Mr. Herbert wrote her, Oct. 15:  “There is, as far as I know, only one person in England capable of organizing and directing such a plan, and I have been several times on the point of asking you if you would be disposed to make the attempt.  That it will be difficult to form a corps of nurses, no one knows better than yourself....  I have this simple question to put to you:  Could you go out yourself, and take charge of everything?  It is, of course, understood that you will have absolute authority over all the nurses, unlimited power to draw on the government for all you judge necessary to the success of your mission; and I think I may assure you of the co-operation of the medical staff.  Your personal qualities, your knowledge, and your authority in administrative affairs, all fit you for this position.”

It was a strange coincidence that on that same day, Oct. 15, Miss Nightingale, her heart stirred for the suffering soldiers, had written a letter to Mr. Herbert, offering her services to the government.  A few days later the world read, with moistened eyes, this letter from the war office:  “Miss Nightingale, accompanied by thirty-four nurses, will leave this evening.  Miss Nightingale, who has, I believe, greater practical experience of hospital administration and treatment than any other lady in this country, has, with a self-devotion for which I have no words to express my gratitude, undertaken this noble but arduous work.”

The heart of the English nation followed the heroic woman.  Mrs. Jameson wrote:  “It is an undertaking wholly new to our English customs, much at variance with the usual education given to women in this country.  If it succeeds, it will be the true, the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants, that they have broken down a Chinese wall of prejudices,—­religious, social, professional,—­and have established a precedent which will, indeed, multiply the good to all time.”  She did succeed, and the results can scarcely be overestimated.

As the band of nurses passed through France, hotel-keepers would take no pay for their accommodation; poor fisherwomen at Boulogne struggled for the honor of carrying their baggage to the railway station.  They sailed in the Vectis across the Mediterranean, reaching Scutari, Nov. 5, the day of the battle of Inkerman.

They found in the great Barrack Hospital, which had been lent to the British by the Turkish government, and in another large hospital near by, about four thousand men.  The corridors were filled with two rows of mattresses, so close that two persons could scarcely walk between them.  There was work to be done at once.

One of the nurses wrote home, “The whole of yesterday one could only forget one’s own existence, for it was spent, first in sewing the men’s mattresses together, and then in washing them, and assisting the surgeons, when we could, in dressing their ghastly wounds after their five days’ confinement on board ship, during which space their wounds had not been dressed.  Hundreds of men with fever, dysentery, and cholera (the wounded were the smaller portion) filled the wards in succession from the overcrowded transports.”