"Oh, you should have passed on to the next entrance. It is difficult
to get along in this room on Saturdays," he said, after the stranger
had unfolded his errand. "You will find the Commissioner in his
office," and the clerk courteously opened a door.

The stranger entered a large, airy room, furnished as most public
offices are, with the most hideous carpets and the stiffest looking
chairs; in this instance there was a sofa that seemed to have been
for years the pauper inmate of some furniture store, and to have been
transferred from thence to the City Poor House, when the owners became
tired of keeping it as a private charity.

Many persons were in the office, two or three women occupied the sofa,
one of them weeping bitterly. Half a score of men, some from the
country, others belonging to the institution, were grouped about the
room reading newspapers, conversing, or waiting patiently for an
opportunity to transact the business which brought them there.

A large table covered with dark cloth ran along one end of the room,
around which stood half a dozen chairs more commodious than the rest,
two of them occupied by the head clerks of the department, and in
one, before which stood a small writing-desk, sat the Commissioner.

He was a slight, active man, with eyes like an eagle's; his features
were finely cut, and you could read each thought as it kindled over
the dark surface of his face.

By the side of the Commissioner sat an old woman, talking in a low
voice and weeping bitterly. You could see by the expression of the
forehead, and by the faint changes of a countenance which no habit
of self-control could entirely subdue, that the tale which this poor
old creature poured into his ear was one of bitter sorrow. His dark
eyes were bent thoughtfully on the table, and a look of deep
commiseration lay upon his features as she continued her low and
broken narrative.

This man was a benefactor to the poor. Sights of distress, even when
they become habitual, had no power to damp his kindly sympathies.
Yet while generous to the poor, he was faithful to the people.

At length the Commissioner looked up. You could see by the sudden
kindling of his face, that he had bethought himself of some means
by which this old woman might be benefited. He addressed her in a
low but cheering voice. The poor old creature lifted her head, the
tears still hung amid the wrinkles in her cheek; but over her withered
lips there came a smile. The Commissioner reached out his hand, she
changed her staff, leaned upon it with her left hand, and half timidly
held out the other. You could see by the brightening of those aged
eyes, and by the increased vigor of her footsteps as she left the
room, how like a cordial this evidence of sympathy in her distress
had cheered her aged heart.

The stranger whom we have introduced saw all this, and his heart
warmed alike to the old woman and to the man who had comforted her.
He approached the table, and could hardly refrain from holding out
his hand to the Commissioner, so surely do truthful feelings vibrate
to the good acts that they witness.

Had you seen those two men as they sat down together, you might have
supposed that they had been old friends for twenty years.

The stranger told his story in few words, for he saw by the business
appearance of the office that it was no place for long speeches. The
Commissioner listened attentively.

"Where is the poor woman now?" he questioned, when the man paused
in his narrative.

"She is waiting in the street--I brought her with me."

"I will see her myself: one minute and I am ready."

The Commissioner took up his hat, crossed the room, spoke a few words
to the woman who sat weeping on the sofa, told an old man who stood
waiting by the door that he would return in a very few minutes and
attend to him, then with a light, active step he left the room,
followed by the stranger.

They found Mrs. Chester in the carriage, grasping the cushion beneath
her head with both hands, and muttering wildly to herself. The last
few hours had brought her disease into its most malignant state. She
was incapable of a single connected thought.

The Commissioner stepped into the carriage and helped to arrange the
cushions.

"She is delirious; it is the fever. Typhus, I should think, in its
worst form," he said. "She must have prompt care."

"She must, indeed," replied the stranger. "The noise, the hot sun,
all are making her worse."

"And you do not know her name?"

"No; she has muttered over several names, but I could not tell which
was hers."

"Nor her home, of course?"

"No; I found her in the street as I have told you."

"It is strange. She seems like an American. It is a pity to send her
to the hospital, but I can do no better."

"You will send her there!" exclaimed the stranger, joyfully, "The
policeman talked of the Tombs."

"No, no, she is no person for that, I am certain," exclaimed the
Commissioner. "I only wish we had the power of doing more than can
be expected at Bellevue; but certainly she shall go to no worse place
than that."

"Oh, thank you!" said the stranger, gratefully.

"I will write out an order, with a few lines to the resident physician
at Bellevue. Nothing more can be done, I am afraid."

"Oh, that is a great deal--everything, in fact--of course she will
have proper attention in an institution where you have control."

The Commissioner looked grave, but did not answer that over the
Bellevue Hospital his power was merely a name--that he could grant
supplies and give directions, but had no real authority over
subordinates appointed by the Common Council, and could not, for the
most flagrant misconduct, discharge the lowest man about the
department of which he was the bonded and responsible head. Shackled
in his actions and even in his speech, this truly efficient and good
man would pledge himself to nothing, so he merely said:

"Will you, sir--you who have done so much--conduct this poor woman
yourself to Bellevue? The van will go up soon, but she does not seem
of the usual class."

"I will go with her, of course," replied the stranger, resuming his
seat in the carriage with benevolent alacrity, while the Commissioner
returned to his office and hastily wrote a letter to the resident
physician, beseeching him to bestow especial care on the unknown
patient who seemed so ill, and so completely alone in the world.

CHAPTER XIV.

BELLEVUE AND A NEW INMATE.

  A gloomy home for one like this;
    So pure, so gentle and so fair,--
  Must her sweet life, in weariness,
    Go out for lack of human care?

The carriage which bore Mrs. Chester paused before the gates at
Bellevue. The gloomy and prison-like buildings loomed in heavy and
sombre masses before the stranger, as he leaned from the carriage
to deliver his order to the gatekeeper. The Hospital, with its walls
of dark stone blackened by age, its sombre wings sweeping out from
the main building and lowering above the massive walls, struck him
with a feeling of gloom. It seemed like a prison that he was entering.
The Hospitals were drear to him, and the dull, heavy atmosphere seemed
full of contagion. He looked at the poor creature thus unconsciously
brought there, perhaps to die, and his heart swelled with compassion.

The gate swung open, and down a paved causeway leading to the water,
bounded on one side by a high stone wall, and on the other by a bakery
and various workshops belonging to the institutions, the carriage
was driven. The wharf in which this causeway terminated, was full
of lounging inmates; some were attempting to fish in the turbid water;
others leaning half asleep against the wall, and some were grouped
together, not in conversation, but basking lazily in the sunshine.

Before it reached this wharf the carriage turned and was driven
through an iron-studded gate, into an open and paved court that ran
along the front of the main Alms House. The hospitals were some
distance back of this building, but here the sick and dying must be
brought first, for their names were to be registered in the Alms House
books before they could be permitted to die in peace.

As the carriage drove in, up came the swarm of idlers from the wharf,
dragging themselves heavily along, laughing stupidly at the ponderous
gambols and grimaces of a huge idiot boy, who, on seeing a new
arrival, rolled rather than walked up from the water with his hand
extended, crying out--money--money. It was all the language the poor
creature possessed. He had learned to beg, and that was knowledge
enough for him. In everything else he was the merest animal that
crawled the earth. Yet, the other paupers followed him as they would
have chased a dog or tame animal of any kind, whose gambols broke
the monotony of their idleness.

Up came this idiot boy to the carriage, leering in upon its inmates,
and rolling from side to side, with his hand out, mumbling that one
word over and over between his heavy lips: and up came the gang of
paupers, gazing in also with stupid curiosity.

It was well for Jane Chester that she could neither see nor hear all
this--that the fever had grown strong enough to shut out all the real
world to her heated senses! As it was, the sight of these miserable
objects did create some new and more harrowing pain. She began to
murmur of the torment to which she had been consigned--of the strange,
heavy fiends so unwieldy and coarse that had taken her in charge.
Every event of that fearful day was absolutely thrusting her a step
nearer to the grave.

Just as the driver had dismounted from his seat and was about to open
the door, the Alms House van came tumbling along the pavement and
into the court with another freight of misery. Along by the carriage
and nearer to the entrance rolled the ponderous black vehicle, and
out from its tomb-like depths were taken forth the men and women,
that an hour before had been lying so helplessly on the benches at
the Commissioner's office.

One by one these poor creatures were carried up the steps, and after
them rolled the idiot, calling out--money, money--as if the emigrants
whom England consigns to our charity, had anything but their own
miserable lives to give away.

And now with the heat, the noise, and the motion of the carriage,
the poor invalid became almost frantic. She struggled with the
stranger--she called wildly for Chester--and would have cast herself
headlong to the pavement, for in her hallucination she fancied that
the pauper gang were carrying away her husband.

They bore her into the Alms House in a fit of momentary exhaustion.

Her name and history was a blank in the Alms House books. Her lips
were speechless--her eyes closed. They only knew that she was
nameless, homeless; and thus was her entrance registered.

And now came two men to carry her to the hospital. One was old, with
grey hairs, who tottered beneath his burden; and the other a pale
lad, who had just recovered from the fever. Out through the back
entrance, down a flight of steps into the hot sunshine again, they
bore the helpless woman, her garments sweeping the pavement, and her
pale hand sometimes striking the stones as they passed along.

But there was no rest for her yet; another registering was to be made.
In the Hospital office a pauper clerk had charge, and to his
investigation the invalid must be consigned. He was no physician,
certainly; but the hospital was divided into wards, each ward having
its own class of diseases. It was this man's prerogative to decide
what particular malady afflicted each patient, and to assign the
proper ward. The two men placed Mrs. Chester in a chair, and the
stranger stood behind it supporting her head upon his arm.

The clerk had entered the blank order upon his books, and now came
forward to examine the patient.

"Put out your tongue?"

The order was given in a peremptory tone, worthy the captain of a
Down-East militia company. Poor Mrs. Chester opened her wild eyes
and looked at the man.

"Your tongue, woman! open your mouth--don't you hear?"

Jane Chester unclosed her parched lips and revealed her tongue. The
edges were red, as if they had been dipped in blood; and down the
centre, like an arrow, lay the dark incrustations peculiar to ship
fever.

The clerk shook his head, and laid his hand upon the sinking pulse.

"Low, very low. Just gone of consumption--no doubt of it--phthisis
pulmonalis--a bad case--very. Take her to the wing!"

"I should doubt, if you are not a physician, sir," said the stranger,
mildly, "I should venture to doubt, if this lady is not suffering
from fever. Not half an hour ago her pulse could hardly be counted;
now you feel that each beat threatens to be the last! These terrible
changes--do they bespeak consumption?"

"I have pronounced upon her case!" replied the clerk, "but it makes
no difference. Let her go to the fever ward. If the doctor don't agree
with your opinion, sir, she can be sent to the wing!"

"I am no physician, but she requires prompt care!" interposed the
stranger.

"Then you are not an M. D.," cried the clerk, with a look of annoyance
that he should have yielded to anything less than a professional man.

"No, but it is quite certain that all this moving about from place
to place is killing the poor lady. She requires the greatest
tranquillity, I am sure!"

"Well, well, take her up to number ten," said the clerk, addressing
the persons who had brought Mrs. Chester in. "The doctor will see
to her when he goes his rounds!"

The two men raised Mrs. Chester in their arms, and carried her up
a flight of broad stairs and through a neighboring passage, till the
stranger, who looked earnestly after them, could no longer detect
the faint struggle with which she sought to free herself, or hear
the moan as it trembled on her pallid lips.

The stranger drew a deep breath as she disappeared, and turned back
to the office greatly oppressed by all that he saw. The clerk was
leaning back in his chair, drumming with his fingers upon the seat.
Inured to an atmosphere of misery, he felt but little of the painful
compassion, the mingled horror and pity which almost overwhelmed that
benevolent man.

"You are sure, quite sure, that this poor lady will be cared for,"
said the kind man, addressing the clerk. "Here is money, I would give
more, but am some distance from home and may require all that I
have--see that she wants for no little comfort that can be bought!"

The clerk's eye brightened as he saw the money.

"Oh, be sure, sir, she shall have every care."

"I have a letter for the resident physician--where can he be found?"

"Oh, he has just started for the island in his boat. The aldermen
and their families dine at the Insane Asylum, and he has gone with
them. You might have seen his yellow flag on the water as you came
in."

"And when will he return to the Hospital?"

"Oh, in a day or two; his rooms are in the other building, but he
usually walks over the wards once or twice a week!"

"Once or twice a week! Why I heard that the ship fever was raging
here--that the hospitals were crowded, and many of your doctors sick!"

"Well, no one disputes that the hospitals are crowded--half the
patients are on the floor now; and some of the assistants are sick
enough!"

"And your resident physician only passes through these hospitals once
or twice a week--who attends to the patients?"

"Oh, the young doctors of course!"

"And are they experienced men?"

"Some of them are graduates, almost half I should think."

"And the rest?"

"I suppose, all have studied a year or two."

"And do these men--who have only studied a or year two--prescribe
for the patients--without the advice of a superior?"

"Certainly, why not? They must begin sometime, you know."

"And will this poor woman, laboring as she is under an acute disease,
be placed under the care of a mere student?"

The clerk mused before he answered.

"Let me see, number ten--yes, young Toules has charge there. It is
his turn in the fever ward. He has never graduated, I believe."

"And has he had no practice among fevers?"

"Oh! yes, he has been three days in number ten, and one sees a good
deal of fever in three days, I can tell you."

The stranger turned away sick at heart.

