es. It has been so extensive as to confer the
utmost benefit on distant settlements, equalizing the disparity of the
sexes, promoting a higher civilization by a proper infusion of female
society, and providing homes for thousands of virtuous, but friendless
and dependent girls, who had found the utmost difficulty in obtaining
even a precarious living. The exodus of American girls from New England
to California, as teachers first and wives afterwards, which some years
ago took place, originated with an American lady, who personally
superintended the enterprise. All through the West there are families
whose mothers are of the same enterprising class, while the South is not
without its representatives. There is a tribe of writers whose study it
is to ridicule and sneer at these humane and truly noble efforts to make
dependent women comfortable; but happily their sarcasm has been
unavailing.

I knew a young girl who was without a single relation in the world, so
far as she was aware. She had been picked up from a curb-stone in the
street, at the foot of a lamp-post, when perhaps only a week old,--her
mother having abandoned her to the charity of the first passer. She was
found by the watchman on his midnight beat, who, having no children,
adopted her as his own. One may feel surprised that foundlings are so
frequently adopted into respectable families, especially when infants of
only a few weeks old. But there are solitary couples whose hearts
instinctively yearn for the possession of children. Providence having
denied them offspring, they fill the void in their affections by taking
to their bosoms the helpless, friendless, and abandoned waifs of others.
Foundlings are preferred, because there is no chance of their
reclamation; the mother never troubles herself to demand possession of
her child; she may remember it, but it is only to rejoice at having cast
it off. The new parents are not annoyed by outside interference. The
foundling grows in their affections; they love it as they would their
own offspring; it cannot be torn away from them.

When only ten years of age, the protectors of the child referred to both
died, and she was turned loose to shift for herself. For three years she
underwent all the hardships incident to changing one bad mistress for
another, being poorly clothed, half fed, her education discontinued,
even the privilege of the Sunday school denied her, a total stranger to
kindness or sympathy.

An age