s doing
its utmost in their behalf; but when our friends write us from across
seas, they tell us, not only how they are, but where,--jotting down
little pen-and-ink pictures to show us how stands the writing-table, and
how hangs the picture, and where is the _fauteuil_, that we may see them
as they are daily; so we crave something more, we feel shut out, we want
to get at their daily living, to know something of hospital-life.

Hospitals have sprung up as if sown broadcast, and these, too, of no
mean order. True, in our first haste and inexperience, viciously planned
hospitals were erected; but these and the Crimean blunders have served
us as beacons, and the anxious care of the Government has been untiring,
the outlay of money and things more precious unbounded; and those who
have had this weighty matter in charge have no reason to fear an account
of their stewardship. The Boston Free Hospital in excellence of plan and
beauty of design can be excelled by none. Philadelphia boasts the two
largest military hospitals in the world. Of the twenty-three in and
about Washington many are worthy of all praise. The general hospital at
Fort Schuyler is admirable in plan and _locale_, and this latter
condition is found to be of vast importance. A Rebel battery, with an
incurable habit of using the hospital as a target, would scarcely be so
dangerous as a low, water-sogged, clayey soil, with its inevitable
results of fever, rheumatism, and bowel-complaints.

Spotless cleanliness is another indispensable characteristic,--not only
urged, but enforced; for there is no such notable housewife as the
Government. The vast "Mower" Hospital at Chestnut Hill, the largest in
the world, is as well kept as a lady's boudoir should be. It is built
around a square of seven acres, in which stand the surgeon's
lecture-room, the chapel, the platform for the band, etc. A long
corridor goes about this square, rounded at the corners, and lighted on
one side by numerous large windows, which, if removed in summer, must
leave it almost wholly open. From the opposite side radiate the
sick-wards, fifty in number, one story in height, one hundred and
seventy-five feet in length, and twenty feet farther apart at the
extremity than at the corridor, thus completely isolating them from each
other. A railway runs the length of the corridor, on which small cars
convey meals to the mess-rooms attached to each of the wards for those
who are unable to leave them, sto