But her life was chiefly lived in those two years at the Scutari hospital; the many difficulties she met with at first, the struggle against dirt and bad food, the enormous amount of extra work to be got through in the day because others would not do their full share, the terribly anxious cases she had to nurse,—all these told on her health.
“I have been a prisoner to my room from illness for years,” she tells us, but she did more good, brave, noble work in those two years than many a woman has done in a lifetime.
One of our poets has written about Miss Nightingale. He was reading one night of the “great army of the dead” on the battle-fields of the Crimea,
“The wounded from the battle plain
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors,”
and as he pictured this desolate scene, he seemed to see a lady with a little lamp moving through the “glimmering gloom,” softly going from bed to bed; he saw the “speechless sufferer” turn to kiss her shadow, as it fell upon the darkened walls. And then he adds:
“A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic Womanhood.”
CHISWICK PRESS:—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COUNT, CHANCERY LANE.
THE YORK READERS
An entirely new series of Primers and Readers, beautifully printed in a specially bold and clear type, and illustrated throughout in colours and in black and white. The volumes are strongly and artistically bound in cloth covers.