Mrs. Tooley reminds us that not only was Lady Verney well known in literary and political circles, but also her books on social questions had the distinction of being quoted in the House of Commons. She gives many interesting details with regard to the philanthropic and political work of Sir Harry Verney and his family, but it is hardly necessary to duplicate them here, since her book is still available. Lady Verney’s death in 1890, after a long and painful illness, following on that of her father and mother, bereaved Miss Nightingale of a lifelong companionship, and might have left her very lonely but for her absorbing work and her troops of friends. How fruitful that work was we may dimly see when we remember that—to instance one branch of it only—in ten years the death-rate in the army in India, which her efforts so determinately strove to lessen, fell from sixty-nine per thousand to eighteen per thousand.[21] She strove—and not in vain—to improve the sanitary conditions of immense areas of undrained country, but she also endeavoured to bring home to the rank and file of the army individual teaching. She gives in one of her pamphlets a delightful story of men who came to a district in India supposed to be fatal to any new-comer, but, strong in their new hygienic knowledge, determined _not_ to have cholera. They lived carefully, they grew their own garden produce, they did not give way to fear, and _all_, without exception, escaped. To return for a moment to Britain, since a separate chapter is reserved for India. She was before her day in contending that foul air was one of the great causes of consumption and other diseases. And her teaching was ever given with courtesy and consideration. How strongly she felt on this and kindred subjects, and how practical her help was, we see clearly in her letters and pamphlets. She delighted in making festivities for companies of nurses and of her other hard-working friends. And in St. Paul’s fine sense of the phrase, she was no “respecter of persons”: she reverenced personality, not accidental rank. She had no patience with those visiting ladies who think they may intrude at all hours of the day into the homes of the poor, and her quick sense of humour delighted in many of the odd speeches which would have shocked the prim and conventional. She thought the highest compliment ever paid to her staff of nurses who visited in the homes of the poor was the speech of the grubby ragamuffin, who seemed to think they could wash off even the blackness of the Arch-fiend and, when being scrubbed, cried out, “You may bathe the divil.” But with all her fun and relish of life, how sane, how practical, she was! Do you remember how she laughed at the silly idea that nothing was needed to make a good nurse except what the “Early Victorian” used to call “a disappointment in love”? Here are other of her shrewd sayings from her _Nursing Notes_:—