Miss Nightingale, calm and unobtrusive, went quietly among the men, always with a smile of sympathy for the suffering.  The soldiers often wept, as for the first time in months, even years, a woman’s hand adjusted their pillows, and a woman’s voice soothed their sorrows.

Miss Nightingale’s pathway was not an easy one.  Her coming did not meet the general approval of military or medical officials.  Some thought women would be in the way; others felt that their coming was an interference.  Possibly some did not like to have persons about who would be apt to tell the truth on their return to England.  But with good sense and much tact she was able to overcome the disaffection, using her almost unlimited power with discretion.

As soon as the wounded were attended to, she established an invalid’s kitchen, where appetizing food could be prepared,—­one of the essentials in convalescence.  Here she overlooked the proper cooking for eight hundred men who could not eat ordinary food.  Then she established a laundry.  The beds and shirts of the men were in a filthy condition, some wearing the ragged clothing in which they were brought down from the Crimea.  It was difficult to obtain either food or clothing, partly from the immense amount of “red tape” in official life.

Miss Nightingale seemed to be everywhere.  Dr. Pincoffs said:  “I believe that there never was a severe case of any kind that escaped her notice; and sometimes it was wonderful to see her at the bedside of a patient who had been admitted perhaps but an hour before, and of whose arrival one would hardly have supposed it possible she could already be cognizant.”

She aided the senior chaplain in establishing a library and school-room, and in getting up evening lectures for the men.  She supplied books and games, wrote letters for the sick, and forwarded their little savings to their home-friends.

For a year and a half, till the close of the war, she did a wonderful work, reducing the death-rate in the Barrack Hospital from sixty per cent to a little above one per cent.  Said the Times correspondent:  “Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant presence is an influence for good comfort even amid the struggles of expiring nature.  She is a ’ministering angel,’ without any exaggeration, in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her.  When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed, alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.

“With the heart of a true woman and the manner of a lady, accomplished and refined beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness of judgment and promptitude and decision of character.  The popular instinct was not mistaken, which, when she set out from England on her mission of mercy, hailed her as a heroine; I trust she may not earn her title to a higher, though sadder, appellation.  No one who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can avoid misgivings lest these should fail.”