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GHTINGALE
HER NURSED
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
TO HER NURSES
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO
DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
Florence Nightingale
to her Nurses
A SELECTION FROM MISS NIGHTINGALE'S
ADDRESSES TO PROBATIONERS AND NURSES
OF THE NIGHTINGALE SCHOOL AT
ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1914
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
BETWEEN 1872 and 1900 Miss Nightingale used,
when she was able, to send an annual letter or
address to the probationer-nurses of the Nightin-
gale School at St. Thomas' Hospital, " and the
nurses who have been trained there." l These
addresses were usually read aloud by Sir Harry
Verney, the chairman of the Nightingale Fund,
in the presence of the probationers and nurses, and
a printed copy or a lithographed facsimile of the
manuscript was given to each of the nurses present,
" for private use only." A few also were written
for the Nightingale Nurses serving in Edinburgh.
The letters were not meant for publication, and
indeed are hardly suitable to be printed as a whole
1 The beginning of the first address will suggest a reason for this turn of
phrase. A nurse who had been through training might not always be
" worthy of the name of ' Trained Nurse ' " (Address of 1876).
V
1703755
vi PREFACE
as there is naturally a good deal of repetition in
them. Since Miss Nightingale's death, however,
heads of nursing institutions and others have asked
for copies of the addresses to be read or given to
nurses, and her family hope that the publication of
a selection may do something to carry further the
intention with which they were originally written.
Perhaps, too, not only nurses, but others, may
care to read some of these letters. There is a
natural desire to understand the nature of a great
man's or woman's influence, and we see in the
addresses something at least of what constituted
Miss Nightingale's power. Her earnest care for
the nurses, her intense desire that they should be
" perfect," speak in every line. They do not, of
course, give full expression to the writer's mind.
They were written after she had reached middle
age, as from a teacher of long and wide experience
to pupils much younger than herself pupils some
of whom had had very little schooling and did not
easily read or write. The want of even elementary
education and of habits and traditions of discipline
which grow in schools are difficulties less felt now
than in 1872, when Miss Nightingale's first letter
PREFACE vii
to nurses was written. At that time it was necessary
in addressing such an audience to write very simply,
without learned allusions (though some such appear
in disguise) and without too great severity and
concentration of style. The familiar words of the
Bible and hymns could appeal to the least learned
among her hearers, and never lost their power with
Miss Nightingale herself.
But through the simple and popular style of the
addresses something of a philosophical framework
can be seen. When Miss Nightingale hopes that
her nurses are a step further on the way to becom-
ing " perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect,"
she has in mind the conception she had formed of
a moral government of the world in which science,
activity, and religion were one. In her unpublished
writings these ideas are dwelt on again and again.
They are clearly explained in her note on a prayer
of St. Teresa :
" We cannot really attach any meaning to perfect
thought and feeling, unless its perfection has been
attained through life and work, unless it is being
realised in life and work. It is in fact a contra-
diction to suppose Perfection to exist except at
viii PREFACE
work, to exist without exercise, without ' work-
ing out.' We cannot conceive of perfect wisdom,
perfect happiness, except as having attained^ attained
perfection through work. The ideas of the Im-
passible and of Perfection are contradictions. . . .
This seems to be the very meaning of the word
' perfect ' 'made through' made perfect through
suffering completed working out ; and even the
only idea we can form of the Perfect Perfect . . .
'God in us,' 'grieving the Holy Spirit of God,'
' My Father worketh and I work ' these seem all
indications of this truth. . . . We cannot explain
or conceive of Perfection except as having worked
through Imperfection or sin. . . . The Eternal
Perfect almost pre-supposes the Eternal Imperfect."
Hence her deep interest in the " laws which
register the connection of physical conditions
with moral actions." She quotes elsewhere a
scientific writer who delighted in the consciousness
that his books were to the best of his ability ex-
pounding the ways of God to man. " I can truly
say," she continues, " that the feeling he describes
has been ever present to my mind. Whether in
having a drain cleaned out, or in ventilating a
PREFACE ix
hospital ward, or in urging the principles of healthy
construction of buildings, or of temperance and
useful occupation, or of sewerage and water supply,
I always considered myself as obeying a direct
command of God, and it was ' with the earnestness
and reverence due to ' God's laws that I urged
them. . . . For mankind to create the circum-
stances which create mankind through these His
Laws is the ' way of God.' '
The letters have needed a little editing. Miss
Nightingale had great power of succinct and
forcible statement on occasion, but here she was
not tabulating statistics nor making a businesslike
summary for a Minister in a hurry. Certain ideas
had to be impressed, in the first place orally, on
minds which were not all highly trained ; and for
this she naturally wrote in a discursive way. She
did not correct the proofs. As readers of her
Life will know, she was burdened with other
work and delicate health, and she found any con-
siderable revision difficult and uncongenial. It has
therefore been necessary to make a few emenda-
tions, such as occasionally correcting an obvious
x PREFACE
misprint, adding a missing word, and taking out
brackets, stops, and divisions which obscured the
sense. A few of the many repetitions and one or
two passages only interesting at the time, have also
been left out. The object has been to change as
little as possible, and I hope nothing has been done
that Miss Nightingale would not have done herself
if she had corrected the proofs. The first two
addresses give perhaps the fullest expression of the
main theme to which she returns again and again.
Others have been chosen chiefly for the sake of
characteristic illustrations of the same theme.
ROSALIND NASH.
LONDON, "May, 1872.
FOR us who Nurse, our Nursing is a thing, which,
unless in it we are making progress every year,
every month, every week, take my word for it
we are going back.
The more experience we gain, the more progress
we can make. The progress you make in your
year's training with us is as nothing to what you
must make every year after your year's training
is over.
A woman who thinks in herself : " Now I am
a ' full ' Nurse, a * skilled ' Nurse, I have learnt
all that there is to be learnt " : take my word for
it, she does not know what a Nurse is, and she
never will know ; she is gone back already.
Conceit and Nursing cannot exist in the same
person, any more than new patches on an old
garment.
2 NO END IN LEARNING i
Every year of her service a good Nurse will
say : " I learn something every day."
I have had more experience in all countries and
in different ways of Hospitals than almost any one
ever had before (there were no opportunities for
learning in my youth such as you have had) ; but
if I could recover strength so much as to walk
about, I would begin all over again. I would
come for a year's training to St. Thomas' Hospital
under your admirable Matron (and I venture to
add that she would find me the closest in obedience
to all our rules), sure that I should learn every
day, learn all the more for my past experience.
And then I would try to be learning every day
to the last hour of my life. " And when his legs
were cuttit off, He fought upon his stumps," says
the ballad ; so, when I could no longer learn by
nursing others, I would learn by being nursed, by
seeing Nurses practise upon me. It is all experi-
ence.
Agnes Jones, who died as Matron of the
Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary (whom you may
have heard of as " Una "), wrote from the
Workhouse in the last year of her life : " I mean
to stay at this post forty years, God willing ; but
I must come back to St. Thomas' as soon as I
i PEBBLES ON THE SHORE 3
have a holiday ; I shall learn so much more "
(she had been a year at St. Thomas') " now that
I have more experience."
When I was a child, I remember reading that
Sir Isaac Newton, who was, as you know, perhaps
the greatest discoverer among the Stars and the
Earth's wonders who ever lived, said in his last
hours : " I seem to myself like a child who has
been playing with a few pebbles on the sea-shore,
leaving unsearched all the wonders of the great
Ocean beyond."
By the side of this put a Nurse leaving her
Training School and reckoning up what she has
learnt, ending with " The only wonder is that
one head can contain it all." (What a small head
it must be then !)
I seem to have remembered all through life Sir
Isaac Newton's words.
And to nurse that is, under Doctor's orders,
to cure or to prevent sickness and maiming, Surgi-
cal and Medical, is a field, a road, of which one
may safely say : There is no end no end in what
we may be learning every day. 1
1 There is a well-known Society abroad (for charitable works) of which
the Members go through a two years' probation on their first entering, but
after ten years they return and go through a second probation of one year.
This is one of the most striking recognitions I know of the fact that
4 THE HIGH CALLING i
I have sometimes heard : " But have we not
reason to be conceited, when we compare ourselves
to ... and . . . ? " (naming drinking, immoral,
careless, dishonest Nurses). I will not think it
possible that such things can ever be said among us.
Taking it even upon the worldly ground, what
woman among us, instead of looking to that which
is higher, will of her own accord compare herself
with that which is lower with immoral women ?
Does not the Apostle say : " I count not
myself to have apprehended : but this one thing
I do, forgetting those things which are behind,
and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press toward the mark for the prize of the high
calling of God in Christ Jesus " ; and what higher
" calling " can we have than Nursing ? But then
we must " press forward " ; we have indeed not
" apprehended " if we have not " apprehended "
even so much as this.
There is a little story about " the Pharisee "
known over all Christendom. Should Christ
come again upon the earth, would He have to
apply that parable to us ?
progress is always to be made : that grown-up people, even of middle-age,
ought always to have their education going on. But only those can learn
after middle age who have gone on learning up to middle age.
i STAGNANT WATERS 5
And now, let me say a thing which I am sure
must have been in all your minds before this :
if, unless we improve every day in our Nursing,
we are going back : how much more must it
be, that, unless we improve every day in our con-
duct as Christian women, followers of Him by
whose name we call ourselves, we shall be going
back ?
This applies of course to every woman in the
world ; but it applies more especially to us, be-
cause we know no one calling in the world, except
it be that of teaching, in which what we can do
depends so much upon what we are. To be a
good Nurse one must be a good woman ; or one is
truly nothing but a tinkling bell. To be a good
woman at all, one must be an improving woman ;
for stagnant waters sooner or later, and stagnant
air, as we know ourselves, always grow corrupt
and unfit for use.
Is any one of us a stagnant woman ? Let it
not have to be said by any one of us : I left this
Home a worse woman than I came into it. I
came in with earnest purpose, and now I think of
little but my own satisfaction and a good place.
When the head and the hands are very full, as
in Nursing, it is so easy, so very easy, if the heart
6 MORNING THOUGHTS i
has not an earnest purpose for God and our
neighbour, to end in doing one's work only for
oneself, and not at all even when we seem to
be serving our neighbours not at all for them or
for God.
I should hardly like to talk of a subject which,
after all, must be very much between each one of
us and her God, which is hardly a matter for
talk at all, and certainly not for me, who cannot
be among you (though there is nothing in the
world I should so dearly wish), but that I thought
perhaps you might like to hear of things which
persons in the same situation, that is, in different
Training Schools on the Continent, have said
to me.
I will mention two or three :
i. One said, "The greatest help I ever had in
life was that we were taught in our Training
School always to raise our hearts to God the first
thing on waking in the morning."
Now it need hardly be said that we cannot
make a rule for this ; a rule will not teach this,
any more than making a rule that the chimney
shall not smoke will make the smoke go up the
chimney.
If we occupy ourselves the last thing at night
i IRRELIGIOUS HOURS 7
with rushing about, gossiping in one another's
rooms ; if our last thoughts at night are of some
slight against ourselves, or spite against another,
or about each other's tempers, it is needless to say
that our first thoughts in the morning will not
be of God.
Perhaps there may even have been some
quarrel ; and if those who pretend to be educated
women indulge in these irreligious uneducated
disputes, what a scandal before those less educated,
to whom an example, not a stone of offence,
should be set !
" A thousand irreligious cursed hours " (as
some poet says), have not seldom, in the lives of
all but a few whom we may truly call Saints upon
earth, been spent on some feeling of ill-will. And
can we expect to be really able to lift up our
hearts the first thing in the morning to the God
of " good will towards men " if we do this ?
I speak for myself, even more perhaps than for
others.
2. Another woman l once said to me : "I was
taught in my Training School never to have those
long inward discussions with myself, those inter-
1 The Madre Santa Colomba, of the Convent of the Trinita dei Monti in
Rome. EDITOR'S NOTE.
8 INWARD DISCUSSIONS i
minable conversations inside myself, which make up
so much more of our own thoughts than we are
aware. If it was something about my duties, I went
straight to my Superiors, and asked for leave or
advice ; if it was any of those useless or ill-tempered
thoughts about one another, or those that were put
over us, we were taught to Jay them before God
and get the better of them, before they got the
better of us."
