An Orphanage for colored children is a tempting charity. The A.M.A early undertook such work. At Wilmington, N.C., and at Atlanta, Ga., it bought lands and erected ample buildings, but the experiment satisfied the authorities that the Association was not called to that department of work. The children's god-fathers and god-mothers, in devotion to their covenant, or grand-parents from personal interest, would soon be taking them out, and others having care of them would call them out as soon as, by some growth and training, the scholars were made profitable for work, and so those properties were sold and the avails put into the ordinary educational process. Then the conclusion was reached that this was the obligation of the local communities, and _not of foreign charity_. According to this idea, an Orphanage in a Southern city, undertaken not by the patronage or approval of the A.M.A., though made to appear so because the originator had been under its commission there as a missionary, has been transferred to a local board and to the support of the city {154} and county. That is as it should be. Those local authorities ought to take care of their own orphans, and not appeal to the charity of the North to relieve them of their proper burdens of humanity. Another so-called Orphanage at still another Southern city, started as an individual venture. It was allowed for a short time to have a conditional endorsement from the A.M.A., which was soon withdrawn and the enterprise disowned. This has swallowed up thousands of dollars of the money of benevolence, and yet it has all the time been a sham and a falsehood. There was nothing of it. When a lady newspaper correspondent called to visit the institution, ten or a dozen children from a neighboring private school were borrowed and paraded as orphans, when at the time there were only two little children in the concern, and they had grandparents living near and abundantly able to take care of them. "Wherefore this waste?" In yet another Southern city, a couple of young ladies start a school. Having once been under commission of the A.M.A., in connection with its institutions, they appear to many to have its endorsement and they make appeal to its constituents. Money comes along for a work irresponsibly begun and without supervision. Only a year goes by before they appeal by their leaflet-paper for several thousand dollars to buy land and build a home and school property. Who but they shall hold and own the property? Whose shall it be when they marry or grow weary of the work and leave? What protection is there for such misplaced benefaction?