Mrs. Hannah Smith, Nurse
The red eye of the lighthouse on Corregidor Island blazed out through the darkness as a Pacific steamer felt her way cautiously into Manila harbour.
Although it was nearly midnight, a woman—one of the passengers on the steamer—was still on deck, and standing well up toward the bow of the boat was peering into the darkness before her as if she could not wait to see the strange new land to which she was coming. Surely it would be a strange land to her, who, until a few weeks before had scarcely in all her life been outside of the New England town in which she had been born.
People who had seen her on the steamer had wondered sometimes that a woman of her age—for she was not young—should have chosen to go to the Philippine Islands as a nurse, as she told them she was going. Sometimes, at first, they smiled at some of her questions, but any who happened to be ill on the voyage, or in trouble, forgot to do that, for in the touch of her hand and in her words there was shown a skill and a nobleness of nature which won respect.
The colonel of a regiment stationed near Manila was sitting in his headquarters. An orderly came to the door and saluted.
“A woman to see you, sir,” he said.
“A woman? What kind of a woman?”
“A white woman, sir. Looks about fifty years old. Talks American. Says she has only just come here. Says her name is Smith.”
“Show her in.”