"Let me," he said, in a broken voice, "let me speak with the nurse
who is to take care of the person I brought here."

The clerk called to a lame pauper who was limping through the building
and ordered him to summon the nurse from number ten. The old man
went with difficulty up the stairs that led from the hall, and soon
returned, followed by a tall dissipated-looking woman of forty, who
still retained in her swollen features traces of intelligence and
early refinement that redeemed them in some degree from positive
brutality.

A look of fierce and settled discontent lay on this woman's features,
which was aggravated by the dress of dark blue that fell scant and
ill-shapen around her stately figure, and was fastened tightly over
the bosom with a succession of coarse horn buttons that but half
filled the yawning buttonholes.

This woman approached the stranger with a dogged and sullen air.

"Is it you that wants me?" she said, looking earnestly at him. "That
man said somebody wanted to see the nurse!"

"And is this woman a nurse to the sick? Is she to have the charge
of this poor lady?" questioned the stranger, turning to the clerk.

"That is the nurse, and I hope she suits you, for you seem hard to
please," answered the clerk, crustily. "She is one of the best women
in the hospital, at any rate!"

The stranger turned his eyes upon the woman with a grave and pained
look.

"I sent to ask your kindness for the poor lady that has just been
carried to your ward," he said; "of course you are well paid by the
city; but I am willing to reward you for extra care in this case!"

"Well paid by the city!" cried the woman, with a fierce and sneering
laugh; "oh, yes, hard work and prison fare at the Penitentiary--harder
work and pauper fare when they send us here for nurses. That is the
pay we get from the corporation for nursing here in the fever. If
we die there is a scant shroud, a pine coffin and Potter's field.
That, is our pay, sir!" and the woman folded her arms, laughing low
and dismally.

"The Penitentiary--what does she mean?" inquired the stranger, greatly
shocked.

"Oh! they come from the Penitentiary, these nurses," said the clerk.
"The corporation have to support the prisoners, you know, and the
hospitals all get their help by law from Blackwell's Island."

"And is this woman a prisoner?"

"A prisoner--to be sure I am--you don't take me for a Poor House
woman, I hope?" cried the nurse. "I haven't got to that yet--nobody
can say that I was contemptible enough to come here of my own accord."

There was something too horrible in all this. The stranger sat down
and drew out his purse with a suppressed groan.

"Here," he said, giving some money to the woman, "this will pay you
for a little kindness to the poor lady. In the name of that God who
has afflicted her, see that she has proper care."

The woman's face softened. For one instant some remnant of
half-forgotten pride made her hesitate to take the money, but this
was soon conquered, and she reached forth her hand clutching it
eagerly.

"I will take care of the lady, sir, never fear," she said, and for
the moment, she really intended to perform her promise.

"Do, and when you lie ill as she does, God be merciful to you as you
are to her!" said the stranger, solemnly, and taking his hat he went
forth with a sad countenance.

When Judge Sharp left Bellevue he went directly to the Mayor's
residence, where he had made a dinner engagement the night before.
We have already described his meeting with Joseph Esmond.

He was satisfied that the person whom he had conducted to the hospital
was the lady for whom the lad was in search, and resolved to go with
the boy and obtain more knowledge of her condition. The little girls
had just returned from the funeral, and were sitting desolately in
their bed-room, shrinking into the farthest corner like frightened
birds in a cage, for the landlord had taken possession, and the poor
children had no home but the street; even in that little bed-room
they felt like intruders.

But the Judge came with Frederick and Joseph, and this was a sunbeam
to their grief.

The noble man questioned them gently, and at last told the whole
anxious group that Mrs. Chester was alive and in Bellevue, where he
had himself conducted her.

The little girls uttered a cry.

Oh, the wild, the bitter joy of that moment. She was alive--alive!
They should see her again--stand by her bedside. She would look at
them--speak to them. They clung to each other, the sobs they could
not suppress filled the room. The Poor House! They were going to the
Poor House! What was that to them? She was there, and with her they
could lie down and sleep once more. It was better thus. The landlord
had taken possession of their home. He determined to keep the scant
furniture, for his rent, and after that the home of those poor
children was the street. The Alms House! It had a pleasant sound to
them. That was a home from which no landlord could send them forth.
They went gladly with Judge Sharp before the Commissioner.

"You will not let them take us away from her--we may all be together!"
pleaded Mary.

The Commissioner mused; it was unusual, but he resolved to request
of the superintendent that these children might not be taken from
Bellevue until the mother was pronounced out of danger, or should
be no more. He wrote to this effect, and with his own hands placed
the children in the carriage that was to convey them to Bellevue.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FEVER WARD AND ITS PATIENTS.

  Rest--give me rest--my forehead burns,
    Hot fires are kindled in my brain!
  Oh, give me rest, till he returns,
    Rest--rest from all this racking pain.

Poor Mrs. Chester, half dying and quite insensible, was borne into
the fever ward of that close and crowded Hospital. Number ten was
a large airy room, capable of holding twenty patients with comparative
comfort, but now the fever was raging fiercely. Nearly six hundred
patients crowded those gloomy walls, and in the room where twenty
persons might have been almost comfortable, eighty poor creatures
were huddled together, breathing the infected air over and over again
till their struggling lungs were poisoned and saturated with the
deadly atmosphere.

Close together, along the walls, were ranged narrow wooden cots, with
their straw beds and coverings of coarse cotton check. And close
together on those contracted couches--the meagre causeway from which
many of these poor creatures were lifted to a pauper's grave, the
patients were huddled, suffering in all the stages of that fierce
and terrible disease, the malignant typhus.

There the sufferers lay, their death-couches jostling, the hot poison
of their breaths mingling together, and spreading a dank miasma from
bed to bed.

Some were in the first creeping stages of the disease flattering
themselves that it was only a little cold they had taken. Others were
shivering with that deathly chill that glides like the icy trail of
a serpent down the back; the limbs aching as with severe toil, and
the brain literally on fire with seething poison. Others were fierce
and mad with delirium; their faces, their breasts and arms had turned
of a dull copper color, the strongest and unmistakable sign of the
deadly form which typhus takes when it is called malignant ship fever.

The poor creatures rolled to and fro on their narrow couches, tearing
out the straw with their hot and quivering fingers, or twisting the
soiled sheets with a feeble and shaking grasp. Some were calling for
water, and praying in piteous tone for mountains of ice, cold bright
ice to fall down and bury them.

Others were still further advanced in the terrible disease, and lay
with the last heavy clouds of delirium resting upon the brain. Pale,
emaciated and motionless, they spoke in whispers of the husbands and
children whom they had left, it seemed to them years before, and of
whom they faintly pleaded for tidings. It was piteous to see those
weaker still, that lay more helpless than infants, the tears rolling
mournfully from their eyes, unable to utter the inquiries that kept
their white lips in constant motion, but gave out no sound.

More than one stretched back upon the meagre pillow, was in her
death-throe groping in the air, with glazed eyes rolled upward to
the ceiling, while the under jaw dropped lower, lower, leaving the
mouth half open never to be closed again, save by a penitentiary
nurse.

One lay dead upon her couch stiffening, there unheeded, the God of
heaven only knowing at what moment the breath left her body.

Scant and miserable as were those pauper beds, enough for all to die
upon could not be found at the Hospital; so blankets had been cast
upon the floor, and on them were laid the sick, till the whole ward
was completely littered with human misery. Over this scene came the
glaring daylight, for the windows had neither blinds nor shutters,
nothing but a valance of gingham through which the sunshine poured
upon the aching eyes of the sick.

They laid Mrs. Chester among those who moaned and writhed upon the
floor. Nothing but the rough folds of a blanket lay between her
delicate limbs and the hard boards. Amid the groans, the ravings of
delirium, the faint death rattle that rose and swelled upon the horrid
atmosphere, they laid her down. The student physician had been his
rounds that day, and so she was left to the care of the nurses. Thus
she remained quite unconscious of the horrors that surrounded her,
till the nurse came back from her interview with Judge Sharp. This
woman grasped the money in her palm, and the touch seemed to give
a glow of animal pleasure to her features, as she threaded her way
through the prostrate sick.

A nurse some years younger than herself, but with less of character
in her face, stood near the door. She approached this woman, and
softly unclosing her hand revealed the money.

"What! there have but four died to-day--you did not find that about
them? I searched thoroughly myself, and none of them had a cent."

"Never mind where it came from. You shall have a share, but remember
I have got to work for it yet. Where is the woman they have just
brought in?"

"What, the slender woman with all that beautiful hair? She is about
here, on the floor, I believe."

"She must have a cot, I am determined on it," said the elder nurse,
resolutely. "Those who pay us shall be first served," and the woman
went on through the prostrate sick, searching eagerly for Mrs.
Chester. "Yes, here she is, sure enough," talking softly to
herself--"now let us see what can be done about a bed."

The woman moved from cot to cot, gazing on the inmates, not with pity,
she was used to their moans, but eagerly searching for a bed that
promised soon to be empty. Her eyes fell upon the corpse that lay
within a few paces of Mrs. Chester, and she approached the cot with
gleeful alacrity, saying to her companion:

"Oh, here is an empty bed--I thought it would not be long before we
found something for her to lie on besides the floor. Go and call
Crofts."

The younger nurse went out, and directly there came two men into the
ward, bearing a rude pine coffin between them. They trod heavily along
the floor, knocking the coffin now and then against a cot till it
jarred the helpless inmate, and thus they carried it down the whole
length of the ward. They deposited the rude thing close by the blanket
on which Mrs. Chester lay, and then went out, leaving the women to
relieve the bed of its mournful burden.

The younger nurse had brought with her a scant shroud, of the coarsest
muslin, and there in the midst of the sick, one of the women put this
grave garment on, while the other stealthily searched in the bosom
of the corpse and under the pillow for any little valuable that the
poor woman might have hoarded in her death-bed. After groping about
awhile, the young nurse drew forth her hand with a low chuckle. It
contained a bit of tissue paper, soiled and crumpled in a heap. A
bank note! what else could it be? The two women looked at the paper
and their eyes gleamed. It was not often that they found bank notes
about the Bellevue paupers! How they longed to examine it then and
there! But the sick were not all insensible, and the young woman
thrust the treasure into her bosom, whispering as she stooped down
to smooth the shroud:

"By and by--of course we go halves to-day!"

"That is fair and above board!" replied the other, folding the arms
of the dead upon the pulseless bosom they had robbed, "there now,
call in the men!"

Again those two men came tramping heavily among the sick. There was
some bustle and a little joking as they placed the pauper corpse in
its pine coffin; and when they bore it out one of the men inquired,
in a voice that might have been heard half over the room, if there
was much chance of their being wanted again within an hour or two.

The elder nurse looked around upon the cots, and answered that it
was very likely, but that the next coffin must be longer--at least
four inches longer!

The two women followed the coffin out, and when quite alone in the
passage, fell to examining the value of their prize.

"There must be two bills," said the younger, beginning to unfold the
little parcel, "what if each of them should be a five, now!"

These words were followed by a short and scornful laugh, accompanied
by an oath, that most fearful thing on the lips of a woman. The scrap
of soiled tissue paper unfolded a lock of grey hair.

"Never mind, mine is here all in hard chink!" said the elder nurse,
striking her bosom. "Here will be enough, with what the doctor allows
for the patients, to give us one glorious night. Just help me lift
the woman into bed, then slide round to the consumption wards; or,
what's better, whisper a word to the orderly, and ask him to come;
we'll make the old shanty shake again before midnight."

The young woman, after appeasing her disappointment by casting the
lock of hair upon the floor, and grinding it fiercely beneath her
heavy shoe, became somewhat consoled. But she sullenly expressed a
determination to find her share of the drink, if she were obliged
to rob every patient in the ward.

After this conference the nurses returned to the ward. One took off
Mrs. Chester's outer garments, while the other proceeded to arrange
the empty cot. In the same cot, the same sheets, and on the very
pillow from which the dead had just been removed, they laid the
helpless woman. Upon her fair hands and face still rested the dust
that had been gathering upon her from the street. But under our
benignant Common Council, the largest hospital in America contained
no bath for its patients, though the Croton water gushed everywhere
around the building. There was a shower bath for punishment of the
penitentiary women, but for the suffering---not even that.

They laid her down, therefore, unrefreshed in that death couch; and
there she remained moaning like the rest, lifting her sweet voice
louder and louder in her excitement; for the noise, the atmosphere
and the horrid sights everywhere in the room drove her wild. She flung
up her hands and laughed as the nurses passed to and fro before her
bed. She called them angels--those two besotted creatures--and
besought them with wild, sweet energy to cherish and care for Chester
while she was so far away. These women promised her cajolingly,
patting her head with their bloated hands, which, in her madness, she
would gather to her bosom or kiss eagerly with her hot lips.

The ordinary course of her disease might not have arrived so early to
the fierce virulence that it had now obtained; but the day had been
one of fearful turmoil, even for a healthy person, and this fever, in
a single hour, grows fierce and strong upon such causes. Fuel for a
death-fire had been heaped up in that one miserable day. Now the poor
creature began to rave--her child, her husband, and little Mary. She
shrieked for them louder and louder, that her voice might rise above
the wild, strong cries that swelled as she thought in defiance of her
feebleness.

CHAPTER XVI.

