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The young man's frame appeared convulsed by some internal emotion. He knew that his mother had resolved to open a subject he hoped would be forever sealed.

He did not at first answer; but seeing that she waited for a response, he said in a low tone, "Why ask me?"

66 Because, William, I must do it. It is the source of great unhappiness to me that you exhibit a disregard of sacred things."

"I do not disregard things I consider sacred, but I detest priestcraft and all other hypocrisy."

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"And do you never intend to go to single pang," he muttered between his

church?"

"Never."

Mrs. Holt rose and essayed to leave the room. She really hardly knew what she was doing. The stern, severe "Never" fell on her ears like some terrible irrevocable doom-doom for her child. It was the first harsh word he had ever spoken to her. Through all their hardships and sufferings, despite his fierce, ungovernable temper and passionate outbreaks, he had never spoken to her a word before with such an emphasis. She felt she could not endure it, and attempted, as I have said, and scarce knowing why, to leave the room.

She only reached the door. Then leaning against it, she gave way to her grief in a burst of passionate demonstrations, in sobs and tears and hysterical groans.

Holt rose quickly and walked up and down the little apartment. His look was hard-hard as stone. Up and down, down and up, with an expression which got to be almost demoniacal.

Suddenly it changed. He stepped up, and laid his hand on her arm.

"Mother, I will go."

She did not appear to regard him. The paroxysm had got control of her. "Mother," he repeated, "do you not hear me? I tell you I WILL go." She appeared a little quieter, but it was evident, for the moment, she could not respond.

Mother," exclaimed Holt, " for God's sake, do not go on so. Speak to me!"

teeth, as he descended to the sidewalk, "why not into a church? To be sure, there is my oath to the contrary, but I will break it, if it is to make her feel easier."

When he came home, about ten o'clock that night, he was in his ordinary mood, and greeted his mother quite as usual.

"Abel, where do you go Sundays? "Do you mean to what meeting?" "Yes."

"Same one always."

"I forget about it."
"Methodist meeting-house in

street."

"What time does it go in?" "Half-past ten in the morning, halfpast three in the afternon."

"Good preacher?"

"First-rate. Ain't afraid of any body. No kid glove nor fancy soap. Won't you come and hear him?"

"I rather think I will." And Holt went.

He saw a small, middle-aged man enter the pulpit, not in any way remarkable in appearance. After the usual exercises, to which Holt paid not the least attention, the preacher announced his text: Matthew vii. 20. "Wherefore, by their fruits ye shall know them."

The subject was one which would naturally attract Holt. The discourse was fragmentary, but practical. I subjoin some brief extracts from it.

"My friends," said the minister, "people are all the time trying to make forms answer for good deeds. As I have often told you, there is no virtue in a mere form, there is no piety in the mere act of coming to church. I don't know the various motives which may bring you here to-day; but the great question is what fruit do you produce on week-days? Answer me that! Never mind Sundays. It is the six days of the week I ask you about, and if they are spent in a perpetual selfish strife without a thought of doing some good, do you believe you will be any the better for coming here on the Sabbath day? I doubt it. It only goes to show your hypocrisy. It is as much as to say, I will pay up for six days' service of the devil by putting on my Sunday coat for a few hours, and crying, 'Lord, Lord.'

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"Look over the world, and apply these words, By their fruits ye shall know them,' fruits which bear from day to day and year to year not a single last gasp crop. There is a great deal of that going on. A man, after a long life of selfish acquisition, with no generous emotions even, but always having the one object, namely, how to get the best of a bargain, or an 'operation,' when he finds it is time to leave this world, and he knows he cannot use his capital in the world to come, I say such a man often turns philanthropist, and gives money here and gives it there, and his name appears in the newspapers, and monuments are raised for him, and he goes down to the grave with great glorification.

"Now what would our Lord say to such a man. He would say, 'Friend,

you had no right to amass all that

wealth. You are now three score and ten, and during the fifty years in which you have been getting it together you have neglected my work, you have done and permitted much evil all those fifty years, and have become, by reason of these great possessions purse-proud, vain, and selfish, and now, as you are about to die, you seek still to aggrandize yourself by giving away what no longer belongs to you.”

"Ah, brethren, do not put off your good performances till fear of the judgment urges you. Let your daily lives overflow with kindness to one another. Then we shall have the true heaven upon earth. Seek not to acquire great wealth. If you are prospered, distribute as you go along. It is by the personal effort of every human being to be good, and not by preaching that the world is to be reformed. A great preacher, or a great lecturer, or a great moral essayist cannot do half the good that one sincere disciple of Christ does who lives according to the law of love."

