The mawkish sentimental ballad of the late 19th century is what is being gently satirized here. It would be easy to assume that Mme. Irene is making fun of large families living in poverty - far from it; that serious subject matter serves to highlight the
sentimental excesses of the song form itself. Pianist Burton Green, playing the accompaniment here, co-wrote this song with Irene (as he did with many of her numbers), and in the process paved the way for Tom Lehrer's scathing satires two generations later.
The gritty reality this song depicts, still very much with us 90+ years later, is not softened in the slightest for this performance on a 4-minute Edison cylinder (recorded in March of 1912). The lyrics describe a father's ironic preference for a noisy factory
to his noisier home life, then having to bathe the youngest child in the coal scuttle because there's not enough money for a basinette - all of this sung sweetly over lilting piano accompaniment. The wax cylinder from which this was sampled had been played quite
a few times, but thankfully on decent equipment so there was still some life left in it. Noise reduction was used lightly to keep the understandability of the words intact.
