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CAEE OF THE SICK AND WOUNDED. 385 service, and the one newly coming to share in CHi^p. • XI some of the toils of State. 1_ It might seem, perhaps, that the issue of any such trial must needs have been sure from the first ; since the male kind was wielding alone the whole power of the State, aijd to woman as yet had not deigned to entrust any shred of authority except the bare permission to be an obedient servitress attending hospital sick-beds under the orders of medical officers ; but the servitress, attired as for work — the gracious bib- apron seemed to fold her in honour and sanctity — ^had a power which man did not give, and could not very well take away, and could hardly indeed keep down. By shunning the irksome light, by choosing a low standard of excellence, and by vaguely thinking ' War ' an excuse for defects which War did not cause, men, it seems, had contrived to be satisfied with the condition of our hospitals ; (*^) but the Lady-in-Chief was one who would harbour no such content, seek no such refuge from pain. Not for Her was the bliss — fragile bliss — of dwelling in any false paradise. She confronted the hideous truth. Her first care was — Eve-like — to dare to know, and — still Eve-like — to force dreaded knowledge on the faltering lord of creation. Then declar- ing against acquiescence in horror and misery which firmness and toil might remove, she waged her ceaseless war against custom and sloth, gain- ing every day on the enemy, and achieving, as we saw, in December what to eyes less intent than her own upon actual saving of life, and VOL. vu. 2 n