There are, thank God, many girls who are little mothers almost from their cradles. We can find them in rich homes and poor ones. In courts and slums where the direst poverty prevails, the baby, often unwelcome to the elders, is passed over to the ceaseless care of one who is only a few years past babyhood herself. From the very first the little deputy-mother deems it her baby, her choicest treasure, and finds beauties and charms in it which are invisible to other eyes. Its increasing size and weight may cause her greater weariness, but they are none the less sources of pride and joy, and make her forget her own aching back. She would go hungry that it might be well fed; cold, that it might be warmly bundled up in the shawl that ought to do duty as covering for both of them. Her baby may be but a caricature of the pink and white loveliness of another infant clad in silk and lace and with two nurses to watch its every movement; but let a ragged dweller in the same court disparage the looks of her darling, and she would fight the slanderer as stubbornly as ever knight of old did in defence of the charms of his ladye love. I must not dwell on this picture. Long ago when the “G. O. P.”[1] was itself a baby under two years old, I wrote with heartfelt respect of “Little Nurses.” I had studied them in many places, and the sight of their devotion had inspired my admiration and loving sympathy. [1] No. 69, vol. ii. Turning from the baby devotee of the slums, and not for a moment forgetting sweet pictures of sisterly devotion which I have seen in other ranks of life, I am going to indulge in a little croak about the decay of the maternal spirit in many of the girls of to-day. I was journeying northward some three years ago, and during part of the time I had only one companion. She was past girlhood, probably some years over thirty, and in the course of conversation she spoke of her old happy home and the gradual scattering of its inmates, until she found herself the last one left. Her parents had died not long after each other, and brothers’ and sisters’ homes were far apart. That there had been true family union and affection amongst them I felt sure, for my companion could not speak of the good father and mother without a trembling of the voice and tears which she turned away to hide. Later the talk turned on children. I suppose, as an old mother, I must have expressed my deep love for them, and I was almost horrified when my companion exclaimed— “I loathe children. I cannot bear even to touch a child.” The expression on her face proved her sincerity.