Six years ago a charitable lady visited the bedside of a dying woman in the seventh story of an East Side tenement, New York, and asked her if she couldn’t do something for her. “Yes,” replied the dying woman. “I can’t die in peace while that brute of a stepmother on the other side of the wall is beating poor little Mary Ellen to death.’ The lady applied to the police, but they told her she must have evidence; she applied to charitable associations, who said they could care for the child after it was rescued, but their charters, unfortunately, didn’t permit them to rescue it; she applied to benevolent individuals, private philanthropists, who told her she had better not meddle in such a case, that it was dangerous to interfere between parent and child, etc. When she had tried all these in vain, she went to the protector of the brute creation, Henry Bergh, who rescued the child, had the cruel stepmother imprisoned, and put little Mary Ellen in a proper home. The result was to overwhelm Mr. Bergh’s Society with applications for interference in similar cases, until finally the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was organized.—Observer.