LIV At a Dinner in London
Lord Stratford—Will the guests kindly write on a slip of paper the name of the one, including the famous generals, who served in the Crimean War they think will be the longest remembered?
Guests—Florence Nightingale (written on every slip).
The Author.
Clara Barton is to America what Florence Nightingale is to us.
London Times.
No general that led hosts to victory on the battlefield is nearly so secure of lasting fame as is the name of Clara Barton.
Dayton (Ohio) Journal.
Miss Nightingale found herself misunderstood and lost her Governmental position—suffering much from Governmental heartlessness and neglect. England, in later Governmental acts, was more appreciative of her war heroine.... Percy H. Epler.
English women are solid and sensible, learned and self-possessed, and all the world respects them. Clara Barton.
Surely woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God’s world. Florence Nightingale.
A white marble cross, 20 feet high, overlooking Balaclava and seen from ships crossing the Black Sea, is known as the “Nightingale Cross,”—erected at the personal expense of Florence Nightingale in memory of the soldiers and nurses who died in the War. The Author.
Clara Barton Pays Respects to Florence Nightingale
In the year 1854 occurred the Crimean War. At the Scutari and Barrack Hospitals, Florence Nightingale rendered service that gave her immortal fame. “Her services there,” said Clara Barton in 1882, “marked an era never before reached in the progress of the world. When Miss Nightingale, with her thirty-eight faithful attendants, sailed from the shores of England, it meant more for the advancement of the world, more for its future history, than all the fleets of armies and navies, cannon and commissary, munitions of war, and regiments of men, than had sailed before her in that vast campaign.
“This unarmed pilgrim band of women that day not only struck a blow at the barbarities of war, but they laid the axe deep at the root of war itself. When Florence Nightingale, covered with the praises and honors of the world, bending under the weight of England’s gratitude, again sought her green island home, it was to seek also a bed of painful invalidism, from which she has never risen and probably never will.”
’Tis good that thy name springs
From two of earth’s fairest things
A stately city and a sweet-voiced bird.