Читать книгу Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives - George S. McWatters - Страница 43

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Hundreds of "lost children" bear testimony to the carelessness of mothers and nurses, who are more intent on other business, when their charges stray off, to be found afterwards, in out-of-the-way places, by stray policemen. Quite often a pedestrian will notice, on going along one of our side streets, a young child, its eyes bubbling over with tears, and red from irritation and inflammation, who has strayed from its parents' residence. Sometimes it will have a stick of candy in its infantile fist, or else an apple, or a slice of bread, butter, and molasses, to console it in its wanderings. It is very seldom, however, that these children do not find their way back to their parents, unless that there is foul play, in such instances where a child may be kidnapped by people who are childless, or through their agency, for the purpose of adoption in barren families. The practice of baby-farming has not as yet attained, in America, the height that it has reached in England, and therefore the lives of children are not yet so endangered as they are across the water. It is calculated that at least one thousand children are missing every year in this city, but they are nearly all returned before the close of the day on which they are first missed.