Another able writer—a woman—has said that for Miss Nightingale the testing moment of her life met her with the coming of the wagon-loads of wounded men from the battlefield of Inkermann, who were poured into the hospital at Scutari within twenty-four hours of her arrival. Had the sight of all that agony and of the senseless confusion that received it, led the Lady-in-Chief and her nurses to waste their power in rushing hither and thither in disorganized fear of defeat, their very sympathy and emotion dimming their foresight and clouding their brain, the whole story might have been different. But Miss Nightingale was of those who, by a steadfast obedience hour by hour to the voice within, have attained through the long years to a fine mastery of every nerve and muscle of that frail house wherein they dwell. The more critical the occasion, the more her will rose to meet it. She knew she must think of the welfare, not of one, but of thousands; and for tens of thousands she wrought the change from this welter of misery and death to that clean orderliness which for the moment seemed as far away as the unseen heaven. There were many other faithful and devoted nurses in the Crimea, though few, perhaps, so highly skilled; but her name stands alone as that of the high-hearted and daring spirit who made bold to change the evil system of the past when no man else had done anything but either consent to it or bemoan it. She, at least, had never been bound by red tape, and her whole soul rose up in arms at sight of the awful suffering which had been allowed under the shelter of dogged routine. Before ten days had passed, she had her kitchen ready and was feeding 800 men every day with well-cooked food, and this in spite of the unforeseen and overwhelming numbers in which the new patients had been poured into the hospitals after Balaclava and Inkermann. She had brought out with her, in the _Vectis_, stores of invalid food, and all sorts of little delicacies surprised the eyes and lips of the hitherto half-starved men. Their gentle nurses brought them beef tea, chicken broth, jelly. They were weak and in great pain, and may be forgiven if their gratitude was, as we are told, often choked with sobs.