TOSSING THE BABY by Harper's Bazaar

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 20, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 19.

TOSSING THE BABY.

By Harper's Bazaar

THE throwing of a baby into the air and catching him again is always a risky practice—certain though the tosser may be of his quickness of eye and sureness of hand. A sudden and unexpected movement of the child in his mid-air flight may result in a cruel fall.

A gay young father snatched up his baby boy one morning and tossed him to the ceiling. Twice the little fellow went flying through the air and came down safely into the waiting arms. The third time the excited child gave a spring of delight as his father’s hands released him, plunged forward, and, pitching over the father’s shoulder, fell head downward to the floor. When the poor baby came out of the stupor in which he lay for hours it was found that, although no bones had been broken, the brain had sustained an injury that would, in all probability, render the child an imbecile.

Another baby snatched from the floor and tossed into the air received a fatal wound in the top of the head from the pointed ornament of a chandelier. Still another child slipped between the father’s hands as he caught her in her downward flight, and, although his frenzied grasp on the baby’s arm saved her from falling to the ground, it wrenched muscles and sinews so cruelly that the girl’s arm was shrunken and practically useless to her all her life. These are extreme cases, but the fact of their occurring at all should be enough to warn one from the habit of relinquishing one’s hold on a child when tossing it.—Harper’s Bazaar.