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Holt was a good deal surprised to find he had been listening to the sermon, and that it was already at an end. He stopped, curious to look at the preacher as he passed out, but he could discern no mark of consciousness or self-sufficiency in his bearing.

He turned away as if disappointed with the scrutiny. He had calculated on discovering something in the preacher's face which should not accord with what he had been saying, possibly which might give the lie to it.

He walked home slowly with his long arms thrown behind him. The next Sunday he went to hear the same man again.

THE OLD HOSPITAL-GONE.

THAT most veracious of chroniclers, Diedrich Knickerbocker, is said to have written his famous History of New York in a room of the Independent Columbian Hotel, "which commanded a very pleasant view of the new grounds on the Collect, together with the rear of the Poor House and Bridewell and a full front of the Hospital, so that it was the cheerfullest room in the whole house." The Poor House is gone, the Bridewell is gone, and now, alas! the old Hospital is gone. With what emotions, if New Yorkers have any emotions, must our old citizens have seen the sight which I saw to-day! What once was green sward, studded with trees, whose leaves have withered and opened for a hundred years, is now excavated earth, and at the hands of delving Milesians the ivy-entwined front of the New York Hospital is fast being demolished, and before these pages reach my readers, there will scarce a trace be left of the venerable pile.

Let us go back, and, while we may, tell the story of this land-mark of old New York. What we are about to write may sound like a lament, and so we would have it; for we believe that this hospital of such glorious memory, for its relief afforded to the sufferings of humanity, has been needlessly sacrificed to the Vandalizing spirit of new New York. Were it the Emperor of Erie, Mr. James Fisk, Jr., or men of his ilk, who had razed these foundations, we perhaps should have felt no surprise; but when we consider that those who have done this are the governors of the institution, men of historic name in New York, we cannot but be amazed at the deed of desecration, which we see committed at their command. It is said, and it is undoubtedly true, that the hospital did not support itself. Who wants a hospital to be self-supporting? Who ex

pects that it will? When it does, it is no longer an hospital, but a private boarding-house, where medical attendance is included in the bill. Shall we build an hospital for the reception of wealthy tradesmen, who find it a little inconvenient to be ill at home, and for bachelor millionaires who have no home? Shall we place it on Fifth Avenue, where an accident happens about once a month, or in the green fields of Bloomingdale, in going to which a man might die twenty times over before reaching a ward?

It cannot be denied that the location of the old hospital, or of the City Hospital, as it was very often called, was one of the very best that could be found for the purposes for which it was intended.

In close proximity to the wharves and piers, where the mighty engines of commerce are constantly crushing so many in their revolutions, in the very heart of lower Broadway, with its countless sources of accidents, in fact very accessible to the places where half the casualties and the crimes of the metropolis occur, could it have remained where it was, it would have been for the next hundred years, as it has been for the last, a true place of succor, or when it must be, of calm death to the suffering poor.

If the money for the support of this time-honored and successful charity were not forthcoming by ordinary means, such as appeals to the State and City Legislatures, extraordinary ones should have been adopted. Whatever may be the faults of New Yorkers, want of liberality certainly cannot be said to be among them. We have carefully read the two especial reports which the governors have caused to be printed in regard to the removal, and we fail to find in them either any evidence of its necessity, or any proof that any vigorous

steps were ever taken to obviate any supposed need of this kind. The policy of the governors seems to have been. drifting, or, Micawber-like, until at last it has culminated in this tearing-down process, which was undoubtedly a great surprise to those who vainly imagined that the Hospital had grown into one of the best possible locations for its

needs.

When the city of Paris removes the Hotel Dieu, for reasons that do not at all apply to our magnificent old hospital, surrounded as it was by green grass on every side, a new one is erected in the very centre of the city on a beautiful island, and on land most valuable for other purposes; but the governors of the New York Hospital tear their buildings down, to allow the Board of Charities and Correction to replace it by a receiving ward, which will be the only hospital in the lower and middle part of the city. But we cannot dwell longer on this theme, and we must leave the subject of the removal, or rather of the annihilation of the New York Hospital, with the final remark that many believe that it was unnecessary, and more than that, cruel to those who have a right to expect that the civilization which demands the sacrifice of health and limb, yea, even of life in its service, will furnish an asylum in the place where it is needed, for the amelioration of their woes. But, old building, hail! and farewell! and now for thy epitaph. The charter of the New York Hospital was granted in 1770, when "George III., by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, sent greeting to his loving subjects, Peter Middleton, Samuel Bard, and John Jones, physicians, by their humble petition presented unto our trusty and well-beloved Cadwallader Colden, Esq., Lieutenant-Governor, and granted a charter for the society of the Hospital in the city of New York, in America." Among the names to whom this trust was conveyed, besides the officials of the city, are many that are still familiar and dear to New York. How Knickerbock

