HEROINES EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW (continued 5)

Walsall, though not in the "Black Country," is in a busy manufacturing district, chiefly of iron. At the time when Sister Dora went there it contained a population of 35,000 inhabitants. It is now connected with Birmingham by almost continuous houses and pits and furnaces.

As fresh coal and iron pits were being opened in the district around Walsall, accidents became more frequent, and it was found impracticable to send those injured to Birmingham, which was seven miles distant; Accordingly, in 1863, the Town Council invited the Redcar Society to start a hospital there. When the Sister who had begun the work fell ill, Sister Dora was sent in her place, and almost directly caught small-pox from the outpatients. She was very ill, and even in her delirium showed the bent of her mind by ripping her sheets into strips to serve as bandages.

When the cottage hospital—which was the second of its kind in England—was opened, the system of voluntary nursing was unknown; the only voluntary nurses heard of then being those who had gone out to the Crimea with Miss Florence Nightingale. Therefore a good deal of misunderstanding was the result; but in the course of time people began to judge the institution by its results. But Sister Dora, by her frank, open manner, disarmed suspicion, while the sublime eloquence of noble deeds silenced tongues, and won for the hospital the confidence of the public, and for herself the admiration and affection of the people.

In 1866 she had a serious illness, brought on by exposure to wet and cold. She would come home from dressing wounds in the cottages, wet through and hot with hurrying along the streets, to find a crowd of outpatients awaiting her return at the hospital, and she would attend to them in total disregard of herself, and allow her wet clothes to dry on her.

This neglect occurred once too often; a chill settled on her, and for three weeks she was dangerously ill. Then it was that the people of Walsall began to realise what she was, and the door of the hospital was besieged by poor people come to inquire how their "Sister Dora" was.

The hospital had moved men of every shade of politics, and every form of religious belief, to the work, and there have been passages in its history not pleasant to remember, but not one of these in the remotest degree involved Sister Dora. On the contrary, her presence and counsel always brought light and peace, and lifted every question into a higher sphere. "Ask Sister Dora," it used to be said. "Had we not better send for Sister Dora" some member would exclaim out of the fog of contention. Thereupon she would appear; and many well remember how calmly self-possessed, and clear-sighted she would stand—never sit down. Indeed, there were those who worked with her fifteen years who never saw her seated; she would stand, usually with her hand on the back of the chair which had been placed for her, every eye directed to her; nor was it ever many moments before she had grasped the whole question, and given her opinion just as clearly and simply and straight to the purpose as any opinion given to the sufferers in the wards. Nor was she ever wrong; nor did she ever fail of her purpose with the committee. No committeemen ever questioned or differed from Sister Dora, yet in her was the charm of unconsciousness of power or superiority and the impression left was of there being no feeling of pleasure in her, other than the triumph of the right.

In 1867 the cottage hospital had to be abandoned, as erysipelas broke out and would not be expelled. The wards were evidently impregnated with malignant germs to such an extent that the committee resolved to build a new hospital in a better situation.

Sister Dora's work became more engrossing when this larger field was opened for it; the men's beds were constantly full, and even the women's ward was hardly ever entirely empty.

Just at this period an epidemic of small-pox broke out in Walsall, and all the energies of Sister Dora were called into play. She visited the cottages where the patients lay, and nursed them or saw to their being supplied with what they needed; whilst at the same time carrying on her usual work at the hospital.

One night she was sent for by a poor man who was dying of what she called "black-pox," a violent form of small-pox. She went at once, and found him in the last extremity. All his relations had fled, and a neighbour alone was with him. When Sister Dora found that only one small piece of candle was left in the house, she gave the woman some money, begging her to go and buy some means of light whilst she stayed with the man. She sat on by his bed, but the woman, who had probably spent the money at the public house, never returned; and after some little while the dying man raised himself up in bed with a last effort, saying, "Sister, kiss me before I die." She took him, all covered as he was with the loathsome disease, into her arms and kissed him, the candle going out almost as she did so, leaving them in total darkness. He implored her not to leave him while he lived, although he might have known she would never do that. So she sat through the night, till the early dawn breaking in revealed that the man was dead.

When the bell at the head of her bed rang at night she rose at once, saying to herself, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee!" Indeed, she loved to think that she was ministering to her Lord in the person of His poor and sick.

Here is a letter from a former patient in the hospital, from which only a short extract can be made:

"I had not been there above a week when Sister Dora found me a little bell, as there was not one to my bed, and she said, 'Enoch, you must ring this bell when you want sister.' This little bell did not have much rest, for whenever I heard her step or the tinkle of her keys in the hall I used to ring my bell, and she would call out, 'I'm coming, Enoch,' which she did, and would say, 'What do you want?' I often used to say, 'I don't know, Sister,' not really knowing what I did want. She'd say, 'Do you want your pillows shaken up, or do you want moving a little?' which she'd do, whatever it was, and say, 'Do you feel quite cosey now?' 'Yes, Sister.' Then she would start to go into the other ward, but very often before she could get through the door I'd call her back and say my pillow wasn't quite right, or that my leg wanted moving a little. She would come and do it, whatever it was, and say, 'Will that do?' 'Yes, Sister.' Then she'd go about her work, but at the very next sound of her step my bell would ring, and so often as my bell rang Sister would come; and some of the other patients would often remark that I should wear that little bell out or Sister, and she'd say, 'Never mind, for I like to hear it, and it's never too often.' And it rang so often that I've heard Sister say that she often dreamt she heard my little bell and started up in a hurry to find it was a dream."

