The wickedest woman never loses sight of either patient. As those who seek her assistance are apt to be persons of means, she has a motive in doing so. It may be one or ten years after her services were rendered, but, at what she considers the proper time, she renews her acquaintance with them. She will startle them by a call, or a note, recalling to them the events they would gladly forget, and soliciting a loan for a short time. The appeal is generally made to the man, and is sustained by such strong proofs that he dares not refuse to comply with the demand. Of course he knows that the wickedest woman will never return his money, but he is forced to send whatever sum she pleases. The child, which has been carefully reared, is a living witness against him, and the wickedest woman threatens to produce it if her demands are refused. Every year the demand is renewed. Men have been driven to bankruptcy, to ruin, and to death, by these heartless extortions. Still, the wickedest woman continues her course. She boasts that society in New York cannot do without her, and the facts seem to justify this boast. CHAPTER LII. BABY FARMING. A recent number of a city journal, contained the following account of the system of bringing up and adopting out illegitimate children in New York. We present it in place of any description of our own. FEMALE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENTS. [Footnote: The writer of this article is a woman.] Having read in the English and Scottish journals of the day a great deal of curious and startling matter in reference to the practice of 'baby-farming,' as it is called, and having constantly accumulating proof submitted to our eyes and understandings of the existence of similar practices in our midst, here, in this great Christian city of New York--having also read with mingled shame and wonder, and with suspended judgment (as to the vital question whether, as the world goes and must go, they were criminally injurious or socially beneficial) concerning the numerous private establishments where wounded love and brazen immorality alike find refuge and concealment, and where the true orphans of life, those innocents who know not and who can never know, their fathers or their mothers, find a temporary home, prior to their entrance upon life and their struggle with the world--a married lady friend of mine and myself determined recently to personally inquire into these subjects and to investigate their condition and practical workings, so far as possible, and to make public our investigations for the benefit of the world at large and of all whom it may concern. Having arrived at this determination, the next morning we glanced over the advertising columns of the papers, and having read and reread the subjoined advertisement--