_Quit rocking_!" the false mother cries at them. "You make my head
ache. Most of 'em have no parents," she explains to me. "None of 'em
have homes."

Here they are, a small kingdom, not wanted, unwelcome, unprovided for,
growled at and grumbled over. Yet each is developing in spite of chance;
each is determining hour by hour his heritage from unknown parents. The
matron leaves us; the rocking begins again. Conversation is animated.
The three-year-old baby bears the name of a three-year-old hero. This
"Dewey" complains in a plaintive voice of a too long absent mother. His
rosy lips are pursed out even with his nose. Again and again he
reiterates the refrain: "My mamma don't never come to see me. She don't
bring me no toys." And then with pride, "My mamma buys rice and tea and
lots of things," and dashing to the window as a trolley rattles by, "My
mamma comes in the street cars, only," sadly, "she don't never come."

Not one of them has forgotten what fate has willed them to do without.
At first they look shrinkingly toward my outstretched hand. Is it coming
to administer some punishment? Little by little they are reassured, and,
gaining in confidence, they sketch for me in disconnected chapters the
short outlines of their lives.

"I've been to the hospital," says one, "and so's Lily. I drank a lot of
washing soda and it made me sick."

Lily begins her hospital reminiscences. "I had typhoy fever--I was in
the childun's ward awful long, and one night they turned down the
lights--it was just evening--and a man came in and he took one of the
babies up in his arms, and we all said, 'What's the row? What's the
row?' and he says 'Hush, the baby's dead.' And out in the hall there was
something white, and he carried the baby and put it in the white thing,
and the baby had a doll that could talk, and he put that in the white
thing too, right alongside o' the dead baby. Another time," Lily goes
on, "there was a baby in a crib alongside of mine, and one day he was
takin' his bottle, and all of a suddint he choked; and he kept on
chokin' and then he died, and he was still takin' his bottle."

Lily is five. I see in her and in her companions a familiarity not only
with the mysteries but with the stern realities of life. They have an
understanding look at the mention of death, drunkenness and all domestic
difficulties or irregularities. Their vocabulary and conversation image
the violent and brutal side of existence--the only one w