heated brain, I can't help it. I have told the
truth to the best of my belief, and if they object
to receive it the fault is theirs: not mine.

GHOSTS.

  GHOSTS often come to my window,
     And knock at my chamber door,
  Or sit by my side at dinner
     Or walk with me on the shore.
   I know their villanous faces,
     As they giggle, and sneer, and jar:
  They will not be gone, so I'll count them,
     And tell them what they are!

  Ghosts of ambitions buried,
    Ghosts of a love grown cold,
  Ghosts of a fortune squandered,
    Ghosts of a tale that's told,
  Ghosts of a traitorous friendship,
    And of follies nine times nine!
  Come Wizard! come! and lay them
    In the deep Red Sea!—of Wine!

GOOD COMPANY FOR NEW
YEAR'S DAY.

"KING'S College Hospital, Portugal-street,
Lincoln's-inn-fields. The committee of this
institution desire to thank the many friends
who have so kindly assisted them with
presents of flowers and evergreens for the
Christmas decorations of their hospital, and
for furnishing the Christmas Tree for the
children in the Pantia Ralli ward. The
tree will be lighted this evening at about
four o'clock. There are no infectious cases
in the ward, and visitors desirous of seeing
the decorations on the tree will be admitted
at any time by giving their name to the
porter at the door. A large portion of the
decorations have been executed by the
patients themselves, and have been carried out
with so much taste as to be well worth a
visit. F. A. Bedwell, vice-chairman."

This was the invitation to the public
which appeared in the papers on New Year's
morning, and which I, as one of the public,
resolved to accept.

The first thing, of course, that struck the
eye on entering the Pantia Ralli ward was
the large, gaily decorated tree in the centre
of the long, clean, airy room; then the holly
wreaths, the floral emblems, the pretty
pictures, and bright illuminated texts covering
the walls. The first thing that struck
the heart was the quiet happiness and
homelike look of the groups clustered
about the beds. Each little knot made
a family party of its own, and brought
the home into the hospital. Mothers and
fathers, perhaps with one or two elder
children, perhaps with a baby to help in the
general fun, had come to share in the pleasure
of their little sufferers; and wherever
one turned, some sweet and tender picture,
touched in by the hand of living nature,
seemed to bring one closer to one's fellow-
creatures, for sympathy and pity.

Here was one mild, decent- looking family
—the father a well-mannered mechanic, the
mother a soft-eyed, pretty young woman,
with a baby and a sturdy little rogue of
five—come to see a very lovely little girl,
brought in last night, with some acute affection
of the lungs. Quite unconsciously the
young mother made many a touching picture,
the like of which Raffaelle saw and
noted in his day, as she pressed her sick
child's fevered face against her own cool
cheek, and soothed its moments of weariness
with her pretty motherly devices—
pretty, if at times not quite wise. This
family interested me much on account
of the winsomeness of the woman, the
exceeding sweetness of the child, and the
polished manner of the father, who was
a foreigner—Swiss or German, I imagine.
When I asked him what ailed his child,
I got what seemed to be the stereotyped
answer of the place, "the bronchitis;" but
I made out the underlying causes of bad air
and unwholesome lodging, to which so much
of our disease in towns is owing. "If I had
the means," he said, "I would live in the
country. We would all do more than we
do, if we had the means," he added, with a
pleasant smile.

Passing from them, I came upon a woman
dandling in her arms a dark-eyed diminutive
child, the smallest for its age I have ever
seen. It was eighteen months old, and was
not larger than a small monkey, or good
sized doll. But it was sprightly and intelligent,
though also very fretful and irritable,
and with good food and nursing would probably
broaden out into something more normally
human than it looked at present.
Here was a widow with a careworn look
and shabby weeds, too sad to be playful,
holding listlessly on her knee a pallid
attenuated infant, more than half of whose
malady was evidently due to starvation;
here a young woman, rather flashily dressed,
and of a good humoured coarse pattern of
humanity, played with her now healthy
baby, which she had brought to see the tree
out of gratitude for the "kind treatment it
had received from the good gentlemen and
dear sisters of the ward."

Some of the brighter and more original
of the children are for ever imitating all they
see done by their elders, as children generally
do, and one, whose chest had often been