a great deal of mischief
they do to their cause, however good. So, just to hold a pattern one up,
to know the others by, we took his likeness at once, and put him in here.
And that is the reason why we have written this paper.

CHAPTER VI--THE HOSPITAL PATIENT

In our rambles through the streets of London after evening has set in, we
often pause beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to
ourself the gloomy and mournful scenes that are passing within. The
sudden moving of a taper as its feeble ray shoots from window to window,
until its light gradually disappears, as if it were carried farther back
into the room to the bedside of some suffering patient, is enough to
awaken a whole crowd of reflections; the mere glimmering of the
low-burning lamps, which, when all other habitations are wrapped in
darkness and slumber, denote the chamber where so many forms are writhing
with pain, or wasting with disease, is sufficient to check the most
boisterous merriment.

Who can tell the anguish of those weary hours, when the only sound the
sick man hears, is the disjointed wanderings of some feverish slumberer
near him, the low moan of pain, or perhaps the muttered, long-forgotten
prayer of a dying man? Who, but they who have felt it, can imagine the
sense of loneliness and desolation which must be the portion of those who
in the hour of dangerous illness are left to be tended by strangers; for
what hands, be they ever so gentle, can wipe the clammy brow, or smooth
the restless bed, like those of mother, wife, or child?

Impressed with these thoughts, we have turned away, through the
nearly-deserted streets; and the sight of the few miserable creatures
still hovering about them, has not tended to lessen the pain which such
meditations awaken. The hospital is a refuge and resting-place for
hundreds, who but for such institutions must die in the streets and
doorways; but what can be the feelings of some outcasts when they are
stretched on the bed of sickness with scarcely a hope of recovery? The
wretched woman who lingers about the pavement, hours after midnight, and
the miserable shadow of a man--the ghastly remnant that want and
drunkenness have left--which crouches beneath a window-ledge, to sleep
where there is some shelter from the rain, have little to bind them to
life, but what have they to look back upon, in death? What are the
unwonted comforts of a roof and a bed, to them, when the recollection