| The Life of Dr. J.R. Miller |
Chapter 4 |
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Thus the writer revealed his eagerness to minister to the sorrowing that was so characteristic to the end of his life. Another characteristic – his ardent love for children – was shown when he wrote:
“The soldiers who have lain in the hospitals at Martinsburg will never forget the sweet little girl with the blue eyes and chestnut curls who, every day, stole noiselessly to their cot, having in her hand some little dainty, and on her sweet face a smile of welcome. She is not more than eleven or twelve, but womanly beyond her years, and possessing a heart large enough and good enough for a Florence Nightingale. Up bright and early in the first golden beams of morning, and with her hands laden with the little luxuries of home, away she trips lightly, gayly to the hospital. She hastens noiselessly around through the rooms, stopping at the side of every weary sufferer, asking him how he rested, and how he feels this morning, and leaving here and there some delicate morsel. When she has finished her morning’s work, away she goes to school, but no sooner are her duties over there than off she glides again to repeat her morning’s work, and again at evening she bears cheer and comfort to many a drooping heart. She is tender hearted, and often drops a tear over some poor sufferer, to see how sorely he is pained, and as he tells her of his home, and the dear friends whom he will never see again. She was passing through a ward with us one morning when we came to a man whose sufferings were most agonizing, and whose face was already paling before the approach of death. It would have been a heart of stone that could have looked unmoved on that scene. The dear child laid her face in her hands as the great tears flowed from her eyes. When we had left the hospital she looked up through her still weeping eyes and said, ‘I was not a baby to cry when I saw that poor man, was I?’”
After reading this passage, one is not surprised to find this also:
“Somehow I can never get over my foolish weakness of falling in love with little girls. Blue eyes, chestnut curls, rosy cheeks, neat dress, sweet smiles, and kind winning manners in a little girl of ten or twelve are not to be withstood … Little girls can do more by the sweetness and innocence of their free young hearts to allay troubled spirits and to cheer and soothe in the hour of suffering than most of those who are older. There is a purity and a sincerity and a simplicity in their manners and words that captivates hearts.”
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