The patients were quick to discover the benefits of the new regime.  Instead of the old system of roughness and neglect, they found now a very different order of things, as nurses, perfectly trained, with soft voice and gentle footfall, passed from bed to bed, ministering to the sick and dying.  Interesting and helpful books for those who were well enough to read found their way into the wards.  Flowers—­for Agnes Jones, who loved intensely all God’s works in Nature, had great faith in the ministry of flowers—­were there to give brightness in the midst of depressing surroundings.  Visits from friends were rendered more easy.  Christmas was made happy with special festivities.  Indeed, she seemed always to be planning something to cheer the sick under her care.  She very soon began Sunday evening Bible readings in the wards where there were only Protestant patients.  Many crowded in, even Romanists, whom she was not allowed to invite, and listened with rapt attention, the late-comers slipping off their shoes, lest they should disturb her.  After nearly two years’ work, she commenced daily evening Bible readings, having an attendance of from twenty to thirty, while on the Sunday evening there were often more than a hundred.

It was no wonder that such devotion met with a ready response from the sad and friendless, and that her loving sympathy evoked love from the seemingly unloving.

Let us follow her as she passes through the wards.  A thorough lady, quiet and self-possessed, she commands respect from even the roughest, and all look up with eager expectancy, hoping for just one word from her.  Here is an old man, whose brightening face shows how welcome are her visits.  As she stops we hear him murmur, “I never had a friend in all my life till I came here.  You are my only friend.”  Another, who is drawing very near to the gates of death, taking her hand in his, says:—­“I want to take leave of you—­I never told you before, but do you remember speaking of the ’Gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord?’ I got that gift then.”  And when she has gone, a poor man may be heard saying to the nurse:—­“The lady can never know what she has done for me ...  I think I am in heaven when she comes.”

Her nurses were thoroughly one with her.  How could they be otherwise when she was so thoughtful and considerate for them?  Before introducing them to their wards, she commended them to God in prayer, asking His blessing on them and their work.  She had a Bible reading for them, but, not content with speaking to them collectively, she would frequently talk to them individually of the Saviour she so loved.  Although she never passed over their faults, they were sure of her ready sympathy in their troubles, and as they poured them into her ear she would say, “Have you told Jesus so?”

The success of the work was an astonishment to all.  The patients could at first scarcely understand why the nurses did not swear at them like their former ones.  The police wondered as they saw women able to deal with those whom they had found utterly untameable; while the committee were so pleased with the success of the experiment, that, a year before the specified time, they decided permanently to adopt the system of trained nurses.