WINS A $100 PRIZE.
An unusual interest was shown in Norwood in last Sunday’s New York Journal as it contained a number of pictures and an interesting sketch of a very pretty Norwood boy, Raymund Wilbur Ellis, the five-year-old son of Ernest W. Ellis. The little boy wins the New York Journal’s prize of $100, offered weekly for the photograph of the finest baby sent in. Master Ellis is, moreover, America’s champion youngster of the week, the contest being between children born in the United States and children born in any part of the British empire. The contest thus extends from England to Australia. It is really an enterprise in which a rivalry is shown between two great journalists, Mr. Alfred Harinsworth, the English newspaper publisher, and W. R. Hearst of the New York Journal, the Chicago American, and the San Francisco Examiner. The British representatives in the baby contest are appearing in Harmsworth’s Magazine.
The following interesting account of Master Raymund and of the contest itself appears in the New York Journal— Raymund Wilbur Ellis is the most beautiful baby of the week. Ho wins the prize of $100, offered weekly for the photograph of the finest baby sent in.
Raymund’s home is at No. 450 Walpole Street, Norwood, Mass., formerly South Dedham. Iio is a son of E. W. Ellis, of the firm of L. D. and E. W. Ellis, he is a true representative of New England. His family have lived there in that region since the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon its shores, and they have boon in Norwood, formerly South Dedham, for one hundred years. It seems a pity, by the way, that the townspeople gave up such a lino old Puritanical sounding name as South Dedham, but perhaps they had good reasons.
Raymund was live years old on April 30 of this year. He is as healthy as he is handsome, and gives promise of being more than usually intellectual, as becomes one of ancient Now England stock.
He comes from a remarkably long-lived ancestry. Two of his great-grandparents lived to be over ninety. He has now two grandfathers, each seventy-four years old, and one grandmother, aged seventy. These pictures were originally taken for a California grandpa. Little Raymund spent three months with the old gentleman last winter in California, and his society gave his grandfather a great deal of pleasure, amusement and instruction.
Raymund has light curly hair and big blue eyes. He has regular features, rosy cheeks, and a beautiful complexion. Ho is well-grown, has a fine appetite and is extremely active. We could hardly imagine a handsomer boy. But we may also observe something more than mere beauty in Raymund. We observe indications of thoughtfulness and strong character in his well-formed forehead and refined features. We hasten to add, however, that he is not like the typical Bostonian boy who wears gold-mined spectacles and reads the Rig-Veda in the original languages. The class of Boston babies who do that is really comparatively limited, in spite of the testimony of comic periodicals.
Raymund shows a satisfactory boyish love for play. Even at this early age he struggles with a football and a baseball bat.
His friends and relatives to link that it is desirable a boy should win the $100 prize this week. So many beautiful girls have appeared that they are afraid our British rivals will say we have no boys worth exhibiting. They think that Raymond is just the boy to show the contrary. The wishes of these friends and relatives are now gratified.
We are glad, indeed, to see a son of New England take the prize. It is an important part of the country and this competition is widely and representatively American. It must include the sunny South, the golden West, the fertile Mid-west, the industrious middle states, and also <New England’s stern and rock-bound shores. It is particularly desirable that, in a contest with Old England, New England should be adequately represented, for it was “there the embattled farmers stood and tired the shot heard round the world.”
Time was when New England was widely and justly famed for the production of large families. That, indeed seems to have been the leading industry. The Pilgrim Fathers set the example immediately after they landed, and it was followed steadily until about the middle of this century. Things have changed very much in these times. The original Now England stock is now diminishing steadily. Still there are actually plenty of fine Yankee babies. Perhaps as a result of the great International Baby Contest the descendants of the Pilgrims will generally see the error of their ways.
Every week an American baby gets a prize of $100 for beauty. Every week sees us better prepared to face the British Empire in the great International Baby Contest.
It is a momentous struggle. Every day the two nations become more and more in earnest over it. Public-spirited men and women throughout the British Empire are hunting up handsome babies and getting their photographs to run-sent the British side in this contest. They are leaving no village, however »mall, no home, however humble, unvisited in their search for the handsomest babies.
From Walton-on-the-Naze, on the east coast of England, to Dead Horse Gulch in Western Australia, every self-respecting British community is sending babies to the contest.
This competition is to decide something far more important than commercial supremacy. A nation may win that supremacy, but it cannot hold it unless it also maintains its supremacy in babies. Men are more Ilian money and babies are more important than men, because they are the men of the future. Apparently this country is getting ahead of England in the commercial race, but if she maintains a better crop of babies she will beat us in the end.
Do not be afraid that America will be beaten, but just make every effort to secure the victory.