Miss Nightingale disposes of the “caste” difficulty with an amusing incident. When the Government’s new water supply “was first introduced into Calcutta, the high-caste Hindoos still desired their water-carriers to bring them their _sacred_ water from the _river_; but these functionaries, finding it much easier to take the water from the new taps, just rubbed in a little (vulgar not sacred) mud, and presented it as Ganges water. “When at last the filthy fraud was discovered, public opinion, founded on experience, had already gone too far to return to dirty water. And the new water supply was, at public meetings, adjudged to be _theologically_ as well as physically safe.” Miss Nightingale urges that irrigation schemes should be set on foot by the Government as a preventive against the ever-recurring famines which afflict our fellow Indian subjects so severely. “Is not the Government of India,” she asks, “too much like a dispensary, which does all that man can do to cure when too late to do anything to prevent?” While Miss Nightingale’s pen was pleading so eloquently and practically during this period for the good of the great Empire in the East, she was not unmindful of the people at home. Her writings and work in connection with the sick poor must form the subject of a separate chapter. CHAPTER XXIII _THE NURSING OF THE SICK POOR_ Origin of the Liverpool Home and Training School--Interest in the Sick Paupers--“Una and the Lion” a Tribute to Sister Agnes Jones--Letter to Miss Florence Lees--Plea for a Home for Nurses--On the Question of Paid Nurses--Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Nursing Institute--Rules for Probationers. Nursing is an Art; and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas, or cold marble, compared with having to do with the living body--the temple of God’s spirit....It is one of the Fine Arts; I had almost said, the finest of the Fine Arts.-- FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. There is no branch of sick nursing which appeals more strongly to Miss Nightingale than the care of the sick poor. It was as a visitor in the homes of her poorer neighbours at Lea Hurst and Embley that she began her philanthropic work, and though the outbreak of the Crimean War drew her into the public arena and concentrated her attention on the army, she had not ceased to feel the importance of attending to the needs of the sick poor, and repeatedly drew attention to the fact that England was behind other nations in providing for the sick poor at home, and in infirmaries.