eyes rested on the inscription across the
road, " East London Children's Hospital."
I could scarcely have seen an inscription
better suited to my frame of mind, and I
went across and went straight in.

I found the Children's Hospital established
in an old sail-loft or storehouse, of
the roughest nature, and on the simplest
means. There were trap- doors in the floors
where goods had been hoisted up and
down; heavy feet and heavy weights had
started every knot in the well-trodden
planking; inconvenient bulks and beams
and awkward staircases perplexed my pas-
sage through the wards. But I found it
airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven-and-
thirty beds I saw but little beauty, for
starvation in the second or third generation
takes a pinched look; but I saw
the sufferings both of infancy and childhood
tenderly assuaged, I heard the little
patients answering to pet playful names,
the light touch of a delicate lady laid
bare the wasted sticks of arms for me
to pity; and the claw-like little hands, as
she did so, twined themselves lovingly
around her wedding-ring.

One baby mite there was, as pretty as any
of Raphael's angels. The tiny head was
bandaged, for water on the brain, and it
was suffering with acute bronchitis too,
and made from time to time a plaintive,
though not impatient or complaining little
sound. The smooth curve of the cheeks
and of the chin was faultless in its condensation
of infantine beauty, and the large
bright eyes were most lovely. It happened,
as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that
these eyes rested upon mine, with that
wistful expression of wondering thoughtfulness
which we all know sometimes in
very little children. They remained fixed
on mine, and never turned from me while
I stood there. When the utterance of that
plaintive sound shook the little form, the
gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as
though the child implored me to tell the
story of the little hospital in which it was
sheltered, to any gentle heart I could address.
Laying my world- worn hand upon
the little unmarked clasped hand at the
chin, I gave it a silent promise that I
would do so.

A gentleman and lady, a young husband
and wife, have bought and fitted up this
building for its present noble use, and have
quietly settled themselves in it as its medical
officers and directors. Both have had
considerable practical experience of medicine
and surgery; he, as house-surgeon
of a great London Hospital; she, as a very
earnest student, tested by severe examination,
and also as a nurse of the sick poor,
during the prevalence of cholera. With
every qualification to lure them away, with
youth and accomplishments and tastes and
habits that can have no response in any
breast near them, close begirt by every repulsive
circumstance inseparable from such
a neighbourhood, there they dwell. They
live in the Hospital itself, and their
rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at
their dinner table they could hear the cry
of one of the children in pain. The lady's
piano, drawing materials, books, and other
such evidences of refinement, are as much
a part of the rough place as the iron bedsteads
of the little patients. They are put
to shifts for room, like passengers on board
ship. The dispenser of medicines (attracted
to them, not by self-interest, but by their
own magnetism and that of their cause)
sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and
has his washing apparatus in the sideboard.

Their contented manner of making the
best of the things around them, I found so
pleasantly inseparable from their usefulness!
Their pride in this partition that we
put up ourselves, or in that partition that
we took down, or in that other partition
that we moved, or in the stove that was
given us for the waiting-room, or in our
nightly conversion of the little consulting-
room into a smoking-room. Their admiration
of the situation, if we could only get
rid of its one objectionable incident, the
coal-yard at the back! " Our hospital
carriage, presented by a friend, and very
useful." That was my presentation to a
perambulator, for which a coach-house had
been discovered in a corner down-stairs,
just large enough to hold it. Coloured
prints in all stages of preparation for being
added to those already decorating the wards,
were plentiful; a charming wooden phenomenon
of a bird, with an impossible top-
knot, who ducked his head when you set a
counter weight going, had been inaugurated
as a public statue that very morning; and
trotting about among the beds, on familiar
terms with all the patients, was a comical
mongrel dog, called Poodles. This comical
dog (quite a tonic in himself) was found
characteristically starving at the door of
the Institution, and was taken in and fed,
and has lived here ever since. An admirer
of his mental endowments has presented
him with a collar bearing the legend,
"Judge not Poodles by external appearances."