The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-12-12
A GREAT HOSPITAL.
The Hotel Dieu, Paris, Was Founded

The Hotel Dieu. Paris, Was Founded
 Thirteen Centuries Ago
 A celebrated French writer has some
 where said: Hospitals are splendid
 palaces of misery The phrase is in-
 adequate to describe the reality when we
 consider the proportion of these build
 ings, their comfortable interior, their almost grandoise and attractive man. agement, a striking contrast to the pale
 and hopeless faces of those whose totter- ing steps lead them hither. People are
 wrong in having an instinctive dread of
 the hospital. Far from looking on these
 institutions as privileged places many
 have an apprehensive dread of them.
 One would think that some mysterious | force impelled them hither against their | own will, and that set in movement by sort of superstition they read above | their portal the fatal words of Dante: Abandon hope all ye who enter here.' These thoughts suggested themselves 1 naturally to me the other day as I
 walked through the wards and waiting
 rooms of the Hotel Dieu, Paris. It is a favorite pilgrimage of mine the best and most profitable of all, that which consists in following between two rows of beds the Calvary of suffering united to poverty
 Hardly do we pass through the outer entrance door of the main building
 when we find ourselves in face of a splendid inner courtyard, to which we mount by steps and which is surround ed by colonnades. Shadow-like forms are seated or slowly walking under these porticos, which suggest the an- cient atrium of some monastery belong ing to the Middle Ages. These are the convalescents whom one thus perceives, the personification of hope, the men on one side, clothed in long grey great coats, soldiers of illness; the women on the other, with faces gayer under dain- ty linen caps, all warming in the air and in the southside sun Those who enter the hospital can, while waiting for the short formality of registration perceive these happy ones restored to life, and also on raising their eyes above the portal of the court, they see head of Christ sculptured in the stone and below these words: Ego sum Resur- rectio ct Vita" Happy they who grasp the true sense of these immortal words, take courage and commit to God the care of curing their poor worn bodies while purifying their souls by resigna- ton.
 In the two wings of the Hotel Dieu are two other courts planted with trees and green with delightful grass plots. There the surgeons send the convales- cents when they are able to bear the air and can recruit by direct contact with nature, or at least with its sem blance, From the windows which look upon these enclosures the eye can take in all the Place du Parvis de Notre | Dame, frequented above all on Sundays | by the bird merchants. This little | feathered world gathered there to find 1 new masters. affords hv it's hrieht color and gay warbling to those sick who can enjoy the sight a suggestion of health, of movement, of life, of all that is joy and song.
 The Hotel Dieu is situated in the He | St. Louis, adjoining the He de la Cite ] These strips of ground, separated by the two sides of the Seine from the mainland of paris, from it's modern centre. The He de la Cite was the whole of the Lutetia of the Gauls, of the Romans and of the two first races of tFankish Kings All descriptions of Paris have compared this island to a ship at anchor in mid-stream, hence the 'rigln Of the ship which figures in the irms of the city, with the we'll known motto, Fluctaut nee mergitur.'