"I am a kind of General Dealer," wrote Miss Nightingale to Mr. Herbert (Jan. 4, 1855), "in socks, shirts, knives and forks, wooden spoons, tin baths, tables and forms, cabbage and carrots, operating tables, towels and soap, small tooth combs, precipitate for destroying lice, scissors, bedpans and stump pillows. I will send you a picture of my Caravanserai, into which beasts come in and out. Indeed the vermin might, if they had but 'unity of purpose,' carry off the four miles of beds on their backs, and march with them into the War Office, Horse Guards, S.W." [114] _Roebuck Committee_, Fifth Report, pp. 20, 21. The caravanserai was the large kitchen aforesaid (p. 173). "From this room," wrote one of the lady volunteers, "were distributed quantities of arrowroot, sago, rice puddings, jelly, beef-tea, and lemonade upon requisitions made by the surgeons. This caused great comings to and fro; numbers of orderlies were waiting at the door with requisitions. One of the nuns or a lady received them, and saw they were signed and countersigned before serving. We used, among ourselves, to call this kitchen the tower of Babel. In the middle of the day everything and everybody seemed to be there: boxes, parcels, bundles of sheets, shirts, and old linen and flannels, tubs of butter, sugar, bread, kettles, saucepans, heaps of books, and of all kinds of rubbish, besides the diets which were being dispensed; then the people, ladies, nuns, nurses, orderlies, Turks, Greeks, French and Italian servants, officers and others waiting to see Miss Nightingale; all passing to and fro, all intent upon their own business, and all speaking their own language."[115] [115] _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. p. 68.