Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/220

 376 WORKMEN AND HEROES many more ; but she could not do it to all, you know, for vve lay there by hun dreds ; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on our pillows again, content" " Lo ! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room. " And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow as it falls Upon the darkening walls. " On England's annals, through the long Hereafter of her speech and song, A light its rays shall cast From portals of the past. " A lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good Heroic womanhood." In the following spring Miss Nightingale crossed the Black Sea and visited Balaclava, where the state of the hospitals in huts was extremely distressing, as help of all kinds was even more difficult to obtain there than at Scutari. Here Miss Nightingale spent some weeks, until she was prostrated by a severe attack of the Crimean fever, of which she very nearly died. But at length the Crimean war came to an end. The nation was prepared to welcome its heroine with the most passionate enthusiasm. But Florence Nightingale quietly slipped back unnoticed to her Derbyshire home, without its being known that she had passed through London. Worn out with ill-health and fatigue, and naturally shrinking from publicity, the public at large has scarcely ever seen her ; she has been a great invalid ever since the war, and. for many years hardly ever left her house. But her energy has been untiring. She was one of the founders of the Red Cross Society for the relief of the sick and wounded in war. When the civil war broke out in America she was consulted as to all the details of the military nursing there. " Her name is almost more known among us than even in Europe," wrote an American. During the Franco-German war she gave ad- vice for the chief hospitals under the Crown Princess, the Princess Alice, and others. The Children's Hospital, at Lisbon, was erected from her plans. The hospitals in Australia, India, and other places have received her care. A large proportion of the plans for the building and organization of the hospitals erected during the last twenty-five years in England, have passed through her hands. The Queen, who had followed her work with constant interest, presented her with a beautiful and costly decoration. The nation gave .50,000 to found the