It is a property of the Seaford air to make even persons with delicate appetites ready for three plain meals a day, with a meat supper to follow, and the convalescents are no exception to the rule. Tea and bread-and-butter for breakfast, bread-and-cheese and ale for the men, and cake and ale for the women as a snack in the way of lunch, good roast meat and vegetables for dinner, {92} with occasional pies or puddings, with another half-pint of ale; tea as usual; and a supper consisting of a slice of meat, bread, and another draught of beer—this is the most ordinary diet; but in many cases milk is substituted for ale, and there is also a morning draught of milk, or rum-and-milk, a lunch or supper of farinaceous food, and wine or special diet, according to the orders of the house surgeon, who visits the patients daily, or as often as may be required. Following the odour of the roast mutton, we see the male patients preparing to sit down to dinner in a good-sized room, where, to judge from the pleased and grateful faces of men and lads, they are quite ready to do justice to the repast. Barely furnished, and with table appointments of the plainest kind, the dining-room is not indicative of luxury; but the sauce of hunger is not wanting, and as we bow our leave-taking, there are signs that the money spent at this Seaford Hospital is well represented by the wholesome but expensive medicine of pure food and drink in ample quantities, prescribed under conditions which build up the strength, and restore life to the enfeebled frames of those to whom a month of such living must be an era in their history. The women's dining-room is, I am glad to see, more ornamental than that of the men. The walls are bright with gay paper, containing large and brilliantly coloured scenery, while the wide windows look seaward, and fill the large room with cheerful light. This is all the more essential as there is no other sitting-room for the female patients, and the more convenient furniture, especially a low wooden couch covered with a mattress, is adapted to the needs of those who require indoor recreation as well as frequent rest. The {93} men have a separate sitting-room in the basement, not a very cheerful apartment, but one which in the warm summer-time is cool, and adapted for the after-dinner doze, or for reading a book when the weather is not quite favourable for sitting out of doors.