black ones and fit Bob like a
flat-head Indian fits the legisla
ture of Idaho. They are all be
decked or perforated with such
lovely ornaments that Bob was
as proud of them as a boy is of
his first pair of suspenders and
he just had to show them. He
hired a colored boy to drive him
through the street a la patent
medicine-man style, with his
feet cocked up in the air and his
‘"panties” rolled up high enough
to make a good display of his
nether anatomy and at the same
give an excellent occular demon
stration of his socks while the
colored administrator was plying
the fan. Bob went through
town exclaiming: “Go ’way
man. Aint they warm. Pan
me. Turn me loose. Too sweet
to live. Come and kiss me. I
don’t care if I never get another
pair. But say, aint they loud?”
These and one hundred seventy
eleven other original sayings con
stituted his humerous repertoire.
Of course, everyone admired the
“beauties” and they may have
indirectly been the cause of his
Sunday night “jubilee.”
Bob is a heading man of high
degree and holds the office of
“general superintendent.” The
rumor that a dog once made two
bites of Bob is not true. He is a
profound thinker and for the
past few months he has been
trying to figure out whether vax
ination is good for the soul. He
will decide that it is not in the
very near future.
PRAYING FOR RAIN.
The praying for rain craze has
caused quite a little comment by
the press and public throughout
the country. There seem to be
two extreme views on the
subject: The superficial believer,
who thinks that man should pray
for anything and that God will
send it and those who believe na
ture runs itself, and that God
will not be governed by man’s
wishes. One man says the way
to pray for rain is, “Repent your
national and individual sins, stop
stealing and killing. Live up to
our national ideals, not in order
to get national blessings, but be
cause it is right and then God
will see that we are abundantly
supplied with all the good things
needful.” And that is what
some people call argument. As
for myself I don’t believe prayer
ever brings rain. I think that
the Almighty, being all wise and
omnipotent has arranged the
gears of nature in such a way
that it is running for the general
good of humankind, and he will
not change the position of any of
the planets or satelites or change
the running mechanism in the
general arrangement of things to
give us rain; While we believe
in prayer we also believe in the
“intelligence of prayer.” If
prayer will bring rain it will
bring heat or frost at our pleas
ure. The people as a rule want
too much anyway. If all the
prayers for rain had been an
swered this country would have
been washed off the map long ago.