Sister Dora said once to a friend, who was engaging a servant for the hospital:

"Tell her this is not an ordinary house, or even a hospital. I want her to understand that all who serve here, in whatever capacity, ought to have one rule, love for God, and then, I need not say, love for their work."

She spoke often and with intense earnestness, on the duty, the necessity, of prayer. It was literally true that she never touched a wound without raising her heart to God and entreating him to bless the means employed. As years glided away, she became able almost to fulfil the Apostle's command: "Pray without ceasing." And her prayers were animated by the most intense faith—an absolutely unshaken conviction of their efficacy. It may truly be said that those who pray become increasingly more sure of the value of prayer. They find that, whatever men may say about the reign of law and the order of nature, earnest prayer does bring an answer, often in a marvellous manner. The praying man or woman is never shaken in his or her trust in the efficacy of prayer. She firmly held to the supernatural power, put into the hands of men by means of the weapon of prayer; and the practical faithlessness in this respect of the world at large was an ever-increasing source of surprise and distress to her.

Since her death, in commemoration of her labours at Walsall, a very beautiful statue has been there erected to her, and on the pedestal are bas-reliefs representing incidents in her life there. One of these illustrates a terrible explosion that took place in the Birchett's Iron Works, on Friday, October 15, 1875, whereby eleven men were so severely burnt that only two survived. All the others died after their admission into the hospital. It came about thus: The men were at work when water escaped from the "twyer" and fell upon the molten iron in the furnace and was at once resolved into steam that blew out the front of the furnace, and also the molten iron, which fell upon the men. Some suffered frightful agonies, but the shock to the nervous systems of others had stupefied them. The sight and the smell were terrible. Ladies who volunteered their help could not endure it, and were forced to withdraw, some not getting beyond the door of the ward. But Sister Dora was with the patients incessantly till they died, giving them water, bandaging their wounds, or cutting away the sodden clothes that adhered to the burnt flesh. Some lingered on for ten days, but in all this time she never deserted the fetid atmosphere of the ward, never went to bed.

She had so much to do with burns that she became specially skilful in treating them. Children terribly burnt or scalded were constantly brought to the hospital; often men came scalded from a boiler, or by molten metal. She dressed their wounds herself, but, if possible, always sent the patients to be tended at home, where she would visit them and regularly dress their wounds, rather than have the wards tainted by the effluvium from the burns. Her treatment of burnt children merits quotation.

"If a large surface of the body was burnt, or if the child seemed beside itself with terror, she did not touch the wounds themselves, but only carefully excluded the air from them by means of cotton wool and blankets wrapped around the body. She put hot bottles and flannel to the feet, and, if necessary, ice to the head. Then she gave her attention to soothing and consoling the shocked nerves—a state which she considered to be often a more immediate source of danger to the life of the child than the actual injuries. She fed it with milk and brandy, unless it violently refused food, when she would let it alone until it came round, saying that force, or anything which involved even a slight further shock to the system, was worse than useless. Sometimes, of course, the fatal sleep of exhaustion, from which there was no awakening, would follow; but more often than not food was successfully administered, and after a few hours, Sister Dora, having gained the child's confidence, could dress the wounds without fear of exciting the frantic terror which would have been the result of touching them at first."

Children Sister Dora dearly loved; her heart went out to them with infinite tenderness, and she was even known to sleep with a burnt baby on each arm. What that means only those know who have had experience of the sickening smell arising from burns.

Once a little girl of nine was brought into the hospital so badly burnt that it was obvious she had not many hours to live. Sister Dora sat by her bed talking to her of Jesus Christ and His love for little children, and of the blessed home into which he would receive them. The child died peacefully, and her last words were: "Sister, when you come to heaven, I'll meet you at the gates with a bunch of flowers."

One of the most heroic of her many heroic acts was taking charge of the small-pox hospital when a second epidemic broke out.

Mr. S. Welsh says: "In the spring of 1875 there was a second visitation of the disease, and fears were entertained that the results would be as bad as during the former visitation. One morning Sister Dora came to me and said, 'Do you know, I have an idea that if some one could be got to go to the epidemic hospital in whom the people have confidence, they would send their friends to be nursed, the patients would be isolated, and the disease stamped out.'" This was because a prejudice was entertained against the new small-pox hospital, and those who had sick concealed the fact rather than send them to it. "I said," continues Mr. Welsh, "'I have long been of the opinion you have just expressed; but where are we to get a lady, in whom the people would have confidence, to undertake the duty?'

"Her prompt reply was, 'I will go.'

"I confess the sudden announcement of her determination rather took me by surprise, for I had no expectation of it, and not the least remote idea that she intended to go. 'But,' I said, 'who will take charge of the hospital if you go there?'

"'Oh,' she replied, 'I can get plenty of ladies to come there, but none will go to the epidemic. And', she added, by way of reconciling me to her view, 'it will only be for a short time.'

"'But what if you were to take the disease and die?' I inquired.

"'Then,' she added, in her cheery way, 'I shall have died in the path of duty, and, you know, I could not die better.'

"I knew it was no use pointing out at length the risk she ran, for where it was a case of saving others, self with her was no consideration. I tried to dissuade her on other grounds.... A few days later I was in company with the doctor of the hospital, who was also medical officer of health, and who, as such, had charge of the epidemic hospital, near to which we were at the time. He said, 'Do you know where Sister Dora is?' 'At the hospital I suppose,' was my reply. 'No,' he rejoined, 'she is over there!' pointing to the epidemic hospital....

