ver, so there is not
much use in describing it here. There are homes for soldiers' daughters
and for sailors' daughters, too; there is nothing very different about
them from an ordinary school.

Another school which belongs to London, though it too has now gone into
the country, is the Foundling Hospital. It seems funny to call a school
a hospital, but in old times the word 'hospital' did not mean, as it
does now, a place for sick people, but any place where people were cared
for and made comfortable. This is rather a sad school in some ways, for
it is a home for the poor little children whose parents have deserted
them or who have no parents; and the faces of the children are quite
different from those of the boys in the Duke of York's School. The
Foundling Hospital is a very large place indeed, and there are in it
both boys and girls, who stay until they are old enough to earn their
own living. The Hospital was begun many years ago by a kind captain of a
ship, who had seen places like it when he went to foreign countries. He
did not quite know how to begin, but he was sure there were many poor
little neglected children in London who must need a home, so he gave
money to some men and asked them to see about it for him; and these men
put a notice in some papers, saying that any baby under two months old
that was brought would be taken in and no questions asked. You would be
astonished at the number of babies that were brought; it seemed quite
impossible that so many mothers could want to give away their little
children. And it was really like giving them away, for when the babies
were taken into the hospital the mothers never came to see them; and if
they did come to the school many years after and saw all the children
running about, they could not tell which was their little boy or girl.
Sometimes the nurses used to keep a locket or some little thing brought
with a child, so that if ever it was wanted they could say which child
belonged to which mother, but they never told anyone which was which.
And many children had no locket or any other kind of token, and when
they grew up they did not know who they were or who their mother and
father had been. Many were just left at the door, and others were put
into a big basket hung outside the door, and left there until someone
inside the hospital heard them crying and came and took them in. And it
was no wonder they cried, because sometimes the men or women who
brought them st