Dear Reader, did you ever try to have the baby's picture taken in China? The question draws forth a sigh.
He was sweet and bright and bonny that jing, was he not? He had just had his Ho had forgotten there ever was a pin or a hard trotting knee. He bore life no grudge. As you posed him in his little he had on sweet far-away look.
you whispered softly to your Cantonese statue of a photographer, 't Now baby is all right, now!" "Yes, allen light," drawls the statue, and fusses about the camera till the brief dream of Heaven has flitted by on swift wings. The baby comes suddenly back to earth, laughs, crows, shouts, and holds out two dimpled hands to you. Now the photographer, in his secret heart, hates a foreign baby above everything. Why em they not be sedate, composed little waxen figures like his own solemn infants at home? Why must they jump and wriggle and squirm, flap their arms like wings, and insist on playing Bopeep at the very instant when he is at last all ready for the picture "No! no!" he says crossly, shaking long yellow finger at the baby, "Ni you make tov muchee bobbery Now baby does not know "bobbery" from building blocks but he knows when people are cruss, and when they cloud over his little world. The statue turns to his camera and carries away the plate triumphantly for the child is still now. In vain you endeavour, fur the next hour, to comfort the little wounded heart. You thirst for the photographer's blood, but he is the only one available, so instead you pay him six dollars for your pictures, and try again. In the first picture taken, baby the lull that comes just. before a hurrieane, when it is so fearfully, ominously still that the ship's sails do not even dap. His eyes are shut tight. The plump cheeks are all wrinkles. The mouth is stretched nearly from ear to ear for the mighty yell that will be here directly.
You try that photographer six times running, and every time he makes the baby ery, Papa Tom laughs and teazes and makes your life intolerable, He proposes to build a godown to keep the pictures in. He pretends to draw a check for a hundred pounds on the Bank f India to re-imburse your Celestial. Finally he adds a crowning injury to your long list of grievances. He comes inone day when you have gone shopping. snatches baby up in his morning dress, with which he has been diligently mopping up the nursery fluor for an hour, rushes down to the photographer and gets picture taken. To be sure baby's hat and cloak look as if they been fired at him, while his little skirts are drape ed gracefully over his left ear, But that little face! It has the joy of morning in it. It is an inimitable Hash of sunshine. It is sweet, bright, natural enough to satisfy even "you. Tom will never tell how he did it, but coolly declares that the photographer and the baby were all right, and all they needed was tu get rid of you and the thing was done! You even put your pride in your pocket and ask Al Hog how he managed it, but he only replies stolidly, You too muchee bungee my one piece kly baby. Suppose all time kly, make bobbery, 1" can do the same you keep both picts betimes you Iouk at that first one with its faultless clothes and the baby that looks like the figure-head of a ship, to be called the Unmitigated Woe, Tt is nut flattering tu your pride as a mother, but you have to confess to yourself that it does look exactly like baby when he cries; then to console yourself you look at the last picture, Honestly, it takes both these pictures to represent an all-round baby.
he Chinese nation is a very big baby truly, and its social life bard indeed to reproduce. Many hands have set themselves to this arduous task. The latest picture, which aims to bring out in strong relief the main "characteristics" of the baby, finds many critics. Many of the baby's friends think the picture tov dark. His nose is too wrinkled. His mouth is too wide. His hands are too large. They indignantly murmur What a shame Now they know in their hearts that the child does, sometimes, look in precisely that way. The uncompromising photographer has a disagreeable way of reproducing what he really sees instead of what you want im to see. What they wish the world to see is Baby at his very best.
In some of this latest photographer's pictures, it must be admitted the baby is somewhat tearful, but for all that, so true to life his mother could never take him for any one else's child. Many a little private Kodak catches, in stray shots, glimpses of Chinese social life which are like the happy morning picture of the Baby. They ought to be hung side by side with the representations of him in his less winning moods. Here is one, a picture of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.