The soldier's wife and child, mother and sister, were always in her thoughts. Not only did she persuade the men to write home, but she used all her great influence to induce them to send home their pay to their families. At Scutari she had a money-order office of her own, and four afternoons in each month she devoted to receiving money from the soldiers who brought it to her, and forwarding it to England. It is estimated that about a thousand pounds was sent each month, in small sums of twenty or thirty shillings. "This money," says Miss Nightingale, "was literally so much rescued from the canteen and drunkenness."
After the fall of Sebastopol the British Government followed her example, and set up money-order offices in several places, with excellent results.
Sometimes it was Miss Nightingale herself who wrote home to the soldier's family; sad, sweet letters, telling how the husband or father had done his duty gallantly, and had died as a brave man should; giving his last messages, and inclosing the mementos he had left for them. To many a humble home these letters brought comfort and support in the hour of trial, and were treasured--are no doubt treasured to this day--like the relics of a blessed saint.
The Treaty of Peace was signed at Paris on March 30, 1856, and now all hearts in the Crimea turned toward home. One by one the hospitals were closed, as their inmates recovered strength; one by one the troopships were filled with soldiers--ragged, gaunt, hollow-eyed, yet gay and light-hearted as schoolboys--and started on the homeward voyage; yet still the Lady-in-Chief lingered. Not while one sick man remained would Florence Nightingale leave her post. Indeed, at the last moment she found a task that none but herself might have taken up. The troopships were gone; but here, on the camping ground before Sebastopol, were fifty or sixty poor women, left behind when their husbands' regiments had sailed, helpless and--I was going to say friendless, but nothing could be more untrue; for they gathered in their distress round the hut of the Lady-in-Chief, imploring her aid; and she soon had them on board a British ship, speeding home after the rest.
And now the end had come, and there was only one more thing to do, one more order to give; the result of that last order is seen to-day by all who visit that far-away land of the Crimea. On the mountain heights above Balaklava, on a peak not far from the Sanatorium where she labored and suffered, towers a great cross of white marble, shining like snow against the deep blue sky. This is the "Nightingale Cross," her own tribute to the brave men and the devoted nurses who died in the war. At the foot of the cross are these words: