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Other babies under the required age (4 years), decked out in all sorts of colors, and with dresses made universally in most execrably bad taste, were standing on some of the other platforms, or running about amongst the crowd, daubing themselves and those indiscreet and enthusiastic persons who attempted to handle them, with half-dissolved candy, and sticky gingerbread. And occasionally getting up a fight among themselves – where little fists would unceremoniously visit little eyes, and little feet would indulge in a series of energetic little kicks, and little fingers would pull out little bunches of little curls, and little voices would give a course of most discordant screams (which were little, but – ), and so the little Tom Hyers would amuse themselves until separated by some courageous individual who dared to touch the little monsters.
I stepped up to a lady to ask the age of a baby which she had in her maternal arms, when I found myself instantly a centre of baby attraction – babies seemed to pitch into me from all directions – a baby poked its fingers into my eye, a baby put sugar on my ruffled shirt, a baby daubed gruel on my white vest, a baby filled my kid glove with milk, a baby dropped something done up in a rag down my neck, and a baby of huge dimensions and unredeemed ugliness amused itself by filling my hat full of playthings which it appropriated from the weaker babies on either side. So that I found in that article of apparel a tin whistle, three dolls, a sugar house, a miniature Noah's Ark with all the animals, a rattle-box, a hair-brush, and two india-rubber balls.
Tried to get out of the muss, but a baby was pulling my coat-tails, and a four-year old baby stood upon each foot improving the pattern of my white pants by wiping their dirty hands thereon. I stepped back and knocked over a baby, I rushed forward and stepped on a baby, I leaped to one side and crushed a small baby in a pink dress, I sprung to the other and crushed a fat baby and its nurse against the wall. I tried to escape from the room but tumbled over a baby, – recovered my feet and started again, but babies got between my legs and tripped me down-stairs, where I landed in an exhausted condition, which was by no means improved by a careless woman dropping her baby directly on my head from the fourth-story.
Saw the distribution of prizes, – first prize given to an Irish baby with a stub nose; second, to a Dutch ditto, with eyes of different colors; and all the rest to the very babies who ought not to have had any, but deserved to be spanked and sent to bed until they should grow decent looking.
Not a good-looking baby got a prize, and the very ones who should have taken the premiums were sent home without having their expenses paid.
The $100 prize baby did not amount to much after all. Not a young couple who saw it but thought they could do better in less than a year; and the mothers of those babies who didn't get anything thought they could beat it on six months' notice.
Those industrious ladies who desired to rear a large family in the shortest time possible, and so had produced three or four children at a birth, were all rewarded by the Great Showman for their extra pains and labors, and all went home triumphant with a premium for fecundity, and money enough to buy flannel for all the brood.
Everybody said the baby show was a humbug – but everybody went to see it. Everybody said it was disgusting, but everybody paid his twenty-five cents to be disgusted, and everybody was disgusted to his heart's content.
No one was perfectly satisfied except the mothers of the lucky babies, and the proprietor of the entire concern, who made a small fortune by the operation.
The excitement is now over, the public have seen the sight, the press has had its say, the women have shown their babies, Damphool has gone back to the country, and the world is once more comparatively quiet.
No other so great excitement will agitate the world until next year, when the Great Showman intends to revive the subject, and show the world the modus operandi of baby birth, with illustrations by the mothers of the babies who took the prizes this year, and who in another twelve-month will probably have no shame at all in the matter, and will stick at nothing. Let us wait, and hope.