Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/64

52 the heyday of summer. Then the sun, streaming through the windows, may illumine the figure of the nurse as she sits on the awful sofa. She has her spectacles on, and is busy with some white needlework. Her attitude is so placid that she might be sitting at a cottage door listening to a blackbird in a wicker cage. Yet this quiet-looking woman, although she has not fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, has fought with raving drunkards and men delirious from their hurts, and has heard more foul language and more blasphemy in a week than would have enlivened a pirate ship in a year.

The Receiving Room nurse was, in old days, without exception the most remarkable woman in the hospital. She appeared as a short, fat, comfortable person of middle age, with a ruddy face and a decided look of assurance. She was without education, and yet her experience of casualties of all kinds—from a bee-sting to sudden death—was vast and indeed unique. She was entirely self-taught, for there were no trained nurses in those days. She was of the school of Mrs. Gamp, was a woman of courage and of infinite resource, an expert in the treatment of the violent and in the crushing of anyone who gave her what she called "lip." She was possessed of much humour,