Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/94

Rh the pupils a long history, which they were to write upon the writing-tablets which hung around the walls. They did it excellently; and I could not but marvel at their powers of memory and their quickness of apprehension and expression.

The following day an excursion was proposed to one of the islands in the neighbourhood of the city, where right-minded men have established a large institution for the reception and assistance of emigrants, who, in sickness or destitution, arrive in New York from Europe. The island is called “Ward's Island,” the institution “the Emigrant's Asylum.” One of its principal founders and supporters, Mr. Colden, formerly one of the chief lawyers of New York, and now a man of affluence, occupying himself solely and entirely with benevolent institutions, conducted Mrs. S. and myself, as well as Bergfalk, whom I persuaded to accompany us thither, in his carriage. Bergfalk is addicted to burying himself among law-books and acts of parliament, to living with the dead, and I must decoy him forth to breathe the fresh air with the living, and to live among them.

The day was glorious, and the sail in the boat upon that calm, fragrant water (I never knew water give forth a fragrance as it does here) in that warm autumnal sun, was one of the most agreeable imaginable. On Ward's Island people may form a slight idea of the difficult question which the Americans have to meet in the reception of the poor, and often most wretched population of Europe, and how they endeavour to meet it. Thousands who come clad in rags, and bowed down with sickness, are brought hither, succoured, clothed, fed, and then sent out westward to the States of the Mississippi, in case they have no friends or relations to receive them at a less remote distance. Separate buildings have been erected for the sick of typhus fever; for those afflicted with diseases of the eye; for sick children; for the convalescent; for lying-in