We are not called upon to feed our patients with our own dinners, or to dress them with our own clothes. We are comfortable, and cannot make ourselves uncomfortable on purpose. But we can learn Sick Cookery for our Patients, we can give up spending our money in foolish dressy ways, and thus squandering what we ought to lay by for ourselves or our families.
On one of the severest winter days in the late war between France and Germany, an immense detachment, many thousands, of wretched French prisoners were passing through the poorest streets of one of the largest and poorest German towns on the way to the prisoners’ camp. Every door in this poor “East End” opened; not one remained closed; and out of every door came a poor German woman, carrying in her hand the dinner or supper she was cooking for herself, her husband, or children; often all she had in the house was in her hands. And this she crammed into the hands of the most sickly-looking prisoner as he passed by, often into his mouth, as he sank down exhausted in the muddy street. And the good-natured German escort, whose business it was to bring these poor French to their prison, turned away their heads, and let the women have their way, though it was late, and they were weary too. Before the prisoners had been the first hour in their prison, six had lain down in the straw and died. But how many lives had been saved that night by the timely food of these good women, giving all they had, not of their abundance, but of their poverty, God only knows, not we. This was told by an Englishman who was by and saw it; one of our own “Aid Committee.”
And at a large German station, which almost all the prisoners’ trains passed through, a lady went every night during all that long, long, dreadful winter, and for the whole night, to feed, and warm, and comfort, and often to receive the last dying words of the miserable French prisoners, as they arrived in open trucks, some frozen to the bottom, some only as the dead, others to die in the station, all half-clad and starving. Some had been nine days and nights in these open trucks; many had been twenty-four hours without food. Night after night as these long, terrible trainsful dragged their slow length into the station, she kneeled on its pavement, supporting the dying heads, receiving their last messages to their mothers; pouring wine or hot milk down the throats of the sick; dressing the frost-bitten limbs; and, thank God, saving many. Many were carried to the prisoners’ hospital in the town, of whom about two-thirds recovered. Every bit of linen she had went in this way. She herself contracted incurable ill-health during these fearful nights. But thousands were saved by her means.
She is my friend.[6] She came and saw me here after this; and it is from her lips I heard the story. Smallpox and typhus raged among the prisoners, most of whom were quite boys. Many were wounded; half were frost-bitten. Sometimes they would snatch at all she brought; but sometimes they would turn away their dying heads from the tempting hot wine, and gasp out, “Thank you, madam; give it to him, who wants it more than I.” Or, “I’m past help; love to mother.”
We have not to give of our own to our sick. But shall we the less give them our all—that is, all our hearts and minds? and reasonable service?
Suppose we dedicated this “School” to Him, to the Divine Charity and Love which said, “Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these my brethren” (and He calls all our patients—all of us, His brothers and sisters) “ye do it unto me”—oh, what a “Kingdom of Heaven” this might be! Then, indeed, the dream of Martin of Tours, the soldier and Missionary-Bishop, would have come true!
III
May I take this opportunity of saying what I think really very much concerns us? First of all, that you have, or might have, directly and indirectly, a great deal to do with maintaining a supply of good candidates to this School. You know whether you have been happy here or not; you know whether you have had opportunities given you here of training and self-improvement. Many, very many of our old Matrons and Nurses have told me that their time as probationers with us was “the happiest time of their lives.” It might be so with all, though perhaps all do not think so now.
It is in your power to assist the School most materially in obtaining fresh and worthy recruits. There is hardly one of you who has not friends or acquaintances of her own. You ought to advertise us. We ought not to have to put one advertisement in the newspapers. If you think this is a worthy life, why do you not bring others to it? I tried to do my part. When Agnes Jones died, though my heart was breaking, I put an article in Good Words, such as I knew she would have wished, in all but the mention of herself; and for years her dear memory brought aspirants to the work in our Schools, or others’ Schools.
To reform the Nursing of all the Hospitals and Workhouse Infirmaries in the world, and to establish District Nursing among the sick poor at home, too, as at Liverpool—is this not an object most worthy of the co-operation of all civilised people?