New-York tribune., 1903-07-24
SOUPS FOR THE BABIES.
Daily Scenes around the SzUingS IN
.SezCGrd Park.
another cat for your bar

Please teacher. here's another cat for your bar
rel"
tousled little girl clad IN shred Of a pima
fore and stocking feet, holds up a pathetic white
kitten and gravey presents il TO the custodian of
the swings
Il is wei known to the people OF the neighbor-
hood that the equipment OF William H. Seward
Park includes not only soups, baths and out
door gymnasium, but also q cat barrel The cat
barrel stands in the cabin where the garden i'm
plements. swings. etc. kept It is the feline
house OF detention for that neighborhood. Once a
day the Society for The Prevention of Cruelty TO
Animals calls with wagon and empties the barrel
and carries of the reluctant inmates. Life even
in an East Side barrel is sweet, compared with the
uncertainty OF the hereafter and the expostu-
late with tooth and nail ard voice.
There We're six poor prisoners OF fate snoozing
in the bottom OF the barrel yesterday morning.
Then the toused little girl contributed her white
kitten, so that made seven
But there are better things than kittens at Will
lam H Seward Park There are babies. Also there
are soups lot Of them The babies and the
soups maintain an entente cordiale all through the
long summer days that rain cannot cool nor the
peties Of Sunday impair. Before the gates open
~ in the morning the little fathers and the
little mothers gather outside with their loved but
troublesome charges, and when the doors swing
back they rush for the soups joyously.
It is a fair field and favor. Whoever gets
there first captures q soup and It is hers or his
for twenty-five soups. There are monitors at the
babies scups-girls Of the tender age of ten or
thereabouts. and it IS their mission TO "scup the
soups" with the babies in them, keep tabs on the
number Of soups each child gets. prevent greedi-
ness and oppression and, in a word, deal out
soup justice impartially and incorruptbly. Some
Of them ere growing gray.
Along in the afternoon. when the picnic house
keeping OF their tenement homes is over for the
day. the mothers-the grown up, truly mothers
IanEles out Of their hair, and stroll with
their babies to the soups.
Us ne three years old2' asks the soup man,
pointing with his cane 10 the baby.
Nav Indignantly. he wun years
Fcupper. fastidously. Here in with him
And The gratihed mother backs up behind the
Sop pTeparaJory 10 doing out twenty-five soups
The baby soups are little brown canvas ham
sides run heayv ribs fbat Keen them In Shane The
nahles lie in them suugly and securely, and no
gets hurt # The sun IS bright as II was Tester-
oaF- you viii see here and there large bandanna
head. It makes awning CAV inconseouential.
sNolc awning. and IN the Secluson that II grants.
overpowers the habF. aoIf with him" orders the
1 s,ern scag man An infant must be in fun pos
80 Ion - o1 ms senses 10 enjoy the hospitality OF
Sometimes there are so many mothers anxious
.sz '',n IN n me, like crowd Of ticket buyers
-4trl1e, le noN Office AZ the opera. They wait
- , li+ IilEllese- Then they go back and
From Ihe other side Of the playground. where
ping nu--nur of song an aI.s slo sTe!ye are soup,
ZilIne and coherency. II hroadens out into a sort
rhythm keeps time with the composite ssc1Innnr ~
sing IS tlis: "'"' ''s'
& Ths har7aer W .e ne baker. Tho csaa-~tick maker.
!hey AT jumped over rotten pertster
Ii' Deadt OLt