e
home an uncomplimentary homesick comrade when September comes.

_April 1_

Last minute of Sunday, so here's to you. To-morrow I shall be
cheerfully immersed up to the eyes in work.

Oh! this Home. How little it deserves the name! Our English storms are
nothing but babies compared with the appalling blasts which sweep down
upon us from the north. In summer the furious seas dash against the
cliffs as if to protect them from the desecration of human
encroachment. The fine snow filters in between the roof and ceiling of
this building, and in a "mild," such as we are now experiencing, it
melts, and endless little rivulets trickle down in nearly every room.
The water comes in on my bed, on the kitchen range, and on the
dining-room table. It falls on the sewing-machine in one room, on the
piano and bookcase in another. Its catholicity of taste is plain
disheartening!

You ask whether these kiddies have the stuff in them to repay what
you are pleased to term "such an outlay of effort." My emphatic "yes"
should have been so insistent as to have reached you by telepathy when
the doubt first presented itself. The Home has been established now
long enough to have some of its "graduates" go out into life; and the
splendid manhood and womanhood of these young people are at once a
sufficient reward to us and a silencing response to you. Many of them
have been sent to the States and Canada for further education, and are
now not only writing a successful story for themselves, but helping
their less fortunate neighbours, in a way we from outside never can,
to turn over many a new leaf in their books.

Yesterday I attended the theatre, only it was the operating theatre.
The patient on this occasion was a doll, the surgeon a lad of seven,
himself a victim of infantile paralysis, and the head nurse assisting
was aged nine, and wears a brace on each leg. The stage was the
children's ward of the hospital. Here are several pathetic little
people, orthopedic cases, brought in for treatment during the winter,
and who must stay till the spring boat arrives, as their homes are now
cut off by interminable miles of snow wastes and icy sea. Nothing
escapes their notice. They tear up their Christmas picture books, and
when charged with the enormity of their offence, explain that they
"must have adhesive tape for their operative work." Dick, the surgeon,
was overheard the other day telling Margaret, the head nurse, as
together they a