MISCELLANEOUS CHARITIES.

CONNECTICUT.

UNION FOR HOME WORK, HARTFORD.

This benevolent and missionary society, started in 1871 by a few ladies connected with all the Protestant churches, has for its object. "the relief of all kinds of suffering, and the physical, intellectual, and spiritual elevation of the women and children of the city." The means used to accomplish these ends are personal visitation; the maintaining of a home or temporary lodging-house; a coffee-house or cheap restaurant; a day-nursery, where working-women leave their young children for the day; a clothing-club, which prepares, for the destitute, garments that are given, or sold at the cost price of the material, according to the circumstances of the persons needing them; a reading-room for girls and one for boys; a sewing-school for girls, and a weekly mothers' meeting for the mothers of the children in the sewing-school, where instruction in sewing and fitting is given them, with a plain, social tea. Tea-parties are also provided for the children, where, with comfortable food attractively set out, china tea-service, and table crowned with flowers, games played and stories told, every effort is made to promote, with the social enjoyment, a love of refinement and goodness.

The day-nursery has been well patronized, and has proved a great blessing, although some women who require its aid live too far away to avail themselves of it. It seems to be the most expensive branch of work, but the matron and her assistants, whose salaries are included in its cost, take care of the home generally, with its lodging-rooms and baths, and do the washing for all. It costs about fifty cents a day to take care of and feed each child, but this amount seems a trifle when we think of the helpless infants saved from neglect, suffering, and danger, while the mother is encouraged in industry, and can go to her work with a light heart, knowing that her little one is enjoying pure air, good food, and patient care.

HOME FOR THE FRIENDLESS, NEW HAVEN.

This institution provides a temporary home for friendless, vagrant girls, and gives them employment and instruction, with the ultimate design of providing for them a more permanent situation or of fitting them to maintain themselves.

The home usually also contains a large number of girls and women who have become friendless and homeless by the force of circumstances beyond their own control, as well as those who have become so on account of their own lack of virtue. To both classes the doors have ever been open, and all have been provided for and helped, according to the exigencies of each individual case.

Many are women with infants, who have left the hospital before they were strong enough to work, and have no other shelter. Some of these have become homeless through the death or desertion of their husbands, and some have none. All are cared for until strong enough to work, and situations are found where an honest living may be earned.

ILLINOIS.

HOME FOR THE FRIENDLESS, CHICAGO.

The Home for the Friendless is an incorporated institution, under the control of a board of lady managers, selected from the various Protestant churches of the city, and is largely supported by voluntary contributions.

The discipline of the institution is strictly parental in its character. Unquestioning obedience is required of the children, and the order and decorum of a well-regulated Christian family are carefully observed.

None are admitted as inmates to the home who will not conform to all the regulations of the house, or who are not hopeful subjects of mental and moral improvement, or who are not desirous of availing themselves of the first good opportunity of securing permanent homes or places of service, except aged or infirm persons, and these at the discretion of the reception-committee.

The object of the institution is the relieving, aiding, and providing homes for friendless and indigent women and children. The kind of persons contemplated are the worthy poor and strangers. Here they find a temporary resting and abiding place until homes are provided for them elsewhere. The large numbers of girls and women who come to the city every year to find employment and search for friends often need counsel and direction to aid them on their way. They come from all parts of the country, and no one is asked, as a condition, where she comes from. The home has been a blessing to thousands and has saved many who have been at the very point of desperation. Good food, kind words, and a desirable shelter and bed rarely ever fail to cheer a sorrowing, disappointed heart and change despondent feelings into brighter and more hopeful ones.

The ages of the children who are taken at the home are: girls, from the infant up to the age of 14; boys, from infancy to 12 years of age. It takes the orphan, as well as those who have living parents, and does all it can to assist parents to keep their children. But,

when necessity compels a mother to give up her children, the home becomes the guardian, and indentures these homeless wanderers into good families, where they receive an education, are loved by foster-parents, and become, to a large extent, useful members of society. While in the home, they have the benefit of a school taught in the building, where they receive the elements of an education, and also the principles of religion, with thorough Bible-instruction each day.

Two industrial schools belonging to the home are under the direct control of the lady managers.

The Home for the Friendless co-operates with every charitable institution in Chicago. Many times boys beyond the age of admission find their way to the home, or are sent by citizens too late at night to be sent to the Newsboys' Home, or to places for work. They receive food, shelter, and frequently a bath and suit of clothes. Old ladies find the home a convenient place to remain while arrangements are being made that will enable them to have a permanent place in the Old Peoples' Home.

Many of the patients from all the charity-hospitals in Chicago are received at the home to convalesce, after being discharged by their physi cians.

Children are frequently kept for a time to enable mothers to get enough in advance to place them in the Half-Orphan Asylum, an institution that makes a specialty of boarding at very low rates, to enable poor people to keep their children. Many other institutions might be named, but suffice it to say, that all respectable friendless women and children are received at the home, without regard to creed, color, or nationality.

