The sisters look sunny and healthy, though they work hard.  They have regular hours for being off duty, and exercise in the open air.  The patients tell me how “homelike it seems to have women in the wards, and what a comfort it is in their agony, to be handled by their careful hands.”  Here are four hundred persons in all phases of suffering, in neat, cheerful wards, brightened by pots of flowers, and the faces of kind, devoted women.

And who is this woman to whom the government of Great Britain felt that it owed so much, and whom the whole world delights to honor?

Florence Nightingale, born in 1820, in the beautiful Italian city of that name, is the younger of two daughters of William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy land-owner, who inherited both the name and fortune of his granduncle, Peter Nightingale.  The mother was the daughter of the eminent philanthropist and member of Parliament, William Smith.

Most of Miss Nightingale’s life has been spent on their beautiful estate, Lea Hurst, in Derbyshire, a lovely home in the midst of picturesque scenery.  In her youth her father instructed her carefully in the classics and higher mathematics; a few years later, partly through extensive travel, she became proficient in French, German, and Italian.

Rich, pretty, and well-educated, what was there more that she could wish for?  Her heart, however, did not turn toward a fashionable life.  Very early she began to visit the poor and the sick near Lea Hurst, and her father’s other estate at Embly Park, Hampshire.  Perhaps the mantle of the mother’s father had fallen upon the young girl.

She had also the greatest tenderness toward dumb animals, and never could bear to see them injured.  Miss Alldridge, in an interesting sketch of Miss Nightingale, quotes the following story from Little Folks:—­

“Some years ago, when the celebrated Florence Nightingale was a little girl, living at her father’s home, a large, old Elizabethan house, with great woods about it, in Hampshire, there was one thing that struck everybody who knew her.  It was that she seemed to be always thinking what she could do to please or help any one who needed either help or comfort.  She was very fond, too, of animals, and she was so gentle in her way, that even the shyest of them would come quite close to her, and pick up whatever she flung down for them to eat.

“There was, in the garden behind the house, a long walk with trees on each side, the abode of many squirrels; and when Florence came down the walk, dropping nuts as she went along, the squirrels would run down the trunks of their trees, and, hardly waiting until she passed by, would pick up the prize and dart away, with their little bushy tails curled over their backs, and their black eyes looking about as if terrified at the least noise, though they did not seem to be afraid of Florence.