Mrs. Tooley tells us of one Crimean veteran, that when he received a basin of arrowroot on his first arrival at the hospital early in the morning, he said to himself, “‘Tommy, me boy, that’s all you’ll get into your inside this blessed day, and think yourself lucky you’ve got that.’ But two hours later, if another of them blessed angels didn’t come entreating of me to have just a little chicken broth! Well, I took that, thinking maybe it was early dinner, and before I had well done wondering what would happen next, round the nurse came again with a bit o’ jelly; and all day long at intervals they kept on bringing me what they called ‘a little nourishment.’ In the evening, Miss Nightingale she came and had a look at me, and says she, ‘I hope you’re feeling better?’ I could have said, ‘Ma’am, I feels as fit as a fightin’ cock,’ but I managed to git out somethin’ a bit more polite.”[11] The barracks had thirteen “coppers,” and in the old days meat and vegetables had just been tossed into these and boiled together anyhow. It is easy to imagine the greasy mess to which the fevered invalids must have been treated by the time the stuff had been carried round to the hospital. But now, sometimes in a single day, thirteen gallons of chicken broth, and forty gallons of arrowroot found their way from the new kitchen to the hospital wards. CHAPTER XIII. _The horrors of Scutari—The victory of the Lady-in-Chief—The Queen’s letter—Her gift of butter and treacle._ Miss Nightingale’s discipline was strict; she did not mind the name of autocrat when men were dying by twenties for lack of what only an autocrat could do; and when there was continual loss of life for want of fitting nourishment, though there had been supplies sent out, as had been said “by the ton-weight,” she herself on at least one occasion, broke open the stores and fed her famishing patients. It is true that the ordinary matron would have been dismissed for doing so; she was not an ordinary matron—she was the Lady-in-Chief. To her that hath shall be given. She had grudged nothing to the service to which from childhood she had given herself—not strength, nor time, nor any other good gift of her womanhood, and having done her part nobly, fortune aided her. Her friends were among the “powers that be,” and even her wealth was, in this particular battle, a very important means of victory. Her beauty would have done little for her if she had been incompetent, but being to the last degree efficient, her loveliness gave the final touch to her power—her loveliness and that personal magnetism which gave her sway over the hearts and minds of men, and also, let it be added, of women. Not only did those in authority give to her of their best—their best knowledge, their closest attention, their most untiring service—but she knew how to discern the true from the false, and to put to the best use the valuable information often confided to her. She had many helpers.