seen my
little drooping friend in his egg-box, and he has always addressed his
dumb wonder to me what it meant, and why, in the name of a gracious God,
such things should be! . . . But, ladies and gentlemen," Dickens added,
"such things need NOT be, and will not be, if this company, which is a
drop of the life-blood of the great compassionate public heart, will
only accept the means of rescue and prevention which it is mine to
offer. Within a quarter of a mile of this place where I speak, stands a
once courtly old house, where blooming children were born, and grew up
to be men and women, and married, and brought their own blooming
children back to patter up the old oak staircase which stood but the
other day, and to wonder at the old oak carvings on the chimney-pieces.
In the airy wards into which the old state drawing-rooms and family
bedchambers of that house are now converted, are lodged such small
patients that the attendant nurses look like reclaimed giantesses, and
the kind medical practitioner like an amiable Christian ogre. Grouped
about the little low tables in the centre of the rooms, are such tiny
convalescents that they seem to be playing at having been ill. On the
doll's beds are such diminutive creatures that each poor sufferer is
supplied with its tray of toys: and, looking round, you may see how the
little tired flushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on
its way into the ark; or how one little dimpled arm has mowed down (as
I saw myself) the whole tin soldiery of Europe. On the walls of these
rooms are graceful, pleasant, bright, childish pictures. At the beds'
heads, hang representations of the figure which is the universal
embodiment of all mercy and compassion, the figure of Him who was once a
child Himself, and a poor one. But alas! reckoning up the number of beds
that are there, the visitor to this Child's Hospital will find himself
perforce obliged to stop at very little over thirty; and will learn,
with sorrow and surprise, that even that small number, so forlornly, so
miserably diminutive compared with this vast London, cannot possibly be
maintained unless the Hospital be made better known. I limit myself to
saying better known, because I will not believe that in a Christian
community of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, it can fail,
being better known, to be well and richly-endowed." It was a brave and
true prediction. The Child's Hospital has never since known want. T