The pastor was so pleased with Miss Caroline that he then and there offered her the choice of becoming either his wife or the Superintendent of the Deaconesses’ Home.
She said she would fill both the vacant places, and their honeymoon was spent in Berlin that they might “settle” the first five deaconesses in the Charité Hospital.
Caroline, young though she was, made a good Deaconess Mother,[4] and she seems also to have been an excellent wife, full of devotion to the work her husband loved, through all the rest of her life. The deaconesses give their work, and in a sense give themselves. They do not pay for their board, but neither are they paid for their work, though they are allowed a very simple yearly outfit of two cotton gowns and aprons, and every five years a new best dress of blue woollen material and an apron of black alpaca. Also their outdoor garb of a long black cloak and bonnet is supplied to them, and each is allowed a little pocket money. Their private property remains their own to control as they please, whether they live or die.
The little account of Kaiserswerth which Miss Nightingale wrote is most rare and precious, having long been out of print, but from the copy in the British Museum I transfer a few sentences to these pages, because of their quaintness and their interest for all who are feeling their way in the education of young children:—
“In the Orphan Asylum,” wrote Miss Nightingale, “each family lives with its deaconess exactly as her children. Some of them have already become deaconesses or teachers, some have returned home. When a new child is admitted, a little feast celebrates its arrival, at which the pastor himself presides, who understands children so well that his presence, instead of being a constraint, serves to make the little new-comer feel herself at home. She chooses what is to be sung, she has a little present from the pastor, and, after tea, at the end of the evening, she is prayed for....
“One morning, in the boys’ ward, as they were about to have prayers, just before breakfast, two of the boys quarrelled about a hymn book. The ‘sister’ was uncertain, for a moment, what to do. They could not pray in that state of mind, yet excluding them from the prayer was not likely to improve them. She told a story of her own childhood, how one night she had been cross with her parents, and, putting off her prayers till she felt good again, had fallen asleep. The children were quite silent for a moment and shocked at the idea that anybody should go to bed without praying. The two boys were reconciled, and prayers took place....”
In the British Museum also is a copy of the following letter:—
“Messrs. Dubaw,—A gentleman called here yesterday from you, asking for a copy of my ‘Kaiserswerth’ for, I believe, the British Museum.
“Since yesterday a search has been instituted—but only two copies have been found, and one of those is torn and dirty. I send you the least bad-looking. You will see the date is 1851, and after the copies then printed were given away I don’t think I have ever thought of it.