he ark of bulrushes
on the waters of the Nile he represents the future of the chosen
people; but will some princess passing by perchance see him?

To chance, to luck, to affection, to all these we entrust the child;
and it would seem that the Biblical chastisement of the Egyptian
oppressor, the death of the first-born, is to be unceasingly renewed.

Let us see how social justice receives the infant when he enters the
world. We are living in the twentieth century; in many of the
so-called civilized nations orphan asylums and wet nurses are still
recognized _institutions_. What is an orphan asylum? It is a place of
sequestration, a dark and terrible prison, where only too often the
prisoner finds death, as in those medieval dungeons whence the victim
disappeared, leaving no trace. He never sees any who are dear to him.
His family name is cancelled, his goods are confiscated. The greatest
criminal may retain memories of his mother, knows that he has had a
name, and may derive some consolation from his recollections,
comparable to the soothing reflections of one who having become blind
recalls the beauty of colors and the splendor of the sun; but the
foundling is as one born blind. Every malefactor has more rights than
he; and yet who could be more innocent? Even in the days of the most
odious tyranny, the spectacle of oppressed innocence kindled a flame
of justice that sooner or later blazed up into revolution. The
persons imprisoned by tyrants because they had happened to be
witnesses of their crimes, and who were cast into dungeons where
darkness and inaudible suffering were henceforth their unhappy
portion, at least roused the people to proclaim the principle of equal
justice for all. But who will lift up his voice for our foundlings?
Society does not perceive that they too are men; they are indeed only
the "flowers" of humanity. And to save honor and good name, what
society would not with one accord sacrifice more "flowers"?

The wet nurse is a social custom. A luxurious custom, on the one hand.
Not very long ago, a girl of the middle-and not even the upper
middle-class, who was about to marry, boasted in the following terms
of the domestic comfort promised her by her future husband: "I am to
have a cook, a housemaid, and a wet nurse." On the other hand, the
robust peasant girl who has given birth to a son, looking complacently
at her heavy breasts, thinks: "I shall be able to get a good place as
wet nurse." It is o