Nursing in a hospital which received soldiers straight from the battlefield, their wounds aggravated by days of neglect, was a difficult task under the most favourable circumstances, but when intensified by the lack even of proper food, such as the above letter discloses, the task was indeed formidable. There was an organising brain, however, at work in that dreadful Barrack Hospital now, and _within ten days_ of her arrival, in spite of the terrible influx of patients which taxed her powers to the utmost, Miss Nightingale had fitted up an impromptu kitchen, from which eight hundred men were daily supplied with well-cooked food and other comforts. It was largely supplied with the invalid food from the private stores of the Lady-in-Chief, which fortunately she had brought out with her in the _Vectis_. Beef-tea, chicken broth, jelly, and little delicacies unheard of before were now administered to the sick by the gentle hands of women nurses. Small wonder that the poor fellows could often only express their gratitude in voices half-choked with sobs! One Crimean veteran told the writer that when he received a basin of arrowroot on his first arrival at the hospital early in the morning, he said to himself, “Tommy, me boy, that’s all you’ll get into your inside this blessed day, and think yourself lucky you’ve got that. But two hours later, if another of them blessed angels didn’t come entreating of me to have just a little chicken broth! Well, I took that, thinking maybe it was early dinner, and before I had well done wondering what would happen next, round the nurse came again with a bit o’ jelly, and all day long at intervals they kept on bringing me what they called ‘a little nourishment.’ In the evening, Miss Nightingale she came and had a look at me, and says she, ‘I hope you’re feeling better.’ I could have said, ‘Ma’am, I feels as fit as a fightin’ cock,’ but I managed to git out somethin’ a bit more polite.” Hitherto, not only had there been a lack of food, but the cooking had been done by the soldiers themselves in the most free and easy manner. Meat and vegetables were boiled together in the huge coppers, of which there were thirteen in the kitchen attached to the barracks. Separate portions were enclosed in nets, and all plunged together into the seething coppers, and taken up when occasion demanded. Some things were served up done to rags, while others were almost raw. This kind of cooking was bad enough for men in ordinary health, but for the sick it meant death.