"The people as soon as they knew Sister Dora was in charge, had no misgiving about sending their relatives to be nursed, and the result was as she had predicted; the cases were brought in as soon as it was discovered that patients had the disease, and the epidemic was speedily stamped out."

She had, however, a hard time of it there, as she lacked assistants. Two women were sent from the work-house, but they proved of little use. The porter, an old soldier, was attentive and kind in his way, but he always went out "on a spree" on Saturday nights, and did not return till late on Sunday evening. When the work-house women failed her she was sometimes alone with her patients, and these occasionally in the delirium of small-pox.

It was not till the middle of August, 1875, that the last small-pox patient departed from the hospital, and she was able to return to her original work.

One of the bas-reliefs on her monument represents Sister Dora consoling the afflicted and the scene depicted refers to a dreadful colliery accident that occurred on March 14, 1872, at Pelsall, a village rather over three miles from Walsall, by which twenty-two men were entombed, and all perished. For several days hopes were entertained that some of the men would be got out alive; and blankets in which to wrap them, and restoratives, were provided, and Sister Dora was sent for to attend the men when brought to "bank." The following extract, from an article by a special correspondent in a newspaper, dated Dec 10, 1872, will give some idea of Sister Dora's connection with the event:

Out of doors the scene is weird and awful, and impresses the mind with a peculiar gloom; for the intensity of the darkness is heightened by the shades created by the artificial lights. Every object, the most minute, stands out in bold relief against the inky darkness which surrounds the landscape. On the crest of the mound or pit-bank, the policemen, like sentinels, are walking their rounds. The wind is howling and whistling through the trees which form a background to the pit-bank, and the rain is coming hissing down in sheets. In a hovel close to the pit shaft sit the bereaved and disconsolate mourners, hoping against hope, and watching for those who will never return. There, too, are the swarthy sons of toil who have just returned from their fruitless search in the mine for the dear missing ones, and are resting while their saturated clothes are drying.

But another form glides softly from that hovel; and amid the pelting rain, and over the rough pit-bank, and through miry clay—now ankle deep—takes her course to the dwellings of the mourners, for some, spent with watching, have been induced to return to their homes. As she plods her way amid pieces of timber, upturned wagons and fragments of broken machinery, which are scattered about in great confusion, a "wee, wee bairn" creeps gently to her side, and grasping her hand and looking wistfully into her face, which is radiant with kindness and affection, says, "Oh, Sister, do see to my father when they bring him up the pit." Poor child! Never again would he know a father's love, or share a father's care. She smiled, and that smile seemed to lighten the child's load of grief, and her promise to see to his father appeared to impart consolation to his heavy, despairing heart.

On she glides, with a kind word or a sympathetic expression to all. One woman, after listening to her comforting words, burst into tears—the fountains of sorrow so long pent up seemed to have found vent. "Let her weep," said a relative of the unfortunate woman; "it is the first tear she has shed since the accident has occurred, and it will do her good to cry." But who is the good Samaritan? She is the sister who for seven years has had the management of the nursing department in the cottage hospital at Walsall.

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 not 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 one day 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 afterward 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:

And all through the pain and trouble that I had afterward, I never forgot Sister's voice saying those words." When she was in the small-pox hospital, avoided by most, this man never failed to stump away to it to see her and inquire how she was getting on.

There were, as she herself recognised, faults in the character of Sister Dora; and yet, without these faults, problematical as it may seem, it is doubtful whether she could have achieved all she did.

One who knew her long and intimately writes to me "A majestic character, brimming over with sympathy, but, for lack of self-discipline, this sympathy was impulsive and gushing. Her glorious nature, physical and mental, was marred by undisciplined impulse. Her nature found its congenial outlet in devoted works of mercy and love to her fellow creatures. How far she would have done the same under authority, I fear is a little doubtful."

Miss Twigg, who knew her well, writes me: "She was a lovable woman, so bright and winsome. She used to come into our rather dull and sad home (our mother died when we were quite children) after evening service. She would nurse one of us, big as we were then, and the others would gather round her, while she would tell us stories of her hospital life.... She was a real woman."

There is one point in Sister Dora's life to which sufficient attention has not been paid by her biographers. It is one which the busy workers of the present day think of too little—namely, the writing of bright, helpful letters to any friend who is sick or in trouble. Somehow or other she always found time for that, wrote one who knew her well, and who contributes the following, written to a young girl who was at the time in a spinal hospital, and who was almost a stranger to her:

My dear Miss J.—I was so glad to hear from you, though I fear it must be a trouble for you to write. I do hope that you will really have benefited by the treatment and rest. I am so glad that the doctor is good to his "children." Such little attentions when you are sick help to alleviate wonderfully. I wish I could come and take a peep at you. Did Mrs. N. tell you that she had sent us five pounds for our seaside expedition? Was it not good of her? Oh! we shall have such a jolly time. To see all those poor creatures drink in the sea-breezes! We have had a very busy week of accidents and operations. It has been a regular storm.[A] My dear, it is in such times as you are now having that the voice of Jesus Christ can be best heard, "Come into a desert place awhile." Know you surely that it is God's visitation. Take home that thought, realise it: God visiting you. Elizabeth was astonished that the Mother of her Lord should visit her. We can have our Emmanuel. I can look back on my sicknesses as the best times of my life. Don't fret about the future. He carrieth our sicknesses and healeth our infirmities. You know infirmity means weakness after sickness. Think of the cheering lines of our hymn: "His touch has still its ancient power." When I arose up from my sick bed they told me I should never be able to enter a hospital or do work again. I was fretting over this when a good friend came to me, and told me only to take a day's burden and not look forward, and it was such a help. I got up every day feeling sure I should have strength and grace for the day's trial. May it be said of you, dear, "They took knowledge of her that she had been with Jesus." May He reveal Himself in all His beauty is the prayer of

Your sincere friend, Sister Dora.

