There can be no mistaking the motives which led Florence Nightingale to enter on her career under the distressing conditions which then prevailed. Born and reared in refined surroundings, in an intellectual atmosphere, with all the educational advantages the times afforded, if she had fulfilled parental and popular expectations, she would have been satisfied to have spent her girlhood life chiefly in a round of gay social functions, with ample leisure for study and travel, and to have married at an early age a man belonging to her own social circle. That she was not satisfied with this sort of existence is seen in this typical extract from one of her letters, written when she was twenty-six years of age: “The thoughts and feelings that I have now,” she wrote, “I can remember since I was six years old. It was not _I_ that made them. A profession, a trade, a necessary occupation, something to fill and employ all my faculties, I have always felt essential to me, I have always longed for, consciously or not. * * * The first thought and the last thought I can remember was nursing work, but for this I have had no education myself. * * *” Later she wrote: “In my thirty-first year I see nothing desirable but death. Why do I wish to leave this world? God knows I do not expect a greater heaven beyond, but that He would now set me down in St. Gile’s, or at a Kaiserwerth, there to find my work, and my salvation in my work.” To her, life was earnest--it was a serious thing, and her struggle for many long, weary years to free herself, to overcome the obstacles that closed in around her, so that she might accomplish the kind of work she felt God wanted her to do--her long-continued effort to gain her relatives’ consent for her to even attempt nursing--forms one of the most interesting chapters in her life story. Nursing to her was always “God’s business.” How much this sense of vocation, this strong feeling that she was called to do the will of God in this form of service, had to do with her success, no one can fully determine, but that it helped tremendously in carrying her over difficult places cannot be doubted. As one looks back over her wonderful life and tries to discern the secret of her remarkable influence, one cannot but feel that the spirit in which she did her work, her absolute devotion to the cause to which she was giving her best powers, accounts in large measure for her name being honored, and her memory kept green all over the civilized world. “The sweetest character in all British history,” was a noted man’s comment on her, yet the sweetness was always combined with strength, and courage, and a quiet determination not to give up because things were harder or more difficult than she had expected. Her work was not lightly undertaken, and as lightly abandoned, as nursing is by many young women today.