at lay before her, for she had been sent to bring order from
chaos, plenty from want, comfort from torture and cleanliness from
wholesale filth. She had to contend not only with these awful
conditions, but with the dislike and distrust of the medical officers
with whom she was to work, who resented the fact that a woman had been
sent out to reorganize what they considered a part of their department,
and who doubted, because she was a woman, that she would be capable of
doing so efficiently.

And when she arrived there was no time to spend in preliminary
planning, for active fighting had been going on at the front and the
wounded from recent battles were pouring in, adding to the confusion
that already existed. They were laid groaning in hallways and on the
bare ground until such time as the doctors could look after them.

Then Florence Nightingale, hardly taking breath, plunged into the task
that awaited her and sent her nurses to the quarters where they were
most needed. With their own hands these brave Englishwomen scrubbed the
reeking floors and supervised the work of the orderlies. They visited
the quartermasters and obtained the supplies that had been tied up
through faulty administration and through army red tape, and in a short
time they had established a diet kitchen where several hundred sick and
wounded men could have the food they required, food that would save
their lives.

The death rate, we are told, before this woman nurse and her little
company arrived at the hospital was sixty percent of all the cases that
were treated there--and after she had effected the changes that she saw
were necessary, the death rate was only one percent--a fact in itself
that speaks more loudly than any words for her efficiency and her
bravery.

At times this indomitable woman was on her feet for twenty hours out of
the twenty-four, supervising, directing, taking the last message of
some dying soldier for his family, feeding another who was too weak to
feed himself. The doctors who had been her opponents soon looked up to
her and became her devoted friends, and the men who had been through
such terrible sufferings thought she was indeed an angel from heaven,
and, as she passed down the long wards would furtively kiss her shadow
as it fell across their blankets. Many a time she took charge of cases
that had been given up by the doctors, who turned their attention
always to those whom they believed had a fighting chance for li