Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1888-01-11
HISTORY OF A CRADLE.
A VISIT TO THE FOUNDING ASYLUM
OF NEW YORK CITY.
Nurses and Nurse ATothers-The CoIored
Babies-where the Little Ones Hail
from-Apparent Effects of Heredity.
Sendin. Children Out West.

SenuRnE AnAAQren Out west.
1t is only cradle, TO be sure. A cradle
made of stout brown wicker and prettily
draped with white muslin and blue rib
bous. Just such a 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
have been saved from the food of misery
and sin that sweeps over this great city
Over this cradle have bent 1000 women.
Women with bleeding hearts and tortured
souls, mothers who came to lay in il and
so renounce their first born. 1t has been
drenched with the tears of the wretched
and rocked with the agonized last en-
brace that marks theparting of flesh and
blood from its own.
If you want TO see this cradle go to the
Founding asylum on SiXty-eighth street
and Third avenue. The building is a
very fine one of cheerful red brick, with
stone facings, and over the main entrance
is the significant figure of ST. Vincent de
Paul, the great apostle of charity, holding
tenderly in his arms little abandoned
one
In the asylum there are about 700 chill
dren, with their nurses and nurse mothers,
leaving ! 600 or /, 100 still to he provided
for The latter are given out to be wet
nursed by women who have lost their
own children and are glad to add to their
husbands earnings by taking a child
from the sisters. These women, the
wives of respectable workingmen are
selected with care and have to be well in
dorscd. They are paid SO month and
are under the surveillance not only of
detective but Of a parish visitor, who may
call at any moment.
The colored babies, who look like big
rubber dolls, with bright bead eyes, are
nursed by colored mothers, and when
they leave the asylum are sent to o colored
order Of sisters in Baltimore to be trained
in useful occupations. There is some
thing 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. 1t
takes, by the way, twenty-five machines
and as many workers within the asylum
walls to turn out the 100000 articles of
clothing used every year. Once 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 up
in the dispensary. The magnitude of the
wet nursing industry for this institution
can be imagined from the fact that it costs
the asylum $120, 900 annually.
1t must not be presumed for a 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 their
offspring are women whose toilets at balls
are described in fashion papers and whose
names are synonyms for the social vir-
tues.
There is not a strcet,,or an avenue in
fashionable New York that, is not repre-
sentcJ in the asylum wards filed with
-5T7sa3f tIing little ones. 1t needs no prac-
ticed eye to recognize =. The t!ae small ear,
the well shaped hand and foot ana .1e y !
clearly cut features the chRd of gentle
birth, just as the child of the laborer 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
Gideon" wishes us to believe that, IL
ings, it would, when they reached ma
tIrity, be impossible to distinguish be-
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
a child of 3 years, there is no danger Of
woman's eye confounding the two, though
the surroundings be identical.
The evidence of birth is to be found in
a cilild's 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 viii shrink from water and soap,
and n taste for cleanliness has to be drilled
into him The sociologist can find plenty
to study in the nurseries of the asylum.
The little ones are brought up under the
impression that they ere at school. and
that some daY their papas and mammas
will write for them to come home In con-
sequence of this the deserted children
never know for moment that they have
been discarded by their own, but look for
wargl with happy confidence to going
home.
Every few months a 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 a good education
AS a 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
unfoldcd their first leaves in the big
asylum which they may today drive past
with indifference Mrs. Robert p. Porter
fn New York Press.
Try Tie 6aesst NelIis Clgar-The best