It does not truly represent Sister Dora to dwell on her outer life, and not look as well into that which is within, as it was the very mainspring of all her actions, as it, in fact, made her what she was.

The same writer to the Guardian gives some sentences from other letters: "Take your cross day by day, dearie, and with Jesus Christ bearing the other end it will not be too heavy." "If we could find Jesus, it must be on a mountain, not in the plains or smooth places." "He went up into a mountain and taught them, saying," etc. "It is only on a mountain side that we shall see the cross. It was only after Zacchæus had climbed the tree he could see Jesus. I have been thinking much of this lately. It is not in the smooth places we shall see Jesus, it is in the rough, in the storm, or by the sick couch." "A Christian is one whose object is Christ." "I am rejoiced that you are enjoying Faber's hymns; they always warm me up. Oh, my dear, is it not sad that we prefer to live in the shade when we might have the glorious sunshine?"

It was during the winter of 1876-77 that Sister Dora felt the first approach of the terrible disease that was to cause her death, and then it was rather by diminution of strength than by actual pain. She consulted a doctor in Birmingham, in whom she placed confidence, and he told her the plain truth, that her days in this world were numbered. She exacted from him a pledge of secrecy, and then went on with her work as hitherto.

"She was suddenly brought, as it were, face to face with death—distant, perhaps, but inevitable; she, who was full of such exuberant life and spirit that the very word 'death' seemed a contradiction when applied to her. Even her doctor, as he looked at her blooming appearance, and measured with his eye her finely made form, was almost inclined to believe the evidence of his outward senses against his sober judgment.... She could not endure pity. She, to whom everybody had learnt instinctively to turn for help and consolation, on whom others leant for support, must she now come down to ask of them sympathy and comfort? The pride of life was still surging up in her, that pride which had made her glory in her physical strength for its own sake, as well as for its manifold uses in the service of her Master. True, she had been long living two lives inseparably blended: the outward life of hard, unceasing toil; the inner, a constant communion with the unseen world, the existence of which she realised to an extent which not even those who saw the most of her could appreciate. To all the poor, ignorant beings whose souls she tried to reach by means of their maimed bodies, she was, indeed, the personification of all that they could conceive as lovable, holy and merciful in the Saviour. At the same time she judged her own self with strict impartiality. She knew her own faults, her unbending will—her pride and glory in her work seemed to her even a fault; and, in place of looking on herself as perfect she was bowed down with a sense of her own short-comings. At the same time—with death before her, she hungered for more work for her Master. His words were continually on her lips: 'I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.'"

At last, in the month of August, 1878, typhoid fever having broken out in the temporary hospital, it was found necessary to close it, and hasten on the work of the construction of another. This gave her an opportunity for a holiday and a complete change. She went to the Isle of Man, to London, and to Paris.

But the disorder was making rapid strides, and was causing her intense suffering, and she craved to be back at Walsall. She got as far as Birmingham, and was then in such a critical state that it was feared she would die. But her earnest entreaty was to be taken to Walsall. "Let me die," she pleaded, "among my own people."

Mr. Welsh says: "On calling at the Queen's Hotel, Birmingham (where she was lying ill), I was told the doctor of the hospital (Dr. Maclachlan) was with her, and thinking they were probably arranging matters connected with the hospital, I did not go to her room, but proceeded to the train. I had scarcely got seated when the doctor called me out, and we entered a compartment where we were alone. He asked me when it was intended to open the hospital. I replied, 'On the 4th of November.' 'Then,' he said, 'that will just be about the same time Sister Dora will die.'

"The announcement was to me a shock of no ordinary kind, for I had not heard of her being ill, and no one could have imagined, from the cheerful tone of a letter I had received from her a week or so before, that there was anything the matter with her. Not being able to fully realise the true state of affairs, I asked him if he were jesting. He replied he was not, and that he thought it best to let me know at once, so that arrangements might be made for getting someone to take her place when the hospital was opened. I said, 'I suppose she is going to Yorkshire?' 'No,' he replied, 'and that is another thing I wish to speak to you about. She wishes to die in Walsall, and she must be removed immediately.'

"On Sunday (the day following) I saw the chairman and vice-chairman of the hospital. On Sunday evening I returned with Dr. Maclachlan to the Queen's Hotel, where he found his patient very weak. On Monday morning a house was taken, and the furniture she had in her rooms at the hospital removed to it. Her old servant who had gone to The Potteries, was telegraphed for, and arrived in a few hours, and by midday the house was ready for her reception. My daughter, knowing Sister Dora's fondness for flowers, had procured and placed on the table in the parlour a very choice bouquet; and when all was ready Dr. Maclachlan drove over to Birmingham, and brought her to Walsall in his private carriage.

"The disease was now making steady progress, and it was evident that every day she was becoming weaker; but she never lost her cheerfulness, and anyone to have seen her might have thought she was only suffering from some slight ailment, instead of an incurable and painful disease."

"A few hours before her death," writes Mr. S. Welsh "she called me to her bedside and said, 'I want you to promise that you will not, when I am gone, write anything about me; quietly I came among you and, quietly I wish to go away.'" And this desire of hers would have been faithfully complied with had not misrepresentations fired the gentleman to whom the request was made to take up his pen, not in defence of her, but in the correction of statements that affected certain persons who were alive.