A spark can be put out while it is a spark, if it
falls on our dress, but not when it has set the whole
dress in flames. So it is with an ill-tempered
thought against another. And who will tell how
much of our thoughts these occupy ?
I suppose, of course, that those who think them-
selves better than others are bent upon setting them
a better example.
ii
And this brings me to something else. (I can
always correct others though I cannot always correct
myself.) It is about jealousies and punctilios as to
ranks, classes, and offices, when employed in one
good work. What an injury this jealous woman is
doing, not to others, or not to others so much as
to herself; she is doing it to herself! She is not
i THE JEALOUS WOMAN 9
getting out of her work the advantage, the im-
provement to her own character, the nobleness (for
to be useful is the only true nobleness) which God
has appointed her that work to attain. She is not
getting out of her work what God has given it her
for ; but just the contrary.
(Nurses are not children, but women ; and if
they can't do this for themselves, no one can for
them.)
I think it is one of Shakespeare's heroes who says
" I laboured to be wretched." How true that is !
How true it is of some people all their lives ; and
perhaps there is not one of us who could not say
it with truth of herself at one time or other : I
laboured to be mean and contemptible and small
and ill-tempered, by being revengeful of petty
slights.
A woman once said : " What signifies it to me
that this one does me an injury or the other speaks
ill of me, if I do not deserve it ? The injury strikes
God before it strikes me, and if He forgives it,
why should not 1 ? I hope I love Him better than
I do myself." This may sound fanciful ; but is
there not truth in it ?
What a privilege it is, the work that God has
given us Nurses to do, if we will only let Him have
10 THE HIGHER OBEDIENCE i
His own way with us a greater privilege to my
mind than He has given to any woman (except to
those who are teachers), because we can always be
useful, always " ministering " to others, real
followers of Him who said that He came " not to
be ministered unto " but to minister. Cannot we
fancy Him saying to us, If any one thinks herself
greater among you, let her minister unto others.
This is not to say that we are to be doing other
people's work. Quite the reverse. The very
essence of all good organisation is that everybody
should do her (or his) own work in such a way as
to help and not to hinder every one else's work.
But this being arranged, that any one should
say, I am " put upon " by having to associate with
so-and-so ; or by not having so-and-so to associate
with ; or, by not having such a post ; or, by having
such a post ; or, by my Superiors " walking upon
me," or, " dancing " upon me (you may laugh, but
such things have actually been said), or etc., etc.,
this is simply making the peace of God impossible,
the call of God (for in all work He calls us) of none
effect ; it is grieving the Spirit of God ; it is doing
our best to make all free-will associations intoler-
able.
In " Religious Orders " this is provided against
i SELF-POSSESSION 11
by enforcing blind, unconditional obedience through
the fears and promises of a Church.
Does it not seem to you that the greater freedom
of secular Nursing Institutions, as it requires (or
ought to require) greater individual responsibility,
greater self-command in each one, greater nobleness
in each, greater self-possession impatience so, that
very need of self-possession, of greater nobleness in
each, requires (or ought to require) greater thought
in each, more discretion, and higher, not less,
obedience ? For the obedience of intelligence, not
the obedience of slavery, is what we want.
The slave obeys with stupid obedience, with
deceitful evasion of service, or with careless eye
service. Now, we cannot suppose God to be
satisfied or pleased with stupidity and carelessness.
The free woman in Christ obeys, or rather seconds
all the rules, all the orders given her, with intelli-
gence, with all her heart, and with all her strength,
and with all her mind.
" Not slothful in business ; fervent in spirit,
serving the Lord."
And you who have to be Head Nurses, or Sisters
of Wards, well know what I mean, for you have to
be Ward Mistresses as well as Nurses ; and how
can she (the Ward Mistress) command if she has
12 THE KEY OF AUTHORITY i
not learnt how to obey ? If she cannot enforce
upon herself to obey rules with discretion, how can
she enforce upon her Ward to obey rules with
discretion ?
in
And of those who have to be Ward Mistresses,
as well as those who are Ward Mistresses already,
or in any charge of trust or authority, I will ask, if
Sisters and Head Nurses will allow me to ask of
them, as I have so often asked of myself
What is it that made our Lord speak " as one
having authority " ? What was the key to His
"authority" ? Is it anything which we, trying to
be " like Him," could have like Him ?
What are the qualities which give us authority,
which enable us to exercise some charge or control
over others with " authority " ? It is not the
charge or position itself, for we often see persons
in a position of authority, who have no authority
at all ; and on the other hand we sometimes see
persons in the very humblest position who exercise
a great influence or authority on all around them.
The very first element for having control over
others is, of course, to have control over oneself.
If I cannot take charge of myself, I cannot take
i A SILENT POWER 13
charge of others. The next, perhaps, is not to
try to " seem " anything, but to be what we
would seem.
A person in charge must be felt more than she
is heard not heard more than she is felt. She
must fulfil her charge without noisy disputes, by
the silent power of a consistent life, in which there
is no seeming, and no hiding, but plenty of dis-
cretion. She must exercise authority without
appearing to exercise it.
A person, but more especially a woman, in
charge must have a quieter and more impartial
mind than those under her, in order to influence
them by the best part of them and not by the
worst.
We (Sisters) think that we must often make
allowances for them, and sometimes put ourselves
in their place. And I will appeal to Sisters to say
whether we must not observe more than we speak,
instead of speaking more than we observe. We
must not give an order, much Jess a reproof, with-
out being fully acquainted with both sides of the
case. Else, having scolded wrongfully, we look
rather foolish.
The person in charge every one must see to be
just and candid, looking at both sides, not moved
14 REPROOF i
by entreaties or, by likes and dislikes, but only by
justice ; and always reasonable, remembering and
not forgetting the wants of those of whom she is
in charge.
She must have a keen though generous insight
into the characters of those she has to control.
They must know that she cares for them even
while she is checking them ; or rather that she
checks them because she cares for them. A
woman thus reproved is often made your friend
for life ; a word dropped in this way by a Sister
in charge (I am speaking now solely to Sisters
and Head Nurses) may sometimes show a pro-
bationer the unspeakable importance of this year
of her life, when she must sow the seed of her
future nursing in this world, and of her future life
through eternity. For although future years are
of importance to train the plant and make it
come up, yet if there is no seed nothing will
come up.
Nay, I appeal again to Sisters' own experience,
whether they have not known patients feel the
same of words dropped before them.
We had in one of the Hospitals which we
nurse a little girl patient of seven years old, the
child of a bad mother, who used to pray on her
i THE SPIRIT IN A WARD 15
knees (when she did not know she was heard)
her own little prayer that she might not forget,
when she went away to what she already knew to
be a bad life, the good words she had been taught.
(In this great London, the time that children
spend in Hospital is sometimes the only time in
their lives that they hear good words.) And
sometimes we have had patients, widows of
journeymen for instance, who had striven to the
last to do for their children and place them all out
in service or at work, die in our Hospitals, thank-
ing God that they had had this time to collect
their thoughts before death, and to die " so
comfortably " as they expressed it.
But, if a Ward is not kept in such a spirit that
patients can collect their thoughts, whether it is
for life or for death, and that children can hear
good words, of course these things will not happen.
Ward management is only made possible by
kindness and sympathy. And the mere way in
which a thing is said or done to patient, or pro-
bationer, makes all the difference. In a Ward,
too, where there is no order there can be no
" authority " ; there must be noise and dispute.
Hospital Sisters are the only women who may
be in charge really of men. Is this not enough
16 TO WIN THOSE WE RULE i
to show how essential to them are those qualities
which alone constitute real authority ?
Never to have a quarrel with another ; never
to say things which rankle in another's mind ;
never when we are uncomfortable ourselves to
make others uncomfortable for quarrels come
out of such very small matters, a hasty word, a
sharp joke, a harsh order : without regard to
these things, how can we take charge ?
We may say, so-and-so is too weak if she
minds that. But, pray, are we not weak in the
same way ourselves ?
I have been in positions of authority myself
and have always tried to remember that to use
such an advantage inconsiderately is cowardly.
To be sharp upon them is worse in me than in
them to be sharp upon me. No one can trample
upon others, and govern them. To win them is
half, I might say the whole, secret of " having
charge." If you find your way to their hearts,
you may do what you like with them ; and that
authority is the most complete which is least
perceived or asserted.
The world, whether of a Ward or of an
Empire, is governed not by many words but by
few ; though some, especially women, seem to
i SIMPLICITY: CALMNESS 17
expect to govern by many words by talk, and
nothing else.
There is scarcely anything which interferes so
much with charge over others as rash and in-
D
considerate talking, or as wearing one's thoughts
on one's cap. There is scarcely anything which
interferes so much with their respect for us as any
want of simplicity in us. A person who is
always thinking of herself how she looks, what
effect she produces upon others, what others will
think or say of her can scarcely ever hope to
have charge of them to any purpose.
We ought to be what we want to seem, or
those under us will find out very soon that we
only seem what we ought to be.
If we think only of the duty we have in hand,
we may hope to make the others think of it too.
But if we are fidgety or uneasy about trifles, can
we hope to impress them with the importance of
essential things ?
There is so much talk about persons now-a-
days. Everybody criticises everybody. Everybody
seems liable to be drawn into a current, against
somebody, or in favour of every one doing what
she likes, pleasing herself, or getting promotion.
If any one gives way to all these distractions,
c
18 MAKING OUR FUTURE i
and has no root of calmness in herself, she will
not find it in any Hospital or Home.
"All this is as old as the hills," you will say.
Yes, it is as old as Christianity ; and is not that
the more reason for us to begin to practise it
to-day ? " To-day , if ye will hear my voice," says
the Father ; " To-day ye shall be with me in
Paradise," says the Son ; and He does not say
this only to the dying ; for Heaven may begin
here, and " The kingdom of heaven is within,"
He tells us.
Most of you here present will be in a few years
in charge of others, filling posts of responsibility.
All are on the threshold of active life. Then our
characters will be put to the test, whether in some
position of charge or of subordination, or both.
Shall we be found wanting ? Unable to control
ourselves, therefore unable to control others ?
With many good qualities, perhaps, but owing to
selfishness, conceit, to some want of purpose, some
laxness, carelessness, lightness, vanity, some temper,
habits of self-indulgence, or want of disinterested-
ness, unequal to the struggle of life, the business
of life, and ill - adapted to the employment of
Nursing, which we have chosen for ourselves, and
which, almost above all others, requires earnest
T SUCCESS OR FAILURE 19
purpose, and the reverse of all these faults ?
Thirty years hence, if we could suppose us all
standing here again passing judgment on ourselves,
and telling sincerely why one has succeeded and
another has failed ; why the life of one has been
a blessing to those she has charge of, and another
has gone from one thing to another, pleasing
herself, and bringing nothing to good what
would we give to be able now to see all this
before us ?
Yet some of those reasons for failure or success
we may anticipate now. Because so-and-so was or
was not weak or vain ; because she could or could
not make herself respected ; because she had no
steadfastness in her, or on the contrary because
she had a fixed and steady purpose ; because
she was selfish or unselfish, disliked or beloved ;
because she could or could not keep her women
together or manage her patients, or was or was
not to be trusted in Ward business. And there
are many other reasons which I might give you,
or which you might give yourselves, for the success
or failure of those who have passed through this
Training School for the last eleven years.
Can we not see ourselves as others see us ?
For the " world is a hard schoolmaster," and
20 THE HIGHER STANDARD i
punishes us without giving reasons, and much more
severely than any Training School can, and when
we can no longer perhaps correct the defect.
Good posts may be found for us ; but can we
keep them so as to fill them worthily ? Or are
we but unprofitable servants in fulfilling any
charge ?
Yet many of us are blinded to the truth by our
own self-love even to the end. And we attribute
to accident or ill-luck what is really the consequence
of some weakness or error in ourselves.
