Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/13

 neglect sick paupers is the way to keep down pauperism. She had converted the Poor-Law Board—a body, perhaps, not usually given to much enthusiasm about Unas and paupers—to these views; two of whom bore witness to this effect.

She had disarmed all opposition, all sectarian zealotism; so that Roman Catholic and Unitarian, High Church and Low Church, all literally rose up and called her "blessed." Churchwardens led the way in the vestry-meeting which was held in her honor after her death; and really affecting speeches, made while moving the resolution of condolence (no mere form) to her family, were the tribute to her public service. All, of all shades of religious creed, seemed to have merged their differences in her, seeing in her the one true essential thing, compared with which they acknowledged their differences to be as nothing. And aged paupers made verses in her honor after her death.

In less than three years—the time generally given to the ministry on earth of that Saviour whom she so earnestly strove closely to follow—she did all this. She had the gracefulness, the wit, the unfailing cheerfulness—qualities so remarkable but so much overlooked in our Saviour's life. She had the absence of all asceticism, or "mortification," for mortification's sake,