“It was a comfort to think that these brave men had some care, all that we could procure for them. For at this time the food was very bad—goat’s flesh, and sometimes what they called mutton, but black, blue, and green. Yet who could complain of anything after the sufferings I have faintly described—borne, too, with such patience: not a murmur!... One day, after a batch had arrived from the Crimea, and I had gone my rounds through them, one of my orderlies told me that a man wanted to speak one word to me. “When I had a moment I went to him. ‘Tell me at once what you want; I have worse cases to see after’—he did not happen to be very bad. ‘All I want to know, ma’am, is, are you one of our own Sisters of Mercy from Ireland?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘your very own.’ ‘God be praised for that!’ “Another poor fellow said to me one day, ‘Do they give you anything good out here?’ ‘Oh yes,’ I said; ‘why do you ask me?’ ‘Because, ma’am, you gave me a piece of chicken for my dinner, and I kept some of it for you.’ He pulled it out from under his head and offered it to me. I declined the favour with thanks. I never could say enough of those kind-hearted soldiers and their consideration for us in the midst of their sufferings.” CHAPTER XVI. _Inexactitudes—Labels—Cholera—“The Lady with the Lamp”—Her humour—Letters of Sister Aloysius._ About the middle of December Miss Nightingale had to rebuke very severely one of her own nurses, who had written a letter to the _Times_ which made a great sensation by its lurid picture of the evils in the hospital—a misrepresentation so great that the nurse herself confessed in the end that it was “a tissue of exaggerations”—perhaps “inexactitudes” would be our modern word. Meanwhile, the small-minded parochial gossips at home were wasting their time in discussing Miss Nightingale’s religious opinions. One who worked so happily with all who served the same Master was first accused under the old cry of “Popery,” and then under the equally silly label of “Unitarianism.” Her friend Mrs. Herbert, in rebuking parish gossip, felt it necessary to unpin these two labels and loyally pin on a new one, by explaining that in reality she was rather “Low Church.” The really sensible person, with whom, doubtless, Lady Herbert would have fully agreed, was the Irish parson, and his like, when he replied to some foolish questions about her that Miss Nightingale belonged to a very rare sect indeed—the sect of the Good Samaritans.