man, who might have been content to live the
quiet life of luxury to which she was born. But God had given to her a
tender heart, which would not permit her to look on suffering without
longing to alleviate it; and when she was twenty-one years old, she
began to take an interest in the condition of hospitals. After a time
she went into the Protestant Deaconesses Institution at Kaiserswerth,
that she might be trained as a nurse. At the end of ten years of
preparation, she entered upon her life-work. War was declared with
Russia; and when the battle of the Alma had been fought, the wounded
crowded the hospitals. But the condition of these places was so
terrible, the men died of disease so rapidly, that the death-rate was
greater than if they had fallen in fight. In this appalling crisis,
Miss Nightingale offered her services. These were thankfully accepted;
and a week afterward, the lady and her nurses left England for Scutari.
What she did there has since become matter for history. On one
occasion, she was on her feet for twenty hours at a stretch, until all
the poor fellows who had been brought in were comfortably accommodated.
None can tell how many lives she was the means of saving.

"Neglected, dying in despair,
They lay till woman came
To soothe them with her gentle care,
And feed life's flickering flame.

"When wounded sore on fever's rack,
Or cast away as slain,
she called their fluttering spirits back,
And gave them strength again.

"'Twas grief to miss the passing face
That suffering could dispel;
But joy to turn and kiss the place
On which her shadow fell."

Nor was her work confined to nursing only. Her example has done very
much; and her literary productions have given light and teaching to
those who wished to follow it. Who does not know the good that her
"Notes on Hospitals" has done? And her little book, "Notes on
Nursing," is invaluable to all who are called upon to spend an hour in
the sick room. Florence Nightingale has answered the question, What is
woman's work? by doing what she could.

She was one example, and ELIZABETH FRY was another. Passing her
childhood in the quiet home of her father, she was yet, as a child,
laying the foundation of her future excellent career. When only
eighteen years of age, she gained her father's consent to her
establishing in his house a school, to which about eighty poor children
came, and where they were tau