The home depends upon voluntary contributions for support. During the year 1874 it has been enabled to shelter and care for a total of 2,244 persons, a much larger number than ever before in one year. All needing assistance are welcomed on the broad basis of simply their need, without regard to religion, nationality, or color.

The Home Visitor, a little sheet issued by the Home, presents the claims of the homeless poor of this great metropolis of the West. Twelve times a year it calls upon the friends, bearing its letters for the elders and stories for the children, giving in a pleasant way all the news of the month concerning the inside workings of the home and doing faithful missionary work wherever it goes.

The price is but fifty cents a year, though few people read it who do not give double the amount to the home, either in money or donations in kind. And many, who would brook no appeal from an individual, will listen, think, and give to the little pleader.

The school belonging to the home is a graded one, numbering 266 pupils, 40 of whom are also taught in the industrial department. Two of these have fitted themselves for admission to the normal school and others have prepared themselves to enter the high school.

MARYLAND.

THE HENRY WATSON CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY, NOS. 70 AND 72 CALVERT STREET, BALTIMORE,

Embraces in its home four separate and distinct departments, viz, the girls' home, in which girls of good character are received and boarded at a low rate, taught useful occupations, and assisted in securing good trades and paying occupations; the children's home, in which destitute children of both sexes are received and provided with carefully-selected homes in the country, under the protection of said society, until they attain the age of 18 years, (this "home" is also a temporary asylum for all homeless or destitute children;) the sewing-machine-school, under the management of superior teachers, in which young girls receive free and thorough instruction upon all of the principal sewing-machines now in use; and the school for instruction in cutting and fitting, in which young girls are thoroughly instructed by competent teachers in the most approved systems of dress-making, also in seamstress-work, free of charge.

HOME OF THE FRIENDLESS, BALTIMORE.

For eighteen years this charity has prosecuted its benevolent and successful labors.. Its work steadily increases, and a large average of muscle, brain, and soul is trained and molded, and returned to the community in a few years in the form of educated labor. Its annual average of inmates exceeds one hundred, of whom 75 per cent. are under 9 years of age.

The institution is thoroughly catholic in the dispensation of its charities, and is equally so in its administration. Its benefactions are without partiality, without test or qualification, asking of its applicants only the question, "Is it a friendless child?"

The number returned to parents and friends is large; but the temporary assistance rendered to the poor in emergencies of sickness, accident, and loss of employment is one of the noblest missions of the institution.

The annual expenditure is about $7,000. Much is received in the way of donation which cannot be included in this sum, although it does a great deal for the comfort and maintenance of the inmates.

MASSACHUSETTS.

THE HOME FOR FRIENDLESS WOMEN AND CHILDREN, SPRINGFIELD,

Provides "a temporary home for friendless and destitute women and children, and gives them employment and instruction, with the ultimate design of providing for them a more permanent situation or of fitting them to maintain themselves."

Two separate homes are sustained: one for women, the other for children. The charity was founded in 1865, as a home for women; the branch for children grew out of it in 1871.

The class cared for in the women's home embraces many whose need for the aid has been brought on themselves by their own folly and sin, as well as others whose condition is the result simply of misfortune and poverty. But whether the need of the applicant has arisen from her own fault or that of others, the great effort is to do her good; to create the desire to follow an honest path in life, if it does not already exist; to point out clearly the way, and make it practicable for the woman to follow it by removing otherwise insurmountable obstacles.

The children, comprising about nine-tenths of the inmates of the institution, are taught in a school-room at the home under the management of the public schools. Sewing and simple housework are also taught; and the children, as opportunity offers, are placed in families where they will be well cared for or perhaps reclaimed by parents whose circumstances have improved.

MICHIGAN.

DETROIT INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.

This is a day-school for poor children, where, in addition to the regular common-school-studies, sewing and housework are taught the girls. The boys who are large enough split and pile wood, and all are supplied with clothing and a warm dinner. The school is sustained by donations and interest on a permanent fund of $4,075.

THE MICHIGAN STATE PUBLIC SCHOOL AT COLDWATER

Is intended to operate as a preventive of crimes by repressing a criminal growth; that is, the children over 4 and under 16 years of age who are in suitable condition of body and mind to receive instruction, who are neglected and dependent-especially those who would otherwise be maintained in the county-poor-houses, those who have been abandoned by their parents, or are orphans, or whose parents have been convicted of crimeare received into this school, where they are trained for and afterward introduced into good society, or, at least, into society at a better point than would otherwise be possible.

The location at Coldwater brings the school under the scrutiny of a most refined and cultivated public sentiment, a spirit and influence which, preceding the administration in all its departments, is of greatest value to the work in hand. The buildings are unusually attractive, both in the outward appearance and in the internal arrangements and appointments. They are constructed for a mixed system, embracing the main features of the congregate and family-plans, as they are separately applied in other establishments. The central building is for offices and