Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/18

 of the work, but for each one in herself; not because she wished for popularity or praise among them, but solely for their own well-being. She had no care for praise in her at all. But (or rather because of this) she had a greater power of carrying her followers with her than any woman (or man) I ever knew. And she never seemed to know that she was doing anything remarkable.

It seems unnatural that I should be writing her "In Memoriam," I who have been a prisoner to my roof from illness for years, and she so full of health and vigor till almost the last. Within sixteen days of her death I received a letter from her, full of all her own energy about work-house affairs, and mentioning her illness, which had begun, but bidding me "not be anxious." But this is not an "In Memoriam," it is a war-cry—a war-cry such as she would have bid me write; a cry for successors to fill her place, to fill up the ranks.

O, fellow countrywomen, why do you hang back? Why are there so few of you? We hear so much of "idle hands and unsatisfied hearts," and nowhere more than in England. All England is ringing with the cry for "Woman's Work" and Woman's"Woman's [sic] Mission." Why are there so few to do the "work"? We used to hear of people giving their blood for their country.