The Capacities Of This
Building, The Mount Vernon Hotel, Though Stated On The Best Authority, Can
Scarcely Be Credited - It Is Said To Make Up 3000 Beds!
Owing to the high rates of house-rent and the difficulty of procuring
servants, together with the exorbitant wages
Which they require, many
married couples, and even families, reside permanently at the hotels.
Living constantly in public, without opportunity for holding family
intercourse, and being without either home cares or home pleasures,
nomade, restless, pleasure-seeking habits are induced, which have led
strangers to charge the Americans with being destitute of home life. That
such is the case to some extent is not to be denied; but this want is by
no means generally observed. I have met with family circles in the New
World as united and affectionate as those in the Old, not only in country
districts, but in the metropolis itself; and in New England there is
probably as much of what may be termed patriarchal life as anywhere in
Europe.
The public charities of New York are on a gigantic scale. The New York
Hospital, a fine stone building with some large trees in front, situated
in Broadway, was one which pleased me as much as any. Two of the
physicians kindly took me over the whole building, and explained all the
arrangements. I believe that the hospital contains 650 beds, and it is
generally full, being not only the receptacle for the numerous accident
cases which are of daily occurrence in New York, but for those of a large
district besides, which are conveniently brought in by railroad. We first
went into the recent-accident room, where the unhappy beings who were
recently hurt or operated upon were lying. Some of them were the most
piteous objects I ever witnessed, and the medical men, under the
impression that I was deeply interested in surgery, took pains to exhibit
all the horrors. There were a good many of the usual classes of
accidents, - broken limbs and mangled frames. There was one poor little boy
of twelve years old, whose arms had been torn to pieces by machinery; one
of them had been amputated on the previous day, and, while the medical men
displayed the stump, they remarked that the other must be taken off on the
next day. The poor boy groaned with a more than childish expression of
agony on his pale features, probably at the thought of the life of
helplessness before him. A young Irishman had been crushed by a railway
car, and one of his legs had been amputated a few hours previously. As the
surgeon altered the bandages he was laughing and joking, and had been
singing ever since the operation - a remarkable instance of Paddy's
unfailing lightheartedness.
But, besides these ordinary accidents, there were some very characteristic
of New York and of a New York election. In one ward there were several men
who had been stabbed the night before, two of whom were mortally wounded.
There were two men, scarcely retaining the appearance of human beings, who
had been fearfully burned and injured by the explosion of an infernal
machine.
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