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366 THE WINTER TROUBLES. CHAP. ' Initiative/ and with it, of course, the faculty ' of opportunely resorting to any very new ways of action. They proved slow, strangely slow, to see and to meet the fresh exigencies occasioned by war wlieu approaching, or even by war when present ; and apparently, in the hospital problem, they must have gone on failing and failing indefinitely, if they had not undergone the pro- pulsion of the quicker — the woman's — brain to ' set them going' in time.(^^) heracces- With 10 Eomau Catholic nuns, with 8 Pro- sion on the ^. > • -i r^ c riTi> 4th of Nov. testant bisters, with o nurses from bt Johns Institution, with 14 nurses chosen from hospitals, and besides with her friend Mrs Bracebridge (who undertook household management), the Lady-in-Chief disembarked on the 4th of Novem- ber, and took up her quarters at Scutari in that immense ' Barrack Hospital ' which was destined, as already we know, to have gathered under its roof a fearful assemblage of ills. If the generous women thus sacrificing them- selves were all alike in devotion to their sacred The Lady- causc, tlicrc was one of them — the Lady-in-Chief — who not only came armed with the special experience needed, but also was clearly tran- scendent in that subtle quality which gives to one human being a power of command over others. Of slender, delicate form, engaging, highly-bred, and in council a rapt careful list- ener, so long as others were speaking, and strongly, though gently, persuasive whenever speaking herself, the Lady-in-Chief — the Lady Florence, Miss Nightingale — gave her heart to