The Mexican Babies

THE Mexican babies are chubby and gay; Each family has ten or a dozen, And all in the town are related, they say, From a first to a twentieth cousin.

The house is adobe, the floor is of dirt; In the patio sheltered and sunny The babies can toddle with never a shirt While their mammas can sing without money.

If the little black-headed brown baby should cry, Or madre grow sick of his prattle, His tears in an instant his sister can dry With the end of a snake for a rattle.

Their little black dogs are a sight to behold, All hairless and wrinkled as mummies; With blankets about them to keep out the cold, And the babies about them for chummies.

How happy these imps from the day they are born,-- They toddle and tumble in tatters; Their faces are dirty, their clothes are all torn, But nobody thinks that it matters.