SHE WHEELED HER OWN BABY.
It was once my lot to board for a few months in a beautiful city. Every pleasant day I wheeled my baby out. On the broad, shady sidewalks which we frequented I used to meet many other baby carriages, their little occupants in charge of girls with snowy caps and aprons. Hardly a day passed that I was not accosted by some of these girls, and always, after the first general chat, would come the question: “Where do you live?” “Say, who do yer work fur?” “Whose baby’s that?” The stare of incredulous astonishment which always greeted my quiet answer, “He is my baby,” was very funny. “She says it’s her own baby, and she ain’t workin’ out for no one!’ I overheard one of them tell another, in a tone of perplexed amazement. “Why, did you take me for a nurse girl? Why shouldn’t it be my own baby?” I asked one of them. “Why, nothing, only—well, the ladies round here don’t ever wheel their own babies out,” she answered. “Well, I am a lady, and I wheel my own baby out,” I remarked briefly. That afternoon one of the ladies who never wheeled her own baby out went by with a little shaggy poodle in her arms!—National Baptist.