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 37 2 THE WINTEIl TROUBLES. u H A P. words of coniuiand could well have sought to ___J exact ; yet ' never/ she gratefully wrote, ' came ' from any of them one word nor one look which ' a gentleman would not have used ; and while ' paying this humble tribute to humble courtesy, ' the tears come into my eyes as I think how, ' amidst scenes of. . . loathsome disease and ' death, there rose above it all the innate dignity, ' gentleness, and chivalry of the men (for never, ' surely, was chivalry so strikingly exemplified), ' shining in the midst of what must be con- ' sidered as the lowest sinks of human misery, ' and preventing instinctively the use of one ex- ' pression which could distress a gentlewoman.' But if those touching words truly rendered the bearing of the hospital orderlies and of the convalescents and other soldiers who were strong enough to be able to obey her, there was worship almost in the gratitude of the prostrate sufferer, who saw her glide into his ward, and at last approach his bedside. The magic of her power over men used often to be felt in the room — the dreaded, the blood-stained room — where ' oper- ' ations ' took place. There, perhaps the maimed soldier, if not yet resigned to his fate, might at first be craving death rather than meet the knife of the surgeon ; but, when such a one looked and saw that the honoured Lady-in-Chief was patiently standing beside him, and — with lips closely set and liands folded — decreeing herself to go through the pain of witnessing pain, he used to fall into the mood for obeying her silent command, and — finding strange support in her