er-like they sound! Watts, De Lancey, Livingston, Duane, Lispenard, Bayard, Rutherford, Colden, Van Cortlandt, Morris, Bogert, Clarkson, Beekman, Provoost, Duryea, Stuyvesant, Verplanck, Roosevelt, De Peyster, Rutgers, Le Roy, Du Bois, and Buchanan. These were the honored men of New York, who just about one hundred years ago undertook the work of founding the New York Hospital. What a pity that the present governors did not wait at least till the cycle was complete, before beginning their work of destruction! A proper poetic sense, would have constrained them to wait another year, when they might have celebrated the centenary by putting the axe to those old trees, planted by their forefathers in the vain hope that they might be left until the Father of Nature should cause them to die.

The twenty-six governors held their first meeting on the 28th of July, 1771. Considerable contributions were made through the exertions of Dr. John Fothergill and Sir William Johnson, eminent physicians in London, by many of the inhabitants of that city, and other places in Great Britain, and in 1772, the Legislature granted an annual allowance of eight hundred pounds. In 1773 five acres of ground were purchased of Mrs. Barclay and Mr. Rutgers, and the foundations were laid on the 27th of July of the same year. On February 28, 1775, when the building was almost completed, it was nearly consumed by fire. The war of Independence prevented the completion of the edifice, but it was used during the war for barracks, and occasionally as an hospital. It was not until January 3, 1791, that the house was in a proper condition to receive patients. It is at this point that the real existence of the hospital begins. The building thus erected was the one fronting the main entrance on Broadway. Some additions and improvements were made in it, however, from time to time. It was known as the Main Building. In it were the apothecary's shop, the office, the dining-rooms, and the governors'

rooms, where met the various committees. In its amphitheatre were achieved the surgical triumphs of Wright Post, Kearney Rodgers, Valentine Mott, and Alexander H. Stevens, names which have made the surgery of our country respected throughout the world. The south building on Duane street was erected in 1853, replacing one that was erected in 1806. This noble building was in many respects a model of hospital architecture. The north building on Worth street was erected in 1841. The main and north hospitals are now torn down, while the south is to be left cooped up by a solid block of warehouses, with noisy streets on every side. It certainly will not be an hospital when this situated. Pest House would be a more appropriate name.

We cannot imagine why all the buildings were not torn down at once. "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well."

It should be stated that the Bloomingdale Hospital for the Insane on the borders of the Central Park, is also part and parcel of the Society of the New York Hospital. It does not, however, fall within the scope of this paper to give any more than this passing notice of that excellent asylum, which is about to be removed to White Plains

Since 1829, more than one hundred thousand patients have been treated in this hospital, of whom more than seventy thousand have been cured while ten thousand have died. More than nine thousand were relieved. The remainder were discharged at their own request, or eloped. There are no published records prior to 1829. In the year 1868, two hundred more patients were treated than in 1867.

There is a valuable library of more than eight thousand volumes, relating to medical science, connected with the hospital. Just one word more about the destruction of this hospital and we pass on to give a sketch of the inner life in such an institution, as seen by a member of the resident medical staff.

As the writer was lately passing the remains of the old building in a Broad

way stage, a young lady sitting near him, on seeing the ruins, the workmen were just pulling the ivy from the front wall,-exclaimed, "That is the work of those horrid doctors; they ought to be strung up." Now this expression is but a fair type of what is generally believed by the people of our city and country who do not have accurate information as to just how much the doctors have to do with the management of such hospitals. The fact is that the Physicians and Surgeons of the New York Hospital have no duties in connection with the institution, except the care of the sick. There is not a physician in the Board of Governors. It is true that this Board confers with the physicians, and asks advice as to the care of the institution; but so far as is shown by the two reports before refer ed to, while giving a great deal of deference to the opinions of medical men who died some seventy years ago, they paid no attention to the advice of their own board; at any rate, to the governors, and not to the "horrid doctors,” should be ascribed the blame or awarded the credit of the tearing down.

This hospital would not have had an existence, without the efforts of the physicians, Doctors Bard, Jones, and Middleton, who founded it. It could not have been sustained if the labors of the long line of physicians and surgeons who visited the sick within its walls had not been gratuitously given, and yet medical men have not participated in its management.

Many of the mistakes in the financial care and success of such hospitals may have depended on the want of cooperation between the medical staff and the directors. We believe it to be a radical error in the management of such institutions that the doctors are excluded from their full share in the directorship. The best hospitals we have ever had in this country, were those that were exclusively controlled by the medical officers of the United States Army. We disclaim any idea, however, in this article of speaking by the authority of the medical staff of the hos

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