well as by hard-won knowledge. Moreover, it chanced that after Miss Skene’s labour of love in the cholera visitation, her niece, “Miss Janie Skene, then a girl of fifteen, who was staying in Constantinople with her parents, had gone with her mother to visit the wounded soldiers at Scutari. Shocked by their terrible sufferings and the lack of all that might have eased their pain, she wrote strongly to her grandfather, who sent her letter to the _Times_, where it did much to stir up public opinion.” “It struck Felicia,” says Miss Rickards, “that having with great pains trained her corps of nurses for the cholera, they might now be utilized at Scutari, her great desire being to go out herself at the head of them. Had these events occurred at the present day, when ideas have changed as to what ladies, still young, may and may not do in the way of bold enterprise, perhaps she might have obtained her parents’ permission to go. As it was the notion was too new and startling to be taken into consideration; and she had to content herself with doing all she could at home to send out others. “Her zeal was quickened by a letter she received from Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who had been much struck by her energy and ability, urging her to do all she could in England to send to the rescue. “At once she set out as a pioneer in the undertaking, delighted to encourage her nurses to take their part in the heroic task. “Meantime Miss Nightingale was hard at work enlisting recruits, thankful to secure Felicia’s services as agent at Oxford. She sent her friends Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge down there, that they might inspect the volunteers and select the women they thought would be suitable. “The interviews took place in Mr. Skene’s dining-room, along the walls of which the candidates were ranged. “Kind-hearted as Mrs. Bracebridge was, her proceedings were somewhat in the ‘Off with their heads!’ style of the famous duchess in ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ If the sudden questions fired at each in succession were not answered in a way that she thought quite satisfactory, ‘She won’t do; send her out,’ was the decided command. “And Felicia had to administer balm to the wounded feelings of the rejected.”[7] CHAPTER XI. _The Expedition._ Of the thirty-eight nurses who went out with Miss Nightingale, twenty-four had been trained in sisterhoods, Roman and Anglican, and of the remaining fourteen, some had been chosen in the first instance by Lady Maria Forrester, others by Miss Skene and Mrs. Bracebridge, but it must be supposed that the final decision lay always with Miss Nightingale.