From 8-year old Hilda’s diary:

I think that I shall write down the story of Florence Nightingale and read it to myself when I am eighty years old because maybe in the meantime I will lend my book to someone who will forget to return it to me, like the way Antoinette forgot to return “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.” I will start now. I think that I will start it “Once upon a time,” like the real story.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in London, England and her name was Florence Nightingale. Her father was very rich and she lived in a very big house. She was a good little girl and loved everyone, especially when they were sick, because then she could take care of them. Whenever her mother had bad headaches, she always pulled the shades down in her room and brought her cool towels for her brow and hot tea to drink and when her mother was sleeping, she wouldn’t even let people walk on the floor above. She saw to it that everything was quiet so her mother could get a good rest.

Perhaps the book given to Hilda was The Story of Florence Nightingale by Inez N. McFee which was published in 1912. That book mentions another by Laura E. Richards, entitled Florence Nightingale, the Angel of the Crimea: A Story for Young People, published in 1909.

How wise Hilda was to understand that things sometimes are lost and that she wanted to preserve the memory of things she cared about. I don’t know whether she reread her diary when she was 80, but would like to think so.