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THE LITTLE HOSPITAL BY THE RIVER.

JUST beyond the dark red brick tower of quaint old Chelsea Church and the now-a-days grotesque monument to Sir Hans Sloane beside it, is a handsome lamp-post placed in the middle of the wide road, with an inscription announcing that in the month of May, 1874, the Thames Embankment of Chelsea was opened. Doubtless this Embankment has purified the river banks, and has been great in its sanitary influences—but we old dwellers in Chelsea have clinging regretful memories of the old wharves, the picturesque lumbering barges, and the stately trees that once adorned Cheyne Walk, though these last were sacrificed some years before the Embankment was thought of.

At this lamp-post begins a plot of inclosed garden-ground, between the houses and the river, with trees bursting into fresh green leaves which quiver under the bright sunshine of this genial spring day, and behind the slight screen they interpose between us and the river is a quaint group of small houses— quaint and old-fashioned with the age of more than a century upon them. In front of the third house, No. 46, is a black board with " Cheyne Home for Sick Children " painted on it, and this is the little Hospital we have come to see.

A Hospital for incurable children! What a sad, hopeless picture this calls up, so many of the bright butterflies of life pinned to the beds from which they must never rise. "Oh how very sad!" say people we tell about this little Hospital, and we said so too, and we went in with troubled hearts to judge for ourselves.

We went first into the pretty rooms on the ground-floor and had a little talk with the sweet-faced superintendent "Sister" the children call the kind lady about her sixteen charges

up stairs. The idea of this Hospital is very beautiful; it only receives patients suffering from chronic or incurable disease, and on that account excluded or discharged from other hospitals. Cases of epilepsy or mental derangement being alone inadmissible. It was first opened in June 1875 with one ward containing eight beds; in September of the same year eight more beds were added.

Twenty-eight children have now been admitted; of these a few have been discharged comparatively well; some have died. There are now sixteen in the Hospital, almost all of whom will never leave their beds again.

We go up the quaint old staircase with its pale green panelled walls, into the first ward. Outside the door we are shown the great ventilating shaft, which goes through the house from basement to roof, and keeps the atmosphere wonderfully pure and fresh; there are also air tubes at the windows.

Two bright, exquisitely-clean rooms lead one out of the other; there are three cots in one room and five in the other; and out of the eight children who occupy these, seven are incurably afflicted either with spine or hip disease, or in the case of the eldest, a very interesting boy of twelve years old, with "paraplegia:" but it is really difficult to believe this doom is on them as we look at the bright smiles on every face. Every child wears a scarlet flannel jacket, and has its cot covered with a richly-coloured striped blanket. The pale green walls are hung with pictures and photographs, and on the little table stretching across every crib is a glass or china flower pot filled with fresh country primroses.

It is difficult to associate disease and suffering with so bright a scene. The

cots and the stools beside them are heaped with books, toys, drawing implements, and work-boxes; and looking out through the flood of sunshine streaming into the room we see the noble river, which almost seems to be flowing beneath the windows, and one may fancy is bearing the red and black steamers, the long slender yellow boats flashing past like rays of light, the barges, and the smaller craft, up and down, for the amusement of the little invalids, as they lie on their cots in full view of the water.

In two cots set side by side in the first room two little girls were busy with their dolls. Their cots were strewn with playthings and a baby-house. They looked very sweet and happy, like two birds in their nests, and soon lost their shyness and grew interested in talking of their toys and pursuits.

Through the doorway between the rooms we came to five boys of different ages, and were greatly struck by their intelligence and evident contentment. It must indeed be a most blessed change to them, for patients are not taken in at this hospital who can be properly cared for in their own homes. One of the little girls up stairs, with a terrible spinal complaint, never slept in a bed till she came to Cheyne Hospital; another child was accustomed to be left alone suffering all day, her father being a flower-seller in the streets and her mother an orangewoman. It is touching to learn that these poor people bring regularly a shilling a week each towards the support of their child.

But there are sadder cases than these. The baby of the Hospital, a smiling, happy darling of four years, was taken from his wretched drunken mother's arms under the arches of Waterloo Bridge, with incurable disease in both hips, also in the spine. His dear little face is always full of smiles and pleasure at being noticed.

Next the "baby" is a bright intelligent fellow, with an answer for everything you say. He is not much older

than "Friar Tuck," as the little one is called, but he is wonderfully clever, a child who must have been remarkable in some way; he, too, has spinal disease and lies flat in his little bed.

Charlie, the eldest boy already mentioned, lies near the window; he has a taste for drawing, and this is sedulously fostered. One wonders what he thinks of as he lies there watching the river run past with its ever varied freight of steamers and boats. He is evidently a reflecting boy and old for his age. He is also a great reader.

