Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands | Page 4

stupor of despair. If you had told me that the time would soon
come when I should remember this sorrow calmly, I should not have
believed it possible: and yet it was so. I do not think that we
hot-blooded Creoles sorrow less for showing it so impetuously; but I do
think that the sharp edge of our grief wears down sooner than theirs
who preserve an outward demeanour of calmness, and nurse their woe
secretly in their hearts.
CHAPTER II.

STRUGGLES FOR LIFE--THE CHOLERA IN JAMAICA--I LEAVE
KINGSTON FOR THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA--CHAGRES,
NAVY BAY, AND GATUN--LIFE IN PANAMA--UP THE RIVER
CHAGRES TO GORGONA AND CRUCES.
I had one other great grief to master--the loss of my mother, and then I
was left alone to battle with the world as best I might. The struggles
which it cost me to succeed in life were sometimes very trying; nor
have they ended yet. But I have always turned a bold front to fortune,
and taken, and shall continue to take, as my brave friends in the army
and navy have shown me how, "my hurts before." Although it was no
easy thing for a widow to make ends meet, I never allowed myself to
know what repining or depression was, and so succeeded in gaining not
only my daily bread, but many comforts besides from the beginning.
Indeed, my experience of the world--it is not finished yet, but I do not
think it will give me reason to change my opinion--leads me to the
conclusion that it is by no means the hard bad world which some
selfish people would have us believe it. It may be as my editor says--
"That gently comes the world to those That are cast in gentle mould;"
hinting at the same time, politely, that the rule may apply to me
personally. And perhaps he is right, for although I was always a hearty,
strong woman--plain-spoken people might say stout--I think my heart
is soft enough.
How slowly and gradually I succeeded in life, need not be told at length.
My fortunes underwent the variations which befall all. Sometimes I
was rich one day, and poor the next. I never thought too exclusively of
money, believing rather that we were born to be happy, and that the
surest way to be wretched is to prize it overmuch. Had I done so, I
should have mourned over many a promising speculation proving a
failure, over many a pan of preserves or guava jelly burnt in the making;
and perhaps lost my mind when the great fire of 1843, which
devastated Kingston, burnt down my poor home. As it was, I very
nearly lost my life, for I would not leave my house until every chance
of saving it had gone, and it was wrapped in flames. But, of course, I
set to work again in a humbler way, and rebuilt my house by degrees,

and restocked it, succeeding better than before; for I had gained a
reputation as a skilful nurse and doctress, and my house was always
full of invalid officers and their wives from Newcastle, or the adjacent
Up-Park Camp. Sometimes I had a naval or military surgeon under my
roof, from whom I never failed to glean instruction, given, when they
learned my love for their profession, with a readiness and kindness I am
never likely to forget. Many of these kind friends are alive now. I met
with some when my adventures had carried me to the battle-fields of
the Crimea; and to those whose eyes may rest upon these pages I again
offer my acknowledgments for their past kindness, which helped me to
be useful to my kind in many lands.
And here I may take the opportunity of explaining that it was from a
confidence in my own powers, and not at all from necessity, that I
remained an unprotected female. Indeed, I do not mind confessing to
my reader, in a friendly confidential way, that one of the hardest
struggles of my life in Kingston was to resist the pressing candidates
for the late Mr. Seacole's shoes.
Officers of high rank sometimes took up their abode in my house.
Others of inferior rank were familiar with me, long before their bravery,
and, alas! too often death, in the Crimea, made them world famous.
There were few officers of the 97th to whom Mother Seacole was not
well known, before she joined them in front of Sebastopol; and among
the best known was good-hearted, loveable, noble H---- V----, whose
death shocked me so terribly, and with whose useful heroic life the
English public have become so familiar. I can hear the ring of his
boyish laughter even now.
In the year 1850, the cholera swept over the island of Jamaica with