6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



is system, silent, watchful, swift, efficient. Five thousand immigrants 

 in a day is no uncommon figure. Five thousand six hundred passed 

 through last Easter Sunday. Five hundred and twenty-five persons 

 are employed on the island exclusive of the score of medical officers and 

 the hundred or more attendants of the Public Health Service. 



It is an island crowded full of pathos and tragedy, of startling con- 

 trasts and unexpected humor. A burly, laughing giant of a man came 





The Immigrant -Hospital at Ellis Island. 



down the line one afternoon, elated to have reached the land of his life- 

 long hope. The next morning he lay stricken with meningitis and that 

 evening was dead. A young mother was separated from her two-year- 

 old baby because the baby had diphtheria. In a few days the baby died, 

 and the mother went on alone to the father waiting in the west. The 

 reunion of broken families, and the old folks coming to live in the home 

 prepared by the pioneer children, constantly afford views of human 

 nature unmasked and unrestrained. 



All races and conditions of men come together here and adjust 

 themselves more or less amicably to each other. Children with no com- 

 mon bond of race, language or religion, play together perhaps more 

 happily for that very reason. Some have been here for months. In the 

 New York room, a Flemish couple have waited seven long months for a 

 little girl who is still sick in the hospital. Every morning on his 

 rounds they ask the doctor how soon she can come to them, and thrice 

 a week they visit her bedside. Perhaps by now their long waiting is 



