FLORENCE NIGIITINGALE, the ear sounds which go straight to the heart of the listener. Now, it is a wasted skeleton of a man who fancies himself in the trenches, or on the blood- stained ridges of the Inkerman valley, contending for dear life, and tue honour of his country. That ceases, and through the stillness comes the heavy moaning of another sufferer at gripswith death. By and by a patient in deep consumption has a fit of coughing; and so through the dreary hours the ear is arrested by expressions of suffering, which, heard in these huge establishments, have a terrible sig- nificance." Merely to see her pass along was an inexpressible comfort to the men. " She would speak to one," said a poor fellow, writing home, " and nod and smile to a many more ; but she couldn't do it to all, you know. We lay there by hundreds ; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again, content." In her rounds, to one she would administer words of consolation and hope, to another teach resignation, now cheering with a smile, or sympathizing with a sigh ; minis- tering to the necessities both of mind and body of the sufferers who, following her light, soft footsteps with their tear-brimmed eyes, bent to " kiss her shadow as it fell !" Such was her influence, that when men, frenzied by their wounds and disease, had worked themselves into a passionate refusal to submit to necessary operations, a few calm sentences of hers seemed at once to allay the storm ; and the 32
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