"Where congregations ne'er break up
And Sabbaths never end!"
Last week we had a thrilling event; one of the girls formerly in this Home was married, and we all went to the wedding, even the little tots who are too young for regular services. They afterwards told me they would like to go on Sundays, so I imagine they think the marriage ceremony a regular item of Divine worship. Alas! I almost disgraced myself when the clergyman solemnly announced to the intending bride and bridegroom that the holy estate of matrimony had been "ordained of God for the persecution of children"!
How you would have laughed to see me the other night. The steamer arrived at midnight, and as we were expecting some children I went down to meet them. There were three little boys, Esau, Joseph, and Nathan, eight, six, and four years of age. I bore them in triumph to the bathroom, feeling that even at that late hour cleanliness should be compulsory. But I soon desisted from my purpose and as quickly as possible bundled the dirty children into my neat, snowy beds! They kicked, they fought, they bit, they yelled and they swore! All my sleeping innocents awoke at the noise and added their voices to the confusion. I momentarily expected an in-rush of neighbours, and a summons the following day for cruelty to children.
Uriah has come to inform me that he cannot "cleave the splits," as his "stomach has capsized." I felt it incumbent to administer a dose of castor oil, thinking that might be sufficient punishment for what I had reason to believe was only a dodge to escape work. It was hard for me to give the oil, but harder still to have the boy look up after it with a quite cherubic smile, and ask if it were the same oil as Elisha gave the widow woman!
Whatever can survive in this land of difficulties survives with a zeal and vitality which only proves the strength of the obstacles overcome. The flies, the mosquitoes, and the rats are proofs. We have none of your meek little wharf rats here. Ours are brazen imps, sleek and shameless, undaunted by cats or men. Their footmarks are as big as those of young puppies (withal not too well-fed puppies), and their raids on man and beast alike ally them with the horde Pandora loosed. Each day the toll mounts. One morning Miss Perrin, the head nurse, awakened to find one of her prize North Labrador boots gnawed to the rim. All that remained to tell the tale was the bright tape by which it was hung up, and the skin groove through which the tape threads.
They ate the Entire Boot
On the next occasion of their public appearance the night nurse was summoned by agonized shrieks to the children's ward. A large rodent had climbed upon Ishimay's bed and bitten her. There were the marks of his teeth in her hand, and the blood was dripping. Nor do they limit their depredations to the hospital. The barn man turned over a bale of hay last week and disclosed no less than twenty-seven rats young and old, fat and lean, though chiefly fat. I rejoice to record that this galaxy at least has departed Purgatory-wards. The dentist left a whole bag of clean linen on the floor of his bedroom. The morning following he found that the raiders had eaten their way through the sack, cutting a series of neat round holes in each folded garment as they progressed. The scuffling and the squealing and the scraping and the gnawing and the scratching of rats in the walls and cupboards are worse than any phalanx of "Yohos" ever summoned from spookland! Oh! Pied Piper of Hamelin, why tarry so long!
December 14