(_Lord Stanley to Miss Nightingale._) ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, _July_ 25 [1864]. I don't wonder that the delays of the "savage tribe" should try your patience; and I admire the more the care and success with which you keep outward show of annoyance to yourself. I had rather be criticised by any one rather than you! I am only passing through town to-day, there being nothing left to do; but shall be again in this place on Thursday, and ready to wait upon you if any matters want settling. If not, I can only wish you health--success is sure to come--and beg that you will remember the value of your own public service, and not by overwork endanger its continuance. Pray excuse a caution which I am sure I am not the first to give. Every day convinces me more of two things: first, the vast influence on the public mind of the Sanitary Commissions of the last few years--I mean in the way of speeding ideas which otherwise would have been confined to a few persons; and next, that all this has been due to you, and to you almost alone. [40] Bibliography A, No. 44. For the subsequent fate of this scheme, see below, p. 157. In one of many moments of vexation at the delays of the "savages" in their red-tape, Miss Nightingale wrote thus to Captain Galton (June 23, 1864): "The Horse Guards say that they were quite aware of Sir John Lawrence's application and of the delay, but that 'it is Sir J. Lawrence's one and only object of interest, while it is _one out of a thousand_ of the War Office's.' They ought to have the V.C. for their cool intrepidity in the face of truth. I have told Sir J. Lawrence of the opinion of these dining-out _freliquets_ as to his hard work. And I think I shall publish it after my death." But "unlicked cubs," as she said at Scutari, "grow up into good old bears"[41]; and it is not in order to pay off a score against the "puppies" that I quote this letter. Behind the remark which excited Miss Nightingale's righteous anger there was an element of unconscious truth, and it is one which sums up this and the preceding chapter. It was, indeed, an ignorant untruth to say that Sir John Lawrence had no other work or interest than the promotion of sanitary improvements for the Army in India; and it would be untrue also, as later chapters will show, to say the same thing of Miss Nightingale. Yet it made all the difference for the promotion of that work in India that there was at the head of affairs a man whose heart and soul were in it. And at home, it made all the difference that there was one resolute will, combined with a clear head, determined to give impetus and direction to the work. It was probably quite true to say that to many, perhaps to most, of the men at the War Office and the Horse Guards this question of Army sanitation in India appeared as only "one out of a thousand" questions. To Miss Nightingale it was, in a very