I SAVE THE CHILDREN. BY THE AUTHOR OF "JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN." ! WAS once telling my little girl the story of the Deluge; putting in very simple words that great mystery, how in some crises justice and mercy come to be one and the same thing; how to sweep away, at once and together, with a great omnipotent hand, these two always co-existent elements, sin and pain, may be, in this case apparently was, the only course possible to a Being who is the Father, not of a portion only but of the entire universe. I tried hard to teach what I believed what one is bound to believe if one accepts the idea of a loving Father at alland thought I was succeeding, till suddenly the listener's face clouded over. ten "the dog returns to his vomit, and the sow to her wallowing in the mire." Penitent thieves, reclaimed drunkards—such instances exist sometimes, but how rare they are! One leper returns to give glory to God—but, where are the nine? "Yes--but "—with a passionate burst of almost inconsolable tears-" why, oh why did God drown all the little babies?" Ay, that is the grand stumbling-block to old as to young, to Christian as to philosopher why do the innocent suffer for the guilty? That all sin should bring its punishment, and require to be washed away by any deluge, or burnt out in any purifying fire, provided both end with life-finite guilt with finite punishment-one can understand this. But the terrible thing is that each human being does not solely bear its own sin, nor work out its own retribution. Upon others, near and distant, down to "the third and fourth generation," falls the debt, and it must be paid. A very good woman-wife and mother, full of endless benevolence to every mortal creature—once said to me, "If ever it comes to you to have to choose between the old and the young-those whose lot is or has been in their own hands, and those who did not choose their lot, who did not ask to be born, and whose life is not dependent on themselves—if ever you are put in this hard strait -Save the children." Words which I scarcely understood or agreed with then; I do now. Many a time, walking through London streets, and passing those miserable little creatures, wan, worn, dirty, wicked; who look up with what seems a perpetual protest against Providence, unless one has faith enough to accept it as a dumb outcry for help to Providence through usmany a time, I say, there flashes across my mind those three words of wisdom as well as pity—“ Save the children !” Grown-up people are so hopeless: aid them as you will, rescue them as you may, in nine cases out of 66 Still we must go on, remembering Who came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Yet alas! for the sufferers are too young to have need of repentance—the helpless bodies, the white blank-paper souls, alike doomed to destruction, as it were, even from birth. Amidst the vile misery-haunted dens in most large cities, one can recognise not only the wisdom, the justice, but the almost necessity of a deluge-if only one could shut one's ears to the drowning cries of the "poor little babies." We all have our work to do, with only a certain time to do it in, and a certain amount of strength to do it with. Happy those who can recognise this, and condense their labours so as to produce the utmost practical good. Much benevolence is spread like butter over so large a surface, that it results in what the little folks call "bread and scrape." I confess, my heart is apt to harden itself towards most of the countless forms of adult charity; it seems to me that the only hope of mending this generation is through those who are growing up to form the next one. Therefore, when the other day I was asked to go and see the East London Hospital for Children, with a view to writing about it, and so perhaps gathering a little money to prevent the shutting up of one ward, which otherwise, in these hard times, must inevitably be done, and soon, I agreed at once. | When I started it was a bright November turesque; Tower Hill, Smithfield, all those familiar historical spots which it is difficult to realise were historical, or that they ever knew any other life than that which now flows through them. How strange, to think that on the very bit of ground where those two boys stand "chaffing" each other, poor young Anne Boleyn-whose skeleton with its "little neck" was lately found here-took her last look of sun and sky; that just where passes a bawling costermonger and his cart, was gathered the furious or shuddering crowd, watching the flames leap up round a living man, and then sink down over a handful of calcined bones! Has the world grown wiser or less wicked since those days? God knows. If we did not firmly believe that it is His world, and that He is dealing with it, age after age, in His own mysterious way, our hearts would sometimes utterly sink. Mine did, I own, in going eastward. To those accustomed to a peaceful, pure country life, amidst birds and trees and flowers, the mere fact of living in a town—almost any sort of town-seems hateful and intolerable. Those narrow streets, pre-eminently hateful, with a population apparently half foreign, to judge by the many German, Italian, and especially Jewish names that were over shopfronts; what lives must be led in them! Especially by the children, the poor little souls whose only play-place is the gutter, who never saw either a field or a daisy. Still, the region was not quite forsaken. 'There was a (( Sailors' chapel," and there was another friendly - looking door, inscribed, Strangers' Rest. Sailors may write their letters, read, and smoke. Nothing to pay." And alas! close by was another door very much grander, in fact quite palatial in its ornamentation, where there was something to pay-money, health, life-the soul's life as well as the body's. And of such I counted not one or two, but dozens, in the brief distance. Verily, where there are so many ginshops for the parents, the poor children must sorely need a hospital. Reaching it, I found it so small and simplelooking that I almost doubted if I had come to the right place. We are so accustomed to see charitable institutions swamped under a magnificence of architectural development, that a plain building in which nothing has been wasted upon mere ornamentation is quite refreshing. Yet simplicity is never ugly-and this building is pleasant enough to the eye, besides being planted in an open new street, which is not quite airless, even in Shadwell. VIII. N.S. | Some of my readers may have heard of this East London Hospital, and how it