"I like books with plenty of moving in them," he said, "fighting and such like, and about going to sea."

Poor fellow, he smiled and looked bright as he spoke, quite unconscious of the strange, almost grotesque contrast to his state his words made. We lent him A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe. "Is it all true?" he eagerly asked; "and did he really carry it about?"

His case is a sad one. He was well two years ago and was at play, when a stone struck him in the back. Probably there was disease in the system, for he became ill at once and is now paralysed to above the waist, but he can move his arms and is wonderfully ingenious and clever in the way he pastes prints and coloured pictures into his scrap-book-we heard no murmur about his powerlessness. He said that at first he grew very weary of lying there. "Now I'm used to it."

One of us said, "And perhaps now you would find it wearisome to get up and move about?"

Charlie looked up with a humorous twinkle in his dark eyes. "I shouldn't mind trying, though!" he answered.

It is really all but impossible to realise how sadly they are afflicted; certainly there is nothing to call up any idea of suffering. Of course their state is variable, and pain must sometimes come. Two of the five boys on this floor are very quaint fellows, very much alike and both blind of one eye. These two have a craving for English history stories, and are delighted to get a fresh

one told them, but they criticise freely and have too good a memory to make it safe to tell the same story twice over. One of these boys said he loved to watch the sunsets on the river.

I do not think one often finds, five well-educated boys, with whom one could spend an hour more pleasantly than with Charlie and his companions in the little Hospital; selfishness and dulness seem entirely absent from the little community.

There is a harmonium in the room, and they told us eagerly that "Sister played on it. Dick and George, the two quaint boys, had each a toy-snake, one white and the other black, and bursts of merry laughter were excited by the fright my companion affected when these snakes were suddenly darted out at him. That was evidently a rare joke; even the two little quiet girls in their nests in the next room made out what was happening and laughed heartily.

The talk was so lively and the fun so sustained that one needed to look at the weight hanging from a little chain at the foot of each cot-the weight which keeps the wounded limb in position, and so obviates pain when the child moves-to realise that these were sufferers stricken by mortal disease, who would probably never walk again or enjoy any earthly life beyond the Hospital walls. Thrice blessed are they who have stepped in to soothe their pain.

Up stairs we found three little boys in the first room, and in the larger one, overlooking the river, were five girls. One of these, a girl of thirteen, named Sally, had been five years in hospital before she was given up as incurable and removed to Cheyne Walk. She has hip disease in a very severe form, but is as bright and happy as a bird. Her little rapt face listening to a story is worth going miles to see; as her interest grows a delicate flush comes into the white, smiling face; it is extraordinary, and would be a good lesson to many imaginary invalids to see the vitality and energy of this child, whose strength

is literally draining away by disease, and who, we learned, must at last die from exhaustion; she shakes one's hand so heartily that it seems as if she must shake her little fragile body to bits. Poor, bright little Sally, no one could talk of a "happy release" in her case for she evidently enjoys her life; she is a character too, in her way, and made us laugh by her quaint repartees and sense of humour.

One of the great features of this little Hospital is its position. The view from the windows of the room we are now in is lovely. Beyond the old bridge is Battersea reach, with the frosted green church spire of Battersea at the bend of the river, and in the summer the light pleasure-boats and out-riggers, golden in the sunlight, skim past as if they were dragon flies. The back windows, too, command some space, for there are long back gardens to these old houses, which give a plenteous area behind, and make the position a very healthy one.

One of the three little boys on this floor fell through a cellar opening and received injuries which ended in spinal disease; this poor child travelled all the way from the West of England in a sadly suffering state.

Two features strike one forcibly in all the wards. How constant, and skilful, and perfect must be the nursing which can keep these children so free from all appearance of suffering or discomfort, and how wonderful must be the sweetness and gentleness by which all is ordered for them. They seem perfectly at ease and at home, as if the Hospital were their own and all who come their visitors; one hears no complaint, no bickering, and yet there is none of the indifferent supineness of the ordinary invalid. They are as ready to be amused as healthy children are and are very grateful for kindness. Certainly they are powerful witnesses to the loving care and skill of their two kind and experienced nurses and the gentle lady superintendent, nor should their skilful doctor be forgotten.