JANE CHESTER AND HER LITTLE NURSES.

  As the starbeams come earthward, and smile on the night,
    Awaking the blossoms that drooped in the day,
  And kindling their hearts with a dewy delight,
    They came to the couch where the sufferer lay.

All at once, in the very height and fury of her delirium, Mrs. Chester
fell back upon the pillow smiling; the hot tears rolled from her eyes,
and her shaking hand was outstretched. She knew them--for one minute,
that woman's heart grew stronger than her frenzied brain, She knew
those two little girls who crept hand in hand to her couch, holding
back their tears, and striving to look cheerful; though each smile
that they forced broke away in a quiver upon their lips, and the very
effort to be calm made their grief more visible.

"Children--_my_ children!" whispered the poor woman, softly, for,
after they came in, she never once lifted her voice as she had done,
"come, I will make room--the bed is cool and broad--better, so much
better than that in which they shook and jostled me--come, my little
tired birds--here is pillow enough for us all; when he comes home
again it will please him to see us here, so comfortable. Ah, here come
my angels; sit close, little ones, till they sweep by. You cannot see
their wings now--they are furled close under those comical dresses,
but that is because we are not good enough to look upon them. Some
day, when he comes, my angels will throw off those blue clothes, and
then their wings will unfurl and scatter soft, sweet air all over us.
You shall see them then, so beautiful--fringed and starred and spotted
with gold and purple and bright green--with sunshine melting through,
and the scent of violets dropping around--hush, girls, don't cry, you
shall have a good sight at my angels then--see, see, I am beckoning
them here. Now, hold your breath and wait; hush!"

The two nurses, who had been at another end of the ward, came that
way, and with her hand quivering in the air, the poor invalid beckoned
them. They came on, loitering heavily along, and talking to each
other. The young woman turned away to another side, and the elder
nurse moved forward, grumbling.

"See, one is coming. I have been bad to-day, you know, and only this
angel will appear," whispered the invalid, pointing with her unsteady
finger toward the nurse.

Mary Fuller looked up; her large eyes began to dilate, and her face
grew very pale. The woman's eyes fell upon her. A look of ferocious
pleasure rose to her face, and she came forward, laying her hand
heavily upon the child's shoulder.

"Mother!" broke from Mary Fuller, and the tears stood in her
affrighted eyes, "oh, mother!"

"Don't mother me, puss! A pretty child you are, to sneak off, get
yourself new frocks and the like, while your own poor mamma is in
prison!" cried the woman, clutching the child's shoulder. "And how
came you here at last?"

"I came in search of her!" said the child, pointing to Mrs. Chester;
"she was good to me, after--after they took you away. I lived with
them; this is her little girl!"

"Then you did not come to see your own mother!--very well--very well!
I only wait till I get out, that's all!" and giving the poor child a
shake, the woman fell to settling the bed-clothes about Mrs. Chester,
muttering threats against the child who stood trembling by her side.

"I have come," said Mary, meekly, following the woman as she turned
from the bed; "I have come to stay. The kind gentleman at the Park
said that we might both live at Bellevue till she was better. Mother,
oh! mother, let me help take care of her. I can--see how strong I have
grown!"

"Take care of her, indeed--and who would take care of me, if I were
sick, I should like to know?"

"I would, indeed I would, mother."

"Indeed you would--very likely," sneered the woman. "But stay, for
what I care--you will be sure to catch the fever though; and that
little doll, with long curls, let her stay, too. It's a sweet place,
here, for children!"

"I don't want her to stay here--only let her come in once in awhile to
see her poor mother--she is so young and so pretty; the fever takes
those first, I am sure!"

"Well, let her come or go--only remember this, if you stay here it
will be no baby play, but work--I'll make you work, let me tell you
that!"

"I will work--oh, mother, if anything I can do will only save her! You
don't know how hungry I was after you went away--and she fed me!"

"Well, feed her, then!" cried the woman, a little softened, "there is
a cup, get some water and give her drinks!"

Mary Fuller took the tin-cup pointed out, and filled it with water.
She went up to the patient with her gentle voice, and held the water
to her lips. The poor woman drank greedily, and then Mary went about
seeking for other means of comfort. The doctor had not yet seen his
patient, so she could only act by her own feeble judgment. She found
a large bowl, and filling it with water, bathed the neck and face and
hands of the poor invalid. Then she saturated Isabel's handkerchief,
and laid it moist and dripping upon the hot forehead.

"She is better--see, it does her good!" cried the child, with glad
tears in her eyes, turning to Isabel, who stood by, weeping as if her
heart would break, and trembling with a fit of terror that had seized
her the moment she entered the room.

This cool ablution had indeed relieved the patient. She sighed deeply,
and her mind seemed to change its tone. She was wandering in sweet and
pleasant places, where fountains gushed high, and wild flowers shook
and brightened beneath the soft rain-drops that fell around; nothing
could be more beautiful than the words that denoted this bright change
in her wanderings. Mary's heart thrilled to hear these words, for she
knew that it was her hand that had created the paradise in which the
sufferer fancied herself to be wandering.

Only once during the next twenty-four hours did Mary leave that humble
bed; then it was to accompany Isabel to the matron, who kindly gave
her a pillow, and allowed her to lie down on the carpet in her room.
The poor child was completely worn out with fatigue and grief.

But Mary never left her watch for a minute. All the evening she sat by
Mrs. Chester's couch, bathing the forehead of her benefactress,
cooling the palms of her hands, and listening to the soft murmurs that
fell from her lips.

About ten in the evening, there came into the ward a young man, not
more than twenty years of age, and singularly effeminate in his
appearance. He wore a loose calico dressing-gown, and embroidered
slippers. His manners were gentle, and he seemed greatly distressed by
all the misery that surrounded him. Never in his brief existence had
this young man prescribed for a patient, till he entered the Hospitals
at Bellevue; yet there he stood, in the midst of a pestilence that
might have taxed the skill of twenty old physicians, free to tamper as
he pleased with all that mass of human misery.

It was well for those poor creatures, that this young student made
up in goodness of heart what he lacked in experience. He did not fear
the pestilence half so much as his own ignorance. But for that
professional pride that clings so powerfully to the young, he would
have resigned at once, rather than take upon his conscience the solemn
responsibility of life and death, as it lay before him in that
fever-ward. But the ignorance that does nothing, is preferable to that
which absolutely kills. The student had little confidence in himself,
but he did not strangle nature with his presumption, and lacking
deeper skill, made a kind nurse. He had learned how to watch the
changes of this disease--an important thing to know--and gave little
medicine, but was prompt at sustaining life with stimulants when the
time came for that. Altogether, it was a fortunate chance for the poor
creatures huddled in that fever-ward, that they were consigned to no
worse hands.

The young doctor went his rounds, with a small blank-book in his hand,
writing down with a pencil the few and simple prescriptions that he
gave. His presence had a soothing effect upon the patients, for he
spoke kindly to them all. At length he came to Mrs. Chester--two days
and three nights she had been struggling with the fatal disease. The
little Mary sat meekly by her side, for up to this time she alone had
ministered to the sick woman.

The young man took Mrs. Chester's hand from the checked coverlet and
began to count her pulse. A hundred--more, even more than that he
counted before the minute went by. It was a case of fearful danger;
he saw that at once. Gladly would he have called in counsel, but no
physician had a right within the walls of Bellevue, except those
appointed by the Resident. Two of the assistants were ill, and the
Resident had not yet returned from his dinner with the Common Council.
Perhaps this was a fortunate chance, for the simple remedies ventured
upon by the student did no harm, and nature was left untrammelled to
wrestle with the disease.

"You will let me stay with her. The gentleman at the Park said I might
stay, if the Doctor did not object!" said Mary, lifting her eyes to
the young man as he laid Mrs. Chester's hand upon the bed.

The student had hardly noticed the child before; but the sweetness of
her voice pleased him, and he answered that she might stay if she
could do any good to her sick friend.

"I have been listening. I heard what you said about them all along
here. In the morning you shall see if I hav'n't taken some care!"

"I hope so," said the student, sadly, "for, without care, the greatest
care, a good many must be dead before morning!"

"Show me which. Just point them out very softly, and tell me what
ought to be done. You need not be afraid that I shall fall asleep!"
whispered the little girl, rising eagerly.

The student looked at the child in surprise. Her plain face, a moment
before so sad, shone with the brightness of an angel's.

"I am sure you will not sleep," he said. "Now follow me around to
these beds and I will repeat my directions to you--the women, I see
are gone out. You will make a small nurse, but a very good one, I
dare say!"

Mary followed him, listening to every word that fell from his lips,
and reading the expression of his face with her intelligent eyes.

All night long the child was on her feet moving from bed to bed,
carrying drink to one, persuading another to swallow the medicine that
had been prescribed, and pouring a spoonful of wine or brandy into the
pale mouth of another; thus keeping the feeble lamp of life flickering
on, pauper life, it is true, but precious to them as the breath that
swells the purple-clad bosom of a monarch.

The nurses left the ward about midnight, and did not return for many
hours. When they came back Mary turned very pale, and cowered down at
the foot of Mrs. Chester's bed. Her mother--she knew the signs, oh,
how well--her mother had been drinking. Judge Sharp's benevolence had
provided the means of a carouse for those two wretched women. They
both came in reeling from one sick bed to another; the older muttering
taunts upon the wretched inmates; the other shedding maudlin tears
more horrible and disgusting still. After wandering about the ward for
a time, the two wretched creatures seated themselves upon the floor,
and throwing their arms around each other, sunk into a brutal slumber
which lasted till day-light.

Again Mary Fuller arose from her place by Mrs. Chester; again she
ministered to the lips that unconsciously muttered her name, coupling
it with words of tender love; and again she hovered around those
pauper couches, treading very lightly, for she trembled with fear that
her mother might awake. When daylight came, the child went noiselessly
round to those whom the doctor had supposed in the greatest danger.
They were all alive. One looked up, blessing her with eyes that,
lacking her gentle care, must have been sealed in death. Another
parted her pale lips, and besought the child not to leave her again
to the care of those rude women. A third took her little thin hand and
kissed it.

The child crept back to her seat, weeping tears of thankfulness. She,
apparently one of the most helpless of God's creatures, had that night
saved the lives of three human beings. She had done this great good,
and with her little hands folded in her lap thanked God--not audibly,
but as children sometimes do thank the Heavenly Father--that He had
made her so strong.

While these feelings comforted the child, the mother arose heavily
from her drunken slumber.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE STUDENT PHYSICIAN AND THE CHILD.

  Softly she came like a spirit of light,
    And her goodness shone out like the glow in a gem;
  As she waited and watched through the wearisome night,
    The fall of her footstep was music to them.

Another day went by. New patients were crowded into the hospital, and
some were carried out with their feet toward the door. For an hour or
two that day Mary Fuller slept a little, with her head resting against
Mrs. Chester's cot. The groans and the depression of the sick did not
shake her nerves as they had at first; and the poor thing was so
exhausted that even in that place, and in the poisoned atmosphere, her
slumber was deep and tranquil; and then came a remembrance of her
father's dying words, that no human being was so humble or weak that
some good to humanity might not be won from her exertions. She looked
around the ward and saw a blessing in every eye, and she knew that one
in heaven was blessing her also.

Oh, if Mrs. Chester could have slept for one hour like that little
creature at her feet. But the poison seemed kindling afresh in her
brain; her fancies grew wild and terrible; she was climbing mountains,
sinking deep, deep, deep into the very bowels of the earth, where
serpents coiled and hissed, and writhed with horrid joy as they saw
her descend. Now she clung to the point of some sharp rock, holding on
with her fingers, while those huge serpents trailed themselves upward,
crawling slowly from the abyss from which she was saved only by the
grip of her own slender fingers.

Then you knew by her voice that the scene had changed. She was
pleading for Chester--pleading with low broken tones, that would have
touched a heart of stone. She besought the Mayor not to wrong her
husband, not to press and wring his proud spirit so cruelly as he had
done; and then she believed that her sweet eloquence had prevailed,
for her lips trembled with thanks; she murmured nothing but soft
blessings upon the man who had been to her worse than a murderer.
Another change, and she passed on to some new hallucination, visionary
as the last, for day and night her brain never rested. When they
questioned her, the poor woman always answered that she was not ill,
that nothing was the matter, nothing whatever--she only wondered the
people would tease her so with inquiries that had no meaning.

Another night came on, and again Mary prepared herself to watch by the
sick. The few hours of slumber she had obtained, made quite a new
creature of her. She was resolved to be doubly vigilant--that no one
of the suffering persons around her should lack nourishment or care.
How cheerful and strong the little creature grew, as a sense of her
power to accomplish good increased upon her. It was strange, but after
the first few minutes she never once thought of the danger. There she
was, feeble and helpless, in the very midst of a pestilence that would
have terrified the strongest man; but it seemed quite impossible to
the brave girl that the fever should reach her. Perhaps this very
confidence protected her, for while she inhaled poison with every
breath, it produced no harmful effect upon her.