But " can we not see ourselves as God sees us ? "
is a still more important question. For while we
value the judgments of our superiors, and of our
fellows, which may correct our own judgments,
we must also have a higher standard which may
correct theirs. We cannot altogether trust them,
and still less can we trust ourselves. And we know,
of course, that the worth of a life is not altogether
measured by failure or success. We want to see
our purposes, and the ways we take to fulfil such
charge as may be given us, as they are in the sight
of God. " Thou God seest me."
And thus do we return to the question we asked
before how near can we come to Him whose name
we bear, when we call ourselves Christians ? How
i TIRESOME PATIENTS 21
near to His gentleness and goodness to His
" authority " over others. 1
And the highest " authority " which a woman
especially can attain among her fellow women must
come from her doing God's work here in the same
spirit, and with the same thoroughness, that Christ
did, though we follow him but "afar off."
IV
Lastly, it is charity to nurse sick bodies well ;
it is greater charity to nurse well and patiently sick
minds, tiresome sufferers. But there is a greater
charity even than these : to do good to those who
are not good to us, to behave well to those who
behave ill to us, to serve with love those who do
not even receive our service with good temper, to
forgive on the instant any slight which we may
have received, or may have fancied we have received,
or any worse injury.
1 There is a most suggestive story told of one, some 300 years ago, an
able and learned man, who presented himself for admission into a Society
for Preaching and Charitable Works. He was kept for many months on
this query : Are you a Christian ? by his " Master of Probationers." He
took kindly and heartily to it ; went with his whole soul and mind into this
little momentous question, and solved it victoriously in his own course, and
in his after course of usefulness for others. Am I a Christian ? is most
certainly the first and most important question for each one of us Nurses.
Let us ask it, each of herself, every day.
22 UNA i
If we cannot" do good "to those who "persecute"
us for we are not " persecuted " : if we cannot
pray " Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do " for none are nailing us to a cross : how
much more must we try to serve with patience and
love any who use us spitefully, to nurse with all
our hearts any thankless peevish patients !
We Nurses may well call ourselves " blessed
among women " in this, that we can be always
exercising all these three charities, and so fulfil the
work our God has given us to do.
Just as I was writing this came a letter from
Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's
Cabin. She has so fallen in love with the character
of our Agnes Jones (" Una ") 1 which she had just
read, that she asks about the progress of our work,
supposing that we have many more Unas. They
wish to " organise a similar movement " in America
a "movement" of Unas what a great thing
that would be ! Shall we all try to be Unas ?
She ends, as I wish to end, " Yours, in the
dear name that is above every other,"
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
1 Nightingale Nurse and Lady Superintendent of Liverpool Workhouse
Infirmary. Pioneer of Workhouse Nursing. After her early death in
1868 Miss Nightingale wrote in Good Word* an article, "Una and the
Lion," on her life and work. EDITOR'S NOTE.
II
May 23, 1873.
MY DEAR FRIENDS, Another year has passed
over us. Nearly though not quite all of us who
were here at this time last year have gone their
several ways, to their several posts ; some at St.
Thomas', some to Edinburgh, some to Highgate.
Nearly all are, I am thankful to say, well, and I hope
we may say happy. Some are gone altogether.
May this year have set us all one step farther,
one year on our way to becoming " perfect as our
Father in Heaven is perfect," as it ought to have
done.
Some differences have been made in the School
by our good Matron, who toils for us early and
late to bring us on the way, we hope, towards
becoming " perfect."
These differences I leave it to you to say,
improvements are as you see : our new Medical
Instructor having vigorously taken us in hand and
23
n
giving us his invaluable teaching (i) in Medical and
Surgical Nursing, (2) in the elements of Anatomy.
I need not say : Let us profit.
Next, in order to give more time and leisure to
less tired bodies, the Special Probationers have two
afternoons in the week off duty for the course of
reading which our able Medical Instructor has laid
down. And the Nurse-Probationers have all one
morning and one afternoon in the week to improve
themselves, in which our kind Home Sister assists
them by classes. And, again, I need not say how
important it is to take the utmost advantage of
this. Do not let the world move on and leave us
in the wrong. Now that, by the law of the land,
every child between five and thirteen must be at
school, it will be a poor tale, indeed, in their after
life for Nurses who cannot read, write, spell, and
cypher well and correctly, and read aloud easily,
and take notes of the temperature of cases, and the
like. Only this last week, I was told by one of
our own Matrons of an excellent Nurse of her
own to whom she would have given a good place,
only that she could neither read nor write well
enough for it.
And may I tell you, not for envy, but for a
generous rivalry, that you will have to work hard
ii POWER FROM WITHIN 25
if you wish St. Thomas' Training School to hold
its own with other Schools rising up.
Let us be on our guard against the danger, not
exactly of thinking too well of ourselves (for no
one consciously does this), but of isolating our-
selves, of falling into party spirit always re-
membering that, if we can do any good to others,
we must draw others to us by the influence of our
characters, and not by any profession of what we
are least of all, by a profession of Religion.
And this, by the way, applies peculiarly to what
we are with our patients. Least of all should a
woman try to exercise religious influence with her
patients, as it were, by a ministry, a chaplaincy.
We are not chaplains. It is what she is in herself,
and what comes out of herself, out of what she is
that exercise a moral or religious influence over her
patients. No set form of words is of any use.
And patients are so quick to see whether a Nurse
is consistent always in herself whether she is what
she says to them. And if she is not, it is no use.
If she is, of how much use, unawares to herself, may
the simplest word of soothing, of comfort, or even
of reproof especially in the quiet night be to the
roughest patient, who is there from drink, or to
26 A TIME FOR THOUGHT n
the still innocent child, or to the anxious toil-worn
mother or husband ! But if she wishes to do this, she
must keep up a sort of divine calm and high sense
of duty in her own mind. Christ was alone, from
time to time, in the wilderness or on mountains.
If He needed this, how much more must we ?
Quiet in our own rooms (and a room of your
own is specially provided for each one here) ; a
few minutes of calm thought to offer up the day
to God : how indispensable it is, in this ever in-
creasing hurry of life ! When we live " so fast,"
do we not require a breathing time, a moment or two
daily, to think where we are going ? At this time,
especially, when we are laying the foundation of our
after life, in reality the most important time of all.
And I am not at all saying that our patients
have everything to learn from us. On the contrary,
we can, many a time, learn from them, in patience,
in true religious feeling and hope. One of our
Sisters told me that she had often learnt more from
her patients than from any one else. And I am
sure I can say the same for myself. The poorest,
the meanest, the humblest patient may enter into
the kingdom of Heaven before the cleverest of us,
or the most conceited. For, in another world,
ii NOT TO BE HARDENED 27
many, many of the conditions of this world must
be changed. Do we think of this ?
We have been, almost all of us, taught to pray
in the days of our childhood. Is there not some-
thing sad and strange in our throwing this aside
when most required by us, on the threshold of our
active lives? Life is a shallow thing, and more
especially Hospital life, without any depth of reli-
gion. For it is a matter of simple experience that
the best things, the things which seem as if they
most would make us feel, become the most harden-
ing if not rightly used.
And may I say a thing from my own experience ?
No training is of any use, unless one can learn (i)
to feel, and (2) to think out things for oneself.
And if we have not true religious feeling and
purpose, Hospital life the highest of all things
with these without them becomes a mere routine
and bustle, and a very hardening routine and bustle.
One of our past Probationers said : " Our work
must be the first thing, but God must be in it."
" And He is not in it," she added. But let us hope
that this is not so. I am sure it was not so with
her. Let us try to make it not so with any of us.
There are three things which one must have to
28 THREE INTERESTS n
prevent this degeneration in oneself. And let each
one of us, from time to time, tell, not any one else,
but herself, whether she has these less or more than
when she began her training here.
One is the real, deep, religious feeling and strong,
personal, motherly interest for each one of our
patients. And you can see this motherly interest
in girls of twenty-one we have had Sisters of not
more than that age who had it and not see it in
women of forty.
The second is a strong practical (intellectual, if
you will) interest in the case, how it is going on.
This is what makes the true Nurse. Otherwise
the patients might as well be pieces of furniture,
and we the housemaids, unless we see how interest-
ing a thing Nursing is. This is what makes us
urge you to begin to observe the very first case you
see.
The third is the pleasures of administration,
which, though a fine word, means only learning to
manage a Ward well : to keep it fresh, clean, tidy ;
to keep up its good order, punctuality ; to report
your cases with absolute accuracy to the Surgeon
or Physician, and first to report them to the Sister ;
and to do all that is contained in the one word,
Ward-management : to keep wine-lists, diet-lists,
ii RELIGIOUS PURPOSE 29
washing-lists that is Sister's work and to do
all the things no less important which constitute
Nurse's work.
But it would take a whole book for me to count
up these ; and I am going back to the first thing
that we were saying : without deep religious purpose
how shallow a thing is Hospital life, which is, or
ought to be, the most inspiring ! For, as years go
on, we shall have others to train ; and find that
the springs of religion are dried up within ourselves.
The patients we shall always have with us while we
are Nurses. And we shall find that we have no
religious gift or influence with them, no word in
season, whether for those who are to live, or for
those who are to die, no, not even when they are
in their last hours, and perhaps no one by but us to
speak a word to point them to the Eternal Father
and Saviour ; not even for a poor little dying child
who cries : " Nursey, tell me, oh, why is it so dark ? "
Then we may feel painfully about them what we do
not at present feel about ourselves. We may wish,
both for our patients and Probationers, that they
had the restraints of the " fear " of the most Holy
God, to enable them to resist the temptation. We
may regret that our own Probationers seem so
worldly and external. And we may perceive too
30 PRAYER ii
late that the deficiency in their characters began in
our own.
For, to all good women, life is a prayer ; and
though we pray in our own rooms, in the Wards
and at Church, the end must not be confounded
with the means. We are the more bound to watch
strictly over ourselves ; we have not less but more
need of a high standard of duty and of life in our
Nursing ; we must teach ourselves humility and
modesty by becoming more aware of our own weak-
ness and narrowness, and liability to mistake as
Nurses and as Christians. Mere worldly success to
any nobler, higher mind is not worth having. Do
you think Agnes Jones, or some who are now
living amongst us, cared much about worldly
success ? They cared about efficiency, thorough-
ness. But that is a different thing.
We must condemn many of our own tempers
when we calmly review them. We must lament
over training opportunities which we have lost,
must desire to become better women, better Nurses.
That we all of us must feel. And then, and not
till then, will life and work among the sick become
a prayer.
For prayer is communion or co-operation with
God : the expression of a life among his poor and sick
ii THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER 31
and erring ones. But when we speak with God, our
power of addressing Him, of holding communion
with Him, and listening to His still small voice,
depends upon our will being one and the same with
His. Is He our God, as He was Christ's ? To
Christ He was all, to us He seems sometimes
nothing. Can we retire to rest after our busy,
anxious day in the Wards, with the feeling : "Lord,
into Thy hands I commend my spirit," and those
of such and such anxious cases ; remembering, too,
that in the darkness, " Thou God seest me," and
seest them too ? Can we rise in the morning,
almost with a feeling of joy that we are spared
another day to do Him service with His sick ?
Awake, my soul, and with the sun,
Thy daily stage of duty run.
Does the thought ever occur to us in the course
of the day, that we will correct that particular fault
of mind, or heart, or temper, whether slowness, or
bustle, or want of accuracy or method, or harsh
judgments, or want of loyalty to those under whom
or among whom we are placed, or sharp talking, or
tale-bearing or gossiping oh, how common, and
how old a fault, as old as Solomon ! " He that
repeateth a matter, separateth friends ; " and how
can people trust us unless they know that we are
32 THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER n
not tale-bearers, who will misrepresent or im-
properly repeat what is said to us ? Shall we
correct this, or any other fault, not with a view to
our success in life, or to our own credit, but in
order that we may be able to serve our Master
better in the service of the sick ? Or do we ever
seek to carry on the battle against light behaviour,
against self-indulgence, against evil tempers (the
" world," the " flesh," and the " devil "), and the
temptations that beset us ; conscious that in our-
selves we are weak, but that there is a strength
greater than our own, " which is perfected in
weakness " ? Do we think of God as the Eternal,
into whose hands our patients, whom we see dying
in the Wards, must resign their souls into whose
hands we must resign our own when we depart
hence, and ought to resign our own as entirely every
morning and night of our lives here ; with whom
do live the spirits of the just made perfect, with
whom do really live, ought really as much to live,
our spirits here, and who, in the hour of death, in
the hour of life, both for our patients and ourselves,
must be our trust and hope ? We would not
always be thinking of death, for " we must live
before we die," and life, perhaps, is as difficult as
death. Yet the thought of a time when we shall
ii COMMUNION WITH GOD 33
have passed out of the sight and memory of men
may also help us to live ; may assist us in shaking
off the load of tempers, jealousies, prejudices,
bitternesses, interests which weigh us down ; may
teach us to rise out of this busy, bustling Hospital
world, into the clearer light of God's Kingdom,
of which, indeed, this Home is or might be a part,
and certainly and especially this Hospital.
