staff, she accepted it.  Still there was a delay of some months, which was partly due to the nurses’ need of further training, and partly to the imperative necessity that she should have entire rest in order to recruit the strength which had been so sorely overtaxed at the Great Northern Hospital.  She did not therefore enter on her duties until March 31, 1865.  Even then she began her new and untried work in much trembling and with great distrust of herself, though her trust in her Saviour never failed.  “It often seems strange,” she wrote, “that I, who have so little self-reliance, and would like every step directed, am obliged to take such an independent position; and yet I have been so led that I could not help it, and I only trust I may be more and more led to look to the guidance of the ever-present and all-wise Heavenly Friend.”

After her arrival she was still obliged to wait some weeks for the advent of her staff, consisting of twelve Nightingale nurses and four probationers.  But although she was not yet in possession of the reins of government, and so was debarred from doing anything in the way of nursing, she was yet allowed free access to the wards, being only prohibited to speak on religion to the Roman Catholic patients.  So the intervening time was not lost, for she found many opportunities of bringing cheer and comfort to sad and weary hearts and of pointing lost ones to the sinner’s Saviour.  Agnes Jones was not one of those who are always

     “Seeking for some great thing to do,”

and ignoring the many small opportunities of service which lie ready to hand.  She was quite content, since the larger field was not yet open to her, to occupy a smaller one.  In a letter to her aunt she wrote very characteristically:—­“I am trying and succeeding more and more in fixing my eyes on all the little things we shall be able to do.  I believe in this is our safety, doing the daily littles as opportunity is given, and leaving the issue with God.  It is the individual influence we shall have, the individual relief and the individual help for mind and body, that will be ours.  If it is His will, He can make others see the many littles as one great whole, or they may see nothing done, while we have the comfort of the littles we know have been done.”

The nurses and probationers arrived in the middle of May, and then work began in good earnest.  The post of lady superintendent was by no means a sinecure.  At 5.30 every morning she might have been seen unlocking the doors for the kitchen-women.  She was often round the wards at 6.0, and all through the busy day until 11.0 at night she was kept fully employed, giving out stores, superintending her nurses, presiding at meals, and visiting patients, besides all the hundred-and-one duties and calls which fall to one in the like position.  Her unselfishness was as conspicuous as ever, and she never thought of sparing herself in any way, her joy being to make the lives of others bright and happy.