rmed.) The
last department is for aged and indigent women.

One of the little orphans clung to the Sister who accompanied us,
holding her hand, and nestling in her coarse but clean blue gown; and
when we took our leave, and I put a small coin into her little soft
hand, her eyes brightened up into a pretty smile.

The number of the Sisters is not full. As none have joined the order
from Cuba, (I am told literally none,) they are all from abroad, chiefly
from France and Spain; and having acclimation to go through, with
exposure to yellow fever and cholera, many of those that come here die
in the first or second summer. And yet they still come, in simple,
religious fidelity, under the shadow of death.

The Casa de Beneficencia must be pronounced by all, even by those
accustomed to the system and order of the best charitable institutions
in the world, a credit to the island of Cuba. The charity is large and
liberal, and the order and neatness of its administration are beyond
praise.

From the Beneficencia we drove to the Military Hospital. This is a huge
establishment, designed to accommodate all the sick of the army. The
walls are high, the floors are of brick and scrupulously clean, as are
all things under the charge of the Sisters of Charity; and the
ventilation is tolerable. The building suffered from the explosion of
the magazine last year, and some quarters have not yet been restored for
occupation. The number of sick soldiers now in hospital actually exceeds
one thousand! Most of them are young, some mere lads, victims of the
conscription of Old Spain, which takes them from their rustic homes in
Andalusia and Catalonia and the Pyrenees, to expose them to the tropical
heats of Cuba, and to the other dangers of its climate. Most had fevers.
We saw a few cases of vomito. Notwithstanding all that is said about the
healthfulness of a winter in Cuba, the experienced Sister Servant
(which, I believe, is the title of the Superior of a body of Sisters of
Charity) told us that a few sporadic cases of yellow fever occur in
Havana, in all seasons of the year; but that we need not fear to go
through the wards. One patient was covered with the blotches of recent
smallpox. It was affecting to see the wistful eyes of these poor,
fevered soldier-boys, gazing on the serene, kind countenances of the
nuns, and thinking of their mothers and sisters in the dear home in Old
Spain, and feeling, no doubt, that this womanly, religious car