A few words with the convalescent / by John F.W. Ware.

  • John F. W. Ware
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A few words with the convalescent / by John F.W. Ware. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    delicacies are wliich find their way to your sickly appetite sometimes, or the tender look, word, act you long for; but they are the tribute, the genuine, generous tribute’, of warm hearts, — all that the cir- cumstances will allow us to give and you to receive. Men who judge of everything by their senses may cull all this nothing. But it is not so. The unseen forces are the most vital and effective. They are the powers behind the act. These sentiments keep you before our thought; they keep us not only alive to the demands, but the sufferings of the hour. Tliey cannot remove every pain or delay, prevent all mistake or abuse, give you what home only can; but there is not a hospitid ward in the land where their influence is not felt, nor a wounded soldier on the field tliat they do not reach. What is this blessed, all-embracing charity of the Sanitary Com- mission,— not omnipotent, indeed, but almost omni- present, — what are lesser associated and private charities, but the expression of feelings which per- vade the homes and the hearts of the land ? What are they but the combining together and bringing to your relief of those unseen things which men are apt to scoff at and consider as merely feelings and words, but thus, by their fruit, become tangible and blessed things. Throw off, then, the despondency which is so apt to settle upon the convalescent because he thinks himself out of the pale of sympathy. It is not so.
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