Some years after my first experience at nursing, my wife was suddenly attacked with typhus fever. I had to clear the house of children and servants, and send for two hospital nurses. When I was preparing for the night on the evening of their arrival, the nurse who was about to sit up smiled when she saw me bring into the patient’s room a coal-box full of paper parcels. She evidently looked upon it as the whim of an amateur. The next morning, she took quite another view of the case, and said: ‘I thought, sir, that I knew my business pretty well; but you certainly have taught me something I did not know—how to manage a sickroom fire. Why, I often let the fire out, and had to sit for hours in the cold, for fear of wakening patients when they were getting a good sleep, besides missing the fire afterwards, when they wakened, and I had not a warm drink for them or the means of making it. With your parcels, I had a good fire all night without a sound, and never had to soil my fingers.’
THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY’S WESTERN TERMINUS.
Port Moody, at the head of Burrard Inlet, was the point first selected as a terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway. The terminus finally decided upon, however, lies on Coal Harbour, near the entrance to this inlet, where the city of Vancouver is now springing up with great rapidity. The Company’s machine-shops and terminal works will be located here, and it promises to be an important commercial city at no distant date. Tenders have been spoken of for a fortnightly mail-service between that point and Yokohama and Hong-kong. It is also probable that the carrying of the bulk of tea shipments for England and the eastern American States and provinces will be done by this route. This makes the outlook all the more promising for Vancouver. Town-lots of land have been laid off by the provincial government fronting the anchorage on English Bay, a large portion of which will be used by the railway Company for terminal works.
‘LET THERE BE LIGHT.’
‘Let there be light;’ and through the abysmal deep,
Where Darkness sat enthroned in silent state,
A tremor passed, as though propitious Fate
Had roused some charmèd castle from the sleep
That sealed all eyes from battlement to keep;
For man or friend the warder dare not wait