There are many others who have helped me, and not once with regard to the little sketch have I met with any unkindness or rebuff. Indeed, so various are the acknowledgments due, and so sincere the gratitude I feel, that I scarcely know where to begin. To Miss Rickards, for the pages from her beautiful life of Felicia Skene, I wish to record heartfelt thanks; and also to Messrs. Burns and Oates with regard to lengthy quotations from the letters of Sister Aloysius—a deeply interesting little volume published by them in 1904, under the title of “A Sister of Mercy’s Memories of the Crimea;” to Dr. Hagberg Wright of the London Library for the prolonged loan of a whole library of books of reference and the help always accessible to his subscribers; and to the librarian of the Derby Free Library for aid in verifying pedigree. Also to Lord Stanmore for his generous permission to use long extracts from his father’s “Life of Lord Herbert,” from which more than one valuable letter has been taken; and to Mr. John Murray for sanctioning this and for like privileges in relation to the lives of Sir John MacNeill and Sir Bartle Frere. To Messrs. William Blackwood, Messrs. Cassell, Messrs. G. P. Putnam and Sons, as well as to the editors and publishers of the _Times_, _Daily Telegraph_, _Morning Post_, and _Evening News_, I wish to add my thanks to those of my publisher. To any reader of this book it will be clear how great a debt I owe to General Evatt, and he knows, I think, how sincerely I recognize it. Mr. Stephen Paget, the writer of the article on Miss Nightingale in the Dictionary of National Biography, has not only permitted me to quote from that—a privilege for which I must also thank Messrs. Smith Elder, and Sir Sidney Lee—but has, in addition, put me in the way of other priceless material wherewith to do honour to the subject of this biography. I have long been grateful to him for the inspiration and charm of his own “Confessio Medici”—there is now this other obligation to add to that. Nor can I forgo cordial acknowledgments to the writer and also the publisher of the charming sketch of Miss Nightingale’s Life published some years ago by the Pilgrim Press and entitled “The Story of Florence Nightingale.” To my friend Dr. Lewis N. Chase I owe the rare privilege of an introduction to Mr. Walker, the sculptor, who has so graciously permitted for my frontispiece a reproduction of the statue he has just completed as a part of our national memorial to Miss Nightingale.