The nurses were sullen and bitter in their language to the child all
day. They seemed to think her an intruder, and, but for the young
physician, she must have been driven forth from the ward by her own
mother. Toward night these two women whispered much together, going
frequently into the passage where several nurses from other wards met
them stealthily. As the night drew on, Mrs. Chester sunk into a fitful
sleep, and this encouraged the little watcher, who sat gazing
wistfully on her face, scarcely daring to move, though the noise
around was unabated. The hours crept on, and darkness gathered over
those pauper-couches. Mary looked up through the gloom, and saw her
mother creeping softly from couch to couch, making herself very busy
with the medicines. The doctor had just paid his last visit for the
night; finding Mrs. Chester low, and evidently sinking, he had ordered
both brandy and wine to be given in small quantities, but very
frequently, during the night.

The tin-cups which held the precious stimulants--for they were
precious in the sick-room, holding life and death in their
strength--stood upon a little stool near Mrs. Chester's cot. It was
these tin-cups that drew the nurse like a vampire to the spot where
her child sat watching.

"Go," she said, in a more kindly tone than she had hitherto used when
addressing the gentle girl, "go and bring that little curly-headed
doll in, if she wants to kiss her mother again to-night--I suppose she
would like to see her fast asleep, as she is now!"

Mary arose, dissatisfied, she knew not why, with the tone of cajoling
kindness in which she had been addressed. But Mrs. Chester slept, and
during the next ten minutes would not require her attendance. Isabel
had been drooping like a strange bird, since she came to the Alms
House, and Mary knew that it would cheer her to see her poor mother in
that calm sleep. Still the child went forth with unaccountable
reluctance. The moment she was out of sight, that wretched woman
pounced like a bird of prey upon those tin-cups, and poured
three-fourths of their contents into a dark earthern pitcher that she
carried under her apron. Then she hastily filled the cups with water,
leaving just enough of the original contents to color the whole.

The next and next patient was robbed in like manner; then with her
black pitcher reeking with the life she had plundered from those poor
creatures, the wretch went out, comparing with a chuckle her horrid
spoil, with the jar half-full of brandy, which the younger nurse had
gathered from her end of the ward.

"Hurry, hurry, or we shan't get through before the young cockatrice
comes back to catch us at work! She has got the eye of a hawk, I can
tell you," cried the woman, emptying her pitcher into the jar, which
was carried away to a safe corner by her accomplice.

"Come, bring the water and fill up after me. There is twenty beds left
yet. I gave the right sort of symptoms to the doctor, and he left the
kind of medicine that we like best for almost the whole lot."

The young woman followed her ruthless leader into the ward, carrying
the water-pitcher in her unsteady hand, for she had not reached the
hardened audacity of her preceptress, and there was something in the
scene to make even a debased nature tremble.

"Don't, don't take more than half; they will die before morning if we
do!" she whispered, as the eyes of a patient, full of heart-rending
reproach, was turned upon their work. "See, this one is so feeble."

"Poh, a little brandy, more or less, what does it signify?" cried Mrs.
Fuller.

"The wine, then leave the wine. I did not take a drop!"

"More fool, you!"

"Hush!" said the young woman, "I hear her coming. Leave the rest; we
shall be found out."

"Take this and give me the water. Out of the way, now, and see that
you don't drink any till I come!"

The young woman hurried out of the room, meeting Mary Fuller and
little Isabel in the passage.

"They want water. I am going for more water. It is wonderful how they
keep us running night and day!" she said, hoping to draw off their
attention with a gratuitous falsehood.

Neither of the little girls answered, but passed gently into the ward.

Mrs. Fuller was by a cot near the door, holding her water-pitcher
to the lips of a patient; nothing could appear more kind than her
demeanor. "Ah, here you are," she said, nodding to the children,
"she is asleep yet! Don't make any more noise than you can help."

Isabel went up to her mother's cot, and kneeling by it looked
earnestly upon the pale and languid features.

"_Is_ she better?--see how white she is, how her eyes are sunken. She
hardly breathes at all. Oh, Mary, _is_ she better?"

"Yes, the Doctor says so--and she does not mutter to herself or seem
so restless as she did. I think, Isabel that she _is_ better!"

The tears gushed into Isabel's eyes. She bent down and softly kissed
the pale hand of her mother. Mrs. Chester started and opened her eyes;
they fell upon her child, and instantly that full gaze was blended
with tears.

"Isabel, my child." The words were very, very faint, but oh, how
sweetly they fell upon those young hearts.

"She knows me--oh, Mary, she knows me!" cried the child, and her
beautiful face grew radiant amid the tears that covered it, like a
flower struck with sunshine when the dew is heaviest on its petals.
"Mamma, oh, my own mamma, this is Mary, our Mary Fuller!"

The sick woman turned her eyes toward her little nurse. She tried to
lift her hand, but it only shook on the checked quilt.

"Mary, my good, good Mary!"

Mary knelt down softly by her friend, and bowing her head wept in
sweet and grateful joy.

"Where am I? Where have I been?" asked the invalid, still more
faintly.

"You are with us, this is our home!" answered Mary, almost catching
her breath, for she dared not tell the poor lady where she really was.

Mrs. Chester was now quite exhausted, her eyes closed, and she
scarcely breathed. Mary started up and poured out a spoonful of what
she supposed to be wine.

"Every ten minutes--every ten minutes we must give her this, with the
beef tea when she can take it."

"Let me--oh, let me give it to her this one time," pleaded Isabel.

Mary resigned the pewter spoon with a faint smile, and Isabel held the
colored water to her mother's pale lips. Then Mrs. Chester slept again
while the two girls sat watching her with their hopeful eyes. Once
every ten minutes these little creatures would steal up to the pillow
and pour the mockery of strength between those white and parted lips,
hoping each time that she would open her eyes and speak to them
again--but no, she slept on and each moment her breath grew fainter.
While the two girls sat with their arms interlinked watching that
beloved face, the nurses stole out from the ward, and crept, each with
an earthen pitcher in her hand, down the Hospital stairs, and out into
the open grounds.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE MIDNIGHT REVEL--MARY AND HER MOTHER.

  Time stole into eternity,
    And they stood wondering by,
  Breathless, and oh, how silently
    To watch the lov'd one die.

Between that portion of Bellevue occupied as an hospital and the main
building lay several enclosures sparsely cultivated with flowers, but
altogether possessing a barren and dismal aspect. Scattered through
these enclosures were offices and shanties, some occupied by favored
paupers, and others used as work-shops and for the culinary purposes
of the Hospitals.

In one of these shanties a shocking scene presented itself that night.
The signal for a secret carouse had been given, and the orderlies and
nurses crept stealthily from their posts by the sick, and came through
the midnight darkness towards the shanty. Some came slowly and at
once; while others stole like gaunt wild beasts, by the high wall that
sweeps parallel with the western front of the main Hospital,
sheltering themselves beneath the willow trees and the deep shadow
cast by the building, while with their hands they groped eagerly along
the wall. They found, after some trouble, the cords for which they
were seeking, each with a piece of iron at the end, that had been cast
over the wall by an accomplice outside the gate. Three of these cords
lay tightened across the wall, their iron ballast sunk into the turf,
and with breathless haste they were drawn over each with a bottle at
the end, which, as it reached the top of the wall, fell into the foul
hands grasping at it.

One bottle was broken in the fall, for the man stationed to receive it
was very old, and he could not see like the others. When the vessel
was dashed against the stones bespattering the aged drunkard with its
contents, he fell upon the grass wringing his hands and bemoaning his
hard fate. The others met his grief with muttered curses, and one of
them spurned the grovelling creature with his foot, showering fierce
reproaches upon his carelessness.

They drove this miserable being back to his lair in the shanties,
but he crawled abjectly toward them, begging to join the carouse
notwithstanding his great misfortune. They would still have rejected
him, but the old man had learned craft with his age, and when pleading
was of no avail, betook himself to threats, which proved more
effectual than his tears. Fearing that he might expose them in the
morning, they consented that the old man should have a portion of
their spoils, and he followed them through the darkness like a lame
old hound that takes his food greedily, though beaten by the hand that
gives it.

A cooking-stove stood in the shanty, with a pine table and some
stools. Upon the stove was a metal lamp burning dimly and emitting a
cloud of smoke. One end of the table held a tin candlestick, where a
meagre tallow-candle swaled away in the socket, and the table was
littered with fragments of food in little round pans. An iron spoon or
two, with three or four tin cups, lay amid this confusion. Around this
table hovered half a dozen women nearly intoxicated with brandy
supplied by the nurses, from number ten.

In this state was the shanty when the two orderlies came in, hugging
the great black bottles to their bosoms, followed by the old pauper,
who still muttered discontentedly at his loss.

Then began the carouse in earnest! The tin cups were filled again and
again--the earthen pitchers circulated from lip to lip--like wild
animals, they devoured the fragments stolen from the convalescent
patients, and swallowed the stimulants, of which they had plundered
the dying not a stone's throw off; pipes and tobacco were produced,
the women smoking fiercely like the men; while ribald jests and
muttered curses rose through the foul smoke.

And these were the persons provided by a law of New York City for the
sick poor--these fierce women, reeling to and fro like fiends amid the
smoke, making sport of pain, joking about coffins--laughing with
drunken glee over the death throes they had witnessed. These were the
nurses a great and rich city gave to its poor--merciful economy--sweet,
beautiful humanity!

And there sat those gentle children in the fever wards so wickedly
deserted. From time to time Isabel parted the violet lips of her poor
mother, and forced through them the liquid fraud that was so cruelly
deceiving them. Mary went from bed to bed administering to the dying
poor, as she had done the night before; but with a heavy heart, for
all that she gave them imparted no strength. She could see the
helpless creatures droop and sink from minute to minute; one or two
were benefited, but the rest only seemed worse from all her tending.

Mary was giving a draught of water to a young woman, who in her
delirium clamored constantly for drink, when Isabel stole softly to
her side. The child was very pale, and her large eyes dilated with
terror. She took hold of Mary's dress and pulled it.

"Mary, oh, Mary, she did not swallow the last. Come, come and help
me!"

Mary sat down the water pitcher and went to Mrs. Chester. She bent
down close to the motionless face, listening. You could see her cheek
grow pale in the dim light, as she held her own breath, hoping to
catch one flutter from those white and parted lips. She lifted her
head at last, and turned her mournful eyes on Isabel.

The little girl looked imploringly upon her--she shed no tear--uttered
no word; but fell, like a wounded bird, prone to the floor, and there
stood poor Mary in the midst of death, utterly alone.

When the nurses came reeling up from their carouse, three lay dead
upon those narrow cots besides Mrs. Chester, and two were dying.

"Go and call Crofts!" cried Mrs. Fuller, staggering from bed to bed,
reckless and fierce. "Let us have the cots cleared--bring in the
shrouds, I say. Tell Crofts we have plenty of use for his pine boxes
to-night."

The other nurse obeyed her, muttering fiercely against the unevenness
of the floor.

The coffins were brought in, and these two wretched women arranged the
poor creatures they had murdered, for their pauper graves. They came
to Mrs. Chester last, but Mary Fuller, who knelt by the bed-side with
poor Isabel senseless at her feet, arose and stood firmly before her
mother.

"You shall not touch her! You shall not even look at her!" cried the
noble child--and with her trembling hand she drew the sheet over the
features she had so dearly loved.

The woman glared fiercely upon the child. Drink had rendered her
ferocious--she lifted her clenched hand, shaking it savagely, and an
oath broke from her hot lips--an oath over the beautiful dead.

"I--I will put that on," said the child, pointing to the shroud which
the nurse held crushed under her arm.

"Out of my way!" cried the furious woman--"out of the way, or I will
strike you!"

"Mother, leave this poor lady to me, or I will go myself and call up
the doctor," answered the child firmly.

"Out of my way!" repeated the wretched woman.

The child grew pale as death, but in her eyes rose the steady firmness
of a meek but strong spirit, fully aroused.

"Mother, though you strike me to your feet, though you kill me, I will
not let you come near this poor lady--not now--not as you are!"

"As I am!--how is that?" cried the vile mother, lifting her soiled
apron to her eyes and heaving a sob. "Here I am, a poor, forlorn
prisoner, and you, my own child, must come to taunt me in this
way--I wish I were dead--oh, I do--I do!"

And in a fit of maudlin self-condolence, the base woman betook herself
to a corner of the ward where, with her arms flung across the cot of a
delirious patient, she muttered herself into a heavy slumber.

Mary Fuller turned to her mournful task. First she sprinkled water in
poor Isabel's face, and strove with all her feeble skill to bring the
child from the death-like swoon in which she had fallen; but the
beautiful child lay upon the floor, pale as her mother, and looking
nearly as much like death. When all her own simple efforts at
restoration proved fruitless, Mary went out in search of help; she met
Crofts in the passage, who took the child in his arms and bore her to
the matron's room.

When Crofts returned with the pine coffin he found the remains of poor
Jane Chester reposing beneath the scant folds of an Alms House shroud.
The pale hands were laid meekly on her bosom, and her hair--that long,
beautiful hair, which Chester had been so proud of, lay in all its
bright beauty over her brow. Disease had not yet reached the purple
bloom that lay upon those tresses, and Mary, following her own gentle
memory of the past, had disposed them in rich waves back from the
forehead, which gave a singular but beautiful look to that calm, dead
face. They lifted the pale form of Jane Chester, and laid it
reverently in the pauper coffin. There was neither pillow nor lining
there, nothing but the bare boards to receive those delicate limbs,
and this bleak poverty made even the heart of Crofts sink within him.

