ved that highest of plaudits--Well done
good and faithful servant!
Miss Dix has one remarkable peculiarity--undoubtedly remarkable in one
of her sex which is said, and with truth--to possess great
approbativeness. She does not apparently desire fame, she does not enjoy
being talked about, even in praise. The approval of her own conscience,
the consciousness of performing an unique and useful work, seems quite
to suffice her. Few women are so self-reliant, self-sustained,
self-centered. And in saying this we but echo the sentiments, if not the
words, of an eminent divine who, like herself, was during the whole war
devoted to a work similar in its purpose, and alike responsible and
arduous.
"She (Miss Dix) is a lady who likes to do things and not have them
talked about. She is freer from the love of public reputation than any
woman I know. Then her plans are so strictly her own, and always so
wholly controlled by her own individual genius and power, that they
cannot well be participated in by others, and not much understood.
"Miss Dix, I suspect, was as early _in_, as _long_ employed, and as
self-sacrificing as any woman who offered her services to the country.
She gave herself--body, soul and substance--to the good work. I wish we
had any record of her work, but we have not.
"I should not dare to speak for her--about her work--except to say that
it was extended, patient and persistent beyond anything I know of,
dependent on a single-handed effort."
All the testimony goes to show that Miss Dix is a woman endowed with
warm feelings and great kindness of heart. It is only those who do not
know her, or who have only met her in the conflict of opposing wills,
who pronounce her, as some have done, a cold and heartless egotist.
Opinionated she may be, because convinced of the general soundness of
her ideas, and infallibility of her judgment. If the success of great
designs, undertaken and carried through single-handed, furnish warrant
for such conviction, she has an undoubted right to hold it.
Her nature is large and generous, yet with no room for narrow grudges,
or mean reservations. As a proof of this, her stores were as readily
dispensed for the use of a hospital in which the surgeon refused and
rejected her nurses, as for those who employed them.
She had the kindest care and oversight over the women she had
commissioned. She wished them to embrace every opportunity for the rest
and refreshment rendered necess
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