FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE'S INFLUENCE.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10267, 9 February 1899, Page 2

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE'S INFLUENCE.

o It tlirills one still to read of the strange , passion of half-worshipping loyalty this gentie woman roused in every one about her. A little ring .. of. English gentlemen gathered round the hospital to do her behest. On* young fellow, not long from Eton, made himself her "fag." Orderlies and attendants rar. at her whisper, and were somehow lifted i>, a mood of chivalry by the process. As foj the patients, they almost worshipped her, Macdonald, who administered the fund "The Times" jhad raised for the service of the lick and -wounded, draws a picture of Florence Nightingale in Scutari:—"As her slendvr form glides quietly along each corridor, everypoor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silenc* and darkness have settled down upon miles , of prostrate sick, she may be observed alono with a little lamp in her hand, making'her , solitary rounds." It is on this picture—the pitying woman carrying her nurse's lamii through the long, corridors where 5000 sick and wounded arc lying—that the imagination of Longfellow has fastened: — "Aβ if a door in heaven should be Opened, and then closed suddenly, '■ : ■■■"■> - ! ■ The vision came end went, . y-, rjThe light shone and was spent. "On England's annals through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, That light its ray shall cast From portals of the past, "A lady with a lamp ehall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good, ■ 7 : Heroic womanhood." , ~ j It was, perhaps, in the operating-room lhafc Florence Nightingale showed in its highest form the mastery sho obtained over the spirits of her soldier patients. This fragileEnglish lady was known, many times to toil for twenty hours continuously amid her band of nurses and her miles of patients; yei' a still sorsr lax upon apr strength must have been to stand in. the dreaded and bloodstained room where the surgeon's knife wa* But the poor soldier, stretched upon theitable, as he looked at the slender figure of the lady nurse, standing with clasped hands but steadfast eyes and pitying smile, enduring the pain of witnessing lus pain, drew forth fortitude from the sight. A soldier told Sidney Herbert tbat the men watched for her coming into the ward,- and though she could no* speak to all, 'we couM i kiss 'her shadow us she passed."— "Fights for ths Flag," in the "CornhUl ' ■ Magazine" for December.