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An Over-Incubated Baby

THE picture opens in a professor's laboratory, filled with chemical implements, prominent among which is a large machine bearing a notice to this effect :—
"PROF. BAKEM'S BABY INCUBATOR.— TWO Years' Growth in Two Minutes."
The doctor's boy is cleaning the apparatus when a lady enters bearing an emaciated baby. The doctor shakes his head at the sight of the weakly child, but, assuring the lady that all will be right, he pockets his fee, and after bowing his visitor out he places the baby in the incubator, and, giving the boy some instructions, goes out for some refreshment. The boy lights the lamp under the incubator containing the baby, and carefully tests the temperature with an enormous thermometer. While endeavouring to turn down the lamp he accidentally upsets it, and the flames shoot up and burst the thermometer. The professor on his return is horror-struck at the sight, and on the lady claiming her child, the incubator is opened and found to contain a very old man, whose actions, and the expressions of his sorrow-stricken mother, are extremely humorous.

PAUL 1903