This is the spirit of prayer, the spirit of con-
versation or communion with God, which leads us
in all our Nursing silently to think of Him, and
refer it to Him. When we hear in the voice of
conscience His voice speaking to us ; when we are
aware that He is the witness of everything we do,
and say, and think, and also the source of every
good thing in us ; and when we feel in our hearts
the struggle against some evil temper, then God is
fighting with us against envy and jealousy, against
selfishness and self-indulgence, against lightness,
and frivolity, and vanity, for " our better self
against our worse self."
And thus, too, the friendships which have
begun at this School may last through life, and be
a help and strength to us. For may we not regard
the opportunity given for acquiring friends as one
of the uses of this place ? and Christian friendship,
34 TRUE FRIENDSHIP n
in uniting us to a friend, as uniting us at the same
time to Christ and God ? Christ called His
disciples friends, adding the reason, " because He
had told them all that He had heard of the Father,"
just as women tell their whole mind to their
friends.
But we all know that there are dangers and dis-
appointments in friendships, especially in women's
friendships, as well as joys and sorrows. A
woman may have an honourable desire to know
those who are her superiors in education, in the
School, or in Nursing. Or she may allow herself
to drop into the society of those beneath her,
perhaps because she is more at home with them,
and is proud or shy with her superiors. We do
not want to be judges of our fellow-women (for
who made thee to differ from another ?), but
neither can we leave entirely to chance one of the
greatest interests of human life.
True friendship is simple, womanly, unreserved :
not weak, or silly, or fond, or noisy, or romping,
or extravagant, nor yet jealous and selfish, and
exacting more than woman's nature can fairly give,
for there are other ties which bind women to one
another besides friendship ; nor, again, intrusive
into the secrets of another woman, or curious
ii FELLOW-SERVICE 35
about her circumstances ; rejoicing in the presence
of a friend, and not forgetting her in her absence.
Two Probationers or Nurses going together
have not only a twofold, but a fourfold strength,
if they learn knowledge or good from one another ;
if they form the characters of one another ; if
they support one another in fulfilling the duties
and bearing the troubles of a Nursing life, if their
friendship thus becomes fellow-service to God in
their daily work. They may sometimes rejoice
together over the portion of their training which
has been accomplished, and take counsel about
what remains to be done. They will desire to
keep one another up to the mark ; not to allow
idleness or eccentricity to spoil their time of
training.
But some of our youthful friendships are too
violent to last : they have in them something of
weakness or sentimentalism ; the feeling passes
away, and we become ashamed of them. Or at
some critical time a friend has failed to stand by
us, and then it is useless to talk of " auld lang
syne." Only still let us remember that there are
duties which we owe to the " extinct " friend
(who perhaps on some fanciful ground has parted
company from us), that we should never speak
36 THE HOUSE OF GOD n
against her, or make use of our knowledge about
her. For the memory of a friendship is like the
memory of a dead friend, not lightly to be
spoken of.
And then there is the " Christian or ideal friend-
ship." What others regard as the service of
the sick she may recognise as also the service
of God ; what others do out of compassion for
their maimed fellow-creatures she may do also for
the love of Christ. Feeling that God has made
her what she is, she may seek to carry on her work
in the Hospital as a fellow-worker with God.
Remembering that Christ died for her, she may
be ready to lay down her life for her patients.
" They walked together in the house of God as
friends " that is, they served God together in
doing good to His sick. For if ever a place may
be called the " house of God," it is a Hospital, if
it be what it should be. And in old times it was
called the " house " or the " hotel " of God. The
greatest and oldest Central Hospital of Paris,
where is the Mother-house of the principal Order
of Nursing Sisters, is to this day called the Hotel
Dieu, the " House of God."
There may be some amongst us who, like St.
Paul, are capable of feeling a natural interest in
ii LOVE OF UNEQUALS 37
the spiritual welfare of our fellow-probationers
or, if you like the expression better, in the im-
provement of their characters that they may
become more such as God intended them to be in
this Hospital and Home. For " Christian friend-
ship is not merely the friendship of equals, but of
unequals " the love of the weak and of those who
can make no return, like the love of God towards
the unthankful and the evil. It is not a friendship
of one or two but of many. It proceeds upon a
different rule : "Love your enemies." It is founded
upon that charity " which is not easily offended,
which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth
all things, endureth all things." Such a friendship
we may be hardly able to reconcile either with our
own character or with common prudence. Yet
this is the " Christian ideal in the Gospel." And
here and there may be found some one who has
been inspired to carry out the ideal in practice.
" To live in isolation is to be weak and un-
happy perhaps to be idle and selfish." There is
something not quite right in a woman who shuts
up her heart from other women.
This may seem to be telling you what you
already know, and bidding you do what you are
already doing. Well, then, shall we put the
38 A RULE OF MANNERS n
matter another way ? Make such friendships as
you will look back upon with pleasure in later
life, and be loyal and true to your friends, not
going from one to another.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel ;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
And do not expect more of them than friends
can give, or weary them with demands for
sympathy ; and do not let the womanliness of
friendship be impaired by any silliness or senti-
mentalism ; or allow hearty and genial good-will
to degenerate into vulgarity and noise.
And as was once truly said, friendship perhaps
appears best, as it did in St. Paul, in his manner
of rebuking those who had erred, " transferring
their faults in a figure to Apollos and to himself."
" No one knew how to speak the truth in love
like him."
It has been said of Romans xii. : " What rule
of manners can be better than this chapter ? "
" She that giveth, let her do it with simplicity " ;
that is, let us do our acts of Nursing and kind-
ness as if we did not make much of them, as unto
the Lord and not to men. " Like-minded one
ii COURTESY 39
towards another"; that is, we should have the
same thoughts and feelings with others. " Rejoic-
ing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them
that weep " ; going out of ourselves and entering
into the thoughts of others.
And have we St. Paul's extraordinary regard
for the feelings of others ? He was never too
busy to think of these. " If meat make my
brother to offend, I will eat no more meat while
the world standeth," he says, though he well knew
such scruples were really superstitions. If the
spirit of these words could find a way to our
women's hearts, we might be able to say, " See
how these Christians (Nurses) love one another ! "
Then the courtesy we owe, one woman to
another : " for the happiness and the good " of
our work and our School is not simply " made up
of great duties and virtues, nor the evil of the
opposite." But both seem to consist also in a
number of small particulars, which, small as they
are, have a great effect on the tone and character
of our School, introducing light or darkness into
the " Home," sweetness or bitterness into our
intercourse with one another.
And, as to our Wards : Christ, we may be
sure, did not lose authority, or dignity and
40 TRUE REFINEMENT n
refinement, " even in the company of publicans
and harlots," just as we may observe in the Wards,
that there are a few of us whose very refinement
makes them do the coarsest and roughest things
there with simplicity. A Sister of ours once re-
marked this of one of her Probationers (who was
not a lady in the common sense of the word, but
she was the truest gentlewoman in Christ's sense),
that she was too refined (most people would have
said, to do the indelicate work of the Wards, but
she said) to see indelicacy in doing the nastiest
thing ; and so did it all well, without thinking of
herself, or that men's eyes were upon her. That
is real dignity the dignity which Christ had on
which no man can intrude, yet combined with the
greatest gentleness and simplicity of life.
n
And let me say a word about self-denial :
because, as we all know, there can be no real
Nursing without self-denial. We know the story
of the Roman soldier, above fourteen hundred
years ago, who, entering a town in France with
his regiment, saw a sick man perishing with cold
by the wayside there were no Hospitals then
ii ST. MARTIN'S CLOAK 41
and, having nothing else to give, drew his sword,
cut his own cloak in half, and wrapped the sick
man in half his cloak.
It is said that a dream visited him, in which he
found himself admitted into heaven, and Christ
saying, " Martin hath clothed me with this
garment": the dream, of course, being a re-
membrance of the verse, " When saw we thee sick
or in prison, and came unto thee ? " and of the
answer, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it
unto me." But whether the story of the dream
be true or not, this Roman soldier, converted to
Christianity, became afterwards one of the greatest
bishops of the early ages, Martin of Tours.
We are not called upon to feed our patients
with our own dinners, or to dress them with our
own clothes. We are comfortable, and cannot
make ourselves uncomfortable on purpose. But
we can learn Sick Cookery for our Patients, we
can give up spending our money in foolish dressy
ways, and thus squandering what we ought to lay
by for ourselves or our families.
On one of the severest winter days in the late
war between France and Germany, an immense
detachment, many thousands, of wretched French
42 FRENCH AND GERMANS n
prisoners were passing through the poorest streets
of one of the largest and poorest German towns
on the way to the prisoners' camp. Every door
in this poor " East End " opened ; not one
remained closed ; and out of every door came a
poor German woman, carrying in her hand the
dinner or supper she was cooking for herself, her
husband, or children ; often all she had in the
house was in her hands. And this she crammed
into the hands of the most sickly-looking prisoner
as he passed by, often into his mouth, as he sank
down exhausted in the muddy street. And the
good-natured German escort, whose business it
was to bring these poor French to their prison,
turned away their heads, and let the women have
their way, though it was late, and they were weary
too. Before the prisoners had been the first hour
in their prison, six had lain down in the straw and
died. But how many lives had been saved that
night by the timely food of these good women,
giving all they had, not of their abundance, but
of their poverty, God only knows, not we. This
was told by an Englishman who was by and saw
it ; one of our own " Aid Committee."
And at a large German station, which almost
all the prisoners' trains passed through, a lady
ir CAROLINE WERCKNER 43
went every night during all that long, long, dread-
ful winter, and for the whole night, to feed, and
warm, and comfort, and often to receive the last
dying words of the miserable French prisoners, as
they arrived in open trucks, some frozen to the
bottom, some only as the dead, others to die in
the station, all half -clad and starving. Some
had been nine days and nights in these open
trucks ; many had been twenty-four hours with-
out food. Night after night as these long, terrible
trainsful dragged their slow length into the station,
she kneeled on its pavement, supporting the dying
heads, receiving their last messages to their
mothers ; pouring wine or hot milk down the
throats of the sick ; dressing the frost - bitten
limbs ; and, thank God, saving many. Many
were carried to the prisoners' hospital in the
town, of whom about two -thirds recovered.
Every bit of linen she had went in this way.
She herself contracted incurable ill-health during
D
these fearful nights. But thousands were saved
by her means.
She is my friend. 1 She came and saw me here
after this ; and it is from her lips I heard the
story. Smallpox and typhus raged among the
1 Madame Caroline Werckner, an Englishwoman. EDITOR'S NOTE.
44 THE LEAST OF THESE n
prisoners, most of whom were quite boys. Many
were wounded ; half were frost - bitten. Some-
times they would snatch at all she brought ; but
sometimes they would turn away their dying
heads from the tempting hot wine, and gasp out,
" Thank you, madam ; give it to him, who wants
it more than I." Or, " I'm past help ; love to
mother."
We have not to give of our own to our sick.
But shall we the less give them our all that is,
all our hearts and minds ? and reasonable service ?
