The room in which Miss Nightingale slept during her residence at Kaiserswerth was in the Orphan Asylum. She took her meals with the Deaconesses. The Spartan severity, but no less the beautiful spirit of the place, were clear in her recollection nearly half a century later. In 1897 the authorities of the British Museum applied to her for a copy of the pamphlet on Kaiserswerth which she had printed in 1851. The pencilled note which she sent with a torn copy of the pamphlet, the only one she could find, is preserved in the Museum Library. "I was twice in training there myself," she wrote (September 24, 1897). "Of course since then, Hospital and District nursing have made giant strides. Indeed District nursing has been invented. But never have I met with a higher tone, 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." Pastor Fliedner told a visitor to Kaiserswerth that "no person had ever passed so distinguished an examination, or shown herself so thoroughly mistress of all she had to learn, as Miss Nightingale."[57] [57] Mr. Sidney Herbert's speech at the Nightingale Fund Meeting, Nov. 29, 1855. IV Happy as Miss Nightingale was at Kaiserswerth, there was yet one thing lacking. She wished, it is true, for no other earth; she had found her pictured heaven; her life was full and rich. Yet with all her self-reliance, and even in the moment of first victory in her long struggle for self-expression, she yearned, woman-like, for sympathy. Nay, and not only woman-like. "Not till we can think," said Carlyle, "that here and there one is thinking of us, one is loving us, does this waste earth become a peopled garden." It was not enough to Florence that she should have had her way and that her parents should have acquiesced. Her loving heart craved for their positive sympathy; her mind, half leaning for all its masterfulness, demanded that what she had decided should be accepted by those dear to her as their choice also. "I should be as happy here," she wrote to her mother (August 31), "as the day is long, if I could hope that I had your smile, your blessing, your sympathy upon it; without which I cannot be quite happy. My beloved people, I cannot bear to grieve you. Life and everything in it that charms you, you would sacrifice for me; but unknown to you is my thirst, unseen by you are waters which would save me. To save me, I know would be to bless yourselves, whose love for me passes the love of women. Oh how shall I show you love and gratitude in return, yet not so perish that you chiefly would mourn! Give me time, give me faith. Trust me, help me. I feel within me that I could gladden your loving hearts which now I wound. Say to me, 'Follow the dictates of that spirit within