ur orphan girls'
asylum," said the abbess.

"How much good you do!" exclaimed Salome.

"Let us go into the Foundling," said the mother-superior, leading the way
to the last house of the eastern row of buildings.

Ah! here was a sight sorrowful enough to make the "angels weep!"

The abbess led her companion into a long room, clean, warm, light and
airy, with about thirty narrow little cots, arranged in two rows against
the walls, fifteen on each side, with a long passage between them.
About half a dozen of these cots were empty. On the others lay about
twenty-four of the most pitiable of all our Lord's poor--young infants
abandoned by their unnatural parents. All these were under twelve months
old, and were pale, thin, and famished-looking. Some were sleeping, and
seemingly, ah! so aged and care-worn in their sleep; some were clasping
nursery-bottles in their skeleton hands, and sucking away for dear life;
one little miserable was wailing in restless pain, and sending its
anguished eyes around in appealing looks for relief.

Four women of the sisterhood were on duty here, and each one sat with a
pining infant on her lap, while there was no one to attend to the wants
of that wailing little sufferer on the bed.

"Oh, merciful Father in Heaven! what a sight!" cried Salome, overcome
with compassionate sorrow.

"Yes, it is piteous! most piteous!" said the mother-superior, in a
mournful tone. "We do the very best we can for these poor, deserted
babes; but young infants, bereft of their mother's milk, which is their
life, and of their mother's tender love and intuitive care, suffer more
than any of us can estimate, and are almost sure to perish, out of
_this_ life, at least. With all our care and pains, more than
two-thirds of them die."

"Is there no help for this?" sadly inquired the visitor.

"No help within ourselves. But the peasant women in our neighborhood have
Christian spirits and tender hearts. When any one among them loses her
sucking child, she comes to us and asks for one of our motherless babes.
We select the most needing of them and give it to her, and the nurse
child has then a chance for its life; but even then, if it lives, it is
because some other child has died and made room for it."

"Oh, it is piteous! it is piteous, beyond all words to express! Destitute
childhood, destitute old age, are both sorrowful enough, Heaven knows!
But they have power to make their sufferings known, and to ask for help