Occasionally Miss Nightingale would be seen standing or moving about in her room; what was then remarked was the grace and dignity of her bearing, though the "willowy figure" which distinguished her in earlier years had now become large. More often she received her visitors in bed or on her couch. What they then observed was the head, the face, the hands. Her head, in girlhood and early womanhood, had been remarked as small. Possibly it had grown somewhat, and something must be put down to the increased size of the face as affecting the appearance; but at any rate her head in later years was certainly large. An Army Surgeon who visited Miss Nightingale frequently in the 'eighties and 'nineties tells me that he was always struck by the massiveness of the head, comparable, he thought, to Mr. Gladstone's. There was an unusually fine rounded form of the fore-part of the head just above where the hair begins. The eyes were not specially remarkable, though there was a suggestion of intellectual keenness in them. The nose was fine and rather prominent; the mouth, small and firm. The hands were small and refined. Every one who saw her felt that he was in the presence of a woman of personality--of marked character, energy, and capacity. As her visitor entered, Miss Nightingale would bend forward from her bed or couch with a smile of welcome; the visitor would be invited to an easy chair beside her, and talk would begin. In her youth Miss Nightingale was a brilliant talker, as witnesses cited in an earlier chapter have told us. In later years, too, she had flashes of brilliance. Madame Mohl, whose standard was high, wrote to her husband from Lea Hurst in 1873: "Mr. Jowett spent three days here. He is a man of mind; I think he would suit you. He is very fond of Flo, which also would suit you. She is here, and her conversation is most nourishing. I would give a great deal for you to be here to enjoy it. She is really eloquent. Yesterday she quite surprised me."[184] But for the most part Miss Nightingale's talk was rather earnest, inquiring, sometimes searching, than sparkling or eloquent. "She is worse than a Royal Commission to answer," said Colonel Yule; "and, in the most gracious, charming manner possible, immediately finds out all I don't know."[185] Younger visitors sometimes felt in awe of her; she could flash out a searching question upon a rash generalization as formidably as Mr. Gladstone himself. She was interested in everything except what was trivial. Her intellectual vitality was remarkable; visitors who knew nothing of her special interests or pursuits were yet delighted by the stimulating freshness of her talk. She liked to keep herself _au courant_ with all that was going on in the political and learned worlds. The letters to her from more than one Indian Viceroy show that the pleasant gossip from the lobbies or the Universities, with which she relieved her discourses on drains, was keenly appreciated. If the