Suppose we dedicated this " School " to Him,
to the Divine Charity and Love which said,
" Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of
these my brethren " (and He calls all our patients
all of us, His brothers and sisters) u ye do it
unto me " oh, what a " Kingdom of Heaven "
this might be ! Then, indeed, the dream of
Martin of Tours, the soldier and Missionary-
Bishop, would have come true !
in
May I take this opportunity of saying what I
think really very much concerns us ? First of
all, that you have, or might have, directly and
ii RECRUITING 45
indirectly, a great deal to do with maintaining a
supply of good candidates to this School. You
know whether you have been happy here or not ;
you know whether you have had opportunities
given you here of training and self-improvement.
Many, very many of our old Matrons and Nurses
have told me that their time as probationers with
us was " the happiest time of their lives." It
might be so with all, though perhaps all do not
think so now.
It is in your power to assist the School most
materially in obtaining fresh and worthy recruits.
There is hardly one of you who has not friends
or acquaintances of her own. You ought to
advertise us. We ought not to have to put one
advertisement in the newspapers. If you think
this is a worthy life, why do you not bring others
to it ? I tried to do my part. When Agnes
Jones died, though my heart was breaking, I put
an article in Good Words^ such as I knew she
would have wished, in all but the mention of
herself; and for years her dear memory brought
aspirants to the work in our Schools, or others'
Schools.
To reform the Nursing of all the Hospitals
and Workhouse Infirmaries in the world, and to
46 PUBLIC OPINION n
establish District Nursing among the sick poor at
home, too, as at Liverpool is this not an object
most worthy of the co-operation of all civilised
people ?
In the last ten years, thank God, numerous
Training Schools for Nurses have grown up,
resolved to unite in putting a stop to such a thing
as drunken, immoral, and inefficient Nursing.
But all make the same complaint ; while the
outcry of " employment for women " continues,
why does not this most womanly employment for
all good women become more sought after? I
hope to hear that my old friends in St. Thomas'
have each done their part ; and 1 feel quite sure
that if it is once placed before them, as a thing
they ought to do, they will be found in the front.
You who are assembled in this room, and who
are each connected with some circle, directly or
indirectly, may do a good work for the civilisation
of the Workhouses and Hospitals of the world.
If you inform yourselves on the subject, and if
you set yourselves to work, to deal with it, as we
do with any other great evil that tortures helpless
people, you will be able to act directly upon your
friends outside, and ultimately get up an amount
of public opinion among women capable of be-
ii EACH A REFORMER 47
coming Nurses, which will be of the greatest
possible aid to our efforts in improving Hospital
and Workhouse Nursing. Every one can help
every one better than if she were a " newspaper,"
better than if she were a " public meeting." I
believe that within a few years you can make it a
thing that will be a disgrace to any Hospital or
even Workhouse to be suspected of bad Nursing,
or to any district (in towns, at any rate) not to
have a good District Nurse to nurse the sick poor
at home.
Those who have made the right use of all the
training that came in their way in this School, if
they would write to their own homes for the
information of their friends outside, an immense
help on its way could be given to the work we have
all so much at heart. And I look upon it as a
certainty that you will each be able, in one way or
another, whether purposely or almost unconsciously,
to take a great part in reforming the Hospital
and Workhouse Nursing systems of our country,
perhaps of our colonies and dependencies, and
perhaps of the world.
48 CONCEITED "NIGHTINGALES 11 n
IV
May I pay ourselves even the least little com-
pliment, as to our being a little less conceited than
last year ? Were we not as conceited in 1872 as
it was possible to be ? You shall tell. Are we,
in 1873, ra ther less so ? And, without having any
one particularly in my head for what I am going
to ask is in fact a truism is not our conceit always
in exact proportion to our ignorance ? For those
who really know something know how little it is.
Would that this could be a " secret " among us !
But, unfortunately, is not our name " up " and
" abroad " for conceit ? And has it not even been
said (" tell it not in Gath ") : " And these conceited
' Nightingale ' women scarcely know how to read
and write ? "
Now let no one look to see our blushes. But
shall we not get rid of this which makes us ridicu-
lous as fast as we can ?
But enough of this joke ; let us be serious,
remembering that the greatest trust which is
committed to any woman of us all is, herself \ and
that she is living in the presence of God as well as
of her fellow- women.
To know whether we know our Nursing
ii SELF-TRAINING 49
business or not is a great result of training ; and
to think that we know it when we do not is a
great a proof of want of training.
The world, more especially the Hospital world,
is in such a hurry, is moving so fast, that it is too
easy to slide into bad habits before we are aware.
And it is easier still to let our year's training slip
away without forming any real plan of training
ourselves.
For, after all, all that any training is to do for
us is : to teach us how to train ourselves, how to
observe for ourselves, how to think out things for
ourselves. Don't let us allow the first week, the
second week, the third week to pass by I will not
say in idleness, but in bustle. Begin, for instance,
at once making notes of your cases. From the
first moment you see a case, you can observe it.
Nay, it is one of the first things a Nurse is strictly
called upon to do : to observe her sick. Mr.
Croft has taught you how to take notes ; and
you have now, every one of you, two leisure times
a week to work up your notes.
But give but one-quarter of an hour a day to
jot down, even in words which no one can under-
stand but yourself, the progress or change of two
or three individual cases, not to forget or confuse
50 SEIZE THE TIME n
them. You can then write them out at your two
leisure times. To those who have not much
education, I am sure that our kind Home Sister,
or the Special Probationer in the same Ward, or
nearest in any way, will give help. The race is
not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ;
and " line upon line " one line every day in the
steady, observing, humble Nurse has often won the
race over the smarter " genius " in what constitutes
real Nursing. But few of us women seriously think
of improving our own mind or character every day.
And this is fatal to our improving in Nursing. We
do not calculate the future by our experience of the
past. What right have we to expect that, if we
have not improved during the last six months, we
shall during the next six ? Then, we do not allow
for the changes which circumstances make in us
the being put on Staff duty, when we certainly shall
not have more time, but less, for improving our-
selves, or the growing older or more feeble in
health. We believe that we shall always have the
same powers or opportunities for learning our
business which we now have. Our time of training
slips away in this unimproving manner. And when
a woman begins to see how many things might have
been better in her, she is too old to change, or it is
ii MARRYATS TORMENTOR 51
too late, too late. And she confesses to herself, or
oftener she does not confess " How all her life
she had been in the wrong."
We are all of us, as we believe, passing into an
unknown world, of which this is only a part. We
have been here a year, or part of a year. What
are we making of our own lives ? Are we where
we were a year ago ? Or are we fitter for that
work of after-life which we have undertaken ?
Do our faults, and weaknesses, and vanities,
tend to diminish ? Or are we still listless, in-
efficient, slow, bustling, conceited, unkind, hard
judges of others, instead of helping them where we
can ? There is no greater softener of hard judg-
ments than is the trying to help the person whom
we so judge, as I can tell from my own experience ;
and in this you will tell me whether we have been
deficient to each other. There is a true story told
of Captain Marryat when a boy ; that he jumped
overboard to save an older midshipman who had
made the boy's life a misery to him by his filthy
cruelties. And the boy Marryat wrote home to
his mother " that he loved this midshipman now
and wasn't it lucky that his life was saved even
better than his own darling mother."
Do we keep before our minds constantly the
52 FREEDOM OF MIND n
sense of our duty here, of our duty to others
Nurses, Sisters, Matron as well as to ourselves,
our fellow Probationers, and our Home Sister,
and to the whole School of which we are members ?
If we thought of this more, we might hope to
attain that quiet mind and self-control, which is
the " liberty " spoken of by St. Paul. We might
learn how truly to use and enjoy both our fellow
Probationers, and this Home and our School, if we
were more anxious about following the example of
Christ than about the opinion of our " world."
" We are the ' world,' which we often seem to
think includes every one but us."
But few comparatively have the power of dis-
engaging themselves, even in thought, from those
about them. They take the view of their own set.
If it is the fashion to conceal, they conceal ; if to
carry tales, they carry tales. There are a few who
never allow themselves to speak against others, and
exercise such a kind of authority as to prevent
others being spoken against in their hearing.
These are the " peacemakers " of whom Christ
speaks. These are they who keep a Home or
Institution together, and seem more than any
others in this our little world to bear the image
of Christ until His coming again.
ii BEYOND ACCIDENTS 53
Do we ever do things because they are right,
without regard to our own credit ? When we ask
ourselves only " What is right ? " or (which is the
same question), " What is the will of God ? " then
we are truly entering His " kingdom." We are
no longer grovelling among the opinions of men
and women. We can see God in all things, and
all things in God, the Eternal Father shining
through the accidents of our lives which some-
times shake us more, though less conspicuous, than
the accidents we see brought in to our Surgical
Wards the accidents of the characters of those
under whom we are placed, and of our own inner life.
One of the greatest missionaries that ever was,
wrote more than 300 years ago to his pupils and
fellow-missionaries :
" Self-knowledge " (the knowledge by which
we see ourselves in God) " self-knowledge is the
nurse of confidence in God. It is from distrust
of ourselves that confidence in God is born. This
will be the way for us to gain that true interior
lowliness of mind which, in all places, and especially
here, is far more necessary than you think. I warn
you also not to let the good opinion which men
have of you be too much of a pleasure to you,
unless perhaps in order that you may be the more
54 PEACE IN ACTION H
ashamed of yourselves on that account. It is that
which leads people to neglect themselves, and this
negligence, in many cases, upsets, as by a kindof trick,
all that lowliness of which I speak, and puts conceit
and arrogance in its place. And thus so many do
not see for a long time how much .they have lost,
and gradually lose all care for piety, and all tran-
quillity of mind, and thus are always troubled and
anxious, finding no comfort either from without or
within themselves."
" Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy
laden," says our Lord, " and I will give you rest."
But He adds immediately who those are to whom
He will give this " rest " or quietness of mind
namely those, who, like Himself, are " meek and
lowly of heart."
These words may seem in a Hospital life " like
dreams." But they are not dreams if we take them
for the spirit of our School and the rule of our
Nursing. " To practise them, to feel them, to
make them our own," this is not far from the
" kingdom of Heaven " in a Hospital.
Pray for me, as I do for you, that " piety " and
a " quiet mind " but these always and only in the
strenuous effort to -press forwards may be ours.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
Ill
July l^rd, 1874.
ANOTHER year has passed over us, my dear friends.
There have been many changes among us. We
have each of us tasted somewhat more of the
discipline of life. To some of us it may have
been very bitter ; to others, let us hope, not so.
By all, let us trust, it has been put to heroic uses.
" Heroic? " I think I hear you say ; " can there
be much of ' heroic ' in washing porringers and
making beds ? "
I once heard a man (he is dead now) giving a
lesson to some poor orphan girls in an Orphan
Asylum. Few things, I think, ever struck me so
much, .or them. It was on the " heroic virtues."
It went into the smallest particulars of thrift, of
duty, of love and kindness ; and he ended by
asking them how they thought such small people
as themselves could manage to practise those great
virtues. A child of seven put up its little nib and
55
56 QUIET AND ORDERLY m
chirped out : " Please, my lord, we might pick up
pins when we don't like to." That showed she
understood his lesson.
His lesson was not exactly fitted to us, but we
may all fit it to ourselves.
This night, if we are inclined to make a noise
on the stairs, or to linger in each other's rooms,
shall we go quietly to bed, alone with God ? Some
of you yourselves have told me that you could get
better day sleep in the Night Nurses' Dormitory
than in your own " Home." Is there such loud
laughing and boisterous talking in the daytime,
going upstairs to your rooms, that it disturbs any
one who is ill, or prevents those who have been
on night duty from getting any sleep ?
Is that doing what you would be done by
loving your neighbour as yourselves, as our Master
told us ?
Do you think it is we who invent the duty
" Quiet and orderly," or is it He ?
If our uniform dress is not what we like, shall
we think of our Lord, whose very garments were
divided by the soldiers ? (But I always think how
much more becoming is our uniform than any
other dress I see.)
If there is anything at table that we don't like,
in PUNCTUAL: TRUSTWORTHY 57
shall we take it thankfully, remembering Who had
to ask a poor woman for a drink of water ?
Shall we take the utmost pains to be perfectly
regular and punctual to all our hours going into
the wards, coming out of the wards, at meals, etc. ?
