Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/217

 with a little sigh of hopeless yearning, such a glory being surely too impossible for realisation, "How I wish I had one like that!" When they upset their boxes of sugar-plums—which they all did by trying unscientific experiments with the lids and original modes of convoy, bottom uppermost—there was no outcry, only a general scramble of little puddy hands, to pick up, and gather in, the wreck. I will not answer for the strictest honour of the wreckers. I think I saw more than one transfer of sugary jetsam and flotsam from the floor to unlawful mouths; but there was no complaint, and wreckers are notoriously given to this kind of illegal transfer.

After the toys had been distributed, the tree was drawn away, the lights put out, and the magic lantern set agoing. The story of Cinderella, and the adventures of a light-minded cat; an energetic cobbler who moved his arms and twitched his thread; a jerking Blondin wheeling a barrow along his tight rope with heroic courage if with an uneasy motion, and whisking face about in the twinkling of an eye and with the snap of a tin accompaniment behind the screen—with many other beautiful and æsthetic pictures, all explained and managed by the medical assistant in charge of the ward—brought forth bursts of childish applause; but in a noticeably feebler volume of sound than if the audience had been anything but a hospital audience. This was perhaps the most touching fact of the whole day—the subdued and plaintive tone of sickness running through the joy and excitement of the little company. How glad one felt for that joy given to them in the midst of so much suffering! They were all as well cared for during the time of the magic lantern as they had been in that of the Christmas tree; and I saw the young medical assistants hoist up such of the little people as had strayed behind backs, and seat them on their shoulders to give them a good view. This too was an incident not without value, if taken as a symbol; and with this, as eminently significant and suggestive, I will end my meagre account of the New Year's-day festivities in the Pantia Ralli ward of King's College Hospital.

One word as to the origin of that ward. It had long been a matter of regret to Dr. Priestley, as a physician connected with King's College Hospital, that they had no ward specially devoted to children. So many cases were brought to the hospital, which they were obliged to send away to die because they had no place for them, that the need of a children's ward, and the immense benefit that would result from it, became daily more pressing in his mind, and an idea which he earnestly longed to see realised. One night he was sitting with Mr. Ralli, a liberal and wealthy Greek merchant, whose name is well known to most of us; and while waiting for the moment when his attendance should be required up-stairs—for Mrs. Ralli was ill—in the course of a discussion on workhouse infirmaries, he mentioned his desire for this children's ward, and the great need there was for one at King's College Hospital; and he spoke as he felt, earnestly and warmly, but without a thought of his friend's power or possibilities. The next morning Mr. Ralli sent him a cheque for five thousand pounds, desiring him to found therewith the ward he desired, to be called the Pantia Ralli ward in memory of, and as a memorial to, his father whom he had much loved, and, in part, as a thank-offering for the safe passage of his wife through a time of danger. The money was to be invested in such securities as he approved of, and Dr. Priestley was to be one of the trustees; there were to be twelve beds in the ward, and he reserved to himself the right of sending children there when he liked. Finding on calculation that there was not enough for the twelve beds proposed, Mr. Ralli added another thousand pounds to make up the sum needed. This then was the origin of this pretty and delightful ward—a chance conversation between an earnest-minded man, deeply touched by the sorrows he was unable to relieve, and his generous friend, whose heart caught the divine spark that warmed the other, and who practically fulfilled what that other had mentally originated. Alas! there was to-day only the sweet and sorrowful widow to see the good work of her husband: he having "entered into his rest" meanwhile; and the memorial he had designed for his father having become now his own.

He could have raised none of greater value. In old times medical students cared nothing for children's diseases, and knew nothing of them; now they are educated to understand the special nature of these diseases, and taught to give them the attention and thought they demand. And as we have learned to think that beginning at the beginning is a better system than tinkering midway, the prevention of disease in childhood is now accepted as a wiser thing than leaving the little ones to perish