Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/26

 from the rules of training considered needful for men.

And even with this thorough training, we shall have many moments of doubt, of dread, of discouragement. But yet the very pressure of the work of which the cares are so heavy, prevents us from having time to dwell on them.

The work has great consolations. It has also great disappointments, like every other noble work where you aim high: and if there has been one thing expressed to me more often and more strongly by her we have lost, it is what I have tried to say above.

I must end as I have begun, with my Una.

I cannot say in my weak words, what she used to tell as to her questionings: "Shall I be able ever to meet the dreariness, the disappointments, the isolation?" And the answer, "Not in my own strength, but in His; not for my work's sake, but for His." "My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in thy weakness." That answer of God to St. Paul, she realized in her daily life more than any one I ever knew.

She was peculiarly sensitive to little acts and words of kindness, and also of unkindness; and if a nosegay, a friendly letter, came to her in her times of overwork and discouragement, she would take it exactly as if it had been sent her by her