THE VISITORS' HOUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 129, 2 June 1926, Page 10

THE VISITORS' HOUR.

i c AT AUCKLAND HOSPITAL. • Those who feel pessimistic about the future of >the people in these days when there is so much eagerness for amusement, only need to rttend at Auckland Hospital some evening during the visitors' hour to fully realise that the milk of human kindness flows as strongly as ever. When the hell "strikes the hour for retiring," the departing crowd present the appearance of a large audience leaving after a big night at the theatre. To wander around the various wards and see the friends surrounding the beds of patients reveals fully the strength of sympathy with suffering. At one bed a young husband is kneeling, holding his wife's hand, and chatting quietly. At another an elderly husband sits on the bed while his wife holds the hand of her • boy who is standing on the other side. "How are you getting on," asked one visitor of a patient. "Splendid," was- the reply, "everybody is so kind, and the nurses are real dears." A little later the patient said, "You might ask my friends not to ring up, asking about mc. The nurses are just run off their feet answering the 'phone. "Oh, I thought the man at the office had the fixed reply 'getting on nicely,' i and never bothered to inquire," remarked a man standing by. "Not a bit of*it," said the patient, "the nurses are most careful to make inquiry before answering and it gives them such a lot of unnecessary work you know." Visitors bring grapes, oranges and flowers to thoir friends, violets being the most popular of the blossom.. "That patient over there has no visitors," said one lady, "I'll go and cheer her up," which soows that there is a true feeling of sympathy apart from family affection. "Take some of my fruit to her," says a patient in a bed near by.' No one can witness such evidence of loving kindness and leave the institution without a feeling of satisfaction and pleasure.