Smyrna times. [volume] (Smyrna, Del.) 1854-1987, 1888-02-15
HISTORY OF A CRADLE.
A VISIT TO THE FOUNDING ASYLUM
OF NEW YORK CITY.

Nurses and Nurse MOthers-The CoIored
Babies-where the Little Ones Hail
fFOm-APParent Effects Of Heredity.
Sending Children Out West.
1t is only a cradle, to be- sure. A cradle
made Of stout brown wicker and prettilv
oraped with white muslin and blue rib
Do1s. just such nest for a wee one as
can be found in hundreds of homes in the
broad land, yet it differs from them all.
For eighteen long years this simple cradle
Las been the ark by which thousands
upon thousands of innocent little lives
nave been saved from the flood of misery
and sin that sweeps over this great citv.
over this cradle have bert II, 600 women
women with bleeding hearts and tortured
souls, mothers who came to lay in it and
so renounce their first bern. 1t has been
drehched with the tears of the wretched
ana rocked with the agOnized last en-
brace that marks the parting of flesh and
blood from its own
II you want to see this cradle 90 to the
rounding asylum on Sixty-eighth street
ana Third avenue. The building is n
very fine one of cheerful red brick. with
stone tacings, and over the main entrance
Is Jhe significant figure Of st. Vincent de
faul, the great apostle of charity, holding
tenderly in his arms a little abandoned
one
In the asylum there are about ZOO chill
dren, with their nurses and nurse mothers
leaving 1000 or ], 100 still to be nrovidad
Tor The latter are given out to be wet
hursed by women who have lost their
own children and are glad to add to their
husbands earnings by taking a child
RON the sisters. These women. the
wives OF respectable workingmen are
selected with care and have to be well in
dorsed. They are paid $40 a month and
IRE under the surveillance not only of
detective but of a parish visitor. who NAV
call at any moment.
The colored babies. who look like bio
rubber dolls, with bright bead ewes. are
nursed by colored mothers, and when
they leave the asylum are sent to a colored
order OF sisters in Baltimore to be trained.
IN useful occupations There is some
thlng pathetic in the fact that no one, not
even OF their own race, wants to adOpt a
child Of negro blood
The children carry no badge of charity
about them, and they are dressed with
every regard to neatness and comfort. If
takes, by the way, twenty-five machines
ana as many workers within the oSvlurn
walls to turn out the 100000 articles Of
clothing used every year. Once a month
there each child is carefully inspected and
reported on at the asylum, physician be-
ing IN attendance to prescribe. if neces-
sary, and the medicine promptly made M
III tue dlspensary. The magnitude of the
wet nursing industry for this institution
can be imagined from the fact that it costs
the asylum $3.50, 600 annually.
1t must not be presumed for moment
that this vast and constantly recruited
army of abandoned children comes en-
tirely from the poorer classes. Every
stratum IN society furnishes its quota. and
among the mothers who have denied tho,
offspring are women whose toilets at balls
are described i'll fashion papers and whose
names are synonyms for the social vir-
tues.
There is not a street or an avenue in
fashionable New York that is not renre-
sentcd in the asylum wards filed with
prattlng little ones 1t needs no Droc-
tlced eye TO recognize in the small ear
the well shaped hand and foot and mo
clearly cut features the chRd Of gentle
birth, just as the child of the lahorer and
the raw emigrant bears the stamp of its
heritage, in broad back, heavy build.
coarseiy cut features and large extremi-
ties.
Walter Besant, in his Children of
Gldeon, wishes us to believe that, if
gwen the same advantages and surround
lngs 1t would, when they reached ma
turity, be impossible to distinguish he
tween the child of the washerwoman and
the child of the gentlewoman. In brief
that education and the refinements of
wealth would stamp out heredity. If the
physical advantages were equal to BEGIN
with this might be true ultimately. but
before education begins, say in the case of
q child OF years, there is no danger of a
woman's eye confOunding the two, though
the surroundings be Identical
The evidence of birth is to be found in
childs natural manner, its instructive
daintiness, its natural bOOrishness. The
love of the beautiful and clean in the one.
the Indifference of the other to any but its
animal wants. One child will come of its
own accord and ask to have its hands
washed from an instructive dislike to dirt:
the other will shrink from water and sOap.
and taste for cleanliness has to be drilled
into him. The sOciOlOgist can find plenty
To study i'll the nurseries of the asylum
The little ones are brought up under the
impression that they are at school, and
That some day their papas and mammas
will write for them to come home. IncOD-
sequence Of this the deserted children
never know for a moment that they have
been discarded by their own, but look for.
ward with happy confidence to going
home.
Every few months band of forty or
fifty children is sent west, where COM
petent agents have found places for them
never where there are small children in
the family, nor unless the-people are able
and willing to give them good education.
As rule the secret of their origin is well
kept This is a reminder that in New
York society there are buds whose
debut is promised this winter, but who
unfOlded their first leaves in the big
asylum which they may today drive past
with indifference.-Mrs. Robert p. Porter
In Now York Press