Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/231

Rh Some of them were wildly leaping about under the beautiful trees, others were fighting. I was told that many of the women who dance at the Quai aux fleurs, come into this section of La Salpétriére.

It did me good to see, in another section, the cheerful and kindly manner of the nurses.

“We think,” said a young, handsome nurse, “that it does the sick good to see people cheerful about them. Poor things, they have trouble enough with their own sufferings!”

The visits of relatives and friends, is permitted only during a certain part of the day. A mother lay there in her bed, wringing her hands in despair, and calling for her son. The appointed, last hour was soon over, and he—was not come.

It is a pleasure to turn from these scenes of human misery, to others which awaken a hope of a better future.

Foremost amongst these at the present time, stands the evangelical church in Paris, on account of its school, its important Deaconess-institution, and its teachers. It is from this church, that, for several years, a number of sermons and spiritual orations have gone forth into all lands where the French language is spoken, with a new vitalization, for the heart and for domestic life. It was from the bosom of this assembly, that Adolphi Monad's “Dying-Sighs” lately breathed forth consolation and peace, for millions of hearts in the whole Christian world. It is there that, A. Vinet's most gifted disciple, the Swiss Edmond de Presancé, and his distinguished fellow-laborers in the Revue Chrétienne, open, at the present time, new