lorence
Nightingale.

To the credit of the timid, and for the encouragement of the weak, we
have to add that Miss Pritty likewise became a true heroine!

No average individual, male or female, can by any effort of imagination
attain to the faintest idea of poor Miss Pritty's horror at the sight of
"_blood_!"--"_human gore_!" particularly. Nevertheless Miss Pritty,
encouraged by her friend's example, rose to the occasion. With a face
and lips so deadly pale that one might have been justified in believing
that all the blood on the decks had flowed therefrom, she went about
among the wounded, assisting Aileen in every possible way with her eyes
shut. She did indeed open them when it was absolutely necessary to do
so, but shut them again instantly on the necessity for vision passing
away. She cut short bandages when directed so to do; she held threads
or tapes; she tore up shirts, and slips, and other linen garments, with
the most reckless disregard of propriety; she wiped away blood from
wounds (under direction), and moistened many dry lips with a sponge, and
brushed beads of perspiration from pale brows--like a heroine.

Meanwhile Edgar went about actively, rejoicing in his new-found capacity
to alleviate human suffering. What the Faculty would have thought of
him we know not. All on board the gun-boat venerated him as a most
perfect surgeon. His natural neatness of hand stood him in good stead,
for men were bleeding to death all round him, and in order to save some
it was necessary that he should use despatch with others. Of course he
attended to the most critical cases first, except in the case of those
who were so hopelessly injured as to be obviously beyond the reach of
benefit from man. From these he turned sadly away, after whispering to
them an earnest word or two about the Saviour of mankind--to those of
them at least who understood English. To waste time with these he felt
would be to rob hopeful cases of a chance. All simple and easy cases of
bandaging he left to the captain and his chief officer. Joe Baldwin,
being a cool steady man, was appointed to act as his own assistant.

From one to another he passed unweariedly, cutting off portions of torn
flesh, extracting bullets, setting broken bones, taking up and tying
severed arteries, sewing together the edges of gaping wounds, and
completing the amputation of limbs, in regard to which the operation had
been begun--sometimes nearly finished--by can