“The cavalry barracks, as a whole, are the least overcrowded, and have the freest external movement of air. Next come the infantry; and the most crowded and the least ventilated externally are the Guards’ barracks; _so that the mortality from consumption, which follows the same order of increase in the different arms, augments with increase of crowding and difficulty of ventilation_.”[18] Her own well-trained mind was in extreme contrast with the type of mind which she describes in the following story:— “I remember, when a child, hearing the story of an accident, related by some one who sent two girls to fetch a ‘bottle of sal volatile from her room.’ ‘Mary could not stir,’ she said; ‘Fanny ran and fetched a bottle that was not sal volatile, and that was not in my room.’” All her teaching, so far as I know it, is clearly at first-hand and carefully sifted. It is as far as possible from that useless kind of doctrine which is a mere echo of unthinking hearsay. For instance, how many sufferers she must have saved from unnecessary irritation by the following reminder to nurses:— “Of all parts of the body, the face is perhaps the one which tells the least to the common observer or the casual visitor. “I have known patients dying of sheer pain, exhaustion, and want of sleep, from one of the most lingering and painful diseases known, preserve, till within a few days of death, not only the healthy colour of the cheek, but the mottled appearance of a robust child. And scores of times have I heard these unfortunate creatures assailed with, ‘I am glad to see you looking so well.’ ‘I see no reason why you should not live till ninety years of age.’ ‘Why don’t you take a little more exercise and amusement?’—with all the other commonplaces with which we are so familiar.” And then, again, how like her it is to remind those who are nursing that “a patient is not merely a piece of furniture, to be kept clean and arranged against the wall, and saved from injury or breakage.” She was one of the rare people who realized that truth of word is partly a question of education, and that many people are quite unconscious of their lack of that difficult virtue. “I know I fibbs dreadful,” said a poor little servant girl to her once. “But believe me, miss, I never finds out I have fibbed until they tell me so!” And her comment suggests that in this matter that poor little servant girl by no means stood alone. She worked very hard. Her books and pamphlets[19] were important, and her correspondence, ever dealing with the reforms she had at heart all over the world, was of itself an immense output. Those who have had to write much from bed or sofa know only too well the abnormal fatigue it involves, and her labours of this kind seem to have been unlimited.