She was a shrewd judge of character. A collection of extracts from Mr. Jowett's notes to her about his pupils, and of her pencilled notes upon her pupils, would furnish a gallery of types of young English men and English women. He used to write to her very freely about his undergraduates; and she liked it--teasing him sometimes about his dukes and marquises and inventing humorous nicknames for them. "Why do I write to you," he said, "about all these young men? Because it pleases me, and because I know that you are a student of human nature." She was indeed. She read her visitors through and through. As soon as a Sister or a Nurse took leave, Miss Nightingale wrote down a memorandum of the attainments, knowledge, and character of each. The character-sketches are terse and vivid, expressed sometimes in racy English. "Miss A.[151] Tittupy, flippant, pretension-y, veil down, ambitious, clever, not much feeling, talk-y, underbred, no religion, may be persevering from ambition to excel, but takes the thing up as an adventure like Nap. III." "Nurse B. A good little thing, spirited, too much friends with G., shares in her flirtations." "Miss C. Seems a woman of good feeling and bad sense; much under the meridian of anybody who will try to persuade her. I think her praises have been sung exaggerated-ly. She wants a very steady hand over her. Such long-winded stories 5 points or at least half the compass off the subject in hand. Had I not been intent on persuading her I should have been out of all patience." "Miss D. As self-comfortable a jackass (or Joan-ass) as ever I saw." "Nurse E. A most capable little woman, no education, but one can't find it in one's heart to regret it, she seems as good as can be." "Miss X. More cleverness than judgment, more activity than order, more hard sense than feeling, never any high view of her calling, always thinking more of appearances than of the truth, more flippant than witty, more petulance than vigour." "Nurse Y. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, a mawkin to frighten away good nurses." There were many Sisters and Nurses so excellent in every respect that they needed nothing but encouragement; she was more careful to mark defects, and sometimes she would write a note of warning or remonstrance immediately after an interview, as to Miss Z.: "A wise man says that true knowledge of anything whether in heaven or earth can only be gained by a true love of the Ideal in it--that is, _of the best that we can do_ in it. Forgive me, dear Miss Z., do you think that you have the true _love_ of the _best_ in nursing? This is a question I ask myself daily in all I do. Do not think me governess-ing. It is a question which each one of us can only ask of, and answer to, herself." The notes which Miss Nightingale took of conversations with Probationers did not refer only to those ladies themselves. She questioned them closely of the state of the wards, the kind and extent of instruction they received, and the