It
is a huge room, with a lofty and echoing roof, a little in the style of
a church. Before the war, when the building was a school, this rather
grandiose apartment no doubt witnessed speechifyings and prize
distributions. May the time be not far distant when it will once again
be used for those observances! Meanwhile its vast floor is occupied by
ranks of beds.
Those beds are generally untenanted. Visitors who, like the lady in the
play, have taken the wrong turning, are apt to find themselves in the
receiving hall, and, gazing at its array of vacant beds, have been known
to conclude that the hospital was empty. (As if any war-hospital, in
these times, could be empty!) But our patients have only a short
acquaintanceship with the receiving-hall beds: these beds are momentary
resting-places on their journey healthwards: they are not meant to lie
in but to lie _on_. The three-score wards for which the receiving hall
is the clearing house are the real destination of the patients; down
long corridors, in wards far cosier because less ornate than this, the
patient will find "his" bed ready for him, the bed which he is not to
lie on but _in_.
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