s 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.

The inspiration to the above lines came about in a very natural way. The
Poet was poor. That is, speaking after the manner of later days, he was
occasionally hard-up. His occasions were very lengthy ones and the
interregnum a period remarkably brief. It had become a sort of chronic
state with him, and although he occasionally wrote a bit of verse by
request, his modesty would not allow him to charge more than a sixpence
or thereabouts for any article, and the consequence was that he
understood to the fullest extent the meaning of the term hard times. Now
it is a well-known fact that families, especially where there are wives
and babies, do not take kindly to poverty and its concomitants, but
emphatically insist upon having something to eat, drink, and wear.

Time has proved that even the weakest are wise in their own way, and are
given knowledge for self-protection; and woman, although she may not
command succ