"It is a pity--she does not seem like the rest--I wish we had asked
the matron for a strip of cloth or something to put under her head,"
he whispered, addressing the stolid man who stood by.

"Wait, only wait a few minutes," answered Mary, laying her hand
eagerly on Crofts' arm. "How kind it is of you to think of this. You
will wait, I am sure. I--I will get something!"

"Very well, we will take out the others first," said Crofts, who was
very kindly disposed toward the little girl; "be quick, though."

Mary went out in breathless haste. She was very pale, and her eyes
were full of sorrowful eagerness as she went forth into the dim, grey
morning, just breaking through the fog that lay on the Long Island
shore, and revealing the waters that rolled darkly between that and
Bellevue. She threaded her way through the enclosures which we have
mentioned. The light was just sufficient to reveal a few spring
flowers, starting up from the soil, and the soft foliage of an old
vine or two that covered the nakedness of some outbuilding.

Ignorant of those rules that made her act a trespass, Mary wandered
on, gathering up the hyacinths, violets and golden crocuses to which
the night had given birth. Down to the water's edge she rambled,
carefully gathering up each bud in her passage. In a corner of the
superintendent's garden she found an old pear tree, dead, except the
trunk and a single limb nearest to the ground, that was studded with
snow-white blossoms.

Mary clambered up by the wall, and breaking off handful after handful
of these fragrant buds, carried them, all wet with dew, back to the
hospital. As she bore her treasure along the fever ward, scenting the
pestilential atmosphere with their pure breath, the sick turned their
languid faces toward her, greedily inhaling the transient sweetness.
Two or three of the convalescent women followed her with longing eyes.
She felt these glances and turned back, leaving a spray of the dewy
buds upon the pillow of each. The grateful look with which her
kindness was greeted softened somewhat the sorrow that oppressed her.

With the most touching reverence she knelt by Mrs. Chester's coffin,
lifted that cold head softly from the boards, and placed the flowers
she had brought beneath it. Softly she laid her benefactress down upon
the blossom pillow. The delicate blending of rosy purple with the rich
gold of the crocuses and the golden green willow leaves, relieved by
the pure white of the blossoms underneath, cast around the dead a halo
of spiritual beauty. The soft and blended brightness of the flowers
seemed to illuminate those beautiful and tranquil features. Around the
form of Jane Chester there seemed nothing of death but its solemn
repose.

"Not yet--a little, only a little longer!" pleaded the child, as
Crofts came to close the coffin, "I hope, I am almost sure, Isabel can
bear to look at her now!"

Crofts smiled grimly, and sat down on the empty cot. In a few moments
Mary came into the ward, supporting Isabel with her frail strength.
The child wept no longer, but the trembling of her little form was
painfully visible as she tottered forward. Not a word passed between
the children--not a look was exchanged, but when Isabel bent over her
mother, and saw the blossom shadows trembling around her head, her
lips began to quiver, and the tears gushed from her heart.

Crofts, the common upholsterer of the Poor House, turned away his
face, and wiped his eyes with the skirt of his coat. Close by him
stood the man who shared his horrid duties, gazing with a look of
stolid indifference on the scene. Crofts arose, and taking this man
by the arm, led him out from the ward.

The two little girls went away after the coffin was removed; directly
Mary came back with her shawl and hood on. She was ready to leave
Bellevue, and returned to say a last, kind word to her mother. The
promise she had made her father on his death-bed rose to her mind, and
took the form of a prayer.

"Mother, look up, mother, I am going." The woman turned heavily and
lifted her head. "I am going, mother."

"Very well, I can't help it," muttered the mother, heavily.

"I don't know where they will take us, or if we shall ever see one
another again," persisted the child; "but, oh, mother before we part,
tell me how I can make you love me?"

"If there is a drop of brandy anywhere about, bring it and I'll love
you dearly, indeed I will, little Mary; I ain't at all well, Mary, and
a drop of brandy is good for sickness; get some, that's a dear; I'm
very fond of you, Mary!"

"Mother, I cannot; but, if you will never ask for it again, I will.
Oh, I will die for you; I hav'n't anything but my life to give--nor
that," she added, with a sudden thought, "for it belongs to God; I
have nothing."

Mrs. Fuller had fallen asleep, and heard nothing of this. So Mary
turned away sorrowful, but not altogether hopeless. Those who trust in
God never are.

CHAPTER XIX.

A SPRING MORNING--AND A PAUPER BURIAL.

  Not here--not here with our lovely dead--
    Oh, give one spot of sacred earth!
  Where the grass may wave, above her head,
    And the sweet, wild flowers have holy birth.

  Oh, grant our prayer--our solemn prayer--
    A lonely grave--and fresh, green sod--
  There is earth around us everywhere;
    And the mother earth belongs to God.

A long heavy boat lay at the Bellevue wharf. In the bow sat half a
dozen paupers, who started up now and then to range the coffins that
came in wheelbarrow loads from a little brick building near the wharf.

A name was marked rudely in chalk upon the lid of each coffin, and
this was all that those who brought them knew or cared about the
senseless forms they carried. Out from that brick house, and along the
wharf, they were trundled amid a swarm of loungers, who helped eagerly
to lower them into the boat.

It was the harvest time of death at Bellevue, and those pine coffins
were garnered by tens and twenties each day. That morning the weight
of twenty-four human forms, all breathing souls fifteen hours before,
sunk that stout boat to the water's edge.

When the last coffin came alone upon the handbarrow, Crofts
accompanied it, followed by two little girls. With his own hands he
helped to lower that coffin into the boat, and those paupers who could
read saw Jane Chester's name chalked upon the lid. As Crofts settled
his burden gently down across an empty seat, a faint odor of flowers
stole through the crevices, and when the rude sail cloth was flung
carelessly over the rest, he laid a strip of clean, coarse linen over
this coffin, then clambering across to the man who sat with the helm
in his hand, he imparted some directions to him in a low voice.

"What, up to Randall's Island! Take those two children in the boat
there and back to the nurseries! It can't be done, I tell you," said
the man, sulkily. "I won't do it without the Superintendent's order,
nor then either, if I can help myself."

"Oh, let us go with her--pray take us!" cried Mary Fuller, who was
anxiously watching the man, while Isabel bent over the wharf, her
hands hanging down, and her eyes full of helpless woe.

The pauper captain neither heeded the pleading cry of Mary Fuller, or
the more touching look of the orphan--and to all the humane arguments
of Crofts he turned a deaf ear. At length Crofts found a means of
persuasion more potent than tears or words. He took from his pocket
four twists of coarse tobacco, which the captain received with a grin.
Hiding the treasure under his seat, he cast a sharp glance over the
pile of coffins to assure himself that the transfer had not been
observed by the men in the bow.

"Holloa, there, stop crying and jump in if you want to go!" cried the
man, addressing the children; "make room in the bow, will you--we have
got to leave these children at the nurseries as we come back."

Crofts lifted the little girls into the boat, sat them gently down in
the shadow of Mrs. Chester's coffin, and went back to the hospital.

"Give way, all hands!" cried the captain, seizing the helm. "Pull a
strong oar, boys, or the tide will turn agin us!"

Half a dozen oars splashed into the water as this command was given.
The boat moved slowly from the wharf, and wheeling through a narrow
inlet, shot heavily out with its freight of death, into the East
River.

Oh, what a change was there, from the dull and murky gloom of
Bellevue! Down upon the broad expanse of waters came the morning
sunshine. Rosy and golden it fell upon the waves, as they tossed and
rolled and dimpled to the soft spring breeze. Here a current of liquid
gold went eddying in and out, like the trail of a comet; there, lay
the smooth, calm surface, rosy with the young light, or blackened by
the shadow of an overhanging bank. Behind them lay New York city,
Brooklyn, and Williamsburg, the tall masts and steeples rising through
a sea of hazy gold, and belted with the silvery flash of the river.
The banks, on either side, were clothed with soft, vivid green, broken
with dog-wood trees in full flower, and maples in the first sweet
crimson of their foliage. The fragrance from these banks swept down
upon the water and trembled through the air.

All this seemed like the very atmosphere of paradise to those little
girls, after their dreary sojourn in the pestilential gloom of
Bellevue. They could not realize that the mother, the benefactress,
whose smile had been so sweet only a few days before, was really and
truly gone. She was there close by; their little hands could touch her
coffin; the scent of flowers stealing through its chinks, constantly
reminded them of the mournful truth; but, with everything so bright
and lovely around, they could not believe in the reality. The motion
of the boat--the melodious dip of the oars in the water--these things
were new and strange. There was nothing like death in it all save the
heap of coffins, and from them they shrank shuddering and appalled.

As the boat crept by Hurl Gate, a fearful change came over them. The
glorious beauty of nature conflicting with the gloom of death; the
frightful jokes of the crew; the boiling waters, leaping up only a few
yards off, in long glittering flashes, like banners of silver, torn
and weltering in the breeze; the sky bending over them deeply blue,
and flooded with pleasant sunshine; the ribald criticisms of those
coarse men, and the death-heap under which the sluggish boat toiled
through the waters--all these sharp contrasts were enough to have
unsettled the nerves of strong manhood. To those children, worn out
and heartbroken, it brought strange and fearful excitement. Their
hands were interlinked; a thrill of keen magnetic sympathy shot
through their frames. They looked at the bright water leaping and
flashing so near. A wild temptation came over them, to spring from the
shadow of that death-heap into the sparkling flood. This thrilling
desire assailed them both at once--their hands clung closer--their
eyes, a moment before so heavy and sad, gleamed with intense meaning.
They crept close to the side of the boat.

"We are alone--we are all alone in the wide, wide world," said Isabel,
in a low voice that thrilled through and through the heart that
listened.

Isabel leaned over the boat; she was gazing wistfully into the water.

"One spring, Mary, and we both have a home."

The child stood up, her foot was on the edge of the boat, her face was
turned toward Hurl Gate.

Mary Fuller started, as if from a wild dream, and flung her arms
around the half frenzied child, standing there upon the threshold of
a great crime.

"Isabel, oh, Isabel! can we leave _her_ here, all alone?"

The child turned her head, her foot was slowly withdrawn, and her eyes
sank to her mother's coffin. She fell into Mary's arms, and burst into
a wild passion of tears. Filled with the same terrible feelings, Mary
Fuller could scarcely restrain the wild sobs that broke to her lips.
She clung close to Isabel, and, cowering down in the boat, afraid to
trust themselves with another sight of the rushing waters that had so
tempted them, the little creatures remained motionless till they
reached Randall's Island.

All this passed before the stolid crew, and they did not know it, but
joked and jeered each other in the midst of death, as if their horrid
duties had been a pastime. These men were so used to the King of
Terrors, that his aspect had ceased to disturb them.

They landed on Randall's Island, a lovely spot at all seasons, but now
teaming with luxuriant beauty. The apple orchards were all in blossom.
The cherry and pear trees, white as if a snow-storm had drifted over
them. The oak groves were robed with delicate foliage, and a carpet of
young grass lay everywhere around. Again the contrast between nature
and that death-freight was more than painful.

Two or three men came down to the landing with wheelbarrows, and the
boat was disencumbered of its gloomy load. The little girls sat down
upon the shore, watching each load as it was trundled away. At length,
the men brought the coffin in which their hearts rested, and laid it
across a hand barrow. They arose silently, and followed it hand and
hand.

They turned into an orchard; the blossoming apple boughs drooped over
the coffin as it passed under them. A host of birds made the fragrant
air tremble with their songs. The single wheel of the hand-barrow
crushed hundreds of wild flowers down in the tender grass. Once more
it seemed like a dream to those young hearts. Surely, surely it could
not be her grave they were approaching through all this labyrinth of
blossoms!

All at once they came into an open space. The world of flowers was
left behind. Thickets and broken hillocks were on the right and left.
A sweep of green sward fell gently down to the water; here the turf
was torn up and mangled, and long deep ridges of fresh soil swept
downward toward the shore. Some were heaped high with fresh mould and
around them all the young grass lay trampled and dead. There was one
deep trench open half the way down, into which a man leaped, while the
others handed down the coffins ranged on either side the trench. With
their hands clinging together, the children crept close to the brink
of the abyss and looked down. One low cry and, in pale silence, they
recoiled back to the coffin and sunk down by it, like twin flowers
broken at the stem.

An old man rose up from the trench, casting down his spade and dashing
the soil from his hands, rejoicing that his task was over for that
day; but his eyes fell upon the mournful group we have described.

"What, another yet!" he muttered, with sullen discontent, as he moved
forward. The little girls heard his approach and crept closer to the
coffin.

"Not there! oh, do not put her there!" cried Isabel, lifting her ashen
face to the man.

The pauper-sexton shook his head.

"This is always the way," he muttered, "when the friends are allowed
to come here, we are sure of trouble!"

"Is there no other place? oh, do not put her with all them!"

So pleaded Mary, rising to her feet, and taking hold of the old man's
garments.

"In all this island is there no room where one person can be buried
alone?"

"If you have a dollar to pay for the trouble--yes," answered the old
man, softened by her distress.

"A dollar!"

The child turned away in utter despondency. Where on the wide earth
was she to find a dollar? Isabel looked at her with mournful
solicitude. A dollar! she would have given her young life for that
little sum of money; but, alas! even her life would not procure so
much.

