n against; it's no matter,--don't bother about me,'
but his eyes were fixed longingly on the smoking tea. Everybody was
busy, not even a nurse in sight, but the poor man must have his tea. I
pushed away the knapsack, raised his head, and seated myself on the end
of the stretcher; and, as I drew his poor tired head back upon my
shoulder and half held him, he seemed, with all his pleasure and eager
enjoyment of the tea, to be troubled at my being so bothered with him.
He forgot I had come so many hundred miles on purpose to be bothered."

One can hardly read this simple unaffected statement of hers, without
instinctively recalling the touching story told of a soldier in one of
the hospitals of the Crimea who, when Florence Nightingale had passed,
turned and kissed the place upon his pillow where her shadow fell. The
sweet name of the fair English nurse might well be claimed by many of
our American heroines, but, when we think of Margaret's pure voice,
singing hymns with the soldiers on the hospital-boat, filling the
desolate woods along the Mississippi shores with solemn music in the
still night, we feel that it belongs especially to her and that we may
call her, without offense to the others, _our Florence Nightingale_.

Her great power of adaptation served her well in her chosen vocation.
Unmindful of herself, and always considerate of others, she could suit
herself to the need of the moment and was equally at home in making tea
and toast for the hungry, dressing ghastly wounds for the sufferers, and
in singing hymns and talking of spiritual things with the sick and
dying.

She found indeed her true vocation. She saw her way and walked
fearlessly in it; she knew her work and did it with all her heart and
soul. When she first began to visit the hospitals in and around St.
Louis, she wrote "I shall never be satisfied till I get right into a
hospital, to live till the war is over. If you are constantly with the
men, you have hundreds of opportunities and moments of influence in
which you can gain their attention and their hearts, and do more good
than in any missionary field." Once, on board a steamer near Vicksburg,
during the fearful winter siege of that city, some one said to her, "You
must hold back, you are going beyond your strength, you will die if you
are not more prudent!" "Well," said she, with thrilling earnestness,
"what if I do? Shall men come here by tens of thousands and fight, and
suffer, and die, and sha