The next point in Miss Nightingale’s letter was one which was at the root of the movement and which she invariably emphasised: “To drag the noble art of nursing out of the sink of relief doles.” It was believed that nothing would so effectually stop the pauperising of the people by indiscriminate charity as the trained nurse in the homes of the sick poor, who would teach her patients how best to help themselves. “To carry out,” continues Miss Nightingale, “the practical principles of preventing disease by stopping its causes and the causes of infections which spread disease. Last but not least, to show a common life able to sustain the workers in this saving but hardest work under a working head, who will personally keep the training and nursing at its highest point. Is not this a great success? “District nursing, so solitary, so without the cheer and the stimulus of a big corps of fellow-workers in the bustle of a public hospital, but also without many of its cares and strains, requires what it has with you, the constant supervision and inspiration of a genius of nursing and a common home. May it spread with such a standard over the whole of London and the whole of the land.” Two years later (1876) Miss Nightingale made an eloquent plea in a long letter to _The Times_ for the establishment of a Home for Nurses in connection with the National Society for Providing Trained Nurses for the Poor. This letter was later reprinted as a pamphlet on _Trained Nursing for the Sick Poor_. In specially pleading for a Central Home for Nurses, she wrote, “If you give nurses a bad home, or no home at all, you will have only nurses who live in a bad home, or no home at all,” and she emphasises the necessity for the district nurse to have a knowledge of how “to nurse the home as well as the patient,” and for that reason she should live in a place of comfort herself free from the discomforts of private lodgings. Miss Nightingale’s plea bore fruit in the establishment of the Central Home for Nurses, 23, Bloomsbury Square, under the able management of Miss Florence Lees. Nothing pleased Miss Nightingale better than to get reports of the experience of the district nurses amongst the poor, and to hear how the people received their visits and what impression they were able to make on the habits of the people. She was specially delighted with the story of a puny slum boy who vigorously rebelled against a tubbing which Miss Lees was administering. “Willie don’t like to be bathed,” he roared; “oo may bath de debil, if oo like!” The implication that Miss Lees was capable of washing the devil white Miss Nightingale pronounced the finest compliment ever paid to a district nurse.