SOURCE: "Florence Nightingale," in Prophets, Priests, & Kings, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1914,pp. 114-20.

In the following essay, Gardiner offers a sketch of Nightingale's life and an assessment of her influence on nursing.

Lying before me is a manuscript. It is written on large sheets of stout paper which have turned yellow with the years. The writing, that of a woman, is bold and free, as of one accustomed to the pen; but the fashion of the letters belongs to a long-past time. It is an obituary notice of Florence Nightingale, written for the Daily News fifty-one years ago, when the most famous of Englishwomen was at the point of death. The faded manuscript has lain in its envelope for half a century unused. The busy pen that wrote it fell for ever from the hand of the writer more than thirty years ago, for that writer was Harriet...