there is a cradle within the door of one of the great institutions of new york before which a constant recurring tragedy is being enacted. it is a plain cradle, quite simply draped in white, but with such a look of cozy comfort about it that one would scarcely suspect it to be a cradle of sorrow.
a little white bed, with a neatly turned-back coverlet, is made up within it. a long strip of white muslin, tied in a tasteful bow at the top, drapes its rounded sides. about it, but within the precincts of warmth and comfort of which it is a part, spreads a chamber of silence—a quiet, small, plainly furnished room, the appearance of which emphasizes the peculiarity of the cradle itself.
if the mind were not familiar with the details with which it is so startlingly associated, the question would naturally arise as to what it was doing there, why it should be standing there alone. no one seems to be watching it. it has not the slightest appearance of usefulness. and yet there it stands day after day, and year after year, a ready-prepared cradle, and no infant to live in it.
and yet this cradle is the most useful, and, in a way, the most inhabited cradle in the world. day after day and year after year it is a recipient of more small wayfaring souls than any other cradle in the world. in it the real children of sorrow are placed, and over it more tears are shed than if it were an open grave.
242 it is a place where annually twelve hundred foundlings are placed, many of them by mothers who are too helpless or too unfortunately environed to be further able to care for their children; and the misery which compels it makes of the little open crib a cradle of tears.
the interest of this cradle is that it has been the silent witness of more truly heartbreaking scenes than any other cradle since the world began. for nearly sixty years it has stood where it does to-day, ready-draped, open, while almost as many thousand mothers have stolen shamefacedly in and after looking hopelessly about have laid their helpless offspring within its depths.
for sixty years, winter and summer, in the bitterest cold and the most stifling heat, it has seen them come, the poor, the rich, the humble, the proud, the beautiful, the homely; and one by one they have laid their children down and brooded over them, wondering if it were possible for human love to make so great a sacrifice and yet not die.
and then, when the child has been actually sacrificed, when by the simple act of releasing their hold upon it and turning away, they have allowed it to pass out from their loving tenderness into the world unknown, this silent cradle has seen them smite their hands in anguish and yield to such voiceless tempests of grief as only those know who have loved much and lost all.
the circumstances under which this peculiar charity comes to be a part of the life of the great metropolis need not be rehearsed here. the heartlessness of men, the frailty of women, the brutality of all those who sit in judgment in spite of the fact that they do not wish243 to be judged themselves, is so old and so commonplace that its repetition is almost wearisome.
still, the tragedy repeats itself, and year after year and day after day the unlocked door is opened and dethroned virtue enters—the victim of ignorance and passion and affection—and a child is robbed of a home.
i think there is a significant though concealed thought here, for nature in thus repeating a fact day after day and year after year raises a significant question. we are so dull. sometimes it requires ten thousand or ten million repetitions to make us understand. “here is a condition. what will you do about it? here is a condition. what will you do about it? here is a condition. what will you do about it?” that is the question each tragedy propounds, and finally we wake and listen. then slowly some better way is discovered, some theory developed. we find often that there is an answer to some questions, at least if we have to remake ourselves, society, the face of the world, to get it.
