they live in.

If we allowed them to enter our country it would greatly increase our
taxes and expenses, for we do not allow begging, and so, as the poor
unfortunates must have food and shelter, we would send them to our
almshouses, and have to pay to support them. So it is forbidden to allow
cripples, or people incapable of earning their own living, to come into
the country.

While the doctors are watching for cripples, they also examine the
immigrants carefully, to see that they have not any kind of sickness. Only
healthy immigrants are allowed to land, sick people being sent back.

When the immigrants have passed the doctors, they then reach the clerks,
who must be satisfied that they have money, or friends in the country,
before they give them permission to land.

People who come without money are divided from the rest, and are taken
before a board of inquiry.

Here they are asked why they came to the country. If they have friends who
have sent for them, and who agree to feed and shelter them, they are
allowed to pass. If no friends come for them, they are kept on Ellis
Island till their friends are found; and if no friends are found, they are
sent back to their own country.

When they have been passed from Ellis Island the immigration law has not
done with them. The law says that no charity shall be given to an
immigrant who has been in this country for less than a year. Any person
who asks for help, and has been less than a year over here, is sent back
to Ellis Island, and from thence he is carried back to his own country by
the same steamship company that brought him.

So you see that the laws are almost strict enough now, and the immigrants
who succeed in passing through Ellis Island are a good, solid class of
people, who are likely to become worthy citizens.

* * * * *

Did you ever hear a singing mouse?

A man wrote a long story to _The Sun_, a few days ago, telling how he was
awakened one night, and frightened out of his wits by hearing a noise like
the peeping of a chicken in the adjoining room.

He got up and lit the gas, and saw a little brown mouse run across the
floor.

He set a trap, caught the mouse, which was no sooner in the trap than it
began to sing. The man whistled to it, and the little creature replied.

The man did not seem to realize that he had found a great prize, but
pretending that his wife was afraid of the mouse, he drowned it in a pail
of