And if we are unavoidably prevented, making an
apology to the Home Sister, remembering what
has been written about those who are in authority
over us ? Or do we think a few minutes of no
consequence in coming from or going to the wards?
Do we carefully observe our Rules ?
If we are what is printed at the top of our
Duties, viz. :
Trustworthy,
Punctual,
Quiet and orderly,
Cleanly and neat,
Patient, cheerful, and kindly,
we scarcely need any other lesson but what explains
these to us.
Trustworthy : that is, faithful.
Trustworthy when we have no one by to urge
or to order us. " Her lips were never opened but
to speak the truth." Can that be said of us?
Trustworthy, in keeping our soul in our hands,
never excited, but always ready to lift it up to
58 THE GRACE OF EXAMPLE m
God ; unstained by the smallest flirtation, innocent
of the smallest offence, even in thought.
Trustworthy, in doing our work as faithfully
as if our superiors were always near us.
Trustworthy, in never prying into one another's
concerns, but ever acting behind another's back as
one would to her face.
Trustworthy, in avoiding every word that could
injure, in the smallest degree, our patients, or our
companions, who are our neighbours, remembering
how St. Peter says that God made us all " stewards
of grace one to another."
How can we be " stewards of grace " to one
another ? By giving the " grace " of our good
example to all around us. And how can we be-
come "untrustworthy stewards" to one another?
By showing ourselves lax in our habits, irregular
in our ways, not doing as we should do if our
superiors were by. " Cripple leads the way."
Shall the better follow the worse ?
It has happened to me to hear some of you say
perhaps it has happened to us all " Indeed, I
only did what I saw done."
How glorious it would be if " only doing what
we saw done " always led us right !
A master of a great public school once said that
in FAMINE WORKERS 59
he could trust his whole school, because he could
trust every single boy in it. Oh, could God but
say that He can trust this Home and Hospital
because He can trust every woman in it ! Let us
try this every woman to work as though success
depended on herself. Do you know that, in this
great Indian Famine, every Englishman has worked
as if success depended on himself? And in saving
a population as large as that of England from death
by starvation, do you not think that we have
achieved the greatest victory we ever won in
India ? Suppose we work thus for this Home and
Hospital.
Oh, my dear friends, how terrible it will be to
any one of us, some day, to hear another say, that
she only did what she saw us do, if that was on
the " road that leadeth to destruction " !
Or taking it another way, how delightful how
delightful to have set another on her journey to
heaven by our good example ; how terrible to have
delayed another on her journey to heaven by our
bad example !
There is an old story nearly six hundred years
old when a ploughboy said to a truly great man,
whose name is known in history, that he " advised "
him " always to live in such a way that those who
60 OBEDIENCE m
had a good opinion of him might never be dis-
appointed."
The great man thanked him for his advice, and
kept it.
If our School has a good name, do we live so that
people "may never be disappointed" in its Nurses?
Obedient : not wilful : not having such a sturdy
will of our own. Common sense tells us that no
training can do us any good, if we are always seek-
ing our own way. I know that some have really
sought in dedication to God to give up their own
wills to His. For if you enter this Training School,
is that not in effect a promise to Him to give up
your own way for that way which you are taught ?
Let us not question so much. You must know
that things have been thought over and arranged
for your benefit. You are not bound to think us
always right : perhaps you can't. But are you more
likely to be right ? And, at all events, you know
you are right, if you choose to enter our ways, to
submit yours to them.
In a foreign Training School, I once heard a
most excellent pastor, who was visiting there, say
to a nurse : " Are you dwcouraged ? say rather,
you are ^obedient : they always mean the same
thing." And I thought how right he was. And,
in DISCIPLINE 61
what is more, the Nurse thought so too ; and she
was not " discouraged " ever after, because she
gave up being " disobedient."
"Every one for herself" ought to have no
footing here : and these strong wills of ours God
will teach. If we do not Jet Him teach us here,
He will teach us by some sterner discipline here-
after teach our wills to bend first to the will of
God, and then to the reasonable and lawful wills
of those among whom our lot is cast.
I often say for myself, and I have no doubt you
do, that line of the hymn :
Tell me, Thou yet wilt chide, Thou canst not spare,
O Lord, Thy chastening rod.
Let Him reduce us to His discipline before it
is too late. If we " kick against the pricks," we
can only pray that He will give us more " pricks,"
till we cease to " kick." And it is a proof of His
fatherly love, and that He has not given us up, if
He does.
For myself, I can say that I have never known
what it was, since I can remember anything, not
to have " prickly " discipline, more than any one
knew of; and I hope I have not "kicked."
To return to Trustworthiness.
Most of you, on leaving the Home, go first on
62 PATIENT m
night duty. Now there is nothing like night duty
for trying our trustworthiness. A year hence you
will tell me whether you have felt any temptation
not to be quite honest in reporting cases the next
morning to your Sister or Nurse : that is, to say
you have observed when you have not observed ;
to slur over things in your report, which, for aught
you know, may be of consequence to the patient :
to slur over things in your work because there is
no one watching you : no one but God.
It has indeed been known that the Night Nurse
had stayed in the kitchen to talk ; but we may
trust such things will not happen again.
And, for all, Jet us all say this word for our-
selves : everything gets toppled over if we don't
make it a matter of conscience, a matter of reckon-
ing between ourselves and our God. That is the
only safeguard of real trustworthiness. If we treat
it as a mere matter of business, of success in our
career in life, never shall we give anything but eye-
service, never shall we be really trustworthy.
Orderly : Let us never waste anything, even
pins or paper, as some do, by beginning letters or
resolutions, or " cases," which they never take the
trouble to finish.
Cheerful and Patient : Let us never wish for
in CHEERFUL AND KINDLY 63
more than is necessary, and be cheerful when what
we should like is sometimes denied us, as it may be
some day ; or when people are unkind, or we are
disregarded by those we love : remembering Him
whose attendants at His death were mocking
soldiers.
I assure you, my friends, that if we can practise
those " duties " faithfully, we are practising the
" heroic virtues."
Patient, cheerful, and kindly : Now, is it being
patient, cheerful, and kindly to be so only with
those who are so to us ? For, as St. Peter tells us,
even ungodly people do that. But if we can do
good to some one who has done us ill, oh, what a
privilege that is ! And even God will thank us
for it, the Apostle says. Let us be kindest to the
impatient and unkindly.
Now let me tell you of two Nurses whom we
knew.
One was a lady, with just enough to live upon,
who took an old widow to nurse into her house :
recommended to her by her minister. One day she
met him and reproached him. Why ? Because
the old widow was " too good " ; " any body could
nurse her" Presently a grumbling old woman,
never contented with anything anybody did,
64 A POOR NURSE
in
who thought she was never treated well enough,
and that she never had " her due," was found.
And this old woman the lady took into her house
and nursed till she died ; because, she said, nobody
else liked to do anything for her, and she did.
That was something like kindness, for there is no
great kindness in doing good to any one who is
grateful and thanks us for it.
But my other story is something much better
still.
A poor Nurse, who had been left a widow, with
nothing to live upon but her own earnings, in-
quired for some tedious children to take care of.
As you may suppose, there was no difficulty in
finding this article. And from that day, for twenty
years, she never had less than two, three, or four
orphans with her, and sometimes five, whom she
brought up as her own, training them for service.
She taught them domestic work, for she herself
went out to service at nine years old. She never
had any difficulty in finding places for them, and
for twenty years she had thus a succession of
children. But she taught them something better.
She taught them that they had " nothing but
their character to depend upon." "I tell them,"
she said, " it was all I had myself ; God helps girls
in TEDIOUS ORPHANS 65
that watch over themselves. If a girl isn't made
to feel this early, it's hard afterwards to make her
feel it."
These girls, so brought up, turned out much better
than those brought up in most large Union schools,
for asylums are not like homes. Of the children
whom Nurse took in, one was a girl of such bad
habits and such a mischief-maker that no one else
could manage her. But Nurse did. She soon
found she could not refuse boys. One was a boy
of fourteen, just out of prison for bad ways, whom
she took and reclaimed, and who became as good a
boy as can be. These are only two specimens.
They called her "Mother." And God, she
used to say, gave them to her as her own. You
will ask how she supported them. The larger
number of them she supported by taking in washing,
by charing one day a week, and bye and bye, by
taking in journeymen as lodgers. Now and then
a lady would pay for an orphan. Once she took
in a sailor's five motherless children for 55. a week
from the father : but she has taken in apprentices
as lodgers, whose own fathers could not afford to
keep them for their wages.
All this time she washed for a poor sick Irish-
woman, who never gave her any thanks but that
66 LENDING TO THE LORD in
" the clothes were not well washed, nor was any-
thing done as it ought to be done." Yet she took
in this woman's child of two years old as her own,
till the father came back, when he gave up drink
and claimed it.
Every Friday she gave her earnings to some
poor women, who bought goods with the money,
which they sold again in the market on Saturday,
and returned her money to her on Saturday night.
She said she never lost a penny by this : and it kept
several old women going.
She must have been a capital manager, you will
say. Well, till she took in lodgers, she lived in a
cellar which she painted with her own hands, and
kept as clean as a new pin. Afterwards she let her
cellar for 2s. a week, though she might have got
2s. 6d. or 35. a week for it, because, she said,
" the poor should not be hard on one another."
Milk she never tasted ; meat seldom, and then she
always stewed, never roasted it. She lived on
potatoes, and potato pie was the luxury of herself
and children.
On Sundays she filled her pot of four gallons
and made broth : sometimes for six or eight poor
old women besides her own family, as she called her
orphans. These must be satisfied with what she
in THE HEROIC VIRTUES 67
provided, little or much. She never let them touch
what was sent her for her patients. Sometimes
good things were sent her, which she always gave
to sick neighbours ; yet she has been accused of
keeping for herself nice things sent to her care for
others. She never owed a penny, for all her
charity.
If this Nurse has not practised the " heroic
virtues," who has ?
I mentioned this Nurse merely as an instance
of one who literally fulfilled the precept to " do
good " to them that " despitefully use you " : to
be "patient, cheerful, and kindly." There is no
time to tell you how she was left a widow with
two infants and a blind and insane mother, whom
she kept till doctors compelled her to put her mother
into a lunatic asylum : how one of her sons was
a sickly cripple, whom she nursed till he died,
working by day and sitting up with him at night
for years : how the other boy was insane, and ran
away : how, to ease her broken mother's heart,
she returned to sick-nursing, chiefly among the
poor, nursed through two choleras, till her health
broke down, and, by way of taking care of herself,
then took up the " tedious " orphan system,
which she never ceased. She felt, she said, as if
68 A LITTLE ANGEL IN EACH m
she were doing something then for her " own dear
boy." As soon as she lived in a poor house of
four rooms and an attic, she has had as many as
ten carpenters' men of a night, who had nowhere
but the public-house to go to. She gave them a
good fire, borrowed a newspaper for them, and
made one read aloud. They brought her sixpence
a week, and she laid it all out in supper for them,
and cooked it. She gave the only good pair of
shoes she had to one of these, because " he must
go to work decent ! "
She was a famous sick cook, often carrying
home fish-bones to stew them for the sick, who
seldom thanked her ; and the remains of damsons
and currants, to boil over again as a drink for
fever patients : who sometimes accused her of
keeping back things sent for them.
" How much more the Lord has borne from
me," she used to say.
And of children she used to say : " We never
can train up a child in the way it should go till
we take it in our arms, as Jesus did, and feel :
c Of such is the kingdom of heaven ' ; and that
there is a ' heavenly principle ' (a ' little angel,'
I think she said) in each child to be trained up
in it."
in FUTURE LEADERS 69
She said she had learnt this from the master in
a factory where she had once nursed.
(How little he knew that he had been one
means of forming this heroic Nurse.)
ii
And now I have a word for the Ladies, and a
word for the Nurse - Probationers. Which shall
come first ?
Do the ladies follow up their intellectual
privileges ? Or, are they lazy in their hours of
study ? Do they cultivate their powers of expres-
sion in answering Mr. Croft's examinations ?
