But there was a man in New York, who, when he read the Citizens' Association's manifesto, thought it a most astonishing falsehood, either of the kind known as a lie, or of that kind which people tell sometimes when they are talking of things about which they know nothing; for his duties had called him to Bellevue Hospital on sundry occasions, and he had there witnessed, with his own eyes, sundry things which made his blood boil with indignation; and when he read the manifesto of the Citizens' Association, he determined to correct it. Of what this man had seen at Bellevue Hospital, some faint conception may be formed from the following facts: There was scarcely a bed there, in any of the wards, which was free from vermin; patients who took most care of the beds, were always liable to get lousy in the water closets; only a single clean sheet a week was allowed, no matter how filthy a bed might become through the poor patient's weak misfortunes; the blankets were dirty; to keep the coverlets clean, for "whited-sepulchre" purposes, when visitors called, they were taken off nights; the cooking of the institution was done by a drunken, filthy cook, and was served to the patients on what had once been tin dishes, but had been so often polished "clean" that they had became rusty sheet-iron plates; the "orderlies," who were paid to attend to the sick, were tyrannical, and little or no attention was paid to the complaints of the sufferers. The only thing a poor sick man had to sit on was a stool, with a seat of about twelve inches by fourteen inches in size, without a back (and most of the sick had weak backs). The sick poor, picked up in the streets, for example, and carried there, had their outer garments taken off, and were put to bed without washing, with their under clothes on, and had no "change of raiment" till they died! The wards were cold in winter, and the poor were glad of even their filthy rags to keep them warm. Generally the bed in which a poor fellow died remained as he left it, unchanged, for the comfort of the next occupant and corpse! But this is quite enough, we opine, for the reader's entire satisfaction.