THE SOLDIER'S FRIEND. suffered from evil tongues, Florence Nightingale calmly held on her way up the steep and rocky road, nor heeded the discordant cries which would have called her back. Not a moment was lost in unnecessary delay, or in preliminary preparations. Miss Nightingale formed, from some hundreds who offered, a band of thirty - seven nurses-many of them like herself, volunteers from the higher ranks of life, gentle ladies, accus- tomed to ease and luxury, but not unused to tend the suffering or the dying, nor to lead lives of charity and self-denial. Twelve nuns from the Convent at Norwood, under charge of their superioress, an Irish lady, proffered their services, and were gladly included in the noble corps; for the holy leader of the band was no narrow-minded bigot, and did not doubt but that a basin of gruel, a glass of wine, or a cup of medicine, might perhaps be administered as tenderly by a hand which clasped a missal, as by one which touched a Testament. When everything was ready, Florence Nightingale bade farewell to her fond parents and her affectionate sister, renounced her friendships and her intellectual pleasures, and quitted the comforts of her home, the quiet liberty of dear old England, for a perilous journey to a land teeming with danger and disease. She and her sister-labourers, prompted by the most sincere, charitable, and religious feelings which can inspire the human heart, and undaunted by the 15
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