The old man stood gazing upon those little pale faces, the one so
beautiful, the other vivid and wild with intense feeling. His heart
was touched, and going back to the trench he took up his spade.

"Come and point out the place where you would like to have her buried,
and I will do the work for nothing," he said; "as likely as not my
little grandchildren will some day be crying over me for want of a
dollar."

The old man seemed like an angel to those little girls. They could not
speak from fullness of gratitude, but followed the grave digger back
towards the orchard. Here the earth was broken, and rendered uneven by
some fifty or sixty hillocks; some marked by a single pine board,
others without even this frail memorial by which the death-couch might
be traced.

On the outskirts of this humble burial-place they found a fragment of
rock, half buried in the rich turf, and overrun with wild flowers,
mingled with fresh young moss. An apple-tree sheltered this spot, and
a honeysuckle-vine had taken root in a cleft of the rock, around which
its young tendrils lay, covered with budding foliage.

The little girls pointed out this spot, and the old man kindly sent
them away, before he sunk his spade in the turf.

When his task was done he came toward them, wiping the drops from his
forehead. The sexton was poor, but out of the feeble strength left to
his old age, he had given something to alleviate distress greater than
his own. A consciousness of this made his voice peculiarly gentle, as
he called a man from the trench to aid in the humble funeral of Jane
Chester.

Again that coffin was borne beneath the sweeping boughs of the
orchard, and lowered into its solitary grave, amid the sweet breath of
their restless blossoms. The two children followed it with meek and
tearful gratitude. The horrors of the tomb seemed nothing to them now,
that the beloved form was secure of a quiet resting-place. The dread
of seeing her cast into that trench had swallowed up all minor
feelings. It seemed like leaving her there in a holy sleep, when the
old man led them from the grave. They knew that it was a sleep from
which their grief could never arouse her, but still they went away,
greatly comforted.

The last boat was ready to put off when these children reached the
shore. They sat down close together, without much apparent emotion.
Their energies were completely prostrated; they had lost, almost, the
power to suffer or to weep.

"We were ordered to leave you at the nurseries. Do you wish to go
there?" inquired the captain.

Isabel looked at him vacantly, and Mary answered,

"We do not know."

"Would you not rather go back to the city, or to Bellevue?" persisted
the man, determined to force them into conversation; but still the
child answered,

"We do not know."

This mild and passive sorrow was more touching than their worst agony
had been. They seemed like two wounded birds bleeding to death without
a struggle.

CHAPTER XX.

THE FATHER'S PROPHECY--THE DAUGHTER'S FAITH.

  Oh, faith, how beautiful thou art!
    Like some pure, snowy-breasted dove,
  Nested within that gentle heart,
    Ye filled its softest pulse with love.

Just where the banks of the East River are the most broken and
picturesque on the New York shore, and the sunny slopes of Long Island
are most verdant in their Arcadian beauty, the river opens its bright
waters, and Blackwell's Island rises, green and beautiful, from its
azure bosom. Years ago, when this gem of the East River was a private
estate, with only one dwelling-house to break its entire seclusion, it
must have seemed like a mile's length of paradise dropped into the
water. Then, its hollows were fragrant with wild roses, haunted by
blackbirds and thrushes. Its shores were hedged in by the snow-white
dogwood, wild cherry and maple trees, laced together with native
grape-vines and scarlet creepers, that, even a year or two back, hung
along its shores, like torn banners left upon a battle-field.
Blackwell's Island had other inhabitants than the singing birds and
the sweet wild blossoms, when the orphans first landed there. Then its
extremities were burdened to the very water's edge, with edifices of
massive stone, where human crime and human misery were crowded
together in masses appalling to reflect upon.

On one end of the island, naturally so quiet and beautiful, rose the
rugged walls of the Penitentiary, flanked by outhouses, hospitals and
offices, every stone of which was eloquent of human degradation. Here,
a thousand wretched men, bowed with misery and branded with crime,
were crowded together. All the day long, herds of these degraded
beings might be seen in their coarse and faded uniform, burrowing in
the earth, blasting and shaping the rocks that were to form new
prison-walls, and filling the sweet air with groans and curses, which
once thrilled only to the songs of summer-birds.

At the other extremity of the island stood the Insane Asylum, a
beautiful pile, towering over a scene of misery that should fill the
heart with awe. There is, perhaps, no spot of its size, throughout the
length and breadth of our land, where every variety of human suffering
is so closely condensed as it has been for years on this island. The
moment your foot touches the shore you feel oppressed with feelings
that seem inexplicable. Pity, horror, and a painful blending of both,
crowd upon the heart with every breath you draw. Nothing but the air
seems free; nothing but the blue sky above seems pure, as you walk
from one scene of distress to another. You feel the more oppressed
because human effort seems so powerless to alleviate the misery you
witness; for who can minister to a mind diseased? What can take away
the deformity and sting of guilt? Where lies the power to lift poverty
from the degradation that the haughty and evil spirit of man has flung
around it? The very heart grows faint as it beats in this wilderness
of woe, and finds no fitting answer to questions like these.

But at the time these events happened there was one remnant of
beautiful nature left on Blackwell's Island--one spot where the
flowers were permitted to bloom in the pure breath of heaven--where
the trees were yet rooted to the earth, and filled as of old, with the
music of summer birds. On the very centre of the island stood an old
mansion house, the residence of its proprietor before the paradise
became city property. It was a rambling old building, with wings of
unequal length shaded with magnificent willows, and surrounded by
shrubbery, and pretty lawns, interspersed with fine old trees.
Terraces beautifully lifted from the water's edge; and gravel walks,
bordered with the thickest and heaviest box-myrtle, with here and
there a grape arbor spanning them with its leafy arch, sloped with
picturesque beauty to the river which washed both sides of the island.
A neglected and rude old place it was, but perhaps the more lovely for
that. Neglect only seemed to give richer luxuriance to every thing
around; the hedges and rose-thickets were tangled together. Great
snow-ball trees, trumpet vines and honeysuckles seemed to shoot out
more rigorously from want of pruning, and the trees had become
majestic with age.

From the broad hall you might see the river on either hand, gleaming
through the spreading branches. Now and then a snow-white sail glided
by, and at sunset the water seemed heaving up waves of gold wherever
your eye turned.

This was the Children's Hospital. In the low chambers, and the fine
old fashioned rooms, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred
children lay upon their little cots, in all stages of suffering to
which infancy is subject. It was a painful scene--those helpless
little creatures, orphaned, or worse than orphaned, in the morning of
life, wearing such looks of pain, and yet so patient. God help them!

It was a touching sight to watch the brightening of those little
faces, whenever the good matron passed into the wards ministering to
their comfort--poor things--by a kind look and soothing word, where
medicine might often less avail. Strange manifestations of character
might be witnessed among those little creatures--fortitude that might
shame a warrior--patience the most saintlike; and again--but why dwell
upon the evil that sometimes exhibits itself fullgrown, in the heart
of an infant?

If cries of bitter passion sometimes arose from those little couches
they came, alas! from hearts that had never learned that unrestrained
passion was a sin. If fierce words were wrung from those infant lips,
it was that anger, not kindness had been showered on them from the
cradle. To some of these little creatures oaths had been familiar as
caresses are to the infancy of others. Such was their household
language.

To this place, so beautiful in itself, so full of painful associations,
Isabel Chester was brought in less than a week after her mother's
burial. Since that day she had drooped like a broken lily. The
terrible grief to which her delicate nature had bent and swayed like
a reed; the sudden change from a home of quiet and tranquil love, to
the most bitter solitude known to the human heart--that of a crowd--had
completely prostrated the orphan. A slow fever preyed upon her; she
could not speak without feeling the hot tears gush from her eyes.

In this state she came under the observation of the Children's
physician, and, touched with compassion, he took her to the Infant
Hospital. Mary went also, for she too, was ailing, and the doctor saw
that it would be cruelty to part them. At the hospital these helpless
creatures had better food and more comfort than could be allowed them
among the seven or eight hundred healthy children with which the
nurseries on the Long Island shore were crowded. For days and weeks
Isabel lay prostrate on her little cot. She had no settled disease.
The child only seemed quietly fading away.

Mary Fuller never left her bed-side. She, too, was broken down with
grief, and her wearied frame had lost all its power of endurance; but
though the hand which held Isabel's drink trembled with weakness, the
little creature never complained, nor ever acknowledged that she was
ill enough to be in bed. Patient and sweet-tempered as an angel, she
watched by the child of those who had done so much for her. The love
and gratitude of her whole being seemed centered in that pale, but
still lovely orphan.

At length all this patient love had its reward. Isabel was well enough
to walk in the grounds, and with their feeble arms around each other,
these children might be seen from morning till night, wandering along
the shore, or sitting quietly beneath the grape-arbors that overlooked
the water. To the other children they were always gentle and kind, but
they had no companions, and they clung together with the deep trust
and holy love of sisters. They had no future--those hopeless children.
Chester had left no relatives that his child ever heard of, and his
gentle wife had been an orphan. Mary Fuller possessed only her
wretched, wretched mother.

But their gentleness, and Isabel's singular beauty, were sure to win
them friends. The Physician and the matron began to love the little
girls, and after a time they became the pets of the establishment.
While the locks of the other children were cut close to the head,
Isabel still possessed her long and flowing tresses. Day by day her
exquisite beauty deepened into health again, and the pensive cast
which grief had given to her features rendered them ideal as they were
lovely.

But as Isabel grew better, Mary Fuller seemed to sink and droop in all
her being. She was often found amid the shrubbery, weeping bitterly,
and alone. Toward nightfall, and at early morning, she might have been
detected stealing softly up the Hospital stairs, and away to a dim
corner of the garret, with a handful of berries or a fragment of cake
which the matron had given her during the day. Sometimes her voice,
low and sweet, as if in tearful entreaties, floated along the garret,
and then might have been heard another voice, sometimes rude,
sometimes querulous, but very feeble, answering her with sharp
reprimands. After this the child would come down in tears and steal
away, as we have described, to weep alone.

Thus they entered upon sweet June, literally a month of roses at the
Infant's-Hospital. The pale little invalids grew better that month,
and were gathered beneath the huge old trees with their nurses,
forgetting their pain in the sweet breath of the flowers; but that
month, though the butterflies were numerous, and humming-birds came
and went through the thickets like flashes from a rainbow, Mary Fuller
was seldom abroad with the rest. More and more of her time was spent
in the low, dim garret; but when she did come forth, those who
observed her saw a new and tranquil light upon her face. She was
sometimes seen to smile, as if a pleasant thought possessed her mind.
Just before this, Mary had asked permission to carry away a little
Bible from the matron's table. It was not brought back, but the matron
only smiled, and never inquired the reason. She had learned to love
and trust Mary Fuller.

There was a clergyman stationed at Blackwell's Island, to whose
spiritual charge was given from four to seven hundred persons at the
Penitentiary, four or five hundred of the insane, and nearly a
thousand children, at the nursery and its hospital. The welfare of all
these souls was entrusted to this meek Christian, and most faithfully
has he performed the solemn duties of his office from that day to
this. Always busy in behalf of the unhappy creatures, who, amid all
their degradation, loved and respected him, always cheerful, always
ready with his gentle word and consoling advice, he made this holy
mission with the helpless and the prisoner the one great business of
his life.

This good clergyman had a family to support on his miserable salary of
three hundred dollars a year, voted him by a Common Council that spent
ten thousand carousing in their tea-room. Had any one of those city
fathers ever been up so early, they might often have seen this good
man at daybreak toiling on foot to the city, or perchance miles away
to some country town, in search of a service place for some repentant
prisoner, or to carry a message from a sick child to its friends. In
his gentle humility the good man never complained, never said that the
pay awarded to his labors by the Common Council of our most wealthy
city, was too little for his wants. You saw it in his garments. You
might have read it in his meek sigh, when some object of compassion
presented unusual claims to his charity; but in his speech and
deportment he seemed ever grateful for the little that was given him.
This true-hearted Christian remains upon his post to this day. If a
single hundred dollars has been added to his yearly means of support,
it was through the intercession of others, and from no discontent
expressed by himself. Surely the reward of such men must be hereafter,
or in the heaven of their own souls.

It was pleasant to see the eyes of those little children brighten,
when the good clergyman entered the hospital. They were fatherless,
and he was better than a father to them. They were sick, and he
comforted them, even as our Lord comforted little children when they
were brought to Him. His hand touched their pale foreheads caressingly;
his mild voice sunk into their little hearts like dew upon a bruised
flower. His very tread upon the stairs was a blessing to them; when
they heard it, all unconsciously the little creatures would smile upon
their pillows, and murmur over fragments of the Lord's Prayer, for
with its holy language, his own lips had rendered most of them
familiar.

To this brave Christian little Isabel and her friend had become
greatly attached. He sat with them in the grape arbors; he helped them
arrange bouquets for the sick children, and while they were busy at
their sweet task, he, in his gentle way, would lead their thoughts
from the flowers to the God who gives them to beautify the earth. At
such times he would go quietly away, leaving the children happier and
better, but without the slightest consciousness that they had been
receiving religious instruction.

This was the man to whom Mary Fuller appealed one night, as he paused
to speak with her in the garden-path that leads along the water.