In her last sickness when she found her end approaching, she insisted on every one leaving the room—it was her wish to die alone. And as she persisted, so was it, only one nurse standing by the door held ajar, and watching till she knew by the change of attitude, and a certain fixed look in the countenance, that Sister Dora had entered into her rest.[B]

"It was Christmas Eve when she passed away, and a dense fog, like a funeral pall, hung over the town and obscured every object a few feet from the ground. Under this strange canopy the market was being held, and people were busy buying and selling, and making preparations for the great Christmas festival on the following day; but when the deep boom of the passing bell announced the melancholy intelligence that Sister Dora had entered into her rest, a thrill of horror ran through the people, who, with blanched cheeks and bated breath, whispered, 'Can it be true?' Although for seven weeks the process of dissolution had been going on before their eyes, they could not realise the fact that she whom they loved and revered was no more."

The funeral took place on Saturday, the 28th of December. "The day was dark and dismal, the streets, covered with slush and sludge caused by the melted snow, were thronged with spectators.... There was general mourning in the town; and although it was market day nearly every shop was closed during the time of the funeral, and all the blinds along the route of the procession were drawn.... On reaching the cemetery it was found that four other funerals had arrived from the workhouse; and as these coffins had been taken into the chapel there was no room for Sister Dora's, which had, consequently, to be placed in the porch. This was as Sister Dora would have wished, had she had the ordering of the arrangements, for she always gave preference to the poor, to whom she was attached in life, and from whom she would not have desired to be separated in death."

True to her thought of others, in the midst of her last sufferings, she had made arrangements for a Christmas dinner to be given to a number of her old patients, in accordance with a custom of hers in previous years; but on this occasion the festive proceedings were shorn of their gladness. All thought of her who in her pain and on her deathbed had thought of them. Every one tried, but ineffectually, to cheer and comfort the other, but the task was hopeless. One young lady, after the meal, and while the Christmas tree was being lighted commenced singing the pretty little piece, "Far Away," but when she came to the words:

she burst into tears; and the women present sobbed, and tears were seen stealing down the cheeks of bearded men.

The Walsall writer of "A Review" concludes his paper thus:

She is no idol to us, but we worship her memory as the most saintly thing that was ever given us. Her name is immortalised, both by her own surpassing goodness, and by the love of a whole people for her—a love that will survive through generations, and give a magic and a music to those simple words, "Sister Dora," long after we shall have passed away. There was little we could ever do—there was nothing she would let us do—to relieve the self-imposed rigours of her life; but we love her in all sincerity, and now in our helplessness we find a serene joy in the knowledge that to her, as surely as to any human soul, will be spoken the divine words: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

In Sister Dora, surely we have the highest type of the Christian life, the inner and hidden life of the soul, the life that is hid in God, combined with that outer life devoted to the doing of good to suffering and needy humanity. In the cloistered nun we see only the first, and that tends to become self-centred and morbid; it is redeemed from this vice by an active life of self-sacrifice.

I cannot do better than, in conclusion, quote from the last letter ever penned by Sister Dora:

"It is 2.30 A.M., and I cannot sleep, so I am going to write to you. I was anything but 'forbearing,' dear; I was overbearing, and I am truly sorry for it now. I look back on my life and see 'nothing but leaves.' Oh, my darling, let me speak to you from my deathbed, and say, watch in all you do that you have a single aim—God's honour and glory. 'I came not to work my own work, but the works of Him that sent me.' Look upon working as a privilege. Do not look upon nursing in the way they do so much nowadays, as an art or science, but as work done for Christ. As you touch each patient, think it is Christ Himself, and then virtue will come out of the touch to yourself. I have felt that myself, when I have had a particularly loathsome patient. Be full of the Glad Tidings, and you will tell others. You cannot give what you have not got."

FOOTNOTES:

XIIIToC

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Some years ago, when the celebrated Florence Nightingale was a little girl, living at her father's home, a large, old Elizabethan house, with great woods about it, in Hampshire, there was one thing that struck everybody who knew her. It was that she seemed to be always thinking what she could do to please or help anyone who needed either help or comfort. She was very fond, too, of animals, and she was so gentle in her way, that even the shyest of them would come quite close to her, and pick up whatever she flung down for them to eat.

There was, in the garden behind the house, a long walk with trees on each side, the abode of many squirrels, and when Florence came down the walk, dropping nuts as she went along, the squirrels would run down the trunks of their trees, and, hardly waiting until she passed by, would pick up the prize and dart away, with their little bushy tails curled over their backs, and their black eyes looking about as if terrified at the least noise, though they did not seem to be afraid of Florence.

Then there was an old gray pony named Peggy, past work, living in a paddock, with nothing to do all day long but to amuse herself. Whenever Florence appeared at the gate, Peggy would come trotting up and put her nose into the dress pocket of her little mistress, and pick it of the apple or the roll of bread that she knew she would always find there, for this was a trick Florence had taught the pony. Florence was fond of riding, and her father's old friend, the clergyman of the parish, used often to come and take her for a ride with him when he went to the farm cottages at a distance.

As he had studied medicine when a young man, he was able to tell the people what would do them good when they were ill or had met with an accident. Little Florence took great delight in helping to nurse those who were ill; and whenever she went on these long rides, she had a small basket fastened to her saddle, filled with something nice which she saved from her breakfast or dinner, or carried for her mother.

