“I am fooling the whole of them,” she said, after some preliminary explanations. “I have been married some years, and am childless, and I am sure that my husband, who is now in Europe, will desert me on his return. His affections are completely alienated from me.”

“But what can I do,” exclaimed the trustee.

“Let me have an infant from the asylum to pass on him as my own. I will settle $20,000 a year on it when it comes of age.”

The trustee told the would-be mother she would look her out in the morning and consult the other members of the committee. And the woman departed well satisfied with the result of her visit.

Next day her statements were all verified. She was found to be in easy circumstances, and in every way capable of taking care of a child.

So with the help of the hospital physician a pretty little girl, whose young mother on the night of its birth said she did not care what became of the nasty brat, was selected and the anxious mother was provided with a baby. No one but the Hospital doctor, the lady trustee and the “mother” knows the particulars of the dark transaction. The husband returned and went almost wild with delight. A few months later the trustee and the doctor were invited to visit the child. They found it lying in a satin-lined cradle, ornamented with blue ribbon and a white dove atop of the lace canopy.

“We are the happiest family in the world; my husband thinks there is nothing good enough for me and that child,” is the testimony of the foster parent. The neatest part of the deception was that her mother-in-law was in the house when the child arrived and has never had a suspicion of its genuineness. Here is an instance where the delusion is practiced on the mother herself: There are mothers who lose all memory and mind when their infants are still-born, and go immediately into a slow fever, from which they do not recover for many months. There was a case of this sort in one of the most palatial of our city residences not long ago, and when it was known that the fifth child was dead, the husband brought a child from an institution, and placed it in its stead. The mother is transported with joy over her live child. She does not wish to be told that the babe she loves so much is not her own. She has her doubts, but she does not wish them confirmed.

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE PRETTY BOY.

There is a section of the young men in the city who may well be included in the ranks of the vicious classes. A deal of their miserable little histories is made during the hours of the night. These are the young men who live and fatten on their families. One may have some admiration for the brute courage of a man who takes the risk of death for the sake of ill-gotten gains of any kind. But what respect can we have for the thing that escapes labor by sticking like a barnacle to the hardly-earned comforts of a home on the strength of an affection that is all one-sided—that takes everything and gives nothing. But there is a class of young men in the city who do this. Fellows whom you see hanging about in the daytime, doing anything else but making an honest living, and whom you will find at night in improper places at all hours. One has no patience in writing about these fellows. They are the sons of men who have to work hard to make a livelihood, but in this latter particular the sons take good care not to imitate their sires. Probably every other member of the family contributes to the support of the decencies and comforts of the home except this drone, who is his mother’s darling, and who is