But this is not all. Private soldiers, out of their small earnings, are accustomed to remit considerable sums through the post office, to their poor relations at home. In one year, twenty-two thousand pounds were thus sent from Aldershot,--the average amount of each money order being twenty-one shillings and fourpence. And if men with seven shillings and seven-pence a week can do so much, what might not skilled workmen do, whose earnings amount to from two to three pounds a week? Soldiers serving abroad during arduous campaigns have proved themselves to be equally thoughtful and provident. During the war in the Crimea, the soldiers and seamen sent home through the money order office seventy-one thousand pounds, and the army works corps thirty-five thousand pounds. More than a year before the money order system was introduced at Scutari, Miss Nightingale took charge of the soldiers' savings. She found them most willing to abridge their own comforts or indulgences, for the sake of others dear to them, as well as for their own future well-being; and she devoted an afternoon in every week to receiving and forwarding their savings to England. She remitted many thousand pounds in this manner, and it was distributed by a friend in London,--much of it to the remotest corners of Scotland and Ireland. And it afforded some evidence that the seed fell in good places (as well as of the punctuality of the post office), that of the whole number of remittances, all but one were duly acknowledged. Again, there is not a regiment returning from India but brings home with it a store of savings. In the year 1860, after the Indian mutiny, more than twenty thousand pounds were remitted on account of invalided men sent back to England; besides which there were eight regiments which brought home balances to their credits in the regimental banks amounting to £40.499.[1] The highest was the Eighty-fourth, whose savings amounted to £9,718. The Seventy-Eighth (Ross-shire Buffs), the heroes who followed Havelock in his march on Lucknow, saved £6,480; and the gallant Thirty-second, who held Lucknow under Inglis, saved £5,263. The Eighty-sixth, the first battalion of the Tenth, and the Ninth Dragoons, all brought home an amount of savings indicative of providence and forethought, which reflected the highest honour upon them as men as well as soldiers.[2] [Footnote 1: The sum sent home by soldiers serving in India for the benefit of friends and relatives are not included in these amounts, the remittances being made direct by the paymasters of regiments, and not through the savings banks.] [Footnote 2: The amount of the Fund for Military Savings Banks on the 5th of January, 1876, was £338,350.]