"Oh! sir, I have been waiting for you here; I thought you would come
this way," cried the child, placing her little hand in his, "I have
something to tell you--something that makes me happy as a bird?"

"You look happy, my child, and you look good, too," said the
clergyman, shaking her hand with a smile. "Come, now, tell me what
it is."

"It is a long story, and one that would make you cry if you knew all.
You are not in a hurry sir?"

"No, no! I am never in a hurry, my dear little girl, so if you have
much to say come in here, and I will listen an hour if you like."

There was an old summer-house on the bank, dilapidated, and
threatening to tumble over the declivity with the first rough wind.
The clergyman led his little friend into this open building, and sat
down upon the only entire seat that it contained.

The child sat by his side awhile, thoughtful and evidently striving to
arrange her ideas.

"Do you remember, sir, a long time ago, when we first came here, you
asked me about my father and mother? I told you that my father was
dead, but I did not say much of my mother. Sir, she was a prisoner
then, and I did not like to mention it; that perhaps was wrong, but I
couldn't help being ashamed."

"There was nothing wrong in that feeling," answered the clergyman,
gently.

"I am glad you think so," replied the child, "for now I am sure you
will not want me to tell you all that has ever happened--how she took
to drink when I was a little, little girl. She was not used to it, and
I don't know how she was led away--for my poor father never talked of
these things to me, but they killed him, sir--it broke his heart at
last. One day--I was only seven years old then, but I remember it, oh!
how well--she had been drinking, oh, she was dreadful always at those
times. I don't know what I did, but I believe that I was only in her
way as she crossed the floor--all that I can remember is, that she
struck at me with her hand and foot. It seemed as if she had crushed
me to the floor. The breath left my body--I was the same as dead for
a long, long time."

"Poor child," murmured the clergyman, gazing upon the little creature
with a look of profound compassion.

"When I came to myself, people thought I would never be good for
anything again, and, sometimes, I thought so too, for after that I
almost stopped growing, and all that was bright about me died away.
I believe, after that, she hated me, sir."

Mary paused a moment, and went on.

"But my father, oh, he loved me better and better; he only wanted to
live for my sake, he told me so many a time. My poor father was a good
man, sir; as good as you are, as good as Mr. Chester was; but he was
so unhappy that God was very kind not to let him live only for my
sake. But, oh, sir, I was all alone when he went. I need not tell you
how we lived. We were poor. You never, in your life, saw any persons
so poor as we were, after father died. She would not work, and when I
did not have enough to eat I couldn't do much. Oh, sir, it was a
miserable life; now when I have told you so much, you will not want me
to say any more about it than I can help."

"Say only what you wish, my child; I will listen."

"One night--she had been drinking night and day, for a week--two or
three women had been in, and while they drank I sat in a corner
longing for them to go. They quarreled; my mother struck one of the
women, and while they were swearing dreadfully, a policeman came in.
It was Mr. Chester--that was the first time I ever saw him. I have
told you about him, and how his child, poor, beautiful Isabel, came
here with me; but I did not tell you that the nurse at Bellevue was my
own mother. The doctors found out that she had been drinking, and sent
her away after that night. A few weeks ago she came up here to work
for the children. Nobody knew that she was my mother, but, oh! sir,
she looked very ill, and I said to myself when she passed me without
a word, only with black looks--I said, she is ill, I will take care of
her; I will go to her at night with nice things that the matron gives
me to eat--I will do without them myself, and, perhaps, this will make
her love me.

"I went up into the garret the first night, but she drove me away. I
would not give up, but went again. She was very ill that night--living
among that fever so long had poisoned all the pure breath she had
left. She was crying when I went up to the bed; I knelt down by the
bed and began to cry, too. She did not send me away. She did not
strike me, though I thought it was for that when she lifted her hand,
but she laid the hand on my head. Indeed she did, sir, and then I felt
she might be my mother yet!"

The child paused; the big tears that welled up from her heart were
choking her.

"I went to see her very often after that, for she was growing worse.
I carried her nice things, and tried every way to make her love me.
She was not always kind, but I didn't mind a little crossness now and
then, for great hopes were in my heart. My father loved his wife, and
I thought of him, and what a joy it would be if I, the poor thing he
wanted to live for, could do something toward making her good enough
to see him once more when she dies.

"Sir, may I ask you one question? If you want a thing very much, and
think and pray for it--does not God, sometimes, bring it all about
when you least expect anything of the kind? It seemed to me as if He
had done it when my mother complained of being so lonesome up there in
the Hospital garret, and wished that she had something to read. She
was a great reader, sir, once. I went down stairs, trembling like a
leaf, and got the matron's Bible. She did not say a word against it,
and I read to her a long time. After that she would ask me to read,
and every day as she grew weaker and weaker, I could see that she was
growing better, too.

"At last I asked her if she would let me bring you up to see her, but
she was vexed at the idea of a clergyman. Once or twice after that I
mentioned it, but she still answered no. Last night, as I was saying
my prayers by her bed, she began to cry softly, and then, sir, she
rose up and kissed me on the forehead. Then I asked her again, and she
said you might come--only she made me promise to tell you everything
about her first. But for that I would not talk of my poor mother's
faults, though it is only to you."

The child ceased speaking--she looked earnestly into the clergyman's
face.

"You will not go home till you have seen her?" she said.

"No, my child, I only trust that my poor efforts may be blessed as
yours have been," and the clergyman went into the Hospital, leading
Mary by the hand. It was an hour before he left the building, and when
he turned to shake hands with the little girl, you could see by the
expression of his face that it had been an important and heart-rending
hour to them all; over and over again did that good man's feet tread
those worn stairs, and each time his face looked more thankful than it
had done before. One evening he remained much longer than usual.
Little Mary had been in the garret since morning, and here, about nine
o'clock, the physician was called for the fourth time that day. He was
absent but a few minutes.

"You had better go up," he said to the matron, who met him in the
hall, "that poor woman is gone."

Mary Fuller turned her head as the matron came into that dimly-lighted
garret. Tears stood on her cheek, but her eyes were radiant with holy
light.

"Oh, madam, she was my mother! She kissed me! with her last breath she
kissed me!"

"She died," said the clergyman, in his low mild voice, "she died with
her arms round this little girl, calm and peaceful as a child."

"Go," said the matron, gently sending Mary to the stairs, "go, my
child, to-morrow you shall see her again."

The child went down, not to weep as they supposed, for there was a
higher and more holy feeling than grief in her young heart. She had
found her mother.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE TWO OLD MEN

  The past, sometimes, comes dimly back,
    Stealing like shadows on the brain;
  We see the ruins on its track,
    And feel the dead flowers bloom again.

Since the day of Chester's death, a great change had fallen upon the
Mayor. He went to his office as usual, and performed its duties with
habitual exactitude, but he never entered the Aldermen's tea-room
again. When his political friends called upon him to accomplish any
unfinished business, such as giving out contracts long before they
were advertised by law--selling city property for a song to
confederates, who were certain to allow a portion of the profits to
flow back into greedy official pockets--or empowering some favorite to
negotiate worthless real estate, and more worthless goods, for which
the ever-enduring people were compelled to pay fabulous prices--for in
all these things, directly or indirectly, he had been engaged--Farnham
resolutely refused to enter into these transactions more.

He felt in the depths of his heart, that the demoralizing influences
consequent upon those half-secret, half-audacious speculations had led
him to the brink--nay, had actually plunged him into a great crime.

Again and again he had reconsidered the events of Chester's trial and
death, following so closely on each other, with a hope of finding
something that might remove the terrible responsibility from his
conscience. But his stubborn and acute reason would not be convinced
by the sophistry that had so often deceived the public. He had no
power to blind his own conscience, and that told him, more and more
loudly every hour, that his cruel acts had murdered a blameless fellow
creature, directly almost as if the deed had been accomplished by a
blow.

Yes, Joseph had uttered the right word--it was murder.

True there was no earthly tribunal to reach his impalpable crime,
for the law recognizes only physical violence by which death is
accomplished. But there is a just God, before whose high court,
sooner or later, will be arraigned the bloodless murderer, whose
dagger has been words--low whispers, and assassin machinations--or
perchance neglect, and the sweeping back of warm affections on a
true heart.

There the all-seeing One, who judges the thought as well as the act
will make no distinction between life drained drop by drop from the
soul, and that sent forth at a blow with the red hand.

These startling truths fastened themselves at last upon his conviction,
breaking through his worldliness and all the hard accumulations which
a life of underground politics had heaped upon a nature capable of
great good.

It was not without a struggle that the Mayor had yielded himself to
this true self-knowledge. But in vain he argued that he had not
anticipated this fearful result, from proceedings that after all were
only intended as the means of removing an obnoxious person from his
path. In vain he reasoned with himself, "I did not wish the man's
death, nor use means to bring it about." The fault lay in his own
sensitive nature. But his reason answered back, neither does the man
who commits murder in his hour of intoxication, mean to become
inebriated or to take a human life when he lifts the first cup to his
lip; yet even the law, that which takes hold only of actual things,
deems this man guilty as if his soul had not been brutalized and made
blind before the blow.

There might have been other influences besides poor Chester's death,
that aided to accomplish this transfiguration of character; for as
Farnham bent beneath the pressure of this truth, other impressions,
perhaps not less potent because unrecognized, stole in upon him;
angels sometimes come softly and fill a newly aroused soul with love,
as the night sheds its dew on the green leaves of an oak, after the
storm has passed by.

What was there in the appearance of Joseph to soften the
self-upbraiding of this stern man? The boy's words had been, perhaps,
the most severe reproof that he had ever met; but they called forth no
bitterness. Instead of this arose an attraction so powerful that he
could not resist it. Thus he had followed the lad to his own door, and
afterwards would turn in the street and gaze on any boy of his size
with a yearning desire to see him again.

But the gentle lad was at home, studying his father's beautiful art,
and seldom went into the street. His life had always been so secluded
that this one event was a great epoch, to which his mind was
constantly going back. A spirit of loneliness came upon him after the
little girls left the house, and at sunset he might sometimes be found
almost in tears, homesick for a sight of them. A beautiful sympathy
had sprung up between him and Mary Fuller that filled him with vague
uneasiness.

Sometimes, too, he would think of the Mayor, so stern and cold to
others, but so full of gentleness to him, and with the warm gratitude
of youth he could not help looking forward to the time when he might
visit Fred again, and thus see the man who had filled him with so much
of terror unseen, and with such strange happiness after.

Once or twice he spoke of this in a timid way, but his father checked
him almost with harshness, and with the reserve of a sensitive nature,
he buried this strange feeling in his bosom till it became almost a
want, which after a time was gratified.

One night, when he had spent the whole day in attempting to copy one
of his father's pictures, while the old artist sat by, giving him such
help as lay in his power, an unaccountable desire seized upon the lad,
and he arose almost with tears in his eyes.

"Father," he said, with great earnestness. "Father I cannot hold the
brush, my hand grows unsteady; please let me go and see Frederick; it
seems to me as if some one there wanted me very much!"

"If Frederick wanted to see us, he would come here, I should think!"
answered the father.

"I believe--I almost think that his father is sick," said Joseph.

"And how did you know this?" asked Mr. Esmond, rather sharply, for he
seemed jealous of his son's interest in the Mayor's family.

"I don't know it--but it seemed to me all day yesterday and to-day,
that something was the matter."

"And if there is, your mother's child--my child should not trouble
himself about it!"

Joseph looked at his father in astonishment. These sharp words were so
unlike his usual kindliness, that the lad was bewildered.

"I--I thought you liked Fred so much," he said, at last.

"But it is not Fred--it is his father you are thinking of, unnatural
child that you are!"

"Father--oh, father!"

"There--there," said the old man, more gently. "I did not mean it. Go,
my son if you wish, I will not stop you, but do not give much love to
any one but your father, he has had so little, so very little on
earth. Don't let this man get your heart away from me."

"Away from you, my own, own father?" said Joseph, grieved, and deeply
hurt.

"Well--well, all this is foolish talk--but I am getting very childish.
It ages one so to live alone, Joseph, you would not believe it, but I
am a younger man by five years than the Mayor."

"The Mayor has grown very old since I first saw him father, you would
be astonished!"

"Then you have seen him more than once?"

"Yes; he comes to Mrs. Peters, now, almost every day, and sometimes I
see him."

"In this house--in this house!" exclaimed the artist, "to-morrow we
will move--to-night, if another room can be got!"

As the old man spoke, a hesitating knock was heard at the door. Joseph
and his father looked at each other wistfully; at length the boy
stepped forward and turned the latch.

Mr. Farnham stood on the threshold. The artist drew his tall form up,
and remained immovable, with his dark eyes fixed sternly on the
Mayor's.

Joseph paused irresolute, with the last dying gold of sunset falling
on his head, from a neighboring window.

The artist glanced from him to the Mayor, and a look of sudden pain
swept across his face. It was a strange, jealous pang to strike a man
of his age.

"Go," said the Mayor gently to the lad; "go, and leave us alone, I
wish to speak with your father."

Joseph looked at his father questioningly.

"Go!" said the old man, in a voice so husky that he could only force
himself to utter that single word.

Joseph went out, and those two old men--for the Mayor looked very old
that night--sat down in the dim chamber, and talked together for the
first time in their lives.

