THE SOLDIER'S FRIEND. far present use should be procured from home through the Commissariat ; and there was likewise a regulation appointing that a " board " must judge stores already landed, before they could be given out. On one occasion, the " board " not having completed its arrangements, and the men languishing for the stores sent from England, Miss Nightingale insisted that they should be at once dispensed. Red Tape, shocked at the audacity of such a singular propo- sition, interposed ; woe betide the man, amenable to martial law, who should dare to touch even the cordage of one box. The noble- spirited woman, conscious that determination must effect what en- treaty had failed to do, had the store -house broken( open, on her own responsibility, and its contents dis- tributed through their proper channels. But on all other occasions, she paid the most scrupulous deference to the existing laws. Her name and angelic ministerings were the theme of frequent, ( grateful praise among the men in the trenches ; and it was remarked that she made the Barrack Hospital so comfortable, that the convalescents began to display a decided reluctance to leave it. Not only in the scene of her arduous labours, but at home, was the self-dedicated Samaritan assailed by jealousies and suspicions. The circumstance of her having accepted the services of some Sisters of Charity from the nunnery at Norwood, and from St. Stephen's Hospital, Dublin, drew down upon her, in December, so invidious an attack from a clergyman 25
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