fight.

The Society has never received any financial support from the city, but
has depended entirely upon private benevolence. Ample means have always
been at its disposal. Last year it sheltered, fed, and clothed 1,697
children in its rooms. Most of them were the victims of drunken parents.
With the Society they found safe shelter. "Sometimes," Superintendent
Jenkins says, "the children cry when they are brought here. They always
cry when they go away."

"Lastly," so ran the old Quaker merchant's address in his first annual
report, "this Society, so far from interfering with the numerous societies
and institutions already existing, is intended to aid them in their noble
work. It proposes to labor in the interest of no one religious
denomination, and to keep entirely free from political influences of every
kind. Its duties toward the children whom it may rescue will be discharged
when the future custody of them is decided by the courts of justice."
Before the faithful adherence to that plan all factious or sectarian
opposition that impedes and obstructs so many other charities has fallen
away entirely. Humanity is the religion of the Children's Society. In its
Board of Directors are men of all nationalities and of every creed. Its
fundamental doctrine is that every rescued child must be given finally
into the keeping of those of its own faith who will carry on the work
begun in its rescue. Beyond that point the Society does not go. It has
once refused the gift of a sea-side home lest it become a rival in a field
where it would render only friendly counsel and aid.

In the case of the little John Does a doubt arises which the Society
settles by passing them on to the best institution available for each
particular child, quite irrespective of sect. There are thirteen of them
by this time, waifs found in the street by the Society's agents or friends
and never claimed by anybody. Though passed on, in the plan of the Society
from which it never deviates, to be cared for by others, they are never
lost sight of but always considered its special charges, for whom it bears
a peculiar responsibility.

Poor little Carmen, of whom I spoke in the chapter about Italian children,
was one of the Society's wards. Its footprints may be found all through
these pages. To its printed reports, with their array of revolting cruelty
and neglect, the reader is referred who would fully understand what a gap
in a Christian community it bridg