The late grand convention of precocious and pinguid children, created such a stir throughout the country, that the news, by some unknown conveyance, penetrated even to the obscure Wolverine hamlet wherein Damphool had for four months been content to vegetate. The infantile humbug promised something new in the way of sight-seeing, and as he desired to meet all his relatives and namesakes who would be certain to be present on that eventful occasion, and wished to improve this noble opportunity of contemplating the infant Damphools of the country, who were to be there exhibited by their stultified progenitors, he took the next train of cars and started for Gotham, to view this first congress of rudimentary "humans." His immediate care, on reaching the city, was to repair to the establishment where I, his former friend, am generally to be found,--having discovered the object of his search, he had some considerable difficulty in convincing me of the utility of such a show, or the absolute necessity that existed of visiting such a promiscuous assemblage of everybody's brats; and paying twenty-five cents to hear a squalling chorus by the unregulated voices of the young ones, and to view the prolific women who had so increased the population of the country, in some cases by as many as four at a single litter. I had some old fashioned notions that babies should be kept at home, and allowed to take their necessary allowance of nutriment, and soil their _un_-necessary allowance of linen (a baby is always wrapped up in cloth enough to full-rig a topsail schooner, from the middle of which its insignificant head sticks out, like a lap-dog which has been rolled up by mistake in the parlor carpet), within the limits of the domestic circle; and not paraded before the public to perform these pleasing functions in the presence of an assemblage, composed in great part, of modest young men and bashful maidens, uninitiated as yet, in the mysteries of baby life. After laboring for some time to convince me that adolescent and embryo human stock is as legitimate a subject of exhibition as any other animals, and that fecund mothers and high-blooded fathers should be as much brought into public notice as brood mares, or imported Durham cattle; and that public displays of fine children, and a discussion of the mode of rearing and training them, and an interchange of sentiments on these important points between those of most experience in the matter, would tend to the great physical improvement of the human race, I was so far satisfied that I agreed to go and witness the latest effort of the "Great American Showman" to get up a sensation.