It should not be supposed, however, that Miss Nightingale was a spurner of rules, and a despiser of discipline, routine, and subordination. The very reverse is the case. Her whole career makes it probable, the character of her mind suggests it, and the administration of the funds placed at her disposal, with which the present chapter has mainly been concerned, proves it. If she shocked and staggered some official minds by her daring innovations, it was her strictness and insistence upon rules and regulations that was most criticized in unofficial quarters. She explained the matter very clearly in her final _Statement to Subscribers_. She had been placed by the Government in two positions of trust, each independent of the other. She had been appointed superintendent of the nursing establishment; and she further had received authority, as almoner of the "Free Gifts" (as the Royal Bounty was called), to apply them, and any other gifts derived from private sources, in the War Hospitals. In the second of these capacities, she could, if she had chosen, have administered her stores solely at her personal discretion, and have delegated a like discretion to other superintendents, sisters, or nurses appointed by her. But, except in a few special cases, which it were superfluous to enumerate, she rejected the liberty of personal discretion, and administered her funds only upon the requisition of medical officers. (She lays repeated stress on this fact, but I daresay that she herself was often the originating source of the requisitions. We have seen that in Harley Street she had learnt the art of managing overworked doctors.) Her statement of the reasons which governed her action is characteristic of her good sense. The exercise of personal discretion alone would have been the easier course; but the objections to it were "the abrogation of ordinary rule; the impossibility of preventing irregular issues, or at least of disproving the charge, and the unfitness of a large proportion of the women, who efficiently discharge the duty of the Nurses, to be the judges of the wants of soldiers and distribution of supplies to them; and, farther, the abuse which some would undoubtedly make of the power. To those to whom the charge of dishonesty would not apply, religious partiality either would, or, what in matters of this kind is only less mischievous, would be believed to, apply." Next, there was the danger of patients being given other food than what the medical officers ordered. "It is needless to state to any sensible person, even without hospital experience, the manifold dangers of issuing to Nurses, whether 'Ladies, Sisters, or Nurses,' stores or facilities for procuring stores, to be distributed at their own discretion through the Wards. It is to be remembered that the employment of women in Army Hospitals is recent, that many experienced and able Surgeons are opposed to it, that, among these, some are honestly, and some are unscrupulously prone to find