up again, as if they were very
polite gentlemen saying, 'How do you do?' to the bridge.
Well, the children in the hospital can see these things, and for those
whose beds don't face the windows there are looking-glasses so arranged
that all that goes on is reflected in them, so that it is like a
wonderful picture-book, changing all day long. Though they look so
happy, poor children! some of them suffer dreadful pain, and it is sad
to think this hospital is for incurable children--that is, children who
can never be well in this world.
In one room there is a large picture; I am sure you have seen one like
it. It is Jesus Christ standing at a door, knocking, and the door is
fast shut, and briars and brambles have grown all over it; but still
Christ stands knocking, hoping it may open. In His hand there is a
lantern, and the picture is called 'The Light of the World.' Now, the
real picture, the one that the artist painted, from which all the others
like it have been printed, was painted just where this children's
hospital is; for the artist, whose name is Holman Hunt, had a house
there before the hospital was built. So he gave a very large copy of his
picture to the children, and wrote under it that it was from the artist
who made that picture, in that place, to Christ's little ones.
There are other hospitals for children, which are for all sorts of
illnesses and not only for incurable ones. There is one in Chelsea, not
far from here, and another, a very large one, in Great Ormond Street,
not very far from the school for sick children.
In the Great Ormond Street one they take in the very tiniest babies, and
so the nurses have plenty to do looking after these mites. Sometimes a
child is very naughty when it first comes in, and will do nothing but
scream and cry, and the nurses have to be very patient; but it always
happens that when it has been there for a time it loves them all so much
that it cries when it gets well and has to go home. It is a funny sight
to see a nurse or a sister having tea with perhaps three or four
children who are well enough to be up. They climb all over her like
little kittens, and love her so much she cannot get rid of them. In this
hospital each ward is named after some member of the Royal Family:
Helena Ward, Alice Ward, and so on, after the Princesses Helena and
Alice, daughters of Queen Victoria.
There is a home for cripple girls in London, and another for cripple
boys in a part of th
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