It sometimes happens that the plans of Providence are a little
difficult to follow, but on this occasion all was plain; there
was a perfect coordination of events. For years Miss Nightingale
had been getting ready; at last she was prepared-- experienced,
free, mature, yet still young (she was thirty-four)-- desirous to
serve, accustomed to command: at that precise moment the
desperate need of a great nation came, and she was there to
satisfy it. If the war had fallen a few years earlier, she would
have lacked the knowledge, perhaps even the power, for such a
work; a few years later and she would, no doubt, have been fixed
in the routine of some absorbing task, and moreover, she would
have been growing old.
Nor was it only the coincidence of time that was remarkable. It
so fell out that Sidney Herbert was at the War Office and in the
Cabinet; and Sidney Herbert was an intimate friend of Miss
Nightingale's, convinced, from personal experience in charitable
work, of her supreme capacity. After such premises, it seems
hardly more than a matter of course that her letter, in which she
offered her services for the East, and Sidney Herbert's letter,
in which he asked for them, should actually have crossed in the
post. Thus it all happened, without a hitch. The appointment was
made and even Mrs. Nightingale, overawed by the magnitude of the
venture, could only approve.
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