Happily Miss Nightingale’s work was not done yet. Two years later (1892) found her at the age of seventy-two starting a vigorous health crusade in Buckinghamshire in particular, and in the rural districts generally. The 1890 Act for the Better Housing of the Working Classes specially roused her attention in a subject in which she had always been interested. She had little faith in Acts of Parliament reforming the habits of the people. “On paper,” she writes, “there could not be a more perfect Health Directory [than the Act] for making our _sanitary_ authorities and districts worthy of the name they bear. We have powers and definitions. Everything is provided except the two most necessary: the money to pay for and the will to carry out the reforms.” If the new Act were enforced, Miss Nightingale was of opinion that three-fourths of the rural districts in England would be depopulated and “we should have hundreds and thousands of poor upon our hands, owing to the large proportion of houses unfit for habitation in the rural districts.” In 1892 Miss Nightingale addressed a stirring letter to the Buckinghamshire County Council on the advisability of appointing a Sanitary Committee to deal with the health questions of the district. “We must create a public opinion which will drive the Government,” she wrote, “instead of the Government having to drive us--an enlightened public opinion, wise in principles, wise in details. We hail the County Council as being or becoming one of the strongest engines in our favour, at once fathering and obeying the great impulse for national health against national and local disease. For we have learned that we have national health in our hands--local sanitation, national health. But we have to contend against centuries of superstition and generations of indifference. Let the County Council take the lead.” Miss Nightingale believed that the best method for promoting sanitary reform among the people was to influence the women--the wives and mothers who had control of the domestic management of the homes. Her next step was, with the aid of the County Council Technical Instruction Committee, to arrange for a missioner to teach in the rural districts of Buckinghamshire. She selected three specially trained and educated women, who were not only to give addresses in village schoolrooms on such matters as disinfection, personal cleanliness, ventilation, drainage, whitewashing, but were to visit the homes of the poor and give friendly instruction and advice to the women. She knew, and respected the feeling, that an Englishman regards his home, however humble, as a castle into which no one may enter uninvited. Miss Nightingale had no sympathy with the class of “visiting ladies” who lift the latch of a poor person’s cottage and walk in without knocking. In launching her scheme of visitation she did the courteous thing by writing a circular letter to the village mothers, asking them to receive the missioners. The letter runs:--