and have a tray put across the
bed, and upon it for them to play with are the toys that kind people
have sent. The rooms are divided into two parts, for boys and girls, and
the children are received between the ages of three and ten, so there
are no tiny babies here. The large windows are down to the ground, so
the children can see what is going on outside, and I will tell you what
they see: first, the Embankment; I have told you about that. It is like
a broad road, and taxi-cabs and bicycles and many other things are
always passing and repassing. Then the river, up which the salt sea
tide rolls every day, and when the weather is very cold and stormy the
gray and white sea-gulls fly inland up the river, and wheel and scream;
and when people throw bread for them they dart down upon it and catch it
before it can touch the water, so quick are they.

On the river there are, in summer, pleasure-steamers crowded with
people; these stop at a pier quite near the children's hospital, and
sometimes they are so full that not another person can get on. Then
there are great barges going slowly along, dragged by a little
steam-tug; perhaps there are three or four barges one after another, so
low in the water that it almost washes over their decks. They carry
great piles of hay or coal further up the river, and they look like
great lazy porpoises being towed along by the fussy little steamer. If
they are coming in with the tide, so that the current helps them, they
do not need the steam-tug; but men stand up at one end and help the
barge along, and guide it by a huge oar called a sweep. Some of these
men and their wives live always on these barges, and earn their living
by taking things up the river. There is only a tiny dirty little cabin,
the size of the smallest room you ever saw, and so Mrs. Bargeman can't
bring fine frocks with her; but that doesn't matter, for it isn't likely
that she has any. The faces of the men and women get quite brown with
being out always in the open air. It is a queer life that, always going
up and down, to and fro, upon the gray water, watching the red sun sink
at night and seeing him rise again; watching the sunlight ripple in the
water by day, and seeing the lights from the shore shine out sparkling
like jewels at night.

The barges are quite low and have no funnels, so they can pass under the
bridges; but the steamers have to bow down their funnels when they come
to a bridge, and then they raise them