There lived in one of two or three solitary cottages in the wood an old shepherd of her father's, named Roger, who had a favourite sheep-dog called Cap. Roger had neither wife nor child, and Cap lived with him and kept him company at night after he had penned his flock. Cap was a very sensible dog; indeed people used to say he could do everything but speak. He kept the sheep in wonderfully good order, and thus saved his master a great deal of trouble. One day as Florence and her old friend were out for a ride, they came to a field where they found the shepherd giving his sheep their night feed; but he was without the dog, and the sheep knew it, for they were scampering in every direction. Florence and her friend noticed that the old shepherd looked very sad, and they stopped to ask what was the matter, and what had become of his dog.

"Oh," said Roger, "Cap will never be of any more use to me; I'll have to hang him, poor fellow, as soon as I go home to-night."

"Hang him!" said Florence. "Oh, Roger, how wicked of you! What has dear old Cap done?"

"He has done nothing," replied Roger; "but he will never be of any more use to me, and I cannot afford to keep him for nothing; one of the mischievous school boys throwed a stone at him yesterday and broke one of his legs." And the old shepherd's eyes filled with tears, which he wiped away with his shirt-sleeve, then he drove his spade deep in the ground to hide what he felt, for he did not like to be seen crying.

"Poor Cap," he sighed, "he was as knowing almost as a human being."

"But are you sure his leg is broken?" asked Florence.

"Oh, yes, miss, it is broken safe enough; he has not put his foot to the ground since."

Florence and her friend rode on without saying anything more to Roger.

"We will go and see poor Cap," said the vicar; "I don't believe the leg is really broken. It would take a big stone and a hard blow to break the leg of a big dog like Cap."

"Oh, if you could cure him, how glad Roger would be!" replied Florence.

They soon reached the shepherd's cottage, but the door was fastened; and when they moved the latch, such a furious barking was heard that they drew back, startled. However, a little boy came out of the next cottage, and asked if they wanted to go in, as Roger had left the key with his mother. So the key was got and the door opened and there on the bare brick floor lay the dog, his hair dishevelled, and his eyes sparkling with anger at the intruders. But when he saw the little boy he grew peaceful, and when he looked at Florence and heard her call him "poor Cap," he began to wag his short tail; and then crept from under the table and lay down at her feet. She took hold of one of his paws, patted his old rough head, and talked to him, whilst her friend examined the injured leg. It was dreadfully swollen, and hurt very much to have it examined; but the dog knew it was meant kindly, and though he moaned and winced with pain, he licked the hands that were hurting him.

"It's only a bad bruise, no bones are broken," said her old friend. "Rest is all Cap needs; he will soon be well again."

"I am so glad," said Florence; "but can we do nothing for him, he seems in such pain?"

"There is one thing that would ease the pain and heal the leg all the sooner, and that is plenty of hot water to foment the part."

Florence struck a light with the tinder-box, and lighted the fire, which was already laid. She then set off to the other cottage to get something to bathe the leg with. She found an old flannel petticoat hanging up to dry, and this she carried off, and tore up into strips, which she wrung out in warm water, and laid them tenderly on Cap's swollen leg. It was not long before the poor dog felt the benefit of the application, and he looked grateful, wagging his little stump of a tail in thanks. On their way home they met the shepherd coming slowly along, with a piece of rope in his hand.

"Oh, Roger," cried Florence, "you are not to hang poor old Cap; his leg is not broken at all."

"No, he will serve you yet," said the vicar.

"Well, I be main glad to hear it," said the shepherd, "and thanks to you for going to see him."

On the next morning Florence was up early, and the first thing she did was to take two flannel petticoats to give to the poor woman whose skirt she had torn up to bathe Cap. Then she went to the dog, and was delighted to find the swelling of his leg much less. She bathed it again, and Cap was as grateful as before.

Two or three days afterward Florence and her friend were riding together, when they came up to Roger and his sheep. This time Cap was watching the sheep, though he was lying quite still, and pretending to be asleep. When he heard the voice of Florence speaking to his master, who was portioning out the usual food, his tail wagged and his eyes sparkled, but he did not get up, for he was on duty. The shepherd stopped his work, and as he glanced at the dog with a merry laugh, said, "Do look at the dog, Miss; he be so pleased to hear your voice." Cap's tail went faster and faster. "I be glad," continued the old man, "I did not hang him. I be greatly obliged to you Miss, and the vicar, for what you did. But for you I would have hanged the best dog I ever had in my life."

This child, Florence Nightingale, of whom the foregoing story is told, was born in Florence, Italy, in 1820. Her parents were English, and her early years were given to the studies which a girl fortunately situated would follow. She was taught in science and mathematics as well as in the fluent use of French, German and Italian.

But from the day the little girl nursed the leg of the shepherd's dog, it became the custom of the neighbourhood where she lived to send for her when anyone had a cut or bruise or sick animal. "During her girlhood," says the lady who has written her life, "she was chief almoner to the cottages around her home, and nursed all illnesses under the advice of her mother and the vicar." Her favourite books were those that taught of helpfulness to the suffering and miserable, and it seemed as if her whole nature was turning toward her great work. While still a young girl she became interested in what Elizabeth Fry had done in English prisons, and she paid an interested visit to Mrs. Fry.

When in London she would visit hospitals and kindred institutions, and it is said that in the family travels in Egypt she nursed to health several sick Arabs. Her tastes and time, it is evident, were turned toward a humane and benevolent rather than a social life. Thus passed the years of her younger womanhood.

She had withdrawn from gaieties to learn whatever she could of the hospitals of London, Edinburgh and Dublin, and indeed, of the civil and military hospitals of all Europe, and finally in 1851, she went into training as a nurse in a famous institution at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine. Here, when she had taken the course of instruction, she passed a distinguished examination. After a short period of further study in Paris she returned to her beautiful English home for rest.

