This was written by Miss Nightingale herself, and the response in money was at once very large, but money was by no means the first or most difficult question. No time must be lost in choosing the nurses who were to accompany the Lady-in-Chief. It was not until later that she became known by that name, but it already well described her office, for every vital arrangement and decision seems to have centred in her. She knew well that her task could be undertaken in no spirit of lightness, and she never wasted power in mere fuss or flurry. She once wrote to Sir Bartle Frere of “that careless and ignorant person called the Devil,” and she did not want any of his careless and ignorant disciples to go out with her among her chosen band. Nor did she want any incompetent sentimentalists of the kind brought before us in that delightful story of our own South African War, of the soldier who gave thanks for the offer to wash his face, but confessed that fourteen other ladies had already offered the same service. Indeed, the rather garish merriment of that little tale seems almost out of place when we recall the rotting filth and unspeakable stench of blood and misery in which the men wounded in the Crimea were lying wrapped from head to foot. No antiseptic surgery, no decent sanitation, no means of ordinary cleanliness, were as yet found for our poor Tommies, and Kinglake assures us that all the efforts of masculine organization, seeking to serve the crowded hospitals with something called a laundry, had only succeeded in washing _seven_ shirts for the entire army! Miss Nightingale knew a little of the vastness of her undertaking, but she is described by Lady Canning at this critical time as “gentle and wise and quiet”—“in no bustle or hurry.” Yet within a single week from the date of Mr. Herbert’s letter asking her to go out, all her arrangements were made and her nurses chosen—nay more, the expedition had actually started. The War Office issued its official intimation that “Miss Nightingale, a lady with greater practical experience of hospital administration and treatment than any other lady in this country,” had undertaken the noble and arduous work of organizing and taking out nurses for the soldiers; and it was also notified that she had been appointed by Government to the office of Superintendent of Nurses at Scutari. The _Examiner_ published a little biographical sketch in reply to the question which was being asked everywhere. Society, of course, knew Miss Nightingale very well, but Society includes only a small knot of people out of the crowd of London’s millions, to say nothing of the provinces. Many out of those millions were asking, “Who is Miss Nightingale?” and, in looking back, it is amazing to see how many disapproved of the step she was taking.