I remember his speaking of a quality in our hostess which always struck us; I mean the thoroughness in all details of her hospitality, even to putting flowers in our rooms, gathered by herself in the garden. Miss Nightingale thought one of us was tired, and said she was not to get up too early in the morning. Mr. Jowett reminded us in this connection of the man who made a virtue of always rising very early and who was 'conceited all the morning and cross all the afternoon.'" [189] As on one occasion when a case of smallpox occurred among the servants at Lea Hurst. Miss Nightingale went immediately to superintend the nursing of the case, and would let no one else come. See Bibliography A, No. 83. At Lea Hurst, during these years, Miss Nightingale devoted herself to her poorer neighbours, and threw into the task the thoroughness and system which characterized all her doings. She took a part in establishing a village coffee-room and a village library, and in organizing mothers' meetings. She gave doles to all deserving families. The _dossiers_ which she kept of their characters and circumstances were as careful as those referring to the Nightingale Probationers. There are sheets and sheets amongst her papers, on which she entered the quantities of each kind of provision supplied to each family, as elaborate as the purveying accounts which she kept at Scutari. She was a sort of National Health Insurance scheme (non-contributory) for the neighbourhood; for she employed a doctor to attend the sick and infirm at her expense, and to report fully to her on all the cases. There are fifty letters from him in this sort during a single year, and as many of a like kind from the village schoolmaster, whom she commissioned to give extra tuition to promising pupils. There were those who thought that Miss Nightingale wasted on these rustic cares energies that might swell the great wave of the world. Among the number was her old friend, Madame Mohl. "Now, my own Flo," she wrote (Oct. 16, 1879), "you believe me, I am sure, to love you truly; therefore you will bear what I say, and also you believe me to have common sense: you can't help believing it, I defy you! Now I declare that if you don't leave that absurd place, Lea Hurst, immediately, you must be a little insane--partially, not entirely; and that if you saw another person knowingly risking a life that might be useful _dans les grandes choses d'ensemble_ to potter after sick individuals, and if you were in a lucid moment you would say, 'That person is not quite sane or she has not the strength of will to follow her judgment in her actions.'" Miss Nightingale was not well pleased by this letter. She felt something of the sort herself; but it is one thing to doubt our own wisdom, and quite another to hear it doubted even by our oldest friends. Miss Nightingale replied that she was doing her duty, which was a duty of affection, to her mother, and Madame Mohl,