ies on all the same. I did not feel then,
nor do I now, that we were doing anything better or more praiseworthy
than is done in a quiet, unostentatious way at home every day. On the
contrary, to many temperaments, my own among the number, it is far
less difficult to engage in a new and exciting work like the one we
were then entering on there, than to pursue the uneventful monotony of
daily doing good at home. As for the dress itself, I have nothing to
say against it. Although not perhaps of the material or texture I
should have preferred, still the colour, grey, was one I generally
wore from choice. But I must confess, that when I found myself
restricted to it, without what seemed a good reason, an intense desire
for blue, green, red, and yellow, with all their combinations, took
possession of me; though, now that I may wear what I please, I find my
former favour for grey has returned in full force. However, allowing
that it was desirable we should have had some uniform costume, it
certainly was unnecessary that ladies, nurses, and washerwomen should
have been dressed alike, as we were. That was part of the mistake I
have already adverted to, and was productive of confusion and bad
feeling.'

Despite of the uniform dresses, however, the sick and wounded soldiers
soon learned to distinguish between the paid nurses and the ladies who
had left their comfortable British homes to lavish upon them their
gratuitous, priceless labours.

* * * * *

There is no assumption in this volume. Its authoress writes as if she
had done only her duty, and as if the task had not been an exceedingly
hard or difficult one; but the simple facts related show how very much
was accomplished and endured. Every chapter justifies the judgment
pronounced by the tall Irish sergeant. This lady nurse is a 'real fine
woman,'--a noble specimen of the class whose disinterested and
self-sacrificing exertions gave to the late war its most distinctive
and brilliant feature. The bravery of British men had been long
established; the superadded trait is the heroism of British women. In
what circumstances of peril and suffering that heroism was exerted,
the following extract, with which we conclude, may serve to show. It
is the funeral of one of the lady nurses, who sank under an attack of
malignant fever, that the following striking passage records:--

'The Protestant burial-ground is a dismal-looking, neglected spo