This is written in too much of the “special correspondent” style to be pleasant; nevertheless it describes what actually took place.
Mr. Samuel Welsh says: “I remember one evening I was in the hospital when a poor man who had been dreadfully crushed in a pit was brought in. One of his legs was so fearfully injured that it was thought it would be necessary to amputate it. After examining the patient, the doctor came to me in the committee-room—one door of which opened into the passage leading to the wards, and another into the hall in the domestic portion of the building. After telling me about the patient who had just been brought in, he said, ‘Do you know Sister Dora is very ill? So ill,’ he continued, ‘that I question if she will pull through this time.’ I naturally inquired what she was suffering from, and in reply the doctor said, ‘She will not take care of herself, and is suffering from blood-poison.’ He left me, and I was just trying to solve the problem—— ‘What shall be done? or how shall her place be supplied if she be taken from us by death?’ when I saw a spectral-like figure gliding gently and almost noiselessly through the room from the domestic entrance to the door leading to the wards. The figure was rather indistinct, for it was nearly dark; and as I gazed at the receding form, I said, ‘Sister, is it you?’ ‘Whist!’ she said, and glided through the doorway into the wards. In a short time she returned, and I said to her, ‘Sister, the doctor has just been telling me how ill you are—how is it you are here?’ ‘Ah!’ replied she, ‘it is true I am very ill; but I heard the surgeons talking about amputating that poor fellow’s limb, and I wanted to see whether or no there was a possibility of saving it, and I believe there is; and, knowing that, I shall rest better.’ So saying, she glided as noiselessly out of the room as when she entered.
“On her recovery—which was retarded by her neglecting herself to attend to others—she called me to the hall-door of the hospital, and asked me if I thought it was going to rain. I told her I did not think it would rain for some hours. She then told me to go and order a cab to be ready at the hospital in half an hour. I tried to persuade her not to venture out so soon; but it was no use—she went; and many a time I wondered where she went to.
“About six months afterwards I happened to be at a railway station, and saw a pointsman who had been in our hospital with an injured foot, but who, as his friends wished to have him at home, had left before his foot was cured. I inquired how his foot was. He replied that had it not been for Sister Dora he would have lost his foot, if not his life. I said, ‘How did she save your foot when you were not in the hospital, and she was ill at the time you left the hospital?’ ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘you know my foot was far from well when I left the hospital; there was no one at our house who could see to it properly, and it took bad ways, and one evening I was in awful pain. Oh, how I did wish for Sister Dora to come and dress it! I felt sure she could give me relief, but I had been told she was very ill, so I had no hope that my earnest desire would be realised; but while I was thinking and wishing, the bedroom door was gently opened, and a figure just like Sister Dora glided so softly into the room that I could not hear her, but oh! she was so pale that I began to think it must be her spirit; but when she folded the bedclothes from off my foot, I knew it was she. She dressed my foot, and from that hour it began to improve.’
“A few days after this interview with the pointsman I was talking to Sister Dora and said, ‘By the bye, Sister, I have found out where you went with the cab that day.’ She replied with a merry twinkle in her eye, ‘What a long time you have been finding it out!’”
Her old patients ever remembered her with gratitude. A man called Chell, an engine-stoker, was twice in the hospital under her care, first with a dislocated ankle, severely cut; the second time, with a leg crushed to pieces in a railway accident. It was amputated. According to his own account he remembered nothing of the operation, except that Sister Dora was there, and that, “When I come to after the chloroform, she was on her knees by my side with her arm supporting my head, and she was repeating:—
“‘They climbed the steep ascent of heaven,
Through peril, toil, and pain:
O God, to us may grace be given
To follow in their train.’