A plan, for
instance, is on foot for sending twenty of the patients to Madeira for
the winter. The British Consul, to his honour, guarantees their
maintenance, if the Hospital will pay their passage out and home. Some
may say--An unnecessary expense--a problematical benefit. Be it so. I
believe that it will not be such; that it may save many lives--they may
revive: but were it not so, I would still say Give. Let them go, even
if every soul in that ship were doomed. Let them go. Let them drink the
fresh sea breeze before they die; let them see the green tropic world;
let them forget their sorrow for a while; let them feel springing up
afresh in them the celestial fount of hope. We let the guilty criminal
eat and drink well the morn ere he is led forth to die--shall we not do
as much by those who are innocent?
But especially would I say, try to lessen such suffering as that for
which I plead to-day, because it is undeserved in the true sense of that
word--not earned by any act of their own. These poor souls suffer for no
sins of their own; they have done nothing to bring on themselves a
disease which attacks too often the fairest, the seemingly strongest and
healthiest, the most temperate and most pure.
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