THE MEXICAN BABIES
Reading edition
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.