But at this time a hospital and home in London for sick and aged governesses was about to fail from lack of means and lack of able direction. To this Miss Nightingale gave herself with ardour, and so renewed its strength that it still remains a witness to her energy. She gave largely to this institution. Nevertheless she was to be found, says a visitor, "organising the nurses, attending to the correspondence, prescriptions and accounts; in short, performing all the duties of a hard-working matron."

Ten years she had been serving apprenticeship for the great work of her life, and now she was thirty-four years old. In 1854 a war broke out between England and Russia. It is known as the Crimean War. England sent her soldiers to the Black Sea in many thousands. These soldiers were sadly clad and fed. Bad management seems to have prevailed, and the service for carrying supplies was inadequate. Warm clothing, blankets, tents and other protection failed to reach the troops. "What a mockery," says one writer, "it must have seemed to the poor fellows, who with scanty rations and in threadbare and tattered clothes, were enduring the most cruel fatigues aggravated by wind and rain and snow and cold upon the bleak heights of the Tauric Chersonese," to hear comforts had been sent them. "When men of courageous mould have been seen 'to weep,' as on night after night, succeeding days of starvation and toil, they were ordered to their work in freezing trenches, who can estimate the exhausting misery they had at first endured?"

"It is now pouring rain," wrote another who was there, "the skies are black as ink—the wind is howling over the staggering tents—the trenches are turned into dykes—in the tents the water is sometimes a foot deep—our men have not either warm or waterproof clothing—they are out for twelve hours at a time in the trenches—they are plunged into the inevitable miseries of a winter campaign—and not a soul seems to care for their comfort, or even for their lives. The wretched beggar who wanders about the streets of London in the rain, leads the life of a prince, compared with the British soldiers who are fighting out here for their country.

"The commonest accessories of a hospital are wanting; there is not the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness; the fetid air can barely struggle out to taint the atmosphere, save through the chinks in the walls and roofs, and, for all I can observe, these men die without the least effort being made to save them. There they lie, just as they were let gently down on the ground by the poor fellows, their comrades, who brought them on their backs from the camp with the greatest tenderness, but who are not allowed to remain with them. The sick appear to be tended by the sick, and the dying by the dying."

During that winter of 1854, many were frozen in their tents. Of nearly forty-five thousand, over eighteen thousand were reported in the hospitals. The English people at last saw their disaster, and certain women volunteered services of helpfulness. The head of the War Department of the Government who knew of Miss Nightingale's interest in nursing, asked her to superintend and organise a staff of nurses. By a strange coincidence Florence Nightingale had written and offered her aid to the sick and wounded soldiers, and her letter passed the letter from the Government.

It was an undertaking wholly new to English habits—a band of devoted women going to soften the horrors of war and save lives the war had endeavoured to end. As the nurses landed at Boulogne in France, the poor fisherwomen seized and carried their baggage in token of their admiration for the work they were starting out to do. And in their journey through France the innkeepers would not take pay for their lodgings and food. They sailed across the Mediterranean and in November, 1854, reached Scutari, a town in Turkey in Asia, opposite Constantinople.

Four thousand sick and wounded soldiers lay in the hospitals awaiting their ministrations. And still others from a great battle were coming in. These hospitals were so filled that even in the corridors were two rows of mattresses and so close together that two persons could barely walk between the rows. The beds reeked with infection. There was no thought, seemingly, of sanitation. Rather than curers the hospitals were breeders of pestilence.

"The whole of yesterday one could only forget one's own existence," wrote one of the nurses, "for it was spent first in sewing the men's mattresses, and then in washing them, and assisting the surgeons, when we could, in dressing their ghastly wounds after their five days' confinement on board ship, during which space hundreds of wounds had not been dressed. Hundreds of men with fever, dysentery and cholera (the wounded were the smaller portion) filled the wards in succession from the overcrowded transports." Such were the conditions this band of women found.

The head of the band, Miss Nightingale, began her work of organisation. She laboured with tireless energy and indomitable will. But not without opposition. The military and medical officials, says one who was there, "were in the uttermost confusion among themselves, and they generally regarded these gentle missionaries as a new element of anarchy."

As soon as the wounded soldiers had had treatment, Miss Nightingale set in active operations a kitchen where food fit for the sick might be prepared. Many hundreds of the invalids could not eat of ordinary food without serious evil results. In this kitchen the nurses cooked nourishing delicacies for the poor fellows. The following is a little snapshot by one who was there: "In the outer room we caught a glimpse of the justly celebrated Miss Nightingale, an amiable and highly intelligent-looking lady, delicate in form and prepossessing in appearance. Her energies were concentrated for the instant in the careful preparation of a dish of delectable food for an enfeebled patient—one of her homely ministrations to the wan victims of relentless war."

After the kitchen the master—or mistress—mind planned a laundry where the clothing and beds of the sick men might be cleansed. Miss Nightingale, you see, merely organised and conducted housekeeping upon a giant scale. Then in addition she set on foot evening lectures for the men able to listen, and a library and a schoolroom.

Nevertheless she gave distinct and individual service. "I believe," wrote one, "that there never was a severe case of any kind that escaped her notice; and sometimes it was wonderful to see her at the bedside of a patient who had been admitted perhaps but an hour before, and of whose arrival one would hardly have supposed it possible she could already be cognisant."

