Most of us are already very busy. "How can I possibly do more?" is a question we usually ask when it looks as though we've reached our limit. It just seems unreasonable, we might think, to take on yet another assignment or to provide additional care for others. People who devote so much of their time and energy to worthy endeavors, and who are asked to do even more, may think that it's asking too much of one person.
Once in a while, however, we come across an extraordinary individual, someone who gives so much of himself or herself to others—who labors and loves more than we thought anyone capable of doing—that it causes us to look again at what we felt certain were our limits.
Florence Nightingale is one of those individuals. When everyone else had finished nursing the soldiers and had retired for the night, Miss Nightingale began her additional rounds. With lamp in hand, it is said, she would move through the corridors, check details, comfort the soldiers, even occasionally write messages home for them. This meant she was sometimes on her feet twenty hours a day. One commentary pointed out: "She did things no one else had time for: she scrubbed floors, laundered, cooked. In a short time the mortality rate dropped from sixty per cent to one per cent."
Mary Baker Eddy Mentioned Them (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1961), p. 160.
