—Hemans.
One of Grace's first acts after reaching Memphis was to inquire for her relatives, whom she had not seen, and but seldom heard from, since leaving Memphis, in her sixteenth year, to make her own way in the hard world. Not that she owed them much affection, or any gratitude—only the natural respect and remembrance of kinship induced her to seek them out. But her efforts were not crowned with success, for she learned that they had been among the first of the native families to flee the city at the approach of the pestilence, and Grace was greatly disappointed thereat.
For a few weeks her voluntarily assumed duties were arduous and embarrassing in the extreme. Mrs. Clendenon and Willard, having had the fever themselves, and having been witnesses of its ravages in their own city, entered at once with confidence and experience on the task of caring for the poor victims who filled the hospitals, and even private houses. To Grace it was all new, and strange, and terrible, and though her will was strong, her sensitive spirit quailed at the horrors she daily saw, so unused was she to these scenes, and so diffident of her own powers for service, that she half doubted her abilities, and was, for a time, overwhelmed by the feeling which we have all experienced at times of willingness to perform duties from which we are deterred by ignorance, or lacking self-confidence.
But this feeling was not long suffered to deter her from usefulness. Laborers were too sadly needed in the terrible harvest of death, and as her increasing familiarity with the details of the awful disease rendered her more efficient, she became an invaluable nurse to the patients, and a reliable and prized aid to the physician of the ward where she was placed.
The Clendenons were in the same hospital, and in the performance of their several duties the trio often met, when a sweet sentence of praise from the lady, and a cheerful word of encouragement from him, went far to keep up her flagging spirits, and stimulate her to renewed exertions.
Her strong, healthy constitution upheld her well in those days; for the fiery scourge rolled on and on like some great prairie fire, hourly seizing fresh victims, and erecting its everlasting monuments in the long rows of new-made graves in the cemeteries that swelled upward, side by side, close and many, like the green billows of old ocean, save that they gave back no solemn, tolling dirge, to tell where youth and love, hope and beauty, old age and infancy, joy and sorrow, went down to the stillness of the grave.
In the universal suffering, the universal grief of those around her, the anguish of those bereaved of whole families, of friends the young lady put away her own griefs from her heart, and threw herself, heart, and soul, and body, into her work; and, though her two friends were doing precisely the same thing, they pleaded, expostulated, scolded and warned in turn.
All in vain; for a rock would have flown from "its firm base" as soon as Grace Winans from the position she has taken. She had, as she pathetically protested, so little to live for, that she was all the more willing and desirous to sacrifice herself for the sake of saving others who had more ties in life than herself.
"That is a poor policy," Mrs. Clendenon argued, stoutly. "You have no right to commit a moral suicide, however few your ties in life may be. Your life is God's, and He has some plan in life for you, or He would not have placed you on the earth."
"And this may have been His plan for me, then," persisted the candidate for self-sacrificial honors. "He may have meant for me to take up this very cross. I have been brought to it by many subtle windings."