FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 375 " The whole of yesterday," writes one of the nurses a few days after they had arrived, " one could only forget one's own existence, for it was spent, first in sewing the men's mattresses together, and then in washing them and assisting the surgeons, when we could, in dressing their ghastly wounds after their five days' confinement on boird ship, during which space their wounds had not been dressed. Hundreds of men with fever, dysentery, and cholera (the wounded were the smaller portion) filled the wards in succession, from the overcrowded transports." Miss Nightingale's position was a most difficult one. Everything was in dis- order, and every official was extremely jealous of interference. Miss Nightingale, however, at once impressed upon her staff the duty of obeying the doctors' orders, as she did herself. An invalids' kitchen was established immediately by her to supplement the rations. A laundry was added ; the nursing itself, was, however, the most difficult and important part of the work. But it would take far too much space to give all the details of that kind but strict administration which brought comparative comfort and a low death-rate into the Scutari hospitals. During a year and a half the labor of getting the hos- pitals into working order was enormous, but before the peace arrived they were models of what such institutions may be. Speaking of Miss Nightingale in the hospital at Scutari, the Times corre- spondent wrote : " Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen ; her benignant presence is an influence of good comfort even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is a ministering angel, without any exag- geration, in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each cor- ridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed, alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. With the heart of a true woman and the manner of a lady, accomplished and refined beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness of judgment and promptitude and deci- sion of character. The popular instinct was not mistaken, which, when she set out from England on her mission of mercy, hailed her as a heroine ; I trust that she may not earn her title to a higher, though sadder, appellation. No one who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can avoid misgivings lest these should fail." Public feeling bubbled up into poetry. Even doggerel ballads sung about the streets praised " The Nightingale of the East, For her heart it means good." Among many others, Longfellow wrote the charming poem, "The Lady with the Lamp," so beautifully illustrated by the statuette of Florence Nightin- gale at St. Thomas's Hospital, suggested by the well-known incident recorded in a soldier's letter : " She would speak to one and another, and nod and smile to
