The small payment has many advantages; it enables the mother to disassociate herself from her past corrupting association; it assists her lady friend to keep up constant communication with her, whereby she is enabled to advise about her future, her change of place, her friends; and it also enables a watchful eye to be kept on the little one. Its nurse coming weekly to receive the money can tell of its progress, the lady can see if it is well cared for, and can by her interest encourage the nurse to do her best. As a rule the caretakers become very fond of their little charges. In one instance the mother having, alas! again returned to evil ways, the nurse continued to keep the baby without payment, jealously guarding him against his mother, ‘who might harm him when in drink.’ Another woman came to ask for a nurse-child because, she said, she had had fourteen children of her own, and now that they were all out in the world, ‘her old man said it was so lonesome-like.’ It is important, too, to choose the nurse carefully, for she has frequently a great influence on the mother, who will naturally be more inclined to listen to the wise words of one who is ‘good to her baby’ than to any mere well-wisher. The mother by this means gains a respectable friend of her own class, in many cases the first she has ever known. In one instance the nurse did what others had failed to do. The mother was one of those people to whom pleasure is as necessary as food and air. Among happier surroundings her sense of fun and capacity for enjoyment would have been a source of brightness, and rendered her a general favourite. For those in her sphere of life joy is an element considered unnecessary, and thus is a dangerous luxury. She had no desire to do wrong nor to offend, but pleasure she must have, and not being able to obtain it innocently, she took it lawlessly. Such conduct mistresses rightly would not allow, and she reached the workhouse when her boy was about three years old. There seemed to be no trace of affection for the child, nor any feeling beyond a sense of irritation at its helplessness and a desire to get it ‘into a home,’ and to be rid of the attendant responsibility. This last idea it was impossible to entertain, for responsibility might become her schoolmaster, and lead her up ‘the difficult blue heights.’