All her experience had now gone to prove that her special gift was hospital work, and on rejoining her mother she definitely laid before her her wish to devote herself to the work of nursing, and with her consent entered into a correspondence with Miss Nightingale with the idea of entering St. Thomas’s Hospital as a Nightingale probationer.

It is very clear that all through her life she was satisfied to be doing the “next thing,” whatever that next thing should be which was pointed out to her by the guiding of God’s Holy Spirit.  She never ran counter to her mother’s wishes, knowing that no blessing could be expected when the command, “Honour thy father and thy mother,” was not observed; but when home no longer needed her, she was glad to enter the larger field to which God had opened the way.

CHAPTER V.

HOSPITAL WARDS.

It has been said that “every woman is by nature more or less a nurse,” but like most sayings it is by no means always true.  Many who possess the gentleness and sympathy which are so necessary in nursing the sick, yet lack the ready nerve, deftness, and promptitude.  Who has not beheld the sad spectacle of women anxious to help, yet helpless because of their ignorance and want of training?  That will be a happy day when a course of training in nursing, though it be but a short one, is considered a necessary part of every woman’s education.  Miss Nightingale truly says, “There is no such thing as amateur nursing ...  Three-fourths of the whole mischief in women’s lives arises from their excepting themselves from the rule of training considered needful for man.”

Agnes Jones was a “born nurse;” but although she had had many opportunities both at Fahan and at Kaiserswerth of developing her talent, she would not attempt to teach others what she had not thoroughly grasped herself.  The post in Liverpool, of Superintendent of the Training School of Nurses for the Poor, was still open to her and, in spite of her fear that she lacked the capacity to govern, had many attractions for her, and so she said, “I determined at least to try, to come to St. Thomas’s Hospital, and to see whether in so great a work as that of training true-hearted, God-fearing nurses, there were not some niche for me.  If every one shrinks back because incompetent, who will ever do anything?  ‘Lord, here am I, send me.’”

Let no one think that the resolve cost her nothing.  As a matter of fact it meant giving up a great deal, but to follow in the steps of Him who freely gave up all for us, she cheerfully surrendered her lovely Irish home for the dreary walls of a London hospital, where her companions were, as a rule, neither Christians in the true sense of the word, nor her equals in society.  Yet who that knows the Lord Jesus as “a living bright reality” can talk of sacrifice?  To know the need of the Lord’s poor was sufficient for her, and she counted nothing too much to give up