(_Benjamin Jowett to Miss Nightingale._) I cannot let the new year begin without sending my best and kindest wishes for you and for your work: I can only desire that you should go on as you are doing, in your own way. Lessening human suffering and speaking for those who cannot make their voices heard, with less of suffering to yourself, if this, as I fear, be not a necessary condition of the life you have chosen. There was a great deal of romantic feeling about you 23 years ago when you came home from the Crimea (I really believe that you might have been a Duchess if you had played your cards better!). And now you work on in silence, and nobody knows how many lives are saved by your nurses in hospitals (you have introduced a new era in nursing); how many thousand soldiers who would have fallen victims to bad air, bad water, bad drainage and ventilation, are now alive owing to your forethought and diligence; how many natives of India (they might be counted probably by hundreds of thousands) in this generation and in generations to come have been preserved from famine and oppression and the load of debt by the energy of a sick lady who can scarcely rise from her bed. The world does not know all this or think about it. But I know it and often think about it, and I want you to, so that in the later years of your course you may see (with a side of sorrow) what a blessed life yours is and has been. Is there anything which you could do, or would wish to do, other than you are doing? though you are overtaxed and have a feeling of oppression at the load which rests upon you. I think that the romance, too, which is with the past, did a great deal of good. Like Dr. Pusey, you are a Myth in your own life-time. Do you know that there are thousands of girls about the ages of 18 to 23 named after you? As you once said to me "the world has not been unkind." Everybody has heard of you and has a sweet association with your name. It is about 17 years since we first became friends. How can I thank you properly for all your kindness and sympathy--never failing--when you had so many other things to occupy your mind? I have not been able to do so much as you expected of me, and probably never shall be, though I do not give up ambition. But I have been too much distracted by many things; and not strong enough for the place. I shall go on as quietly and industriously as I can. If I ever do much more, it will be chiefly owing to you: your friendship has strengthened and helped me, and never been a source of the least pain or regret. Farewell. May the later years of your life be clearer and happier and more useful than the earlier! If you will believe it, this may be so.