Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/21

 have it; here is an independent and well-paid calling waiting to receive you when you leave your training, if only you have fitted yourselves for it. I might say more than this; I might say we are beset with offers of places for trained nurses and trained superintendents, and we cannot fill them. I would I could go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in. How often I have known Pastor Fliedner, of Kaiserswerth (he is now gone to his glorious rest), say, when thus pressed by calls from pastors, and from directors of institutions, out of all parts of Germany, "You ask me for deaconesses. Has your district furnished us with any probationers? No; not one. Then, am I to give you the finished article, and you not to give me the live material? Am I to raise deaconesses out of the ground by a stamp of the foot?" That is what we, alas! feel often inclined to say when we are pressed from all parts of her Majesty's dominions, colonies included, in that empire "upon which the sun never sets."

I have spoken chiefly of work-house hospitals, and their want of trained nurses and trained superintendents, because I had to describe the work of her who was the first to try to fill the deep, yawning chasm, but not like Curtius, to close it up—and because it seemed the most crying want. But why do I call it so? To