As I gaze upon the radiance
Shining on me from afar,
I can almost see beyond it,--
Almost see 'the gates ajar.'

Tender thoughts arise within me
Of the friends who've gone before,
Absent long but not forgotten,
Resting on the other shore.

And my soul is filled with longing
That when done with earth and sin,
I may find the gates wide open
There for me to enter in."

Apparently, she wrote her poetry for herself, as an unskilled musician
might play for his own amusement.

The rest which Miss Dix allowed herself between September 1854 and
September 1856, was to visit the chief hospitals and prisons in
Europe. Edinburgh, the Channel Islands, Paris, Rome, Naples,
Constantinople, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Stockholm, Copenhagen,
Amsterdam, Brussels, and again Paris and London: these places mark the
course of her two years' pilgrimage among the prisons and hospitals of
Europe. She found much to admire in this journey, but sometimes abuses
to correct. We must content ourselves with an incident from Edinburgh,
perfectly in character. She found in that city private insane
hospitals, if they could be dignified by the name, under such
conditions of mismanagement as shocked even her experienced nerves.
Having reported the facts to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh to no
purpose, she was advised to lay the matter before the Home Secretary
in London. The Provost knew of this intention and resolved to
forestall her by taking the train for London the next morning; so
little did he know Miss Dix. She boarded the night train, and was on
the spot before him, had her interview, secured the appointment of a
royal commission and, ultimately the correction of the abuses of which
she had complained.

During the four years that intervened between her return and the
outbreak of the Civil War, she seems to have travelled over most of
her old ground in this country, and to have extended her journeys into
the new states and territories. At the approach of hostilities, it
fell to Miss Dix to give the President of the Philadelphia and
Baltimore Railroad the first information of a plot to capture the city
of Washington and to assassinate Mr. Lincoln. Acting upon this
information, Gen. Butler's Massachusetts troops were sent by boat
instead of rail, and Mr. Lincoln was "secretly smuggled through to
Washington."

By natural selection, Miss Dix was appointed Superintendent of Women
Nurse