Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/420

 37G THE WINTER TKOUBLES. CHAP. XI. The aid she received froTii Mr Macdonald and the ' Times ' Fund. which the slower sex aims ; but slie reigned— painful, heart-rending empire 1 — in a spirit of tliorough devotion to the objects of lier care, and, upon the whole, with excellent wisdom. To all the other sources of power which we have seen her commanding, she added one of a kind less dependent upon her personal qualities. Knowing thoroughly the wants of a hospital, and foreseeing, apparently, that the State might fail to meet them, she had taken care to provide herself with vast quantities of hospital stores, and by drawing upon these to make good the shortcoming of any hampered or lazy official, she not only furnished our soldiery with the things they were needing, but administered to the de- faulting administrator a telling, though silent rebuke ; and it would seem that under this dis- cipline the groove-going men winced in agony, for they uttered touching complaints, declaring that the Lady-in-Chief did not choose to give them time (it was always time the males wanted), and that the moment a want declared itself, she made haste to supply it herself.(28) And the power in this way resulting to the Lady-in-Chief soon received an accession. At the instance of Sir Kobert Peel many readers of the ' Times ' in those days had not only joined in offering a large sum of money for the com- forting of our sick and wounded soldiers, but had persuaded the Directory of the great journal to receive and distribute the fund. For the per- formance of this last task the Directory chose Mr Macdonald, a man loyally devoted to his