The board is also vested with power to bind out, to proper persons, children who have been surrendered to the Institution, and all those not known to have friends in the State legally authorized to make such surrender. The children are not kept after they reach their fourteenth year, all being either returned to their parents or sent out to service. Their food is simple, abundant, and nutritious, and though smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping-cough, and all the other diseases common to children, have occasionally crept into the Institution, but very few have died. Many of them have been vulgar and intractable at their entrance, but have soon yielded to wholesome discipline and example. In May, 1S37, the family was removed to the Nicholson House, then No. 3 West Tenth street, which had been purchased by one of the trustees, and was sold to the society the following year. This building furnished accommodations for one hundred and twenty children, and was soon filled. During the summer of 1840 a house was rented in Morristown, New Jersey, and 47 of the children taken there to spend the hot season. In 1840, the society, having received several liberal donations, purchased some valuable lots on Sixth avenue, where a three-story brick edifice sixty-four feet wide was erected, the cost of all but a little exceeding $20,000. In May, 1841, the children were removed to it, and the number again much increased, some of the younger ones remaining in a part of the wood building on Tenth street, called at that time "the Nursery." This new building on Sixth avenue was occupied for sixteen years, though never equal to the demands, and after much discussion about removing the Institution out of the city, and other schemes for enlargement, more lots were finally secured adjoining those on Tenth street, the present building erected, and the children removed to it amid the financial panic in the fall of 1857. The edifice is substantially, constructed of brick trimmed with brown stone, is four stories above the basement, has a front of ninety-five feet, and cost, exclusive of grounds, over $37,000. The basement contains, besides wash-room and laundry, a fine playroom; the first floor, a kitchen, dining-room, parlor, and rooms for the matron. The second floor is devoted to school-rooms, the third contains dormitories for the girls, and the fourth the dormitories for boys, and an infirmary. The society has discharged all its indebtedness, converted its buildings on Sixth avenue into stores which bring a fine income, and now ranks among the most successful and best-established institutions of New York.

Since its organization, three thousand and thirty-three half-orphan children have been admitted to share its advantages, between two hundred and three hundred being the average number for several years past. All are instructed in the rudiments of English learning, under the inspection of the Board of Education, and the usual percentage of the school fund and the State orphan fund are paid to the Institution. Public prayers are offered with the children every morning and evening; a fine Sabbath-school is conducted in the building, and all attend church. Early rising, industrious habits, great cleanliness, intellectual, moral, and religious instruction, are the chief characteristics of the Asylum. The Institution is Protestant, but not denominational. Mrs. Tomlinson, its chief foundress and promoter, continued its first director for twenty-seven years, and died in 1862. During the year 1869 the only remaining one of the seven who first organized the society, Mrs. James Boorman, was also called to her reward. In May, 1870, Miss Mary Brasher, who had held a place of usefulness in the board for more than twenty years, was also discharged by the great Master.

The toils of these worthy ladies have sometimes appeared thankless. They have ever sought to strengthen the bond between the parent and the child, by insisting on a small payment for weekly board whenever possible, and thus have wisely prevented many parents from drowning their natural affection in idleness and dissipation. Yet their good works have not saved them from being occasionally covered with abuse by the dissolute and ungrateful. Numbers of the children, however, have given evidence of genuine conversion while in the Institution, and many more after having gone to live in Christian families in the country. Some who had not been heard from for years, when converted, have taken the earliest opportunity to write to the managers, breathing grateful emotion for those who had picked them from haunts of penury or dissipation, planted in their tender minds the seeds of truth, which were now developing into a holy life. Surely, He that went about doing good, and who took children in His arms, and blessed them, will not be unmindful of these toils, but in the day of final reckoning will say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto me."