Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 39, December 24, 1870.Various
General
Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 39, December 24, 1870.
Various
American wit and humor -- Periodicals
The poet had now reached that stage of parental experience where he
realized to its fullest extent, what many another poor mortal has
learned to his sorrow, that a baby in the house is the greatest tyrant
ever invented. A baby may be a well-spring of joy, a gleam of bright
sunshine, an angel from Heaven, a compound of unalloyed blissfulness, or
a mixture of "snaps and snails and puppy dogs' tails;" but it is
nevertheless the tyrant of the household, the king of the family, the
royal personage to whom all must bow, and to whom everything must yield.
What father or mother is there who dares set his or her will up in
opposition to the baby. If baby wants papa's spectacles, it must have
them, no matter if papa is reading. If it wants mamma's thimble, it has
it. If baby wants to go to sleep, the whole family must move on tip-toe,
and not speak above a whisper. If baby gets the croup at night, the
whole family must be aroused, papa must run two miles to the doctor's,
grandmother must be routed from her warm bed and brought post-haste to
help take care of it, everybody from the cook upwards must stir about
lively and be on the watch ready any moment to offer their devotional
incense at the shrine of this potent baby monarch, the wee ruler who's
slightest wish has greater weight than the king's command.
It is owing to this peculiarity of our humanity which always has been
and always will be, that the world has received the remarkable lines
placed at the heading of this article. Since the Poet's time there have
been attempts by other aspirants to immortality to continue the story so
well begun, and add a lengthy jingle to the already completed verse,
conceiving in their futile minds the idea that it was an unfinished
structure upon which they could build for themselves a temple of fame;
but all such dastardly attempts met with the success they deserved, and
that was speedy oblivion; and we contend and will maintain to the bitter
end, that these lines are the only right and true lines written on the
subject by our immortal Poet, and that the others which are falsely
circulated as part and parcel of the original, are spurious, emanating,
it is said, from a half-insane idiot who hung himself immediately after
finishing them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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