He was merrily wagging his tail
on a boy's pillow when he made this modest
appeal to me.

When this Hospital was first opened in
January of the present year, the people
could not possibly conceive but that somebody
paid for the services rendered there;
and were disposed to claim them as a
right, and to find fault if out of temper.
They soon came to understand the case
better, and have much increased in gratitude.
The mothers of the patients avail
themselves very freely of the visiting rules;
the fathers, often on Sundays. There is
an unreasonable (but still, I think, touching
and intelligible), tendency in the
parents to take a child away to its
wretched home, if on the point of death.
One boy who had been thus carried off on
a rainy night, when in a violent state of
inflammation, and who had been afterwards
brought back, had been recovered with
exceeding difficulty; but he was a jolly
boy, with a specially strong interest in his
dinner, when I saw him.

Insufficient food and unwholesome living
are the main causes of disease among these
small patients. So, nourishment, cleanliness,
and ventilation, are the main remedies.
Discharged patients are looked after,
and invited to come and dine now and
then; so are certain famishing creatures
who never were patients. Both the lady
and the gentleman are well acquainted, not
only with the histories of the patients and
their families, but with the characters and
circumstances of great numbers of their
neighbours: of these they keep a register.
It is their common experience that people
sinking down by inches into deeper and
deeper poverty, will conceal it, even from
them, if possible, unto the very last extremity.

The nurses of this Hospital are all young;
ranging, say, from nineteen to four-and-
twenty. They have, even within these
narrow limits, what many well-endowed
Hospitals would not give them: a comfortable
room of their own in which to take their
meals. It is a beautiful truth that interest
in the children and sympathy with
their sorrows, bind these young women to
their places far more strongly than any
other consideration could. The best skilled
of the nurses came originally from a kindred
neighbourhood, almost as poor, and
she knew how much the work was needed.
She is a fair dressmaker. The Hospital
cannot pay her as many pounds in the year
as there are months in it, and one day the
lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her
about her improving her prospects and following
her trade. No, she said; she could
never be so useful, or so happy, elsewhere,
any more; she must stay among the
children. And she stays. One of the
nurses, as I passed her, was washing a
baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I
stopped to speak to her charge: a common,
bullet- headed, frowning charge enough,
laying hold of his own nose with a slippery
grasp, and staring very solemnly out of a
blanket. The melting of the pleasant face
into delighted smiles as this young gentleman
gave an unexpected kick and laughed
at me, was almost worth my previous pain.

An affecting play was acted in Paris
years ago, called The Children's Doctor.
As I parted from my Children's Doctor
now in question, I saw in his easy black
necktie, in his loose buttoned black frock
coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of
his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the
very turn of his moustache, the exact realisation
of the Paris artist's ideal as it was
presented on the stage. But no romancer
that I know of, has had the boldness to
prefigure the life and home of this young
husband and young wife, in the Children's
Hospital in the East of London.

I came away from Ratcliffe by the Stepney
railway station to the Terminus at
Fenchurch- street. Any one who will reverse
that route, may retrace my steps.

THE MADRAS BOY.

THE Madras boy is not a boy. The word is
a corruption of the Telugu word " boyi," a
palanquin bearer. There is nothing which
sounds stranger to a new-comer in Madras than
the constant cries of Boy! He makes a call,
and immediately on his entering the room
the lady of the house cries, Boy! This
startles him. But he is reassured by hearing
"Yes, mam," answered, and seeing a native
(probably of advanced years) appear and receive
orders to have the punkah pulled. The master
of the house comes in, greets his visitor, says
he must stop to tiffin, and immediately roars,
Boy! Again the domestic appears, and is
ordered to have the horse taken out of the
gharie; and so on at short intervals the silvery
call or the trumpet roar of, Boy! resounds
through the house. Ladies are generally some
time before they can bring themselves to be
constantly calling Boy! but in a bachelor's
house the cry seems to be ever in the air. " Boy,
cheroot!" " Boy, fire!" "Boy, soda!" And
ever and anon, when the Boy is dozing, or far
off, one hears the cry " crescendo," until it is
evident that the caller must be red in the face