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A New Way to Spend Christmas

Adapted by Stephen W. Hines

"In spite of rain and fog, our party met at the appointed hour on board of the boat bound for Randalls Island.

This is one of the three islands that lie in East River that are used for charitable purposes. Blackwells Island is full of hospitals, alms and workhouses; Wards has a hospital for immigrants, a mental asylum, and the Potter's Field; but Randalls is devoted to children.

On it is a nursery in which children over two years old are placed and kept until parents or guardians are able to provide for them. If not claimed, they are bound out at a proper age to respectable citizens to learn some useful trade. There are now in the nursery six hundred and forty-two boys and three hundred and twenty-one girls. A school for retarded children is also on this island as is a hospital for sick babies.

For thirty years has the lady who led our party (a worthy daughter of good Isaac T. Hopper) visited the poor children in their various refuges, taking upon herself the duty of seeing that this holiday is not forgotten but kept as it should be, with goodies, gifts, kind words, and a motherly face to make sunshine in a shady place.