M. Soyer, who placed his culinary art at her service, has written a book about his experiences in which he tells us that, after a merry evening in the doctors’ quarters, when on his way back to his own, he saw by a faint light a little group—shadowy in the half-darkness—in a corner of one of the corridors. A Sister stood beside Miss Nightingale with a lighted candle that she might see clearly enough to scribble down the last wishes of the dying soldier who was supported on the bed beside her. With its deep colouring, described as like a grave study by Rembrandt, the little picture drew the passer-by, and for a few minutes he watched unseen while the Lady-in-Chief took into those “tender womanly hands” the watch and trinkets of the soldier, who with his last gasping breath was trying to make clear to her his farewell message to his wife and children. And this seems to have been but one among many kindred scenes. We have all heard of the man who watched till her shadow fell across the wall by his bed that he might at least kiss that shadow as it passed; but few of us, perhaps, know the whole story. The man was a Highland soldier who had been doomed to lose his arm by amputation. Miss Nightingale believed that she might possibly be able to save the arm by careful nursing, and she begged that she might at least be allowed to try. Nursing was to her an art as well as a labour of love. The ceaseless care in matters of detail, which she considered the very alphabet of that art, stand out clearly in her own _Notes on Nursing_. And in this instance her skill and watchfulness and untiring effort saved the man’s arm. No wonder that he wanted to kiss her shadow! To the wives of the soldiers she was indeed a saving angel. When she arrived at Scutari, they were living, we are told, literally in holes and corners of the hospital. Their clothes were worn out. They had neither bonnets, nor shoes, nor any claim on rations. Poor faithful creatures, many of them described in the biographies as respectable and decent, they had followed their husbands through all the horrors of the campaign, and now, divided from them and thrust aside for want of space, they were indeed in sorry case. Well might Miss Nightingale write later, and well may we all lay it to heart—“When the improvements in our system are discussed, let not the wife and child of the soldier be forgotten.” After being moved about from one den to another, the poor women—some wives and some, alas, widows—had been quartered in a few damp rooms in the hospital basement, where those who wanted solitude or privacy could do nothing to secure it beyond hanging a few rags on a line as a sort of screen between home and home. And in these desolate quarters many babies had been born. It was but the last drop of misery in their cup when, early in 1855, a month or two after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, a drain broke in the basement, and fever followed.