One of the best of England's charities is the Foundling Asylum in London, founded in 1739 by Captain Thomas Coram. He was not a man of family or means, but he had a warm heart and great perseverance. For seventeen years he labored against indifference and prejudice, till finally his home for little waifs and outcasts became a visible fact, and for more than a century has been doing its noble work. Captain Coram was born at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, in 1668, a seaport town which carried on some trade with Newfoundland. It is probable that his father was a seafaring man, as the lad early followed that occupation. When he was twenty-six years old we hear of him in the New World at Taunton, Mass., earning his living as a shipwright. [Illustration: CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM] He did not wait to become rich--as indeed he never was--before he began to plan good works. He had saved some money by the year 1703, when he was thirty-five; for we see by the early records that he conveyed to the governor and other authorities in Taunton, fifty-nine acres to be used whenever the people so desired, for an Episcopal church or a schoolhouse. This gift, the deed alleges, was made "in consideration of the love and respect which the donor had and did bear unto the said church, as also for divers other good causes and considerations him especially at that present moving." Later he gave to Taunton a quite valuable library, a portion of which remains at present. A Book of Common Prayer is now in the church, on whose title-page it is stated that it was the gift "by the Right Honorable Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the Honourable House of Commons of Great Britain, one of His Majesty's most Honourable Privy Council, and Treasurer of His Majesty's Navy, etc., to Thomas Coram, of London, Gentleman, for the use of a church, lately built at Taunton, in New England." About this time, 1703, Mr. Coram moved to Boston, and became the master of a ship. He was deeply interested in the colonies of the mother country, and though in a comparatively humble station, began to project plans for their increase in commerce, and growth in wealth. In 1704 he helped to procure an Act of Parliament for encouraging the making of tar in the northern colonies of British America by a bounty to be paid on the importation. Before this all the tar was brought from Sweden. The colonies were thereby saved five million dollars. In 1719, when on board the ship Sea Flower for Hamburgh, that he might obtain supplies of timber and other naval stores for the royal navy, Captain Coram was stranded off Cuxhaven and his cargo plundered. Some years later, in 1732, having become much interested in the settlement of Georgia, Captain Coram was appointed one of the trustees by a charter from George II.