dinner. I took it to be grease for the two or
three literary machines, my brethren, whom I
saw sitting thereat. The plea of preparation
for the river air might possibly be valid in its
favour; but then why carry sandwiches and
wine on board the steamer? 'We will have
some wine put on board to keep out the cold,'
said the excellent chairman, with a smile at the
stout literary gentleman, whose name, I believe,
he did not know. And so, on board the steamer
there was wine in one of the cabins for the
further greasing of the hinges of the press. I
would as soon have taken poison, and might as
well, for it was port."

"Well, you know, there was nothing meant
but good-natured hospitality."

"No doubt; and I am naturally bashful
among strangers. But it was a grief to me that
Mr. Galahad, the secretary, did not take the
Seat Perilous and eat. He took me round the
hospital in the form of a H, while all the world
in it was feeding. What they were having in
the wards was Irish stew. It was stew day.
Good stew too, with honest-looking chops in
it, and baked rice-puddings to follow. Well,
and there were the women's quarters, and there
were the men's quarters; and in the pure
temperate air in the galleries there sat, here women,
there men, about long tables, in quiet dinner
parties, not more languid and pale than some of
your fashionable companies towards the fag-end
of the season. The consumptive eye has its
own lustre, and perhaps it was brightened in
some faces by interest in the day's event; for
an event it was, that touched many a heart
among them. I don't usually care much for
special hospitals, believing that many of them
collect cases which had better be sent to a good
general hospital, and that general hospitals are
of infinitely more service to humanity by the
advance in knowledge of the healing art. But
while small-pox and fever are among the obvious
exceptions, I think that consumption, though
less obviously, is an exception too.

"A Consumption Hospital can only be of
service to the very poor. It is peculiarly a disease
for home treatment where a fair degree of home
comfort can be attained. But where poverty
presses so sorely that a healthy home is
unattainable, then I think it is well to gather
these poor patients into a comfortable hospital
of their own, where they are nursed with utmost
skill, well fed, in a pure temperate air free
from draughts, and comforted with special
hope and sympathy. For nobody doubts now
that in the first, at least, of its three stages
consumption can be cured. Patients sent in
good time do go from this hospital with a new
lease of life, and after they have left may keep
themselves easily within range of watchful care.
They are admitted upon recommendation of a
governor, that is to say, yearly subscriber of
three guineas. Each governor may send one
patient a year, and the patient is kept thirteen
weeks, at a cost to the hospital of about ten
pounds. So of course the money of the large
number of governors who don't send patients
helps to support the charity of those who do.
There is a famously appointed kitchen, and there
is a dispensary with a row of brass taps for the
serving out of the different qualities of cod-
liver oil, as the publican serves out his mild,
bitter, and fourpenny. I wouldn't like to say
that I remember how many hundred, thousand,
million, or billion gallons of cod-liver oil are used
in that place every year."

"Have you the figures in your pocket?"

"Yes, of course. Let me see. Eight hundred
and fifty-eight gallons, and three-quarters.
Also two hundred and twenty-two gallons of
brandy, twenty gallons of gin, six gallons of
rum, one hundred and forty-two gallons of
sherry, and three hundred and ninety-three
gallons of port. These are properly put in the
drug account; and all the pure wine used upon
these premises in a twelvemonth was one dozen
of claret."

"Pocket the rest of the figures."

"Willingly. But I should like the hospital
committee to make the discovery that they can
get Greek wine nearly as strong as port, and a
great deal wholesomer and cheaper, and that if it
be the spirit they want, whisky-and-water beats
port hollow. Pardon me for being a little
sensitive upon the subject of that fraudulent
old humbug of a wine. Coarse spirit at eightpence
a bottle is exported from England,
brandied, logwooded, mixed with a little wine,
mellowed by age, and imported again into this
country as a luxury, partly owing its cost to
the long warehousing necessary to enable the
mixture to abate of its first nauseousness, and
become drinkable."

"Enough of that."

"The mention of it is enough. It came of
mentioning the cod liver oil and drugs of the
dispensary. There is a chapel, too, at that
hospital in the shape of a H—a very handsome one,
entirely the gift of Sir Henry Foulis. But to
come to the travellers.

"One of the hospital physicians, Dr. W. H.
Stone, was lately paying a visit to Madeira,
and studying the climate, when it was
proposed to him by some generous residents in
the island to establish winter-quarters there
—a sanatorium—for some of the poor patients
at Brompton to whom there was hope that
one such escape from the English winter might
secure recovery. A committee was formed by
the kind-hearted Madeira people, under the
presidency of Captain Erskine, her Majesty's
consul, and it was definitively settled that if
the hospital authorities would select with great
care twenty of the poor patients to whom a
winter in Madeira would be of most service,
send them out in November, and take them
home in May, the friendly islanders would
lodge and feed, care for and comfort them, during
the whole of their stay. A large merchant's
house was accordingly taken at Madeira, in a
suitable position, and adapted to their use. The
patients whose cure might possibly be
completed by such aid were carefully picked, each
being examined successively by three physicians;