Mrs. Rose Stock left her rooms, on the second floor of 550 South avenue, at 10 o’clock this morning to step across the street to make some purchases at a grocery store. As she closed the door, the baby, Harriet, 3 months old, was sleeping quietly in its crib, and Louis, 5 years old, with Dorothy, 3 years old, her other children, were playing.
Scarcely had the mother gone when an idea seized one of the two. It was probably Louis, although he credited Dorothy with it when asked about it. Why not take the baby out of its crib and give it a bath in the tub, as they had seen mother do so often? It was a brilliant thought. So Louis went and fetched the baby and took it to the bathroom.
The tub was full of water and clothes, for Mrs. Stock had been washing there the night before, and had not finished soaking the clothes. They set the baby in the water, which was about a foot deep. The baby gasped, gurgled and was still. It did not appear to enter into the spirit of the game at all.
Louis had never seen the baby so quiet before when its mother bathed it. He could not quite make out just what was wrong, but a vague foreboding that he had done something he ought not to came over him. He ran out into the hall and met his mother returning with her arms laden with groceries for the dinner hour.
“Oh, mama!” he cried, “the baby is in the water.”
Mrs. Stock ran up the stairs, but before she got there Mrs. Rose Leiser, a next-door neighbor, had lifted little Harriet out of the tub and laid her on the bed.
Dr. Joseph Strong of 566 Waite avenue was called in and tried artificial respiration. Every time he moved the little arms a jet of water gushed from the baby’s mouth. His efforts were in vain.
When a reporter called at the little home some time later, Mrs. Stock was seated in one room surrounded by a semicircle of sympathizing neighbors, and in the next room Louis, who has sunny Lord Fauntleroy curls and a dimpled face, was down on his knees looking through a photograph album. He looked up at the visitor with steady blue eyes and a smile when he was asked who put the baby in the water.
“I know,” he said. “It’s on the bed. It’s sleeping.”
Then he turned to his photograph album, but when a search was made for little Dorothy, he led the way up the stairs and showed the visitor how to open the door.