The neighborhood of the bridges was occupied by tenement-houses, making the approach to South Boston rather squalid. The House of Correction and other public institutions then established there lessened the attractiveness of the peninsula. So when Boston began to expand in earnest it took the usual course of cities and grew toward the west. The Back Bay was duly filled in, for the new part of Boston is on made ground. My father considered this much less wholesome than the original soil. In the days of my childhood, South Boston, while not a fashionable suburb, counted many substantial and fairly well-to-do citizens among its inhabitants. Toward the eastern end it was pleasantly open and still retained a rural air. At City Point were semi-circles of granite, built for the cannon of the Revolution. Facing it, with a mile of water stretching between, was the grim gray outline of Fort Independence, not yet reduced to innocuous desuetude by the changes in methods of warfare. As there was already a baby girl, it was hoped that I would be a boy. My father was much disappointed at my failure to fulfil this hope. He declared that the only way to console him would be to name me for Florence Nightingale, which was accordingly done. This was before the Crimean War had made her famous. My parents, however, had spent some days at “Embley,” the home of the Nightingale family, while on their wedding-tour. Florence, then a young woman of twenty-three, was already turning toward her life-work. She consulted my father, as a philanthropist of experience, about the propriety of her studying nursing and devoting her life to the care of the sick. He, of course, counseled her to do so. Ever in advance of his own day and generation, he would have had small patience with the people who even now consider a nurse as a species of social pariah. Miss Nightingale corresponded with my parents before she had taken up her public work. The beautiful and devout spirit of her later years, as well as an intense interest in the movements in behalf of political and religious freedom, is manifest in these early letters. Touches of fun remind us that she had a happy sense of humor. Throughout the correspondence we see the great admiration of the young English gentlewoman for the man whose life was dedicated to the cause which she longed to take up. She thus acknowledged the news of my birth and of the decision to name the new baby after her, foreshadowing, also, her own future career. EMBLEY, _December 26_.