"I'm goin' to have an operation to-morrow," said another exultingly.
"That's one blessed fact about children," said the attending nurse, "they never fret in anticipation. They look forward with positive pride to a new experience—even if it is an operation."
In one bright room three boys were playing a game of number-cards, one a hunchback, another with crippled lower limbs, and a third, seated on a long high bench, handling the cards with his toes, his arms and hands being useless.
The top part of the foot of the socks belonging to this last lad had been cut off, and he was picking the cards off the table with his bare toes; passing them from foot to foot, and replacing a certain card on the table, quite as expertly as another boy might do it with his fingers.
I walked into another room to see the little babies; blind, crooked-limbed, distorted, never going to be able to use their bodies properly.
"Why does God leave them here?" I demanded of grandmother as soon as we had reached the open air again.
"Perhaps," said grandmother quietly, "to give us the blessed privilege of acting the God toward them."
"Christianity means brotherhood, Pearl, dear," she added, after we had walked several yards in silence.
What a great country this America is! Caring for its ailing and crippled in such a beautiful way!
"Oh, China!" I cried, when I was all alone in my own room, "you would drown your blind, crooked-limbed, distorted babies, or throw them out on the hillsides to die! Oh, China! China! would you could come over here and see how America treats her 'weak and wounded, sick and sore?' These are the words of a church hymn."