Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/309

Rh travel as cheaply as possible, she look a slow train, Lei us say, on a Monday evening. She reached her destination late on Wednesday afternoon, very much exhausted and very ill. Although almost six feet tall, she weighed, before going, just ninety-seven pounds. She had the lustrous eyes and the pink Hush associated with consumption; her pale face was suffused with a cold, clammy sweat; and she had the cruel cough, which wracked her chest and would not let her rest. The first thing she did was to go to a home for young women, where she asked to stay over night, so that in the morning she could go to the sanitarium where her stay had been arranged for. They would not take her in. It was their rule to refuse consumptives, even for a night; and with the name of the 'Poor Nazarene' over their door, they turned her away.

The reader, if he have read only this paper, will now see that there was no occasion for this. We might dilate upon the spirit of Christliness, to which this institution would ostensibly lay claim, and through which spirit this very sick traveler might surely have been given shelter until the morning at least. But upon a purely practical basis, there is no reason why, with elementary knowledge and common sense, such as those controlling such an institution should have, this sick one could not have been provided for without in the least jeopardizing the health of any other person. The progress of civilization is never furthered, indeed it is most horribly retarded, whenever the stigma of inhumanity is fixed upon the fair countenance of religion.