The institutions of Kaiserswerth, when she was there in 1851, were still on a comparatively modest scale. They comprised, as she enumerates them, a Hospital (with 100 beds), an Infant School, a Penitentiary (with 12 inmates), an Orphan Asylum, and a Normal School for schoolmistresses. There were in all 116 deaconesses, of whom 94 were "consecrated," the remainder being still on probation. The "consecration" consisted only of "a solemn blessing in the Church, without vows of any kind." Of the 116 deaconesses, 67 were on service in other parts of Germany, or abroad; the rest were engaged in working the various institutions at Kaiserswerth itself. After six months' trial they received a modest salary, just enough to provide their clothes. There was no other reward, except that the Mother House stood open to receive those who might fall ill or become infirm in its service. Everything was clean and well ordered, but there was no luxury; the board was simple to the verge of roughness. The place was pervaded by two notes. It was a place of training, and a place of consecrated service. The training was both in practice and by precept. Every week the pastor gave a conversational lecture to the deaconesses, finding out from each the difficulties she might have experienced in her work, and suggesting how they could best be met. The education of the young, the ministration of the sick, the art of district visiting, the yet more difficult work of rescue and reformation, all were taught. In such a place as this, Florence Nightingale found by actual experience, as already she had learnt to expect from reading the reports, the realization in some degree of her most earnest desires. The training in nursing was, it is true, not particularly good; it fell far short of the professional standard which the Nightingale School was afterwards to set up. She objected strongly in later years to current statements that her own training was confined to Kaiserswerth. "The nursing there," she wrote, "was _nil_. The hygiene horrible. The hospital was certainly the worst part of Kaiserswerth. I took all the training that was to be had--there was none to be had in England, but Kaiserswerth was far from having trained me." On the other hand "the tone was excellent, admirable. And Pastor Fliedner's addresses were the very best I ever heard. The penitentiary out-door work and vegetable gardening under a very capable Sister were excellently adapted to the case. And Pastor Fliedner's solemn and reverential teaching to us of the sad events of hospital life was what I have never heard in England."[56] But here, at Kaiserswerth, Miss Nightingale found "a better life for women," a scope for the exercise of "morally active" powers. And here, though the field was limited, was provided in some sort the training which alone could fit women for larger responsibilities elsewhere. Here was "the service of man" organized as "the service of God"; here was