Ought they not to look upon themselves as
future leaders as those who will have to train
others ? And to bear this in mind during the
whole of their year's training, so as to qualify
themselves for being so? It is not just getting
through the year anyhow, without being blamed.
For the year leaves a stamp on everybody this
for the Nurses as well as the Ladies and once
gone can never be regained.
To the Special Probationers may I say one
more word ?
Do we look enough into the importance of
70 STUDYING THE CASES in
giving ourselves thoroughly to study in the hours
of study, of keeping careful Notes of Lectures, of
keeping notes of all type cases, and of cases
interesting from not being type cases, so as to
improve our ^powers of observation all essential
if we are in future to have charge ? Do we keep
in view the importance of helping ourselves to
understand these cases by reading at the time books
where we can find them described, and by listening
to the remarks made by Physicians and Surgeons
in going round with their Students? (Take a
sly note afterwards, when nobody sees, in order
to have a correct remembrance.)
So shall we do everything in our power to
become proficient, not only in knowing the
symptoms and what is to be done, but in knowing
the " Reason Why " of such symptoms, and why
such and such a thing is done ; and so on, till we
can some day TRAIN OTHERS to know the " reason
why."
Many say : " We have no time ; the Ward
work gives us no time."
But it is so easy to degenerate into a mere
drudgery about the Wards, when we have goodwill
to do it, and are fonder of practical work than
of giving ourselves the trouble of learning the
in STUDY IS RELIGION 71
" reason why." Take care, or the Nurses, some of
them, will catch you up.
Take ten minutes a day in the Ward to jot
down things, and write them out afterwards :
come punctually from your Ward to have time
for doing so. // is far better to take these ten
minutes to write your cases or to jot down your recol-
lections in the Ward than to give the same ten
minutes to bustling about. I am sure the Sisters
would help you to get this time if you asked
them : and also to leave the Ward punctually.
And do you not think this a religious duty ?
Such observations are a religious meditation :
for is it not the best part of religion to imitate
the benevolence of God to man ? And how can
you do this in this your calling especially if
you do not thoroughly understand your calling ?
And is not every study to do this a religious
contemplation ?
Without it, May you not 'potter and cobble about
the patients without ever once learning the reason of
what you do, so as to be able to train others ?
(I do not say anything about the "cards," for
I take it for granted that you can read them
easily.)
Our dear Matron, who is always thinking of
72 GIVE AND TAKE m
arranging for us, is going to have a case-paper
with printed headings given to you, and to keep
this correctly ought to be a mere every-day
necessity, and a very easy one, for you.
2. And for the Nurses :
They are placed, perhaps here only, on a
footing of equality with educated gentlewomen.
Do they show their appreciation of this by thinking,
" We are as good as they " ? Or, by obedience and
respect, and trying to profit by the superior
education of the gentlewomen ?
Both we have known ; we have known Nurse-
Probationers who took the Ladies " under their
protection " in saving them the harder work, and
the Ladies have given them the full return back
in helping them in their education.
And we have known very much the reverse.
Also, do the Nurse-Probationers take advantage
of their opportunities, in the excellent classes given
them by the Home Sister, in keeping diaries and
some cases ?
Very few of the Nurse-Probationers have taken
notes of Mr. Croft's Lectures at all ; it is not fair
to Mr. Croft to give him people who do not
benefit by his instruction.
3. And I have another word to say :
in IGNORANT CRITICISM 78
Are there parties in our Home ?
Could we but be not so tenacious of our own
interests, but look at the thing in a larger way !
Is there a great deal of canvassing and misin-
terpreting Sisters and Matron and other authorities?
every little saying and doing of theirs? talking
among one another about the superiors (and then
finding we were all wrong when we came to know
them better) ?
We must all of us know, without being told,
that we cannot be trained at all, if in training this
will of our own is not kept under.
Do not question so much. Does not a spirit
of criticism go with ignorance ? Are some of you
in all the " opposition of irresponsibility " ? Some
day, when you are yourselves responsible, you will
know what I mean.
Now could not the Ladies help the Nurse-
Probationers in this : (i) in never themselves
criticising ; and (2) in saying a kindly word to
check it when it is done ?
Let me tell you a true story about this.
In a large college, questions about things
which the students could but imperfectly under-
stand in the conduct of the college had become
too warm. The superintendent went into the hall
74 ARGUING ABOUT GREEK in
one morning, and after complimenting the young
men on their studies, he said : " This morning I
heard two of the porters, while at their work, take
up a Greek book lying on my table ; one tried to
read it, and the other declared it ought to be held
upside down to be read. Neither could agree
which was upside down, but both thought them-
selves quite capable of arguing about Greek, though
neither could read it. They were just coming
to fisticuffs, when I sent the two on different
errands."
Not a word was added : the students laughed
and retired, but they understood the moral well
enough, and from that day there were few questions
or disputes about the plans and superiors of the
college, or about their own obedience to rules and
discipline.
Do let us think of the two porters squabbling
whether the Greek book was to be read upside
down, when we feel inclined to be questioning
about " things too high for us."
We are constantly making mistakes in our
judgment of our little world. We fancy that we
have been harshly treated or misunderstood. Or
we cannot bear our fellow-Probationers to laugh
at us.
in RIDICULOUS TROUBLES 75
Believe me, there will come a time when all
such troubles will simply seem ridiculous to us,
and we shall be unable to imagine how we could
ever have been the victims of them. (One of your
number told me this herself. She has left St.
Thomas' for another post.) Let us not brood or
sentimentalise over them. They should be met
in a common-sense way. How much of our time
has been spent in grieving over these trifles, how
little in the real sorrow for sin, the real struggle
for improvement.
4. As for obedience to rules and our superiors :
" True obedience," said one of the most efficient
people who ever lived, " obeys not only the
command, but also the intention " of those who
have a right to command us. Of course, this is a
truism : the thing is, how to do it. As it is a
struggle, it requires a brave and intrepid spirit,
which helps us to rise above trifles and look to
God, and His leadings for us. Oh, when death
comes, how sorry we shall be to have watched
others so much and ourselves so little ; to have
dug so much in the field of others' consciences
and left our own fallow ! What should we say of
a "Leopold" Nurse who should try to nurse in
"Edward" Ward, and neglect her own "Leopold" ?
76 THE BUSYBODY in
Well, that is what we do. Or who should wash
her patients' hands and not her own ?
It is of ourselves and not of others that we
must give an account. Let us look to our own
consciences as we do to our own hands, to see if
they are dirty.
We take care of our dress, but do we take care
of our words ?
It is a very good rule to say and do nothing
but what we can offer to God. Now we cannot
offer Him backbiting, petty scandal, misrepresenta-
tion, flirtation, injustice, bad temper, bad thoughts,
jealousy, murmuring, complaining. Do we ever
think that we bear the responsibility of all the
harm we do in this way r
Look at that busybody who fidgets, gossips,
makes a bustle, always wanting to domineer,
always thinking of herself, as if she wanted to tell
the sun to get out of her way and let her light the
world in its place, as the proverb says.
And when we might do all our actions and say
all our words as unto God !
So many imperfections ; so many thoughts of
self-love ; so many selfish satisfactions that we mix
with our best actions ! And when we might offer
them all to God. What a pity !
Ill
THE SISTER 77
5. One word more for the Ladies, or those
who will have to train and look after others.
What must she be who is to be a Ward or
" Home " Sister ?
We see her in her nobleness and simplicity :
being, not seeming : without name or reward in
this world: "clothed" in her "righteousness"
merely, as the Psalms would say, not in her
dignity : often having no gifts of money, speech,
or strength : but never preferring seeming to
being.
And if she rises still higher, she will find
herself, in some measure, like the Great Example
in Isaiah liii., bearing the sins and sorrows of
others as if they were her own : her counsels often
" despised and rejected," yet " opening not her
mouth " to be angry : " led as a lamb to the
slaughter."
She who rules best is she who loves best : and
shows her love not by foolish indulgence to those
of whom she is in charge, but by taking a real
interest in them for their own sakes, and in their
highest interests.
Her firmness must never degenerate into
nervous irritability. And for this end let me
advise you when you become Sisters, always to
78 JUDGE NOT DETECTIVE in
take your exercise time out of doors, your monthly
day out, and your annual holiday.
Be a judge of the work of others of whom you
are in charge, not a detective : your mere detective
" is wonderful at suspicion and discovery," but is
often at fault, foolishly imagining that every one
is bad.
The Head-Nurse must have been tested in the
refiner's fire, as the prophets would say : have been
tried by many tests : and have come out of them
stainless, in full command of herself and her
principles : never losing her temper.
She never nurses well till she ceases to command
for the sake of commanding, or for her own sake
at all : till she nurses only for the sakes of those
who are nursed. This is the highest exercise of
self-denial ; but without it the ruin of the nursing,
of the charge, is sure to come.
Have we ever known such a Nurse ?
She must be just, not unjust.
Now justice is the perfect order by which
every woman does her own business, and injustice
is where every woman is doing another's business.
This is the most obvious of all things : and for
that very reason has never been found out. In-
justice is the habit of being a busybody and doing
in SAVIOUR NOT RULER 79
another woman's business, which tries to rule and
ought to serve : this is the unjust Nurse.
Prudence is doing your nursing most perfectly :
aiming at the perfect in everything : this is the
" seeking God and His righteousness " of the
Scriptures.
And must not each of us be a Saviour, rather
than a ruler : each in our poor measure ? Did the
Son of God try to rule ? Oh, my friends, do not
scold at women : they will be of another mind if
they are " gently entreated " and learn to know
you. Who can hate a woman who loves them ?
Or be jealous of one who has no jealousy ? Who
can squabble with one who never squabbles ? It
is example which converts your patients, your
ward-maids, your fellow-Nurses or charges : it is
example which converts the world.
And is not the Head-Nurse or Sister there,
not that she may do as she likes, but that she
should serve all for the common good of all ?
The one worst maxim of all for a future Matron,
Sister, or Nurse is " to do as I like " : that is dis-
order, not rule. It is giving power to evil.
Those who rule must not be those who are
desirous to rule.
She who is best fitted is often the least inclined
80 THE NEED OF CALMNESS in
to rule : but if the necessity is laid upon her, she
takes it up as a message from God. And she
must no longer live in her own thoughts, making
a heaven or hell of her own. For if she does not
make a heaven for others, her charge will soon
become something else.
She must never become excited : and therefore
I do impress upon you regularity and punctuality,
and never to get hurried. Those often get most
excited who are least in earnest. She who is
fierce with her Nurses, her patients, or her ward-
maid, is not truly above them : she is below
them : and, although a harsh ward-mistress to her
patients or Nurses, has no real superiority over
them.
There is no impudence like that of ignorance.
Each night let us come to a knowledge of our-
selves before going to rest : as the Psalm says :
" Commune with your own heart upon your bed,
and be still.'" Is it possible that we who live
among the sick and dying can be satisfied not to
make friends with God each night ?
The future Sister should be neither mistress
nor servant, but the friend of every woman under
her. If she is mistress of others when she is not
mistress of herself, her jealous, faithless temper
in THE EMPTY SYRINGE 81
grows worse with command (oh, let not this be
the case with any of us !) wanting everything of
everybody, yet not knowing how to get it of
anybody. Always in fear, confusion, suspicion,
and distraction, she becomes more and more
faithless, envious, unrighteous, the cause of
wretchedness to herself and others. She who has
no control over herself, who cannot master her
own temper, how can she be placed over others,
to control them through the better principle?
But she who is the most royal mistress of herself
is the only woman fit to be in charge.
For this is the whole intention of training,
education, supervision, superintendence : to give
self-control, to train or nurse up in us a higher
principle ; and when this is attained, you may go
your ways safely into the world.
But she who nurses, and does not nurse up in
herself the " infant Christ," who should be born
again in us every day, is like an empty syringe
it pumps in only wind.
The future Sister must be not of the gover-
nessing but of the Saviour turn of mind.
