And then, again, how like her it is to remind those who are nursing that “a patient is not merely a piece of furniture, to be kept clean and arranged against the wall, and saved from injury or breakage.”
She was one of the rare people who realized that truth of word is partly a question of education, and that many people are quite unconscious of their lack of that difficult virtue. “I know I fibbs dreadful,” said a poor little servant girl to her once. “But believe me, miss, I never finds out I have fibbed until they tell me so!” And her comment suggests that in this matter that poor little servant girl by no means stood alone.
She worked very hard. Her books and pamphlets[19] were important, and her correspondence, ever dealing with the reforms she had at heart all over the world, was of itself an immense output.
Those who have had to write much from bed or sofa know only too well the abnormal fatigue it involves, and her labours of this kind seem to have been unlimited.
How strongly she sympathized with all municipal efforts, we see in many such letters as the one to General Evatt, given him for electioneering purposes, but not hitherto included in any biography, which we are allowed to reproduce here:—
“Strenuously desiring, as we all of us must, that Administration as well as Politics should be well represented in Parliament, and that vital matters of social, sanitary, and general interest should find their voice, we could desire no better representative and advocate of these essential matters—matters of life and death—than a man who, like yourself, unites with almost exhaustless energy and public spirit, sympathy with the wronged and enthusiasm with the right, a persevering acuteness in unravelling the causes of the evil and the good, large and varied experience and practical power, limited only by the nature of the object for which it is exerted.
“It is important beyond measure that such a man’s thoughtful and well-considered opinions and energetic voice should be heard in the House of Commons.
“You have my warmest sympathy in your candidature for Woolwich, my best wishes that you should succeed, even less for your own sake than for that of Administration and of England.—Pray believe me, ever your faithful servant,
“Florence Nightingale.”