"As her slender form glided quietly along each corridor every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her," wrote another. "When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down on the miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone with a little lamp in her hand making her solitary rounds. No one who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can avoid misgivings lest these should fail. With the heart of a true woman and the manners of a lady she combines a surprising calmness of judgment and promptitude and decision of character."

"To see her pass was happiness," one poor fellow said. "As she passed down the beds she would nod to one and smile at many more; but she could not do it to all, you know. We lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads upon the pillows again, content."

"The magic of her power over men used often to be felt," wrote Kinglake the historian, "in the room—the dreaded, the blood-stained room—where 'operations' took place. There perhaps the maimed soldier, if not yet resigned to his fate, might at first be craving death rather than meet the knife of the surgeon; but when such a one looked and saw that the honoured lady-in-chief was patiently standing by him and, with lips closely set and hands folded, decreeing herself to go through the pain of witnessing pain, he used to fall into the mood of obeying the silent command, and, finding strange support in her presence, bring himself to submit and endure."

Every fresh detachment of the wounded meant fresh work for the band of devoted women. Miss Nightingale was always among the busiest and she was known to stand for twenty hours assisting at operations, directing nurses, herself ministering to cholera and fever patients and distributing stores. Once she was prostrated by fever for some weeks. Illness also attacked others of the nurses and many were laid in quiet graves in that distant land.

At last the fighting was brought to an end. For a year and a half had the noble and humane work of nursing gone on and shown the world how much greater is the saving of lives than the destruction of lives by the murder of war. The gratitude the English people felt for what the nurses had done they expressed by a gift of fifty thousand pounds to Miss Nightingale after her return to England. They had planned also a public welcome of their heroine, but with the modesty and calm judgment that always characterised her, she slipped quietly into England by the carriage of a French steamer and so to her country home. Queen Victoria, who with her husband the Prince Consort, had most earnestly admired Miss Nightingale's course, and had sought direct knowledge of her work during her stay in the East, entertained her at Balmoral and presented her with a valuable jewel. The sum presented her by the nation was, at her request, given to the foundation of a training home for nurses in connection with St. Thomas's Hospital. It is called the "Nightingale Home."

This "Angel of the Crimea" returned to England so enfeebled with arduous labour that she has never since entered active life. She lived many years, perforce, in her own sick-room with scarcely strength to pen a letter, and saw no one but closest associates. The knowledge and experience she had got in public service, however, she gave to the world in part in her "Notes on Nursing" and "Notes on Hospitals," and other publications. Several Governments have sought her advice upon the sanitation of army camps, and the Red Cross Society is in part from her aid and endeavour.

Her "Notes on Nursing" are full of sound sense and we should be more fortunate if the knowledge in them were more general than it is.

"Everything you do in a patient's room after he is 'put up' for the night increases tenfold the risk of his having a bad night; but if you rouse him up after he has fallen asleep, you do not risk—you secure him a bad night."

"Conciseness and decision are above all things necessary with the sick. Let your doubt be to yourself, your decision to them."

"Above all leave the sick-room quietly, and come into it quietly; not suddenly, not with a rush."

"Remember never to lean against, sit upon, or unnecessarily shake the bed upon which a patient lies."

"An extraordinary fallacy is the dread of night air," she wrote. "What air can we breathe at night but night air? The choice is between pure night air from without and foul night air from within. Most people prefer the latter—an unaccountable choice. What will they say if it be proved true that fully one-half of all the disease we suffer from is occasioned by people sleeping with their windows shut? An open window most nights of the year can never hurt anyone. In great cities night air is often the best and purest to be had in the twenty-four hours."

"The five essentials, for healthy houses," she again says, "are pure air, pure water, efficient drainage, cleanliness and light. I have known whole houses and hospitals smell of the sink. I have met just as strong a stream of sewer air coming up the back staircase of a grand London house, from the sink, as I have ever met at Scutari; and I have seen the rooms in that house all ventilated by the open doors, and the passages all unventilated by the close windows, in order that as much of the sewer air as possible might be conducted into and retained in the bedrooms. It is wonderful!"

She is opposed to dark houses; says they promote scrofula; to old papered walls and to carpets full of dust. An uninhabited room becomes full of foul air soon, and needs to have the windows open often. She would keep sick people, or well, forever in the sunlight if possible, for sunlight is the greatest possible purifier of the atmosphere. "In the unsunned sides of narrow streets," she writes, "there is degeneracy and weakliness of the human race—mind and body equally degenerating. Oh, the crowded school, where so many children's epidemics have their origin, what a tale its air test would tell!"

"Nursing is an art; and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or cold marble compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's Spirit? Nursing is one of the fine arts; I had almost said, the finest of the fine arts."

Miss Nightingale is living with her great work done. Still she continues and will ever continue, her ministrations in the bravery, devotion and unselfishness of every nurse and in the effective work of every hospital.

SANTA FILOMENA

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

FOOTNOTES:

Typographical errors corrected in text:

Page 52: Bethelehem replaced with Bethlehem

Page 60: Dauphinè replaced with Dauphiné

Page 90: deserevd replaced with deserved

Page 97: "pronounced sentenced of death" replaced with "pronounced sentence of death"

Page 145: propperly replaced with properly

Page 167: "and sometimes at the Lady Pocahontas" replaced with "and sometimes as the Lady Pocahontas"

Page 182: heighth replaced with height

Page 189: Mandonald replaced with Macdonald

Page 234: fairty replaced with fairly

Page 235: surviviors replaced with survivors

Page 280: dailyneeds replaced with daily needs

Readers should note that in the Chapter on Catherine Douglas, pp. 101-131, the spelling 'Scotish' is not an error, but a varient spelling.