. Beauty for ashes. had it in some form, not only thepulmonary affection, but tuberculosis of the skin,glands and bones. No one could visit these caseswithout having an insight into our high death ratefrom that disease. We visited a family in one oldhouse where the father was dying with consump-tion. The baby was crawling about on the floor,near the bed, and another child, a little older, climbedup and sat by the fathers pillow. Flies swarmedover the patient and over the floor, and in spite ofthe nurses stern admonitions he was untidy and care-less. It gave one a creepy feeling to be in the ro
. Beauty for ashes. had it in some form, not only thepulmonary affection, but tuberculosis of the skin,glands and bones. No one could visit these caseswithout having an insight into our high death ratefrom that disease. We visited a family in one oldhouse where the father was dying with consump-tion. The baby was crawling about on the floor,near the bed, and another child, a little older, climbedup and sat by the fathers pillow. Flies swarmedover the patient and over the floor, and in spite ofthe nurses stern admonitions he was untidy and care-less. It gave one a creepy feeling to be in the rooma minute, and we knew that the wife and babies weredoomed to his fate, to say nothing of those whom theflies visited and dined with. But ah, the ghastlyfaces and hollow eyes, and ah, the sound of thatdreadful cough, in room after room we visited, wherethe White Death throttles its myriad victims! Theywere bread-winners, most of them; mothers, so manyof them, whose little broods would be left to the careof 03 Q ^^BEAUTY FOR ASHES 73 Pneumonia claimed its toll in winter, and gave usmany patients, when icy rains dripped through theleaky roofs, and cold winds whistled through theloose casings, and blew the rags out of the brokenwindow panes. There was rheumatism, too; one ofthe worst enemies of the poor, for it cripples so manypast earning power. One old woman, coughing and hobbling, showed usher cellar, half full of seep water. All the cel-lars in this row are this way, she declared, butthe landlord says he dont see no call to drainem. Most of the houses we visited had no cellars, andthose there were proved wet and mouldy. Many ofthe dwellings were built flat on the ground, some-what after the peculiar manner of the early settlers,who settled down wearily and hard when they through this part of the country are still to befound cabins built in wet, undrained hollows, withtimbers laid next to the earth. No wonder ourgrandmothers were twisted and bent at fifty. Th
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