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In a little cabin down the road, the already deserted wife brought her second baby into the world. Except for the constant care of her former mistress, mother and child must have perished, for the winter was hard and the husband did nothing towards their support.

But our good woman was not at the end of her resources; she had seen the couple married and she intended to see that the husband took care of his family. After infinite trouble and annoyance, she succeeded in getting the pair engaged to work on the land of an unmarried farmer living some distance back in the country and away from any settlement. There it was hoped they would learn to tend to their own affairs and grow into respectability. It was on this farm that a second child was born to the couple, so that the family now numbered three.

But with all our good woman's foresight, with all her honest intentions, she could not have hit upon a more ill-advised scheme. The farmer in question, though himself not of normal intelligence, was good-looking and far superior in every way to the drunken imbecile to whom the girl had been married. More than this, he proved to be the man to whom report had said she had earlier been engaged. So it was not long before another child was to come to the farm, which the husband and the farmer each referred to the other and which both consequently refused to claim.

The situation had become for the third time tragic, and our good woman felt she must again intervene. She more than suspected the farmer's guilt, and was indignant at his attitude. Reflecting on the husband's character and finding that it had always been unfit, she determined to see the pair divorced, and the woman then married to the farmer, who would thus be obliged to undertake her support. The determination was put into execution, though not until the two children born of the first marriage had been placed in a home, the farmer stoutly refusing to provide for them. The mother, however, sought to keep her oldest child with her, though in this she was not successful. Very soon she brought the little illegitimate girl to the woman who had interfered so much in her life, explaining that there would be no peace in the home while the child remained.

It was a really wise move, the one which our good woman next made, that of applying to have the child received into the Vineland institution. It had begun to dawn upon her that the family was not normal, and that special training was needed. In this way the little seven-year-old found entrance to the sphere in which she rightly belonged.

But the mother's story was not yet at an end. Her union this time proved successful. She was satisfied with her husband and he apparently with her. Her defects in housekeeping and personal tidiness did not wear on his dulled intelligence, while he possessed capacity enough to run his farm and provide for his constantly increasing family. Today five strangely interesting, yet strikingly defective, children grace his home. The oldest girl is on the point of being put out to service.

One is appalled at the thought! Will some clean youth be attracted to her (for she is attractive, and only a trained eye could readily detect her deficiency) and so bring disaster upon himself and his home? Or will she sink to the lowest level of her kind, and add to the horror of degradation and crime with which the land abounds? Heaven forbid. Yet one of these fates surely awaits her, while society stands passively by. No one can be brought face to face with a fact so apparent without feeling that something must be done and done at once, if this girl and thousands of similarly defective girls are to be saved from themselves, and society saved from the evils they unwittingly engender.

This is indeed but an isolated case, yet in this girl's family alone, seven other deficient boys and girls are growing on to manhood and womanhood, each having the same tendencies, bearing the same taint; while from the families of her mother's deficient brothers and sisters other children of like grade are advancing swiftly on the selfsame road.