The Nightingales were well-to-do people. They owned a beautiful country seat in Derbyshire, which was for many years the residence of Florence and her parents. Florence's love for animals and flowers was second only to her love of humanity. Very early she formed the idea of a vocation which should be lofty and altruistic. Her acquaintance with Elizabeth Fry did much to develop this idea. Mrs. Fry, already famous as the first woman who made the welfare of women in prison her care, was a preacher of the Quaker sect. Having decided upon her course, Miss Nightingale began to learn in the hospitals the medical nurse's duties; and, hearing of a German training school for nurses at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, she went thither and enrolled herself as a "deaconess." Kaiserswerth had been started in a very small way by Pastor Fleidner. It was a Protestant school, which combined religious teaching with charitable work among the poor and outcast. The Pastor himself was poor, but his devotion to his work attracted many helpers who gave him money to carry it on. Florence here became interested also in prison reform, which led her to open a small home for women after they should come out of prison. The few years she spent here brought her face to face with much suffering and want, and taught her how to find and help unfortunate people. From Kaiserswerth she went to Paris and entered a Catholic Convent to study the methods of the Sisters. While there she learned to respect and admire so greatly the love and devotion of the nuns, that afterwards, in the Crimean War, she called upon them to assist her. In England once more, Miss Nightingale settled down to a quiet life, devoting herself to the care of the sick and the poor about her. Living near the Nightingales, were Sidney Herbert and his wife. Herbert, who afterwards became Lord Herbert of Lea, was made Secretary of War in the English Government. The post was no sinecure, for almost immediately after his appointment, war broke out between Russia on one side and England, France, and Turkey on the other. The scene of the fighting was on the border where Turkey and Russia join. Near this border is the Crimea, a peninsula, whose principal city is Sebastopol. To capture this city was the object of the fighting in that part of the country, from which fact the whole war is known as the Crimean War. England had lived in peace since 1815, a period of forty years, and had to some degree lost the practical knowledge of how to conduct a military campaign. The result was a great waste of time, men and stores, through the inexperience of both officers and soldiers. Disaster followed disaster, each treading upon the other's heels. Finally William Howard Russell, the War Correspondent of the London Times, wrote a strong letter home to England in which he spoke of the suffering of the wounded, saying: "For all I can see, the men die without the least effort to save them."