Page:The Souvenir of Western Women.djvu/165

Rh in every movement for the public advancement, and as a member of many of the boards of the city and state organizations, finds his time more than occupied. Mrs. Eliot, who stands as a type of motherhood, has yet found time in her busy life to enrich the literature of the West by her pen, and she, as well as her husband, the Pastor Emeritus of the Church of Our Father, are looked upon as they deserve to be from the points of years and service as the virtual heads of the Unitarian Church of the Pacific Northwest.

HE BABY HOME is the outgrowth of a work begun many years ago by a few earnest women on the East Side. It was incorporated in March, 1899, and the change in management that year was followed by the erection of a building on a sightly block of ground, donated for that purpose, by Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Kern as a loving memorial to their infant daughter, whose death occurred the previous year. Mrs. Kern was president of the Home for some years, but owing to other demands upon her time and strength, she felt obliged to give this responsibility to others. She, however, was an honorary member of the board until her death a year ago.

Nearly five hundred different babies have been cared for under the hospitable roof of what we now call the old building—these from many and varied conditions of life. The majority have been of respectable but poor parentage; children of widowed and forsaken mothers, dependent upon themselves for support, or of fathers, desolate and helpless when left with motherless babies; others wholly orphans and often friendless. There have been some, too, of illegitimate birth; but where is there more need of sympathy and kindness than toward those babies born with a stigma that makes an additional burden in after life? Even though the number were much greater, if such can be helped to homes where they are welcomed and reared to lives of usefulness and self-reliance, can any one question the good results? Not all illegitimate children are from degraded parents. There are many heart-broken mothers whose one bitter experience has brought almost unbearable sorrow, to be borne through a life of regret and remorse. Great is the pity that the one who shared the sin, and oft times the chief in error, escapes the responsibility and extreme suffering consequent to the wrongdoing.

Under the present administration nearly eighty children have been placed in homes for adoption, thereby bringing the childless home and the homeless child together and making both happier and better. This part of the work is certainly commendable and worthy of assistance and encouragement.

In the management of the Home two principles are paramount—that no worthy parent be refused assistance; neither shall he or she be permitted to