Another very interesting and tenderly prized gift was a writing-desk, inlaid with pearl, presented to Miss Nightingale by her friends in the neighbourhood of her Derbyshire home. On the front of the desk was a silver plate inscribed with the words “Presented to Florence Nightingale on her safe arrival at Lea Hurst from the Crimea, August 8th, 1856, as a token of esteem from the inhabitants of Lea, Holloway, and Crich.” Miss Nightingale, on being told that her friends and neighbours wished to celebrate her home-coming by a presentation, requested that it might be done as privately as possible; accordingly a small deputation waited on her at Lea Hurst a few weeks after her arrival and presented the desk. Amongst other old friends whom Miss Nightingale received on her return home was the late Duke of Devonshire, who drove over from Chatsworth to Lea Hurst and presented his distinguished neighbour with a silver owl and some other tokens of his esteem. The duke caused a collection of press notices--there were no press cutting agencies in those days--to be made with regard to Miss Nightingale and her work and made into a scrap-book, which His Grace eventually presented to the Derby Town Library. During these weeks, in which Miss Nightingale was recruiting her health at Lea Hurst, she entertained from time to time little parties of her humble friends and neighbours, who enjoyed the privilege of seeing the mementoes which she had brought from the Crimea. There are still living a few old people in the neighbourhood of Lea Hurst who recall the awe and wonder with which they regarded cannon balls from Sebastopol, bullets taken from Balaclava heroes, and other martial objects in Miss Florence’s collection, and the emotion they felt at sight of the flowers and grasses which she had gathered from the graves of the soldiers in the cemeteries of Scutari and Balaclava. Then there was “Miss Florence’s Crimean dog,” a large Russian hound which was the wonder of the countryside, second only in interest to the drummer boy Thomas, who attended his lady home from the war and was a very big person indeed as “Miss Nightingale’s own man.” For graphic and thrilling narrative of the fall of Sebastopol, Thomas could outvie the special correspondent of _The Times_, and if he was unavoidably absent from the Balaclava charge, he had the details of the engagement by heart.