When hospitals were to be
built, when schemes of sanitary reform were in agitation, when
wars broke out, she was still the adviser of all Europe. Still,
with a characteristic self-assurance, she watched from her
Mayfair bedroom over the welfare of India. Still, with an
indefatigable enthusiasm, she pushed forward the work, which,
perhaps, was nearer to her heart, more completely her own, than
all the rest-- the training of nurses. In her moments of deepest
depression, when her greatest achievements seemed to lose their
lustre, she thought of her nurses, and was comforted. The ways of
God, she found, were strange indeed. 'How inefficient I was in
the Crimea,' she noted. 'Yet He has raised up from it trained
nursing.'
At other times, she was better satisfied. Looking back, she was
amazed by the enormous change which, since her early days, had
come over the whole treatment of illness, the whole conception of
public and domestic health--a change in which, she knew, she had
played her part. One of her Indian admirers, the Aga Khan, came
to visit her. She expatiated on the marvellous advances she had
lived to see in the management of hospitals-- in drainage, in
ventilation, in sanitary work of every kind. There was a pause;
and then, 'Do you think you are improving?' asked the Aga Khan.
She was a little taken aback, and said, 'What do you mean by
"improving"?' He replied, 'Believing more in God.
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