Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/418

428 These children, called “The children of the Madonna,” or “The children of Annunziata,” are reared in various divisions of the building, until they are old enough to be married or to go into service. From two to three thousand children are thus left annually in the wardship of the Madonna. In the year 1838, two thousand and twenty-two were received into the house, of whom considerably more than half died. I did not greatly wonder at this, when I saw the state of the children in the institution. Most of them appear miserably weak and ill-conditioned. The three little creatures that were laid in the turning machine this morning, seemed to me in a much better state than any of those within the halls of the institution. Many of these looked so emaciated, that we felt ready to weep over them. There are, for three hundred infants, only one hundred nurses. Many were lying crying, and sucking their little hands. Much worse still was the condition in the department where the elder girls were brought up. Cleanliness prevailed in the rooms and the beds appropriated to the infants, but in those of the elder girls, uncleanliness, bad air, and a state of disorder which was astonishing. The girls of various ages, who were employed about the place, looked so self-willed, and so impudent, as to excite disgust and sorrow. The otherwise good and noble countenance of the nun who attended us through the institution, wore an expression of hopelessness and dejection, so that we could very well see that she had undertaken a Sisyphus-labor. Seven nuns had to educate three hundred girls.