After Miss Nightingale received the gift of this convenient vehicle, she redoubled her exertions on behalf of the soldiers still remaining in the Crimea. The winter was severe and snow lay thick on the ground, but it did not deter her from constantly visiting the camp hospitals, and she was known to stand for hours at the top of a bleak rocky mountain near the hospitals, giving her instructions while the snow was falling heavily. Then in the bleak dark night she would return down the perilous mountain road with no escort save the driver. Her friends remonstrated and begged her to avoid such risk and exposure, but she answered by a smile, which seemed to say, “You may be right, but I have faith.” M. Soyer was so impressed by the danger that Miss Nightingale was incurring, that he addressed, as he relates, “a letter to a noble duchess, who I knew had much influence with her.” I am afraid, however, that neither the solicitous M. Soyer nor the “noble duchess” deterred Miss Nightingale from following what she felt to be the path of duty. During this period she was much engaged in promoting schemes for the education and recreation of the convalescent soldiers and those forming the army of occupation. She formed classes, established little libraries or “reading huts,” which were supplied with books and periodicals sent by friends at home. Queen Victoria contributed literature and the Duchess of Kent sent Miss Nightingale a useful assortment of books for the men. All the reading huts were numerously and constantly attended, and Miss Nightingale remarked in her after report that the behaviour of the men was “uniformly quiet and well-bred.” Lectures and schoolrooms were established for the men, both at Scutari and in the Crimea, by various officers and chaplains, and in these Miss Nightingale took a deep interest and was herself instrumental in establishing a café at Inkerman, to serve as a counter-attraction to the canteens where so much drunkenness prevailed. As she had ministered to the bodily needs of the men while sickness reigned, now she tried to promote their mental and moral good by providing them with rational means of occupation and amusement. With solicitous womanly thought for the wives and mothers at home, Miss Nightingale had from the first encouraged the men to keep up communication with their families by supplying those in hospital with stationery, and stamps and writing materials were now at her instance supplied to the convalescent and other reading huts. In the first months of the war the men had been allowed to send any letters to Miss Nightingale’s quarters in the Barrack Hospital to be stamped, and many a reckless lad who had run away and enlisted was by her gentle persuasions prevailed upon to write home and report himself.