Explore "Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands" by Mary Seacole on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Summer was fairly advanced before the British Hotel was anything like finished; indeed, it never was completed, and when we left the Hill, a year later, it still wanted shutters. But long before that time Spring Hill had gained a great reputation. Of course, I have nothing to do with what occurred in the camp, although I could not help hearing a great deal about it. Mismanagement and privation there might have been, but my business was to make things right in my sphere, and whatever confusion, and disorder existed elsewhere, comfort and order were always to be found at Spring Hill. When there was no sun elsewhere, some few gleams -- so its grateful visitors said -- always seemed to have stayed behind, to cheer the weary soldiers that gathered in the British Hotel. And, perhaps, as my kind friend Punch said, after all these things had become pleasant memories of the past.
"The cold without gave a zest, no doubt, / To the welcome warmth within; / But her smile, good old soul, lent heat to the coal, / And power to the pannikin. "