A Tribute to the Red Cross Nurses.
By Franklin B. Hussey, of Chicago.
The war is over. Now let us rejoice. Now erect your tablets and monuments to the heroes of the war—the living and the dead. Write their names on the long roll of honor: Dewey, Schley, Hobson and Wainwright, Roosevelt, Lee, Wheeler and all the rest, and alongside their names write those of the private soldier and the “man behind the guns.” They “remembered the Maine.” And while we rear our symbols of marble and of bronze to commemorate their brave deeds, there is one we must not, we cannot, forget.
When our brave boys left home and marched proudly down to war they did not go alone, for the gentle presence of woman walked beside them, to assuage with her soft touch the grim horrors of carnage. A few days ago the busy thoroughfares of our city resounded with the music and fanfares of a great jubilee. I saw the towering fronts of the thronging palaces of trade put off their accustomed garb of work-a-day gray and drab and bedeck themselves in carnival attire, while stretched across from roof to roof for miles hung festoons of glittering lights, banners and flags in a bewildering chaos of red, white and blue. I saw triumphal arches spanning the streets, adorned with the portraits and names of patriots, but I saw not hers of whom I speak.
Under those arches, attended by all the pomp and splendor of the trappings of war, keeping step to the glad music of victory, marched ten thousand men, at their head the Chief Executive of the nation. I saw senators and judges, diplomatic representatives and statesmen, generals and heroes of the army and navy, veterans and volunteer soldiers pass in glittering procession, while a million voices shouted loud huzzas that told of a nation’s tribute of gratitude to all those who had contributed to the great victory; but for her I looked in vain.
At night I saw a great feast spread, honored by the presence of the nation’s leader and all those who had ridden in the grand pageant. The toasts went round and the glasses clinked, but never a word of her of whom I speak.
Not that she was forgotten; not but that cheers would have rung out at the mention of her name; but because she went about her duty of self-sacrifice so simply, so modestly, without even a thought or expectation that any one would ever know or care whether she lived to come back from the death-laden fever swamp, or not, her part in the great victory had been, for the time being, overlooked; and while gifted tongues are paying their tributes of burning eloquence to our heroes, without seeking to detract one whit from their glory and fame, which they so richly deserve, may I draw nigh, with uncovered head, and cast a flower at her feet? She asks no recognition. She seeks no praise; but on some sunny slope of one of our wooded parks I want to see a simple shaft uplifted in memory of the girl with a red cross on her arm. She went forth to war with no blare of trumpets or beat of drums; the first to go, the last to return; she carried neither sword nor musket, but only the gentle ministrations of a woman’s hand and heart; not to make wounds, but to heal them. If you seek fitting words in which to embody her record, go ask those whose fevered brows her cooling palms have pressed, whose bloody wounds her hands have stanched, but the lips that could best tell her noblest deeds lie cold and still, wrapped in the sleep that heeds no bugle call. She carried balm and healing not only to broken and bleeding bodies, but to broken and bleeding hearts as well, and stood through long pestilential nights, like a ministering angel of heaven, beside the weary pillow of pain, and when all that human hands could do had been done, and the dying soldier murmured last words to mother, wife or sweetheart, hers the ear that caught the last faint whisper, hers the fingers that penned the last letter home, hers the voice that read from the thumb-worn page, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”—while with his hand clasped in hers, his soul passed on through the “valley” and the “shadow” up to “the sandals of God.” Yes, raise aloft her statue in the streaming sunlight. Let some great sculptor, catching aright the inspiration of his theme, outline that slender form—that woman’s form, with melting heart and nerves of steel, against the soft blue of the summer sky, with her lint and bandages in one hand and her Bible in the other, the sign of the cross upon her sleeve, and the glory of the countenance of the “Son of Man” reflected on her face, and underneath let these words be traced:
To the nurses of the Red Cross—those angels of the battlefield—who ministered to our soldiers and sailors, the thanks of a grateful nation; for “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.”
AS THE SUN WENT DOWN.
Two soldiers lay on the battlefield
At night when the sun went down,
One held a lock of thin, gray hair
And one held a lock of brown.
One thought of his sweetheart back at home,
Happy and young and gay,
And one of his mother left alone,
Feeble and old and gray.
Each in the thought that a woman cared,
Murmured a prayer to God,
Lifting his gaze to the blue above
There on the battle sod.
Each in the joy of a woman’s love,
Smiled through the pain of death,
Murmured the sound of a woman’s name,
Tho’ with his parting breath.
Pale grew the dying lips of each,
Then, as the sun went down,
One kist a lock of thin, gray hair,
And one kist a lock of brown.
Anon., in Town Talk.
UNWRITTEN THANKS.
Dear readers, I pray you accept this last word from me: “Poor even in thanks”—the thanks with which the heart is burdened but cannot speak. The acts of kindness shown during these waiting, and oft weary years, that crowd and clamor for expression, would duplicate this volume many times, and the cherished names that the hand struggles to write, would turn these pages into a biographical dictionary.
Let me pray, then, that every person who takes up this volume and recalls a kind act done me, or a friendly, encouraging word spoken in all the years of the busy period which it covers, shall read between the lines, the cherished memory, the thanks, and the blessing so richly deserved and so fully given.