and too untrained. As her mother was an invalid, Dorothy stayed at home and nursed her for some years. At last, at the age of thirty-three, she secured the opportunity to practice nursing regularly in the Sisterhood of the Good Samaritans, and two years later she was sent to help in the care of the sick and injured in a town called Walsall on the border of the coal and iron district. It was once a beautiful wooded country, but the trees have been cut down, the streams polluted, great black chimneys give out constant streams of smoke, and the red brick houses are begrimed with dirt. The men spend a large part of their time underground in the mines, and come home tired out and often drunk. Accidents are frequent, and the hospital is always in demand.

Sister Dora's special ambition was to become a good surgical nurse, and so faithful and intelligent was she that the doctors trusted her more and more, and taught her to set fractures under their direction.

Sister Dora was led to give particular attention to what is called conservative surgery. Her sympathy was aroused for the unfortunate men who came in, often so much crushed and mangled that amputation of one or more limbs was necessary to save their lives. These men would remark, when told what their fate must be, "Then you might as well kill me at once, if you are going to take off my leg, or arm, or hand, for I don't know what's to become of me or of my wife and children." A fine, healthy young man was one night brought in with his arm torn and twisted by a machine. The doctor pronounced that nothing could save it, and that he must amputate it at once. The sufferer's groan and expression of despair went to the Sister's heart. She scanned the torn limb with her quick, scrutinizing glance, as if she would look through the wound to the state of the circulation below, and then measured with her eye the fine healthy form before her.

The man looked from one face to the other for a ray of hope, and seeing the deep pity in her expression, exclaimed, "Oh, Sister! save my arm for me; it's my right arm." Sister Dora instantly turned to the surgeon, saying, “I believe I can save this arm if you will let me try." "Are you mad?" answered he, "I tell you it's an impossibility; mortification will set in in a few hours; nothing but amputation can save his life." She turned quickly to the anxious patient. "Are you willing for me to try and save your arm, my man?" What would he not have been willing to let the woman do, who turned upon him such a winning face, and spoke in tones so strangely sympathetic? He joyfully gave consent. The doctor was as angry as he was ever known to be with Sister Dora, and walked away, saying, "Well, remember it's your arm: if you choose to have the young man's death upon your conscience, I shall not interfere; but I wash my hands of him. Don't think I am going to help you."

It was indeed a heavy responsibility for a nurse to take upon herself, but Sister Dora never shrank from a burden which seemed to be cast upon her. It was by no means the first time that she had disagreed with the surgical opinion; often and often had she pleaded hard for delay in the removal of a limb which, she ventured to think, might by skill and patience be saved. On this occasion her patient's entire confidence in her was sufficient encouragement. She watched and tended "her arm," as she called it, almost literally night and day for three weeks. It was a period of terrible suspense and anxiety. "How I prayed over that arm!" she used to say afterwards.

At the end of that time she waited till she thought the doctor was in a particularly amiable mood, and then she begged him to come and look at her work. Not with a very good grace, he complied. No professional man

could possibly like to have his opinion distinctly proved to be wrong by any one, least of all by a woman working under his own superintendence. But his astonishment overcame his displeasure when he beheld the arm which she unbandaged and displayed to him, no longer mangled, but straightened, and in a healthy, promising condition. "Why, you have saved it!" he exclaimed, "and it will be a useful arm to him for many a long year." Triumph does not at all express Sister Dora's feelings as she heard this verdict, and yet her thankfulness was naturally not unmixed with triumph, and she cried for happiness.

The surgeon, without whose leave, be it remembered, she could not have done this, and who was justly proud of her as his own pupil, brought the rest of the hospital staff "to show them what might be done,” as he said. The man, who went by the name of "Sister's arm in the hospital, became one of her most devoted admirers. She would not allow him to go until he was in a fair way to be able to work again; and after he ceased to be an in-patient he constantly came up to have his arm "looked at," which meant that he wanted to look at the woman who had given him back all that made life worth having.

Months later, when Sister Dora herself was ill, this young man walked twenty-two miles every Sunday morning to inquire for her. When the servant appeared in answer to his vigorous pull at the hospital bell, he eagerly asked, "How's Sister?" and when he had received his answer said: "Tell her that's her arm that rang the bell."

The stout ship Birkenhead lay hard and fast,
Caught without hope upon a hidden rock;

Her timbers thrilled as nerves, when through them passed
The spirit of that shock.

And ever like base cowards, who leave their ranks
In danger's hour, before the rush of steel,
Drifted away disorderly the planks

From underneath her keel.

So calm the air, so calm and still the flood,
That low down in its blue translucent glass
We saw the great fierce fish, that thirst for blood,
Pass slowly, then repass.

They tarried, the waves tarried, for their prey!
The sea turned one clear smile! Like things asleep
Those dark shapes in the azure silence lay,

As quiet as the deep.

Then amidst oath, and prayer, and rush, and wreck,
Faint screams, faint questions waiting no reply,
Our Colonel gave the word, and on the deck
Formed us in line to die.

To die! - 't was hard, whilst the sleek ocean glowed
Beneath a sky as fair as summer flowers:

Our English hearts beat true: - we would not stir:
That base appeal we heard, but heeded not:
On land, on sea, we had our colours, Sir,
To keep without a spot!

They shall not say in England, that we fought
With shameful strength, unhonoured life to seek;
Into mean safety, mean deserters, brought
By trampling down the weak.