You have shown his many-sided life as known to few. You have shown in him a rarer and more fruitful man than even we, who had known and loved him for so long, knew.
What has been a revealing to us of him will be even more so for the crowd of your readers who knew him but by the dramatic Greek life: and by his work among the blind, deaf mutes and idiots. No one will know him quite till after you have been read. That is the privilege of your community with him—with his unconsciously heroic life. A great duty has been fulfilled in making known his sympathy for every kind of misfortune,—his love of helping humanity, so to speak, ancient and modern,—his generous and persevering devotion to right,—his noble horror of helpless pity,—his indomitable faith in progress; thanks to you.
And how little he thought of reputation! That was the noblest thing of all.
The pressure of ever-increasing illness and business—how little I thought to survive him—makes it difficult for me to write one unnecessary line. Our common friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, Dr. Fowler, and how many others, are all gone before us.
In their names and in his name I bid with all my heart,
Fare you very well,
Florence Nightingale.
On the anniversary of my birth, our only daughter, Caroline Minturn Hall, was born at Portsmouth, near Newport, Rhode Island. One of her pictures exhibited at the Paris Salon shows the beloved landscape of “Oak Glen,” which adjoins her birthplace.
When our second son, Henry Marion Hall, was born, we moved to the country, in order to give our three children greater liberty and more fresh air than they could enjoy in the city. For fifteen years we lived in Scotch Plains, a pretty, quaint old New Jersey town lying at the foot of the Watchung Mountains. The countryside in 1878 was still in a primitive condition. Scotch Plains was almost destitute of “modern conveniences,” the gods of the servant-girl. A delusive bath-tub appeared very effective until you found that it was necessary to drag all the hot water up-stairs. We had a series of pumps indoors and out, but no set wash-tubs.
There was neither gas, electricity, nor steam heat. We burned kerosene-oil and my husband wrestled with the hot-air furnace, which required such devotion that he christened it his black wife.