The Mankato Free Press

Necessary to Have One.

Recently the wife of a sea captain visited the Philadelphia Almshouse for the purpose of securing a child for adoption. In her tour through the nursery she selected a child about eight weeks old—a bright, chubby boy—and obtained the consent of the mother to adopt him as her own. The necessary papers were made out and signed, and then it was the sea captain's wife broke forth in an ecstasy of rejoicing, and hugged and kissed the little infant, saying to it: "You don't know how much joy you are bringing with you to your new home."

The excessive rejoicing of the lady and the enigmatical address to her new charge excited the curiosity of the officers, and she was asked to explain how it was the baby could be such a treasure.

"Why, certainly," replied the young foster-mother, "my husband is a sea captain. We were married about eleven months ago, and he went to sea soon after our wedding. He will be home again in two weeks, and won't he be a happy man to find that he has a nice pretty boy waiting to welcome him home?" And again the woman pressed the child to her bosom, and chuckled over the deception she was about to practice on her unsuspecting husband. The child was hers legally. It had been given her by its mother in due form of law, and she was bent on presenting it to her husband as his own son. The officers of the institution warned her of the consequences which might arise if in after years the husband should discover the trick which in her ill-conceived affection she had practiced upon him; and she burned the papers to prevent the possibility of his ever discovering the proof of the deception, and went away with the child. The last words she uttered on leaving the almshouse were: "Won't baby wake papa's heart glad and his home happy!"