I cannot leave the subject of “warders” without bearing my testimony to their excellency as a class—I specially refer to those in charge of wards, and not to their washerwomen and plumbers and glaziers _confrères_. The multiplicity of returns they have to render daily, the alterations, however trivial, that are constantly occurring and have to be noted, and the serious consequences attending the slightest error or omission, all combine to make their duties and responsibilities more arduous than any class of men I have seen. Their pay for this, moreover, is so small—29s. a week, with a gradual rise—that many otherwise excellent men shrink from accepting promotion. The colour-sergeants of the army might learn a lesson from these warders, and if the “descriptive return” in use, and which supplies every information, was substituted for the ponderous ledgers, small books, defaulter sheets, etc., as used in the army, it would come like the Waverley pen— As a blessing and boon to sergeants and men. CHAPTER XIX. “THE CONVALESCENT WARD.” ON my admission into hospital I was at first sent to the convalescent ward, a huge room devoted to light and unpronounced cases. It accommodates 40 patients, and the entire furniture may be roughly estimated as consisting of 40 beds, 40 tables, 40 chairs, one shovel and tongs, and one thermometer. The beds are ranged round the entire room, the tables and chairs a yard apart forming two rows down the centre; the thermometer is suspended from a beam, the shovel is chained to one fire-place, and the tongs to the other. A high desk and a still higher stool complete the furniture of this singular room. The fixtures are of a more unique kind; at one end are the cabinets, at the other the lavatories. These are simply boarded partitions, extending only about three feet from the ground—so constructed as to make it absolutely impossible to conceal more than one-third of the body, however engaged; thus admirably adapted for observation, but utterly regardless of privacy or decency, and revolting in their proximity to a room devoted to convalescents. Along the walls here and there are chains hanging. These are the alarm bells for communicating with the outer yard in case of fire, mutiny, or other emergency. At each corner are the padded cells—grim, sombre constructions—admirably adapted for deadening sound, and fitted with every appliance for the restraint of violent and demented criminals. The proximity of these cells is very awful, and the shrieks that occasionally emanate from them, and the sights I have seen, would have filled me with horror six months previously. The treatment of convalescents is as original as can well be conceived. The day is mapped out into the following portions, which are observed with a punctuality seldom attained except by chronometers:—