ylum, which needs, like any
other household, a woman's care to make it perfect.

In my wanderings since the fire of 1877, I boarded some weeks at the Y.
W. C. A. home in Boston, a beautiful institution, conducted entirely by
ladies. It was a comfortable, happy home, ruled by ladies who were like
mothers or friends to all its occupants, and under the supervision of a
committee of ladies who visit it every week. It is such arrangements we
need to perfect the working of our public institutions, where a woman's
care is required as in a home. Men are properly the outside agents, but
women should attend to the inner working of any home.

The Tewksbury affair of 1883, stands a disgrace to the New England
States, who had so long prided themselves on their many public
charitable institutions, and which have, without question, been an honor
to her people.

I am sorry to say they are not all perfect, as I learned from the lips
of a young man in this hotel, who looked as if he were going home to
die. He had been waiting some weeks in the Boston City Hospital, until
the warm weather should make his journey less dangerous in his weak
state. "If I should live a hundred years, I should never get that
hospital off my mind," were his words, as he lay back in his chair
looking so sad; "a disagreeable, unkind nurse, a cold ward, and
miserable food." His words touched a responsive chord in my heart, for
my experiences had been similar to his; I can never forget them.

Let me here entreat the ladies, wherever this book may be read, that
they take this work upon themselves. Rise up in your own strength, and
solicit the Governor to appoint you as Commissioners, as you are over
your Old Ladies' Homes. If the Governor has the authority or power to
appoint those who now form the Board of Commissioners of the Provincial
Lunatic Asylum, he can surely invest you with the same title, and you
will not any longer allow your fellow-sisters to be neglected by those
who cannot understand the weakness or the misfortunes that have brought
them under the necessity of being protected by the public.

Before leaving Fredericton, I called at the Government House to lay my
case before His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor, hoping to awaken his
sympathy in our cause, and urge him to call an early meeting of the
Board. I was so anxious to return to the care of those poor feeble women
I had left in the Asylum; so anxious to right their wrongs, I could not
be r