Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/25

 training school for the colony, five trained nurses and a trained lady-superintendent.

I give a quarter of a century's European experience when I say that the happiest people, the fondest of their occupation, the most thankful for their lives, are, in my opinion, those engaged in sick nursing. In my opinion, it is a mere abuse of words to represent the life, as is done by some, as a sacrifice and a martyrdom. But there have been martyrs in it. The founders and pioneers of almost everything that is best must be martyrs. But these are the last ever to think themselves so. And for all there must be constant self-sacrifice for the good of all. But the distinction is this—the life is not a sacrifice; it is the engaging in an occupation the happiest of any. But the strong, the healthy wills in any life must determine to pursue the common good at any personal cost—at daily sacrifice. And we must not think that any fit of enthusiasm will carry us through such a life as this. Nothing but the feeling that it is God's work more than ours—that we are seeking His success and not our success—and that we have trained and fitted ourselves by every means which He has granted us to carry out His work, will enable us to go on.

Three fourths of the whole mischief in women's lives arises from their excepting