San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-08-31
BABES NURSED.
BACK 7 0
HEALTH
Humane Society Seeking
Shelter for Family of
Unfortunates.
By BEss CARROLL.

Did you ever hear of a family
without name, without a home,
without father or mother or friends,
penniless and utterly alone?
The San Antonio Child Protective
and Humane Society fosters such a
family-a little group of foundlings
and abandoned babies. Bereft of n
home roof and of the lullaby songs
that babies are supposed to inherit by
natural right, these little castof
mites are bound together by com
mon tragedy-kindred through the
bond of sorrow that makes them equal
ly forsaken.
INNOCENT OF FATE.
Gathered from here and there, found
on doorsteps or deserted at the homes
of strangers given up to chance,
usually by young girl-mothers who
can't make the grade-these babies
have not even the birthright of a
name. Winsome, laughing little folk,
4, too young to know that they are dis
cards, thrown aside in the shuttle Of
the game Of life.
There is an old adage that says,
AS the twig is bent. so the tree isin-
clined." But il helpless little human
"twigs" are bent down by the hands
of fate, does it mean that they must
live always with their faces turned
from the sun?
PROTECTS BABIES.
Not in San Antonio. For the Hu.
name Society seeks and protects these
babies; pays their board bills until
they can be placed in some foster
mothers gentle arms. When medical
treatment is necessary, as it often is
as q result of starvation and abuse, the
babies are sent to hospitals for the
best Of care. No baby is offered for
adoption unless it is well. The
healthy babies are placed as soon as
possible, for the Humane Society isn't
.rich and even board bills for babies
Rake holes in its pocketbook.
Sometimes 1t takes months to re-
claim the babies from starvation and
neglect. 1t will be long time until
two of the society's little wards can
be sent to a home of their own.
BOTH STARVED.
These two baby boys are perhaps
the tiniest patients that any hos
pital in the city ever had-for both of
them are starved. RED" is 4 months
old: he weighed Z pounds a month
ago, but good care and nourishment
are slowly filling out his hollow
cheeks. He was so nearly starved to
death when he was found that nour-
ishment made him very i'll, and great
sores covered his body. Today he pa
tiently lies on his lonely hospital bed,
observing the world about him with
big blue eyes. The skin is wrinklcd on
his sharp little bones. There is no
flesh on his arms-only folds of fab
by skin. Literally living skeleton, he
is fighting gamely to get well. Some
where Reds mother--a 16-year-old
country girls breaking her heart
over the baby she loves, and cannot
keep.
GREATEST TRAGEDY.
The buddy of this tiny fellow is
three month-old boy whose mother
deserted him by leaving him 40 a
boarding home, giving a fictitious
name and address. Like Red" his
hands are claws and his face is white
and sharp with the pinch of hunger.
The greatest tragedy in this family
of babies lies wrapped in little pink
bundle at the Humane Society's board
ing home. Sunny" has great blue
eyes and touseled black hair. Her
hands are as pinx as the inside of
sea-shells, and her fragile fingersl
cling with all the trust in the world
to thole she loves. Sunny's mother is
II. the only support Of an aged
mother and a crippled father. Her sal
ary barely makes stretched ends meet
in their humble little home.
GIVES UP HOPES.
Gone all day, the mother cannot
care for the baby herself and the old
folk are too feeble. Board for Sunny
costs SIG a month-juSt SIG more
than Sunny's mother can make. True
70 the~child she loves, the girl mother
is desperately clinging to a forlorn
hope-the hope that somehow, any
how, she can keep her baby for her
self. But unless help comes soon Sun
ny will be offered for adoption. The
Humane Society hasn't funds enough
10 pay the baby's board indefinitely.
Another winsome little girl is Marie
o months old. She has no mother,
and her father left her to board with
a woman friend. According to evidence
produced in court. the woman cruelty
abused the children left in her care
and threatened to drown them. 1t
doesn't seem possible that anyone
could drown the laughing sweetness
Of red-haired, blue-eyed Marie.