[150] The part of Home Sister was "created," and was most efficiently filled for 21 years, by Miss Crossland, who retired on a pension in 1895. "Nearly 600 nurses completed their probationary course under her care, and subsequently entered upon their vocation as nurses in some general Hospital or Infirmary, or in training as District Nurses for the Poor, and a very large number of them became Matrons, Superintendents, or Ward Sisters." (_Nightingale Fund Report_ for 1895). Miss Nightingale, however, attached even more importance to the Home Sister's influence on the moral and spiritual side of the School. The Home Sister was to encourage general reading, to arrange Bible classes, to give interests to the nurses in order "to keep them above the mere scramble for a remunerative place." The two sides of the School are closely joined in the letters to Miss Nightingale from the Home Sister and Matron--letters telling on one page of the progress of Probationers in antiseptic dressing and so forth, and on another of their Bible readings or selected hymns. Miss Nightingale was especially pleased when Canon Farrar allotted some seats at St. Margaret's to her nurses and took a Confirmation class among them. II Miss Nightingale relied, however, upon her own influence also. During her residence in London she now made a point of seeing regularly all the Sisters, Nurses, and Probationers attached to her School. She had resolved, when Agnes Jones died, to "give herself up to finding more Agnes Joneses." This was the task to which she now devoted a large part of her life. She was still untiring in the attempt to procure promising raw material. She applied to Mr. Spurgeon, among others, who in reply (July 29, 1877) hoped that from his church "there would come quite a little army of recruits for your holy war. Rest assured that to me in common with all my country-men your name is very fragrant." When applications came to her for trained nurses from provincial towns, she used to tell them what Pastor Fliedner said when similar applications came to him for trained Deaconesses from Kaiserswerth: "Have _you_ sent _me_ any Probationers? I can't stamp material out of the ground." From 1872 onwards all the "raw material" passed under Miss Nightingale's own eye.