FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 369 sympathy peculiarly soothing. There is indeed no part of the volumes she has given us more surprising than the minute knowledge she there shows of all the people who have been in any way connected with her. The gillies, guides, and (gamekeepers, the maids who have served her, the attendants, coachmen, and foot- men, are seldom mentioned without some notice of their lives being recorded as faithfully as is the case with peers and peeresses. How few mistresses are there who, burdened as she is with duty, would thus hold in kindest remembrance each faithful servant, become acquainted with their circumstances, and provide for them in age or in trial with generous solicitude. It is this rich humanity of feel- ing that is her noblest characteristic. The public are accustomed to see messages of sympathy sent by the queen in cases of disaster and of accident, but they can- not know how truly those calamities fall upon her own heart. As far as her life in the Highlands is concerned, she is now perhaps the best specimen we have of what the old Highland chieftain used to be, only that in her case we find the benefits of paternal government without its harsh severities. There is the same frank and hearty attachment to her dependents, the same intimate knowledge of each one of them, the same recognition of services. It is a queenly quality to recognize what is worthy, no matter wnat the rank may be. It was from this she placed so much confidence in her faithful attendant, John Brown. Her great kindness to him was her own generous interpretation of the long and loyal services of one who, for more than thirty years, had been personal attendant on the Prince Consort and herself, leading her pony during many a long day upon the hills, watching over her safety in London as well as on Deeside, and who, on more than one occasion, protected her from peril. " His attention, care and faithfulness cannot be exceeded," she writes in the first volume of the " Leaves," " and the state of my health, which of late years has been sorely tried and weak- ened, renders such qualifications most valuable." FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE By Lizzie Alldridge (born 182C-1910) very distinguished lady nurse, who has been in half the hospitals in Europe, once said to me : " To Florence Nightingale, who was my own first teacher and inspirer, we owe the wonderful change that has taken place in the public mind with regard to nursing. When I first began my hospital training, hospital nursing was thought to be a profession which no decent woman of any rank could follow. If a servant turned nurse, it was supposed she did so because she had lost her character. We have changed all that now. Modern nursing owes its first impulse to Flor- ence Nightingale." 24
