Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/12

 her Una, if you please; for, when her whole life and image rise before me, so far from thinking the story of Una and her lion a myth, I say here is Una in real flesh and blood—Una and her paupers, far more untamable than lions.

The graceful, tender legends of Catholic saints and martyrs—why call them Roman Catholic?—have not a greater miracle than we have here in the flesh. She lived the life, and died the death of the saints and martyrs; though the greatest sinner would not have been more surprised than she to have heard this said of herself. In less than three years she had reduced one of the most disorderly hospital populations in the world to something like Christian discipline, such as the police themselves wondered at. She had led, so as to be of one mind and heart with her, upwards of fifty nurses and probationers; of whom the faithful few whom she took with her of our trained nurses were but a seed. She had converted a vestry to the conviction of the economy as well as humanity of nursing pauper sick by trained nurses,—the first instance of the kind in England; for vestries, of whom she had almost the most enlightened, the most liberal body of men in England to support her, must look after the pockets of their rate-payers as well as the benefit of their sick. But, indeed, the superstition seems now to be exploding, that to