The mothers who present themselves with a child in arms, and just from the hospital, have to pass a board of inspectors for admission to the home. They are required to remain in the institution six months, and each TO NURSE A MOTHERLESS ONE beside her own or take charge of a run-about child. When the mother goes away she usually leaves the child and pays a weekly sum for its maintenance or makes it over to managers, who offer it for adoption. A great many, most of the children who are taken to asylums of this sort, become candidates for adoption. The work of disposing the waifs in suitable homes is one of intense interest and anxious responsibility. The adoption committee is composed, therefore, of the most efficient managers in the board. Members of this committee come into contact with no end of queer people and have many strange experiences to relate. The whole business is the outcome of the criminal side of life these papers are discussing, and as such these incidents are not incongruous here. There are so many people and so many different sorts of people desiring children for adoption that it requires a peculiarly shrewd faculty and a practical knowledge of human nature to discriminate between the worthy and the unworthy. The circumstances of all persons wishing to adopt children are fully investigated, and references as to their respectability must be presented and approved before a child is committed to their care. Persons moving into new neighborhoods often intend passing the child as their own. Strange orders are often received from a distance—“special commissions,” as manufacturers say. The child must have eyes of peculiar cerulean blueness, hair of a particular golden color, fingers tapering, nails pink-tinted, toes graduated to a nicety, and the limbs dimpled. There is not a doubt but that scores of happy new mothers could furnish just such a wonderful babe, but this order comes to the matron and managers of an infant asylum. A woman writes for a baby with brown, curly hair and large dark blue eyes, and a man—but how should he know any better?—telegraphs for a child with light curly hair, warranted to turn dark as the child grows older—the hair, mind you. During a year not more than three or four children with dark hair and eyes are called for, whereas people are anxious to get blonde girls, and many applications are made for children of that description. It looks as if it would take a strong revolution of popular feeling to restore brunettes to popular favor. Certain it is, these good people would not be so fastidious if they got up their own babies. The greater number of people who take children from asylums are CHILDLESS COUPLES