And Mr. Milnes, with the touch of a poet and the feeling of a friend, said another very true thing. He drew a contrast between the crowded and brilliant scene before him, and "the scene which met the gaze of that noble woman, who was now devoting herself to the service of her suffering fellow-creatures on the black shores of Crim Tartary, overlooking the waters of the inhospitable sea." She was grateful for sympathy; but the glitter of praise and reputation was as nothing, or less than nothing, to her. She was wrestling by those bleak shores with disease and death, wrestling, too, with jealousies and intrigues and other difficulties. She cared for no recognition, except in so far as it could help her in her work. A contribution of £1000 to her private fund, sent by the people of New Zealand in November, greatly pleased her. "If my name," she wrote to her parents, "and my having done what I could for God and mankind has given you pleasure, that is real pleasure to me. My reputation has not been a boon to me in my work; but if you have been pleased, that is enough. I shall love my name now, and shall feel that it is the greatest return that you can find satisfaction in hearing your child named, and in feeling that her work draws sympathies together--some return for what you have done for me. Life is sweet after all." The form taken by the memorial, inaugurated at the public meeting in Willis's Rooms, was the establishment of a "Nightingale Fund," to enable her to establish and control an institute for the training, sustenance, and protection of nurses, paid and unpaid. A copy of the resolution was sent to Miss Nightingale, who acknowledged it in a letter from Scutari (Jan. 6, 1856): "Dear Mr. Herbert--In answer to your letter (which followed me to the Crimea and back to Scutari) proposing to me the undertaking of a Training School for Nurses, I will first beg to say that it is impossible for me to express what I have felt in regard to the sympathy and the confidence shown to me by the originators and supporters of this scheme. Exposed as I am to be misinterpreted and misunderstood, in a field of action in which the work is new, complicated, and distant from many who sit in judgment upon it,--it is indeed an abiding support to have such sympathy and such appreciation brought home to me in the midst of labour and difficulties all but overpowering. I must add, however, that my present work is such as I would never desert for any other, so long as I see room to believe that what I may do here is unfinished. May I, then, beg you to express to the Committee that I accept their proposal, provided I may do so on their understanding of this great uncertainty as to when it will be possible for me to carry it out?"[182] [182] _Report of the Nightingale Fund_, "Addenda," pp. 1-2.