James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

[26] fifty regiments do with twenty thousand sick men? As for nurses, there was hardly a creature worthy of the name in the Crimea. In view of such facts as these no one can be surprised that the great hospitals at Scutari were in such a condition, that, probably, they were the direct means of killing ten men for every one whom they saved from death. It had perhaps been better if the poor fellows had been wrapped in blankets and laid upon a sheet of India-rubber on the snow in the open air, fed now and then, and left to take their chance.

England heard of all this with amazement and consternation. It was the “Times” newspaper through which it learned the details, and people began spontaneously to send sums of money to the editor of that journal for the relief of the soldiers. The proprietors of the “Times” consented, at length, to receive and appropriate money for this object, and in thirteen days the sum of fifteen thousand pounds sterling was sent.in. With this money thousands of shirts, sheets, stockings, overcoats, flannels, and tons of sugar, soap, arrow-root, and tea, and great quantities of wine and brandy, were purchased, and a commissioner was sent out to superintend their distribution. But the great horror was, the neglect of the sick in the hospitals, and a cry arose for a corps of skilful, educated nurses.

There was but one woman in England fitted by character, position, and education, to head such a band. Sidney Herbert, a member of the British cabinet, was an old friend of Florence Nightingale's father. Mr. Herbert was thus acquainted with the peculiar bent of Miss Nightingale's disposition, and the nature of her training. By a curious coincidence, and yet not an unnatural one, she wrote to him offering her services, and he wrote to her asking her aid, on the same day. Other ladies of birth and fortune volunteered to accompany her, to whom were added some superior professional