The first thought I can remember, and the last, was
nursing work; and in the absence of this, education work, but
more the education of the bad than of the young... Everything
has been tried-- foreign travel, kind friends, everything. My
God! What is to become of me?' A desirable young man? Dust and
ashes! What was there desirable in such a thing as that? 'In my
thirty-first year,' she noted in her diary, 'I see nothing
desirable but death.'
Three more years passed, and then at last the pressure of time
told; her family seemed to realise that she was old enough and
strong enough to have her way; and she became the superintendent
of a charitable nursing home in Harley Street. She had gained her
independence, though it was in a meagre sphere enough; and her
mother was still not quite resigned: surely Florence might at
least spend the summer in the country. At times, indeed, among
her intimates, Mrs. Nightingale almost wept. 'We are ducks,' she
said with tears in her eyes, 'who have hatched a wild swan.' But
the poor lady was wrong; it was not a swan that they had hatched,
it was an eagle.
II
Miss NIGHTINGALE had been a year in her nursing-home in Harley
Street, when Fate knocked at the door. The Crimean War broke out;
the battle of the Alma was fought; and the terrible condition of
our military hospitals at Scutari began to be known in England.
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