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In September, 1894, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, the younger daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom the literary friends of her father used to call "the Rose of all the Hawthornes," rented a little flat of three rooms and a kitchen at 668 Water Street, on the lower East Side of New York. This was in the heart of a very poor neighborhood, and Mrs. Lathrop's idea in locating there was to help some of the destitute poor who were suffering from incurable cancer to bear the pains and trials through which they had to go before death came to relieve them. She took several patients with cancer to live in this little apartment with her; she received others at certain times during the day in her own room so as to dress their lesions, and she visited as many more in their homes as her time and strength would permit her to