“Oh, we didn’t have food every _day_!” said he, with a touch of gently scornful laughter. “Every _three_ days or so, we may have had some biscuits served out. But there was a lot of the food as wasn’t fit to eat.” He was, however, a man of few words, and when I asked him what Miss Nightingale was like, he answered rather unexpectedly and with great promptitude, “Well, she had a very nice figger.” All the same, though he did not dilate on the beauty of her countenance, and exercised a certain reserve of speech when I tried to draw him out about the Lady-in-Chief, it was clear that hers was a sacred name to him, and that the bit of her handwriting which he possessed in the little book, so carefully unwrapped for me from the tin box holding his dearest possessions, which he uncorded under my eyes with his own capable but rather tired old hands, between two bouts of his wearying cough, had for long been the great joy and pride of his present quiet existence. I had a talk with others of these veterans in their stately and well-earned home of rest in the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, and it was clear that to them all she was enshrined in memory’s highest place. This may be a fitting moment for recording the tribute of Mr. Macdonald, the administrator of the _Times_ Fund, who wrote of her before his return to England:— “Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant presence is an influence for good comfort, even among the struggles of expiring nature. She is a ‘ministering angel,’ without any exaggeration, in these hospitals, and, as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. The popular instinct was not mistaken, which, when she had set out from England on her mission of mercy, hailed her as a heroine; I trust she may not earn her title to a higher though sadder appellation. No one who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can avoid misgivings lest these should fail. With the heart of a true woman, and the manners of a lady, accomplished and refined beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness of judgment and promptitude and decision of character.”