When Florence Nightingale entered the Deaconess Hospital at Kaiserswerth, the institution, if we count the first primitive penitentiary, had been in existence sixteen years. It already consisted of a hospital and training home for deaconesses, a seminary for infant-school teachers, a kindergarten, an orphan asylum, and a penitentiary, but was small compared with the extensive settlement of to-day. It was managed on very simple and primitive lines, and the nurses came almost entirely from the peasant class. The fashion of “lady” nurses was practically unknown. Deaconess Reichardt, the first sister enrolled in the institution, was still there at the time of Miss Nightingale’s sojourn. An interesting bit of autobiography regarding her Kaiserswerth days is given by Miss Nightingale in a letter preserved by the authorities of the British Museum. The letter was sent in reply to their request for a copy of the little history of Kaiserswerth which Miss Nightingale published after her return from the institution, and was hastily written in pencil. It is dated September 24th, 1897, from her house 10, South Street, Park Lane, and runs as follows:-- “MESSRS. DUBAU,-- “A gentleman called here yesterday from you, asking for a copy of my _Kaiserswerth_ for, I believe, the British Museum. “Since yesterday, a search has been instituted--but only two copies have been found, and one of those is torn and dirty. I send you the least bad-looking. You will see the date is 1851, and after the copies then printed were given away, I don’t think I have ever thought of it. “I was twice in training there myself. Of course, since then hospital and district nursing have made great strides. Indeed, district nursing has been invented. “But never have I met with a higher love, a purer devotion than there. There was no neglect. “It was the more remarkable because many of the deaconesses had been only peasants--(none were gentlewomen when I was there). “The food was poor--no coffee but bean coffee--no luxury but cleanliness. “FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”