Both at Embley and Lea Hurst, Florence and her sister had their own little gardens, in which they digged and sowed and planted to their hearts’ delight, and in summer they ran about with their miniature watering cans, bestowing, doubtless, an almost equal supply on their own tiny feet as on the parched ground. In after years this early love of flowers had its pathetic sequel. When, after months of exhausting work amongst the suffering soldiers, Florence Nightingale lay in a hut on the heights of Balaclava, prostrate with Crimean fever, she relates that she first began to rally after receiving a bunch of flowers from a friend, and that the sight of them beside her sick couch helped her to throw off the languor which had nearly proved fatal. She dated her recovery from that hour. In every respect the circumstances of Florence Nightingale’s childhood were calculated to fit her for the destiny which lay in the future. Not only was she reared among scenes of exceptional beauty in both her Derbyshire and her Hampshire homes and taught the privilege of ministering to the poor and sick, but she was mentally trained in advance of the custom of the day. Without that equipment she could not have held the commanding position which she attained in the work of army nursing and organisation. She and her sister Parthe, being so near in age, did their lessons together. Their education was conducted entirely at home under a private governess, and was assiduously supervised by their father. Mr. Nightingale was a man of broad sympathies, artistic and intellectual tastes, and much general cultivation, and, having no sons, he made a hobby of giving a classical education to his girls, and found a fertile soil in the quick brain of his daughter Florence. He was a strict disciplinarian, and none of the desultory ways which characterised the home education of young ladies in the early Victorian days was allowed in the schoolrooms at Embley and Lea Hurst. Rules were rigidly fixed for lessons and play, and careless work was never passed unpunished. It was in the days of childhood that the future heroine of the Crimea laid the foundation of an orderly mind and a habit of method which served her so admirably when suddenly called to organise the ill-regulated hospital at Scutari. As a child Florence excelled in the more intellectual branches of education and showed a great aptitude for foreign languages. She attained creditable proficiency in music and was clever at drawing, but in these artistic branches her elder sister Parthe excelled most. From her father Florence learned elementary science, Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and under his guidance, seated in the dear old library at Lea Hurst, made the acquaintance of standard authors and poets. But doubtless the sisters got an occasional romance not included in the paternal list and read it with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes in a secluded nook in the garden.