that time--conscientiously charge myself
with doing less for the men who had only thanks to give me, than for
the officers whose gratitude gave me the necessaries of life. I think
I was ever ready to turn from the latter to help the former, humble as
they might be; and they were grateful in their way, and as far as they
could be. They would buy me apples and other fruit at Balaclava, and
leave them at my store. One made me promise, when I returned home, to
send word to his Irish mother, who was to send me a cow in token of
her gratitude for the help I had been to her son. I have a book filled
with hundreds of the names of those who came to me for medicines and
other aids; and never a train of sick or wounded men from the front
passed the British Hotel but its hostess was awaiting them to offer
comforts to the poor fellows, for whose suffering her heart bled.

_Punch_, who allowed my poor name to appear in the pages which had
welcomed Miss Nightingale home--_Punch_, that whimsical mouthpiece of
some of the noblest hearts that ever beat beneath black coats--shall
last of all raise its voice, that never yet pleaded an unworthy cause,
for the Mother Seacole that takes shame to herself for speaking thus
of the poor part she bore of the trials and hardships endured on that
distant shore, where Britain's best and bravest wrung hardly
Sebastopol from the grasp of Britain's foe:--

"No store she set by the epaulette,
Be it worsted or gold lace;
For K. C. B. or plain private Smith,
She had still one pleasant face.

"And not alone was her kindness shown
To the hale and hungry lot
Who drank her grog and ate her prog,
And paid their honest shot.

"The sick and sorry can tell the story
Of her nursing and dosing deeds;
Regimental M.D. never worked as she,
In helping sick men's needs.

"Of such work, God knows, was as much as she chose
That dreary winter-tide,
When Death hung o'er the damp and pestilent camp,
And his scythe swung far and wide.

"She gave her aid to all who prayed,
To hungry and sick and cold;
Open hand and heart, alike ready to part
Kind words and acts, and gold.

* * * * *

"And--be the right man in the right place who can--
The right woman was Dame Seacole."

Reader, now that we have come to the end of this chapter, I can say
what I have been all anxiety to