t
Indies, in the Shetlands, in London, at Middlesbrough, in Sussex. At
all the ports at which we touched on our last cruise she spared no
pains to interest people in the work. You heard her deliver her last
appeal in the cause at Rockhampton. She spoke under extreme physical
difficulty, but with melting pathos. As it was her last speech, so,
perhaps, it was her best.

Your mother took up ambulance work at a time when it was little in
fashion, because she believed it to be a good cause. By years of hard
work, in speech, in letter, by interview, by pamphlet, by personal
example and devotion, she spread to multitudes the knowledge of the
art of ministering first-aid to the injured. We may rest assured that
her exertions have been, under Providence, the means of saving many
precious lives. In her last cruise you have seen how, when painful
injuries have been received, she has been the first to staunch the
bleeding wound, facing trying scenes with a courage which never
faltered while there was need for it, but which, as the reaction which
followed too surely told, put a severe strain upon her feeble frame.

Many could tell, in terms of deepest gratitude, what a true angel from
heaven your dear mother had been to them in their hours of sickness.
You will readily recall some of the most striking occasions.

That your mother accomplished what she did is the more to be admired
when account is taken of the feeble condition of her health and of her
many serious illnesses. She inherited weakness of the chest from her
mother, who died of decline in early life. When on the point of first
going out into society, she was fearfully burned, and lay for six
months wrapped in cotton-wool, unable to feed herself. In the early
years of our married life we were frequently driven away in the winter
to seek a cure for severe attacks of bronchitis. In 1869 your mother
caught a malarial fever while passing through the Suez Canal. She rode
through Syria in terrible suffering. There was a temporary rally,
followed by a relapse, at Alexandria. From Alexandria we went to
Malta, where she remained for weeks in imminent danger. She never
fully recovered from this, the first of her severe illnesses, and in
1880 she had a recurrence of fever at Algiers. It was followed by
other similar attacks--at Cowes in 1882, in the West Indies in 1883,
at Gibraltar in 1886, and on her last voyage, first at Borneo, and
finally, and with the results we so bitterly l