of death mindful only of duty, is, meanwhile,
doing the work of two or three different persons,
and, when all other duties are performed, buries
himself in hospital accounts through the small
hours of the morning.

The numbers in the Fever Hospital, rising
throughout the autumn, were at Christmas
between seventy and eighty. The type of the
fever was then changing to its most virulent
form, and at the end of January there were a
hundred and twenty-nine cases, nearly all of
typhus. In December there had been three
deaths from typhus fever, five from typhoid; in
January there were twenty deaths from typhus,
two from typhoid. As we write, the hospital is
so full that many cases have to be refused
admission.

The pressure upon the too slight resources of
the institution may be removed as suddenly as
it has been enforced; but the fact sharply
illustrates the need of an unflagging aid to the
refuge that is always open in time of need for
sufferers from that fatal disease which, born as
it is of dirt, and feeding chiefly on the helpless
poor, has, from some unsuspected lurking-place,
stepped forth already as assassin of the highest
of the land, and from whose blow not the most
careful guardian of his own health and that of
his household can ensure escape. In a
thousand corners of our town, lie the materials for
generating fever-poison. What temper of the
air will bring their deadly power into action,
what temper of the soundest body may in a
chance place at a chance moment give the
poison hold, no man can say. We only know
how we must fight against unwholesomeness.
We know the imminent peril to the sick and to
the sound, of typhus or typhoid fever patients
in the crowded and narrow dwellings of the
poor; we know that it is desirable to keep
infectious cases from the wards of a general
hospital; and that the Fever Hospital, like the
Small-Pox Hospital, is an institution which it would
be a disgrace to London not to have, and having,
not to maintain in full efficiency. There is but
one hospital for each of these diseases. Small-pox
we already know how to subdue by simple means
if we will properly take and enforce them; typhus
and typhoid fever—whether gastric, nervous,
or by whatever other fancy name called—we
have abated, but cannot hope to subdue for
many years after small-pox shall have been
extinguished by the vaccinator. It is not just
that our one Fever Hospital, feebly maintained
by the public, should be forced to lay the burden
of its work upon a staff that cannot meet a week
of sudden pressure without risk of death to some
one of its number of brave men and women.

We do not attempt any interference with the
public taste, though we do think that a
substantial sum towards the endowment of a
hospital like this which struggles to rescue from the
grave, husbands and wives and children of the
poor, would be a manlier way of spending
offerings designed to raise a memorial worthy
of the benevolent Prince whom we have lost, and
would be one more to his known mind, than the
erection of a wilderness of obelisks. England
is not clever at raising monuments of stone; but
she understands, on the whole, better than
most of her neighbours, how to build and
maintain monuments of living mercy. Let that be
as it may, we know full well that, from whatever
quarter it may come, help will not long be
wanting to the men who face a daily peril to confer
a daily blessing on their kind.

FROM TURKEY TO PERSIA.

I AM going from Constantinople to Tehran,
the capital of Persia. Upon a close July afternoon,
I take my place in a four-oared caique,
and we pull rapidly out for the French steamer,
which lies anchored off Tophana, with her
seaward flag a-flying.

One of my companions, who has been giving
me a farewell dinner, is a young man full of the
untamed hope and eager spirit of enterprise,
which sit so gracefully on youth. (Poor boy! I
cannot think now without a pang how that gallant
heart ceased to beat, and the fresh cheerful voice,
which seems to echo still in my ear, gave out its
last tones among the festering marshes of the
Peiho!) The brave youngster fixes his large
bright eyes upon me with a look of generous
envy. He seems to long to say to me: " Do
stay here, and go to those weary embassy balls
and stiff dinners in armour, and talk about the
Golden Horn and Solyman the Magnificent, to
travelling gentry of Great and Little Britain!
Copying despatches now and then till midnight
over burnt claret and cigarettes is not after all
such a very bad business, so let me roam away
in your place to the mystic heart of Asia. Let
it be I who shall wander, a happy adventurer,
with a score of horsemen clattering round me,
over the mountains of Armenia, and through the
wilds of Koordistan; and let it be the clank of
my spurs which shall be heard by the fierce
tribes who encamp round the base of holy
Ararat. You are old, and want rest. I am
young, eager for change, scornful of hardship.
Let me speed away to see something of the
grand old world, while you remain amidst the
repose and comforts of the new one."

But another of my companions, a man of grave
experience, who has seen all these things, has no
such thoughts.

"I am glad," says he, as we skim over the
deep blue waters, and look round upon one of
the most enchanting sights of the world, the
thousand coloured landscape round Stamboul:
"I am glad to have been the journey you are
going; but I confess I should not like to travel
it again."

I know the captain of the French steamer.
He is a naval officer driven by a slender purse
into the merchant service, and some twenty
years ago we tossed together in storm and
danger for ten terrible days over the boisterous
waters which rage in winter-time round the iron
coast of Algeria. We danced together, when
nimbler-toed, with the colonial beauties of Bona
and Constantine; and we played lausquenet for