482 
CHARLES HENRY NICHOLS. 
the stage in the hospital chapel is preserved a full length 
portrait of the Doctor, painted from life, as he appeared in 
good health and in the vigor of a superb manhood in 1877. 
This cherished memento was secured to the institution by 
his admirers. In the same chapel, to the left of the stage, 
hangs an oil portrait of Miss D. L. Dix, one of the greatest 
benefactors of the insane which our country has produced. 
This lady was a lifelong friend of St. Elizabeth. 
From the time Doctor Nichols retired from the manage¬ 
ment of Bloomingdale asylum, and particularly after the 
Government Hospital for the Insane in the District of Colum¬ 
bia became an assured and admired success, the governors 
of the former institution never ceased to wish for his return 
to Bloomingdale. 
In July, 1877, after repeated overtures from the governors 
of Bloomingdale and when they were contemplating exten¬ 
sive new buildings and improvements, about which he had 
been consulted, he was induced to consent to again accept 
service in that institution. His salary was fixed at five 
thousand dollars a year, with a spacious detached and fully 
furnished dwelling-house within the grounds suited for him¬ 
self and family. The Doctor had a taste for the refinements 
and comforts of life, and he and his lady were always wel¬ 
comed to the best society in Washington. Even with the 
increased salary and improved domestic comforts, it was 
with him a grave question to retire from an institution he 
had moulded into being and had watched over with such 
solicitude for a quarter of a century to its present grand 
proportions, where he had attended 4,000 patients and had 
everything in good working condition. It was but natural 
that he parted from St. Elizabeth as from a dear friend. 
When he received the tract of land known as “ St. Eliza¬ 
beth” it was without buildings and an almost neglected 
waste. He left it a walled enclosure, with large and well- 
cultivated gardens and extensive, palatial hospital buildings, 
where were sheltered nearly a thousand patients, receiving 
the best of care and medical treatment known to Christian 
civilization and a generous government. 
