was in a long, bright, clean room, and the sunset
was throwing splashes of light on the ceiling over his head.
He watched them idly for a time; then turned on his pillow. At once he
perceived a long, double row of clean white-painted iron beds, on which
lay or sat figures of men. Other figures, of women, glided here and
there noiselessly. They wore long, spreading dove-gray clothes, with a
starched white kerchief drawn over the shoulders and across the breast.
Their heads were quaintly white-garbed in stiff winglike coifs, fitting
close about the oval of the face. Then Thorpe sighed comfortably, and
closed his eyes and blessed the chance that he had bought a hospital
ticket of the agent who had visited camp the month before. For these
were Sisters, and the young man lay in the Hospital of St. Mary.
Time was when the lumber-jack who had the misfortune to fall sick or to
meet with an accident was in a sorry plight indeed. If he possessed a
"stake," he would receive some sort of unskilled attention in one of the
numerous and fearful lumberman's boarding-houses,--just so long as his
money lasted, not one instant more. Then he was bundled brutally into
the street, no matter what his condition might be. Penniless, without
friends, sick, he drifted naturally to the county poorhouse. There he
was patched up quickly and sent out half-cured. The authorities were
not so much to blame. With the slender appropriations at their disposal,
they found difficulty in taking care of those who came legitimately
under their jurisdiction. It was hardly to be expected that they
would welcome with open arms a vast army of crippled and diseased men
temporarily from the woods. The poor lumber-jack was often left broken
in mind and body from causes which a little intelligent care would have
rendered unimportant.
With the establishment of the first St. Mary's hospital, I think at Bay
City, all this was changed. Now, in it and a half dozen others conducted
on the same principles, the woodsman receives the best of medicines,
nursing, and medical attendance. From one of the numerous agents who
periodically visit the camps, he purchases for eight dollars a ticket
which admits him at any time during the year to the hospital, where he
is privileged to remain free of further charge until convalescent. So
valuable are these institutions, and so excellently are they maintained
by the Sisters, that a hospital agent is always welcome, even in
those camp
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