When one sees this pleasant home, full of peace and brightness, and of every comfort and amusement that children's hearts can wish for, and then hears of the homes and no homes that some of these children knew before they were brought to Cheyne Walk, or to hospital life elsewhere, one wonders why schemes like this one have not been more often set on foot for poor little mortals beyond the reach of probable cure, though not beyond the reach of medical skill and careful nursing in the way of alleviation of suffering; for in several of the most severely afflicted among these children there is a manifest improvement in looks and in spirits; it is very interesting too to see the self-control and refinement that has come over these waifs and strays, and, as some cases have proved, cure has supervened when it had been declared hopeless.

And how was this good work begun? Very simply, without any fuss or publicity, by the simple quiet determination of two people longing to lessen some of the misery they saw and felt to be around them; aided by friends they have done their work well and thoroughly since June 1875, and now they are implored to extend it, and to relieve more little sufferers discharged from other hospitals as incurables, from the miseries that await them in their homes.

But they cannot extend their work as they wish without further external help added to that which some of their friends have given them. They have

already secured the house adjoining "the little Hospital," and if they can get sufficient help to maintain eighteen extra cots they can nurse double their present number of patients with a small addition to their present staff of nurses. The applications for admittance into this happy little refuge are numerous and most urgent, and no wonder, as those who take the trouble to visit 46 Cheyne Walk any week-day afternoon will doubtless testify. It will be a sad pity if the help needed for so good a work should not be found, and that its merciful aid should be limited to so small a number, when one thinks of the hundreds of suffering children stifling in squalid houses, where they are often thrust aside or wearied out of life by the play and strife of their healthy noisy brothers and sisters, even if no worse treatment falls to their lot.

I began this paper by saying we crossed the threshold of "the little Hospital" with troubled hearts. We recrossed it with thankful ones; thankful that there should be so much happiness within it, so much loving-kindness to be found among us, and that such a fountain of love and pity is flowing there for these helpless little children.

KATHARINE S. MACQUOID.

All communications should be addressed to the Honorary Secretary of the Hospital, Mrs. Wickham Flower, 47 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, S.W.

HARRIET MARTINEAU.

IN 1850 Charlotte Brontë paid a visit to Harriet Martineau at Ambleside, and she wrote to her friends various emphatic accounts of her hostess. "Without adopting her theories," Miss Brontë said, "I yet find a worth and greatness in herself, and a consistency, benevolence, perseverance in her practice, such as wins the sincerest esteem and affection. She is not a person to be judged by her writings alone, but rather by her own deeds and life, than which nothing can be more exemplary or noble."

The division which Miss Bronte thus makes between opinions and character, and again between literary production and character, is at the root of any just criticism of the two volumes of autobiography which have just been given to the public. Of the third volume, The Memorials, by Mrs. Chapman, it is impossible to say anything serious. Mrs. Chapman fought an admirable fight in the dark times of American history for the abolition of slavery, but unhappily she is without literary gifts; and this third volume is one more illustration of the folly of intrusting the composition of biography to persons who have only the wholly irrelevant claim of intimate friendship, or kinship, or sympathy in public causes. The qualification for a biographer is not in the least that he is a virtuous person, or a second cousin, or a dear friend, or a trusty colleague; but that he knows how to write a book, has tact, style, taste, considerateness, senses of proportion, and a good eye for the beginnings and ends of things. The third volume, then, tells us little about the person to whom they relate. The two volumes of autobiography tell all that we can seek to know, and the reader who judges them in an equitable spirit will be ready to allow that, when all is said that can be said of her

hardness, arbitrariness, and insularity, Harriet Martineau is still a singular and worthy figure among the conspicuous personages of a generation that has now almost vanished. Some will wonder how it was that her literary performances acquired so little of permanent value. Others will be pained by the distinct repudiation of all theology, avowed by her with a simple and courageous directness that can scarcely be counted other than honourable to her. But everybody will admit, as Charlotte Brontë did, that though her books are not of the first nor of the second rank, and though her antitheological opinions are to many repugnant, yet behind books and opinions was a remarkable personality, a sure eye for social realities, a moral courage that never flinched; a strong judgment, within its limits; a vigorous self-reliance both in opinion and act, which yet did not prevent a habit of the most neutral self-judgment; the commonplace virtues of industry and energy devoted to aims too elevated, and too large and generous, to be commonplace; a splendid sincerity, a magnificent love of truth. And that all these fine qualities, which would mostly be described as manly, should exist not in a man but a woman, and in a woman who discharged admirably such feminine duties as fell to her, fills up the measure of our interest in such a character.

Harriet Martineau was born at Nor wich in 1802, and she died, as we all remember, in the course of last summer (1876). Few people have lived so long as three-quarters of a century, and undergone so little substantial change of character, amid some very important changes of opinion. Her family was Unitarian, and family life was in her case marked by some of that stiffness,

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