y with all such wrong
ideas. In a letter on the subject of training she wrote: "I would
say also to all young ladies who are called to any particular vocation,
qualify yourselves for it, as a man does for his work. Don't think
you can undertake it otherwise. . . . If you are called to man's work,
do not exact a woman's privileges--the privilege of inaccuracy,
of weakness, ye muddle-heads. Submit yourselves to the rules of
business, as men do, by which alone you can make God's business
succeed; for He has never said that He will give His success and His
blessing to inefficiency, to sketchy and unfinished work."

She prepared herself for her life's work by years of hard study and
ten years' training, visiting all the best institutions in Germany,
France, and Italy. She gave up a life of ease and comfort in order
to develop her natural gift to the utmost.

Her opportunity was not long in coming. In 1854 the Crimean War broke
out. Most of the generals in the English army were old men whose
experience of actual warfare dated back to the early days of the
century. Everything was hopelessly mismanaged from the beginning.
In August the English and French allied forces moved against the
fortress of Sebastopol, from which Russia was threatening an attack
on Constantinople. Troops were landed in a hostile country without
the means of moving them away again; there was little or no provision
made to transport food, baggage, or medical stores.

After the victory of Alma Lord Raglan marched on to Balaclava, and
here the transport utterly broke down. The soldiers, in addition to
undertaking hard fighting, were forced to turn themselves into
pack-mules and tramp fourteen miles through the mud in the depth of
winter in order to obtain food and warm blankets for their comrades
and themselves. Their condition rapidly became terrible. Their
clothing wore to rags, their boots--mostly of poor quality--gave out
entirely. Their food--such as it was--consisted of biscuit, salt
beef or pork, and rum.

No vegetables could be obtained, and for want of green food scurvy
broke out among the troops. Stores were left decaying in the holds
of transports, and the doctors were forced to see men dying before
their eyes without the means of helping them. The loss of life from
the actual fighting was considerable, but more particularly so from
the insanitary condition of the camp and the wretched hospital
arrangements.

The actual figures of our losse