began. An Indian doctor and a trained nurse, meeting in their daily avocations during the cholera outbreak of ten or twelve years ago, fell in love, married, and then being rather "peculiar" people-that is, people who carried out literally the doctrines-no! He never preached any doctrine but the commands of Christ, a proceeding which astonishes most "Christians " exceedingly-they determined not to quit the scene of their labours. Filled with pity for the miseries and needs of the child-population around them, they set up in an old sail-loft ten little beds; took in out of the hundreds near ten sick children, nursed, fed, clothed them, and comforted them either into life or death, as God willed: doing this principally at their own expense, after the words, “Sell all thou hast and give to the poor: and thou shalt find treasure in heaven." Not on earth, certainly, for Mr. Heckford died in his prime, and Mrs. Heckford has now gone abroad. But before then their work had been done. The poor sail-loft and the ten little cots were transmuted into a large public hospital, where three wards, continually full of children, blessed their eyes, and rewarded their loving and faithful hearts. I refuse to believe that these two lives, though sacrificed, have been either lost, or wasted, or unhappy lives. And the memorial tablet, which is the only decoration of the entrance-hall, will long speak of them both-the devoted husband and wife, who gave up their childless lives for the good of children. Very simple, quiet, and silent was this entrance-hall, and as simple as unpretentious was the welcome of the two officials whom I disturbed in their morning's work-being an early and unexpected visitor. All the better. One remarkable feature in this hospital is that it has no "visiting days;" at any time any one of the inquisitive or benevolent public may enter and examine the work it is doing. We wasted no time, but plunged at once. into this examination. I found that besides the medical staff, the management of the hospital, on Mrs. Heckford's inevitable secession, was carried on practically by three persons—the secretary, Mr. Ashton Warner, and two ladies; one a nurse from St. Thomas's Hospital, invaluable in her own department, and another, who ruled the commissariat, and was said to was said to "know everything that came into the place, from an ounce of pepper upwards,” and to be the most admirable of housekeepers 18 as well as an excellent book-keeper. I did not see this lady, but any one who knows how difficult it is to rule a house, may well accord some merit to the domestic ruler of a hospital. The nurse I did see, for she came to me at once. She is so entirely the soul of the place that I must needs speak of her. I will do it only by the name of "Sister St. Catherine," for something in her face reminded me strangely of Raffaelle's St. Catherine, leaning peacefully against the wheel which she knows is to be her death. Every hospital nurse must face death, soon or late, with the same sweet calmness. And perhaps it is that—this daily familiarity with the great terror of humanity -which gives to all their faces, whether Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, Petite Sœurs des Pauvres, or the excellent Protestant nursing sisterhoods, which, I am thankful to say, are multiplying every day, that universal expression of sweet strength and calm courage, which in a nurse is the utmost blessing to both the sick and the friends of the sick. At the first glance I saw what Sister St. Catherine was, must necessarily be-how she had found her vocation, and fulfilled it. Would that all women could do the same! She took me to the first ward-named after the Princess Mary of Teck, who opened it. "We have many surgical cases here," she said. "In such a district as that about us, where the drunkenness and ignorance is so great on the part of the parents, the children are exposed to accidents from morning till night. Numbers are brought in to us having. tumbled down-stairs, or been run over in the streets, or fallen into the fire. Last Saturday night there was a terrible case of the latter -such a dear little girl, burnt all over face and neck and arms. I never saw anything so bad." that poor little man was in too dark a corner, so we moved his cot and gave him a different view. He began to get better immediately." From bed to bed we passed-some hopeful, some hopeless. More than one clearly would be empty before many days or hours. The saddest point of all was that most of the cases were not pure accident-what we term "the visitation of God"-but arising from hereditary taint: the drunkenness and other vices of the parents producing in the children every form of constitutional corruptionrickets, hip complaint, bone disease, cancer. "These are our worst and most painful cases. Often, surgery is the only hope of cure; and the children are so weakly that we dare not risk an operation. Sometimes, when otherwise life is impossible, we do risk it, and it succeeds." And if failing, I thought to myself, why regret?-for in going through this ward one almost felt that death was better than life. Still, its brightness, its perfect cleanliness, the total absence in it of ugly sights and of the painful "hospital smell"-so difficult to avoid, even with any amount of carbolic acid, in an accident ward-lessened a little the inexpressible sadness, sadder than any grown-up hospital I ever went through. For there, in many instances, the patients have themselves to blame-and even in dying they have, most of them, enjoyed some share of the blessings of life; but these hapless innocents have found life no blessing but a curse from the very beginning. And whose fault? Not their own, certainly. The most mournful sight of all was the four bassinets in the middle of the roomtwo empty, two full-but with what occupants! Oye mothers of wholesome "proper" babies-fat, rosy, screaming, kicking, happy, innocent little torments-or delights, according as you make them and bring them up to be-could you come and look at thesewretched abortions of humanity, no bigger than dolls, with withered old faces, and skinny, yellow, powerless arms! All quiet I so terribly quiet-always "good," alas! for they have not the strength to cry. think no mother alive who recalled her own child's babyhood could see these poor babies without tears. Yet, to see them clean, warm, comfortable, each with its bottle beside it, and tenderly looked after by a pleasant-faced young nurse, was something. "It is so," answered Sister St. Catherine. "We do the best we can with them; but |