Our doctor had call’d in another, I never
But he sent a chill to my heart when I saw
Fresh from the surgery-schools of France
Harsh red hair, big voice, big chest, big
Wonderful cures he had done, O, yes, but
He was happier using the knife than in trying
And that I can well believe, for he look’d
I could think he was one of those who would
break their jests on the dead,
And mangle the living dog that had loved
him and fawn’d at his knee–
Drench’d with the hellish oorali–that
ever such things should be!
Here was a boy–I am sure that some of
But for the voice of love, and the smile,
Here was a boy in the ward, every bone
Caught in a mill and crush’d–it was all
And he handled him gently enough; but his
voice and his face were not kind,
And it was but a hopeless case, he had seen
And he said to me roughly, ‘The lad will
need little more of your care.’
‘All the more need,’ I told him, ‘to seek
The Lord Jesus in prayer;
They are all His children here, and I pray
But he turn’d to me, ‘Ay, good woman,
can prayer set a broken bone?’
Then he mutter’d half to himself, but I
know that I heard him say,
‘All very well–but the good Lord Jesus
Had? has it come? It has only dawn’d.
O, how could I serve in the wards if the
hope of the world were a lie?
How could I bear with the sights and the
loathsome smells of disease
But that He said, ‘Ye do it to me, when ye
So he went. And we past to this ward
where the younger children are laid.
Here is the cot of our orphan, our darling,
Empty, you see, just now! We have lost
her who loved her so much–
Patient of pain tho’ as quick as a sensitive
Hers was the prettiest prattle, it often
Hers was the gratefullest heart I have
found in a child of her years–
Nay you remember our Emmie; you used
How she would smile at ’em, play with ’em,
talk to ’em hours after hours!
They that can wander at will where the
works of the Lord are reveal’d
Little guess what joy can be got from a
cowslip out of the field;
Flowers to these ‘spirits in prison’ are all
they can know of the spring,
They freshen and sweeten the wards like
the waft of an angel’s wing.
And she lay with a flower in one hand and
her thin hands crost on her breast–
Wan, but as pretty as heart can desire, and
Quietly sleeping–so quiet, our doctor said,
Nurse, I must do it to-morrow; she’ll
never live thro’ it, I fear.’
I walk’d with our kindly old doctor as far
as the head of the stair,
Then I return’d to the ward; the child
Never since I was nurse had I been so
Emmie had heard him. Softly she call’d
from her cot to the next,
‘He says I shall never live thro’ it; O Annie,
Annie consider’d. ‘If I,’ said the wise
I should cry to the dear Lord Jesus to help
It’s all in the picture there: “Little children
Meaning the print that you gave us, I
find that it always can please
Our children, the dear Lord Jesus with
children about his knees.
‘Yes, and I will,’ said Emmie, ‘but then if
How should he know that it’s me? such a
lot of beds in the ward!’
That was a puzzle for Annie. Again she
‘Emmie, you put out your arms, and you
leave ’em outside on the bed–
The Lord has so much to see to! but, Emmie,
It’s the little girl with her arms lying out
I had sat three nights by the child–I
could not watch her for four–
My brain had begun to reel–I felt I
That was my sleeping-night, but I thought
that it never would pass.
There was a thunderclap once, and a clatter
And there was a phantom cry that I heard
The motherless bleat of a lamb in the
storm and the darkness without;
My sleep was broken besides with dreams
And fears for our delicate Emmie who
scarce would escape with her life;
Then in the gray of the morning it seem’d
she stood by me and smiled,
And the doctor came at his hour, and we
went to see to the child.
He had brought his ghastly tools; we believed
Her dear, long, lean, little arms lying out
Say that His day is done! Ah, why should
The Lord of the children had heard her,