Joseph shut himself in the dark hall, and found a seat upon the
stairs, filled with vague wonder; for his keen imagination seized upon
this event, and his affectionate nature turned lovingly to the old
men, whose voices came through the ill-fitting door in indistinct
murmurs.

It must have been an hour when the door opened, and Joseph saw the
Mayor and his father standing just within the room. The light from a
tallow candle fell upon them from behind, striking their side faces
with singular effect. Both were pale, but the cheek of the Mayor, on
which the light lay strongest, glistened with moisture. Could it be
that this was the trace of tears?--and, if so, what power had that
humble artist, to make a man weep who had not been known to shed tears
since his boyhood!

The artist too had a look of tender sadness on his face, as if all his
deeper feelings had been moved.

The two old men--we call them old, but events rather than time had
left hoary marks upon them--the two old men held each other by the
hand; Joseph arose and drew back, that the Mayor might pass, but when
he went by without a word, the boy was seized with a pang of
disappointment, and followed him.

"Mayor," he said, "please won't you say good-bye to me, I have wanted
to see you so much all day?"

The Mayor turned his face; the light from a street-lamp shone upon it,
as he stood in the lower entrance. Surely there had been tears on that
stern face.

"Yes," answered Mr. Farnham, looking into those deep earnest eyes, "I
will bid you good-bye."

"Mr. Farnham," said Joseph, "won't you stay a little?"

The Mayor stepped back into the hall, but wavered in his walk, and
supported himself by the lad. Joseph could feel that the hands which
were laid on his shoulders trembled.

"Are you sick?" questioned the lad, with his forehead up lifted in
reverential tenderness.

"Sick--no! I think it is not sickness, but, but"--

"Have I or father done anything to hurt you, sir?"

"Hurt me!--no, no--but Joseph you said once that I had murdered Mr.
Chester, did you believe it?"

Joseph's head drooped forward. His eyes were suffused with sadness,
he could not answer.

"Did you think so, Joseph?" repeated the Mayor, in a voice of strange
solicitude.

"I thought so then, but now I am sure you could not have intended to
do it."

"No!" answered the Mayor, impressively. "I did not intend it; when you
think of me hereafter you will remember this--and remember too, my
child, that when a man takes the first step toward an unjust act, he
loses a great portion of his power to control the second--great crime
grows out of small errors, my boy, remember that, and I charge you,
repeat it to my son, when he has need of such warning."

"I will repeat it to him, as you wish me to, sir!"

"And now farewell."

Joseph felt a kiss quiver upon his forehead, like the touch of a
spirit that had taken flight. He looked around, the Mayor was gone.

"Farewell--why did not he say good-bye--or good-night, Joseph?
Farewell! that is a very solemn word. I wish he had not said
farewell!"

CHAPTER XXII.

THE WALK AND THE WILL.

  Now do I drop my heavy load of woe,
    As some wet mantle saturate with rain,
  And rise as a soft spirit that doth glow
    In rays of light beyond the realm of pain.

        W. W. FORDICK.

The Mayor walked home very slowly, for remorse, while softening into
penitence, had sapped the foundations of his life; and he had grown a
feeble old man in so short a time, that those who look upon God as an
avenger, rather than a chastiser, might have supposed that old age had
fallen as a judgment upon him. But the All-wise one knows best how to
redeem the souls he has created, and that weary man as he walked home
in the darkness, was a thousand times more worthy of respect, than he
had ever been in his whole lifetime before.

There was a private room in the lower story of his house, in which Mr.
Farnham had usually received his constituents and persons who came to
his residence on private business. It had been little used of late,
for the routine of his old life was broken up, and when he went to
this apartment, it was usually to be secure of the solitude which
daily became more necessary to his habits of self-communion. That
night he found company in the drawing-room. Mrs. Farnham had guests
from the South; other friends were invited to meet them, and the lower
portion of the house was in a blaze of magnificence. This scene was so
at variance with his state of feelings, that the Mayor recoiled from
its glitter, as the sick man shrinks from a noonday sun.

His wife, who was standing in the centre of a group near the door,
resplendent with jewels and brocade, saw him pass through the hall,
and playfully shaking her fan called after him.

Either he did not hear, or he did not heed her, and with the usual
obstinacy of a silly woman, she called to her son and bade him go
bring his father back.

Frederick went and found Mr. Farnham in his private room, looking cold
and weary. The greatest retribution that had fallen upon this man for
his evil act had been the effect it had produced upon his own son.
Frederick had known and loved Chester. With his energy and quickness
of character, it was impossible that he should not have gathered all
the facts regarding his trial and death. The very silence which he
maintained on the subject was a proof of this. His manner too had
changed so completely that it was a constant reproach to the suffering
man. There had always existed a certain reserve between the father and
son, but now it amounted almost to coldness. Perhaps this repulsion
had driven the unhappy man to seek sympathy in the child of another,
for it became a weary trial to seek his home day after day, and find
all affection chilled there.

That night Farnham's heart was softened toward the whole world, and
most of all did he yearn for the old look of confidence from the now
constantly averted eyes of his son. Just as these feelings were
strongest in his bosom, Frederick entered the room where he sat. The
Mayor looked up wistfully.

"My mother wishes me to call you, sir; she has company in the drawing
room." The cold respectfulness of his manner fell like snow upon the
Mayor.

"I cannot come, Frederick; tell your mother that I am not well enough
for company," he said, so mournfully that the warm heart of the lad
was touched.

"Are you really ill, father?" he said.

The Mayor could not answer. It was the first time that his son had
called him father since Chester's burial.

The boy was struck by his silence.

"Tell me--speak to me father, are you ill?"

The Mayor held out his hands.

"Frederick!"

It was enough--the boy fell upon his knees and kissed those trembling
hands.

"Father, forgive me, I had no right to make myself your judge."

"God bless you, my boy, and remember this night you have made your
father very happy."

After Frederick left him, Mr. Farnham began to write. His strength had
returned, and his whole energies of soul and body were concentrated in
the work he was doing. After he had written an hour, pausing now and
then in deep thought, there lay before him a legal document, carefully
drawn up, which he read twice. Then he arose and rang the bell; a
servant came, and he directed her to go to the drawing-room and tell
two gentlemen who were his guests at the time, that he wished to see
them. The gentlemen came up flushed and laughing. Champagne had freely
circulated below, and they were in splendid spirits.

"I will only detain you a moment," said the Mayor, "but here is a
document which requires witnesses. Will you sign it?"

The gentlemen laughed gaily.

The Mayor laid his finger on the signature. Again the gentlemen
laughed.

"What is it, a marriage contract, or your last will and testament?"
said one, delighted with his own wit.

"It is my last will and testament," answered the Mayor, quietly.

Again the men laughed; they did not believe him.

"Well, well, give us hold here, at any rate, we know it's all right,
so here goes!"

They signed their names and went out laughing. The next morning they
started South without seeing their host, and with a confused sense of
what they had signed over night.

But with all these sources of agitation the Mayor was breaking down.
He went up to his bed-room after signing the will, greatly exhausted.
His wife passed through the room an hour after, and saw the document
on the table. It was late, and she resolved to read it over at leisure
in the morning before her husband was up; so dropping it quietly into
her pocket she went up stairs.

Three days after the city was in mourning. The public building and
military banners were all draped with black. It was the first time in
years that a Mayor of New York had died in office, and the people were
lavish of funereal honors to Farnham's memory.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FESTIVAL OF ROSES.

  A ring--a ring of roses,
  Laps full of posies;
  Awake--awake!
  Now come and make
  A ring--a ring of roses.

The month of June had littered its path with roses, and now came July,
with its crimson berries, its ruddier blossoms, and its profuse
foliage. On the Fourth of this luxurious month some gleams and
glimpses of the great National Jubilee are sure to reach even the
prisoners and the poor on Blackwell's Island. The sick children at the
Hospital had a share of enjoyment; presents of toys, cake and fruit
were liberally distributed. The grounds produced an abundance of
flowers, and it was marvellous how these little creatures managed to
amuse themselves. The matron, the nurses, and many of the little
patients, were busy as so many bees that morning, before the sun had
changed his first rose-tints to the shower of vivid gold with which he
soon boldly deluged the water. Among the first and the busiest were
Mary Fuller and Isabel. They sat beneath a great elm tree back of the
Hospital, with a heap of flowers between them, out of which they
twined a world of bouquets, fairy garlands, and pretty crowns.
Half-a-dozen little girls, lame, or among the convalescent sick,
volunteered to gather the flowers, and some of the larger boys were up
among the branches of the elm tree, garlanding them with ropes of the
coarser blossoms. The birds were in full force that morning, as
became the little republican rovers, absolutely rioting among the
leaves, and pouring forth their music with a wild _abandon_ that made
the foliage thrill again.

"Now, now the sun will be up in no time. Run, Isabel, with the
flowers--here they are, a whole apron full--I will be tying up more
while you leave these!" said Mary Fuller, heaping Isabel's apron with
the pretty bouquets she had been preparing; "don't leave a pillow
without them!"

Isabel gathered up her apron and ran into the house. Up the stairs she
went with a fairy footstep, and glided into the wards. Stealing softly
from one little cot to another, she left upon each pillow her pretty
tribute, where the sick child was sure to see it the moment its
languid eyes were unclosed. When her store was exhausted she ran down
for more.

"Did any of them wake up? Did they see the flowers?" inquired Mary,
eagerly.

"Some were awake--they hadn't slept all night, poor things--but the
flowers made them smile," was the cheerful reply. "Come, fill my apron
again, and give me those large ones, with the white lilies, for the
mantel-pieces. Won't the doctor be astonished when he goes up? They're
better than medicine, I can tell him."

Again Isabel's apron was heaped full, and again she glided, in all her
bright, young beauty, through the sick wards. When she came down, an
earthern pitcher, crowded with great white lilies, honeysuckles and
sweetbriar, stood on the windows or mantel-pieces of every room. There
was not a pillow without its pretty garland, or bouquet of buds, tied
with the spray of some fragrant shrub. She had made the atmosphere of
those sick wards redolent with fragrance.

"Now for the boys' hats!" said Mary, "here are plenty of soldier's
feathers."

The boys cast down their straw-hats from the tree, shouting for her to
make soldiers of them, each one clamoring for a red plume.

But the red hollyhocks did not quite hold out, so, perforce some of
the slender plumes were of yellow, some of snow-white--for you never
saw such hollyhocks as grew in the Hospital-gardens--and Mary had all
variety of tints around her, even to some of a deep maroon.

When each straw hat had its plume, the little girls fell to ornamenting
three or four large paper kites, and then they began forming garlands
for their own heads. Mary twined a beautiful wreath of white clematis
around the dark tresses of Isabel's hair.

"Nothing but white," she said with a gentle sigh, "for that is almost
mourning."

The others arrayed themselves according to their own fancy, and when
the sun rose high it kindled up a happy and picturesque group beneath
that old elm tree.

A company of boys, with a red silk handkerchief streaming over them
for a banner, their hollyhock plumes rising jauntily in the sunshine,
the tallest mounting an epaulette of red, yellow, and purple flowers,
marched out with gallant parade from the shelter of the old tree. Tin
trumpets, an old milk pail, and various similar instruments, made the
air ring again as this warlike band sallied forth.

A score of little pale creatures watched them from the Hospital stoop
and the upper windows. Some of the boys were lame; some were blind;
while others bore evidence of recent disease; but if they looked in
these things like a company of volunteers returning from Mexico, it
only gave them a more warlike appearance, and of this they were very
ambitious.

Then the little girls began to seek their own amusements. They played
"hide and seek," "ring, ring a rosy," and a thousand wild and pretty
games; for the place was so beautiful, and the day so bright, the
little rogues quite forgot that they were in the Poor House, or had
ever been sick in the whole course of their lives.

Mary and Isabel were a little pensive at times, but when all the rest
seemed so happy, they could not choose but smile with them--and so the
Fourth of July wore over.

There was a great tumult and glorious time on Long Island shore that
day. The children had a festival of flowers over there also; crowds of
people were walking along the banks of the river; and you could see
hundreds of gaily-dressed visitors landing every minute from the
water, while the children huzzaed, and flung up their hats till you
could hear them across the broad river. Still it is to be doubted if
there was more real enjoyment among them than our little band of
convalescents experienced among the flowery nooks of the old Hospital.

The hour for cakes and fruit to be served under the elm surprised our
little warriors down by the river. When the signal was given, they
marched along the broad walk, lined on each side with box-myrtle of
twenty years' growth. They paraded superbly up the terrace steps--down
again--through the grape arbors, and around the end of the Hospital,
in gallant array, with colors flying, sixpenny trumpets blowing, and
the tin pails doing their best to glorify the occasion.

Our little troop bivouacked under the old elm, amid a storm of
fire-crackers, and a shout from the little girls. Here gingerbread and
fruit were served, and the girls began their games again. Little Mary
Fuller sat upon the grass, singing, while the rest formed a ring,
darting, with their garlands and bouquets, like a chain of flowers,
through an arch made by the uplifted hands of Isabel Chester and a
little lame girl who could not run. Nothing on earth could be more
beautiful than Isabel was just then, with the white spray dancing in
her hair, a pleasant smile in her dark eyes, and the faintest
rose-tint breaking over her cheek.