large-sized rooms. But how shall I describe to you the spectacle which was
presented to me, on my entering the first of these? But half the
casements, of which there were six, were glazed, and these were obscured
with dirt, almost as much as the other windowless ones were darkened by
the dingy shutters, which the shivering inmates had fastened to, in order
to protect themselves from the cold. In the enormous chimney glimmered the
powerless embers of a few sticks of wood, round which, however, as many of
the sick women as could approach, were cowering; some on wooden settles,
most of them on the ground, excluding those who were too ill to rise; and
these last poor wretches lay prostrate on the floor, without bed,
mattress, or pillow, buried in tattered and filthy blankets, which,
huddled round them as they lay strewed about, left hardly space to move
upon the floor. And here, in their hour of sickness and suffering, lay
those whose health and strength are spent in unrequited labour for
us--those who, perhaps even yesterday, were being urged onto their unpaid
task--those whose husbands, fathers, brothers and sons, were even at that
hour sweating over the earth, whose produce was to buy for us all the
luxuries which health can revel in, all the comforts which can alleviate
sickness. I stood in the midst of them, perfectly unable to speak, the
tears pouring from my eyes at this sad spectacle of their misery, myself
and my emotion alike strange and incomprehensible to them. Here lay women
expecting every hour the terrors and agonies of child-birth, others who
had just brought their doomed offspring into the world, others who were
groaning over the anguish and bitter disappointment of miscarriages--here
lay some burning with fever, others chilled with cold and aching with
rheumatism, upon the hard cold ground, the draughts and dampness of the
atmosphere increasing their sufferings, and dirt, noise, and stench, and
every aggravation of which sickness is capable, combined in their
condition--here they lay like brute beasts, absorbed in physical
suffering; unvisited by any of those Divine influences which may ennoble