Page:Una and the Lion by Florence Nightingale.djvu/28

 old prostitutes, the worn-out old thieves, the worn-out old drunkards.

And, if any one would know what are the lowest depths of human vice and misery, would see the festering mass of decay of living human bodies and human souls, and then would try what one loving soul filled with the spirit of her God can do to let in the light of God into this hideous well (worse than the well of Cawnpore), to bind up the wounds, to heal the broken-hearted, to bring release to the captives,—let her study the ways, and follow in the steps, of this one young, frail woman, who has died to show us the way—blessed in her death as in her life.

If anything ought to nerve the official crowd of the Poor-Law Board, and us women on the non-official side, to resolve on fighting this holy crusade until all the sick poor of these kingdoms are cared for as children of God, it is surely the fact that so precious a life has been sacrificed in discharging a duty which, if the country had recognized it as a duty, ought to have been unnecessary after three centuries of a Poor Law.

The last words spoken to her were, "You will soon be with your Saviour." Her reply was, "I shall be well there." And so she passed away. In her coffin she had that listening, beaming expression, peculiar to her in life, as if always