Let her reason with the unjust woman who is
not intentionally in error. She must know how
to give good counsel, which will advise what is
G
82 IRON AND GOLD m
best under the circumstances ; not making a
lament, but finding a cure ; regarding that only
as " bettering " their situation which makes them
better. She must know and teach " how to refuse
the evil and choose the good," as Isaiah says.
She must have an iron sense of truth and right
for herself and others, and a golden sense of love
and charity for them.
When a future Sister unites the power of com-
mand with the power of thought and love, when
she can raise herself and others above the common-
places of a common self without disregarding any
of our common feelings, when she can plan and
effect any reforms wanted step by step, without
trying to precipitate them into a single year or
month, neither hasting nor delaying : that is
indeed a " Sister."
The future Sister or Head must not see only a
little corner of things, her own petty likes and
dislikes ; she must " lift up her eyes to the hills,"
as David says. She must know that there is a
greater and more real world than her own little-
nesses and meannesses. And she must be not only
the friend of her Nurses, but also, in her measure,
the angel whose mission is to reconcile her Nurses
to themselves, to each other, and to God.
in THE NURSE'S CHARGE 83
in
Now let us not each of us think how this fits on
to her neighbour, but how it fits on to oneself.
Shall I tell you what one of you said to me
after I last addressed you ? " Do you think we
are missionaries ? "
I answer, that you cannot help being mission-
aries, if you would. There are missionaries for
evil as well as for good. Can you help choosing ?
Must you not decide whether you will be mission-
aries for good, or whether for evil, among your
patients and among yourselves ?
And, first, among your patients :
Hospital Nurses have charge of their patients
in a way that no other woman has charge ; in the
first place, no other woman is in charge really of
grown-up men. Oh, how careful she ought to be,
especially the Night Nurse, to show them what a
true woman can be ! The acts of a nurse are
keenly scrutinised by both old and young patients.
If she is not perfectly pure and upright, depend
upon it, they know.
Also, a Hospital Nurse is in charge of people
in their sick and feeble, anxious and dying hours,
when they are singularly alive to impressions. She
84 CHILDREN-PATIENTS m
leaves her stamp upon them, whether she will or
no. And this applies almost more to the Night
Nurse than to the Day Nurse.
Lastly, if she have children -patients, she is
absolutely in charge of these, who come, perhaps
for the first and the last time of their lives, under
influence.
So many pass by a child without notice. A
whole life of happiness or wretchedness may turn
upon an act of kindness to it a good example set
it. A poor woman once said of a child of hers
under just these circumstances : "The Sister set
its face heavenwards: and it never looked back."
Do we ever set their faces the other way ? The
child she spoke of when it was dying actually gave
its halfpence, which it had saved for something for
itself, for another dying child " who had nobody."
I call that practising the " heroic virtues," if ever
there were such. And that was done under just
such an influence as we have been speaking of.
On the other hand, do you know anything in
its way more heinous than a Nurse, who to the
sick and tiresome child might be like an angel " to
set it face heavenward " by her sympathy with it,
and who, by her own bad habits or bad temper, by
her unfairness, by her unkindness or injustice, by
in A CHILD PIECER 85
her coarseness or want of uprightness, sets it the
other way ?
A very good man once said that in each little
Hospital patient, he saw not only a soul to be
saved, but many other souls that might possibly be
committed to this one : for the poor can do so
much among one another : do what no others
going among them can do. Every child is of the
stuff out of which Home Missionaries may be
made, such as God chooses from the ranks that
have furnished his best recruits.
The Apostles were fishermen and workmen.
David Livingstone was a cotton-mill piecer.
In each little pauper waif he saw one destined to
carry a godly example (or the reverse) where none
but they could carry it into godless and immoral
homes.
We will not repeat here, because we are so fully
persuaded of it, that a woman, especially a Nurse,
must be a missionary, not as a minister or chaplain
is, but by the influence of her own character, silent
but not unfelt.
It was this, far more than any words, that gave
his matchless influence to David Livingstone, whose
body, brought upwards of 1500 miles through
pathless deserts by his own negro servants such
86 LIVINGSTONE m
a heroic feat as Christians never knew before was
buried this spring in Westminster Abbey. Some
of us knew him : one of our Probationers was with
him and his wife, who died in 1862, and Bishop
Mackenzie, at their Mission Station in Africa. He
was such a traveller and missionary as we shall
never see again perhaps. But what he was in
influence each of us may be, if we please, in our
little sphere.
A Nurse is like a traveller, from the quantity
of people who pass before her in the ever-changing
wards. And she is like a traveller also in this,
that, as Livingstone used to say, either the vices
or the virtues of civilisation follow the footsteps of
the traveller, and he cannot help it. So they do
those of the Nurse. And missioning will be,
whether she will or no, the background of her
nursing, as it is the background of travelling. The
traveller may call himself a missionary or not, as
he likes. He is one, for good or for evil. So is
the Nurse.
Livingstone used to say that we fancy a
missionary a man with a Bible in his hand and
another in his pack. He then went on to say
what a real missionary must be in himself to have
influence. And he added : " If I had once been
in THE NURSE A TRAVELLER 87
suspected of a single act of want of purity or
uprightness the negroes would never have trusted
me again. No, not even the least pure or the
least upright of the negroes. And any influence
of mine would have been gone for ever." What
his influence was, even after his death, you know.
Then you must be missionaries, whether you
will or no, among one another.
We need only think of the friendships that are
made here. Will you be a missionary of good or
of evil to your friend ? Will you be a missionary
of indifference, selfishness, lightness of conduct,
self-indulgence ? Or a missionary to her and
to your patients of religious and noble devotion
to duty, carried out to the smallest thing ?
Will you be a " hero " in your daily work,
like the dying child giving its hard-saved halfpence
to the yet poorer child ?
Livingstone always remembered that a poor
old Scotchman on his death-bed had said to him :
u Now, lad, make religion the every-day business
of your life, not a thing of fits and starts ; for if
you do not, temptation and other things will get
the better of you."
Such a Nurse one who makes religion the
" every-day business of her life," is a "Missionary,"
88 SALT OF INSTITUTIONS m
even if she never speak a word. One who does
not is a missionary for evil and not for good,
though she may say many words, have many good
texts at the end of her tongue, or, as Livingstone
would say, a Bible in her hand and a Bible at her
back.
Believe me, who have seen a good deal of the
world, we may give you an institution to learn in,
but it is You must furnish the u heroic " feeling
of doing your duty, doing your best, without
which no institution is safe, without which
Training Schools are meat without salt. You
must be our salt, without which civilisation is
but corruption, and all churches only dead
establishments.
Shall I tell you what one of the most famous
clergymen that ever lived said ? That, in order
to manage people, and especially children, well, it
was necessary to speak more of them to God than
of God to them. If a famous preacher said that,
how much more must a woman ?
Another learned clergyman, who was also the
best translator of the Bible (in a foreign language),
said : u Prayer, rather than speech must be relied
upon for the reform of any little irregularities :
for only through prayer could the proper moment
in GOD'S WAYS 89
for speech become known." If a great leader of
mankind said that, how much more should a
Nurse ?
I must end : and what I say now I had better
have said : and nothing else.
What are we without God ? Nothing.
" Father, glorify Thy name ! " How is His
name glorified ? We are His glory, when we
follow His ways. Then we are something.
What is the Christian religion ? To be like
Christ.
And what is it to be like Christ ? To be High
Church, Low Church, Dissenter, or orthodox ?
Oh, no. It is : to live for God and have God
for our object.
IV
LONDON, May 26, 1875.
MY DEAR FRIENDS, This year my letter to you
must needs be short, for I am not able to write
much. But good words are always short. The
best words that ever were spoken Christ's words
were the shortest. Would that ours were
always the echo of His !
First, then :
What is our one thing needful ? To have high
principles at the bottom of all. Without this,
without having laid our foundation, there is small
use in building up our details. That is as if you
were to try to nurse without eyes or hands. We
know who said, If your foundation is laid in
shifting sand, you may build your house, but it
will tumble down. But if you build it on solid
ground, this is what is called being rooted and
grounded in Christ.
In the great persecutions in France two hundred
90
iv A LONELY PATH 91
years ago (not only of the Protestants, who came
over here and settled in Spitalfields, but of all who
held the higher and more spiritual religion) a
noble woman, who has left her impress on the
Christian Church, and who herself endured two
hard imprisonments for conscience' sake, would
receive no Probationer into her Institution, which
was, like ours, for works of Nursing and for the
poor, till the Probationer had well considered
whether she were really rooted and grounded in
God himself, and not in the mere habit of obeying
rule and doing her work ; whether she could do
without the supports of the example and fellow-
ship of a large and friendly community, the
sympathy and praise of fellow-workers all good
things in themselves, but which will not carry us
through a life like Christ's. And I doubt whether
any woman whom God is forming for Himself is
not at some time or other of her life tried and
tested in this lonely path.
A French Princess, who did well consider, and
who was received into the said Institution on
these conditions, has left us in writing her experi-
ence. And well she showed 'where she was
" rooted and grounded " through ten after-years
of prison and persecution.
92 FRUITS OF HIDDEN LIFE iv
We have not to endure these things. Our lot
is cast in gentler times.
But I will tell you an old woman's experience
that I can never remember a time, and that I do
not know a work, which so requires to be rooted
and grounded in God as ours.
You remember the question in the hymn,
" Am I His, or am I not ? " IF I am, this is
what is called our " hidden life with Christ in God."
We all have a " hidden life " in ourselves, besides
our outward working life. If our hidden life is
filled with chatter and fancies, our outward work-
ing life will be the fruits of it.
" By their fruits ye shall know them," Christ
says. Christ knows the good Nurse. It is not
the good talker whom Christ knows as the good
Nurse.
If our hidden life is " with Christ in God," by
its fruits, too, it will be known.
What is it to live " with Christ in God " ? It
is to live in Christ's spirit : forgiving any injuries,
real or fancied, from our fellow-workers, from
those above us as well as from those below (alas !
how small our injuries are that we should talk of
forgiving!) thirsting after righteousness, righteous-
ness, i.e. doing completely one's duty towards all
iv CHRISTS SPIRIT 93
with whom we have to do, towards God above as
well as towards our fellow -nurses, our patients,
our matron, home sister, and instructors ; fain to
be holy as God is holy, perfect as our Father in
Heaven is perfect in our hospital and training
school ; caring for nothing more than for God's
will in this His training ; careful for our sick and
fellow -Nurses more than for ourselves ; active,
like Christ, in our work ; like Christ, meek and
lowly in heart in our Wards and " Home " ;
peacemakers among our companions, which includes
the never repeating anything which may do
mischief; placing our spirits in the Father's
charge. (" 1 am the Almighty's charge," says
the hymn.) This is to live a life with Christ
in God.
You may have heard of Mr. Wilberforce.
He it was who, after a long life of unremitting
activity, varied only with disappointment, carried
the Abolition of the Slave Trade, one of England's
greatest titles to the gratitude of nations. Slavery,
as Livingstone said, is the open sore of the world.
(Mr. Clarkson and my grandfather were two of
his fellow-workers.) Some one asked how Mr.
Wilberforce did this, and a man I knew answered,
" Because his life was hid with Christ in God."
94. THREE JUDGES iv
Never was there a truer word spoken. And
if we, when the time comes for us to be in charge
of Wards, are enabled to " abolish " anything
wrong in them, it can only be in the same way,
by our life being hid with Christ in God. And
no man or woman will do great things for God,
or even small, whose u hidden life " is employed
in self-complacency, or in thinking over petty
slights, or of what other people are thinking
of her.
We have three judges our God, our neighbour,
and ourselves. Our own judgment of ourselves
is, perhaps, generally too favourable : our neigh-
bour's judgment of us too unfavourable, except
in the case of close friends, who may sometimes
spoil each other. Shall we always remember to
seek God's judgment of us, knowing this, that it
will some day find us, whether we seek it or not ?
He knows who is His nurse, and who is not.
This is laying the " foundation " ; this is the
" hidden life with Christ in God " for us Nurses.
" Keeping up to the mark," as St. Paul says ; and
nothing else will keep us up to the mark in
Nursing.
" Neglect nothing ; the most trivial action may
be performed to ourselves, or performed to God."
iv IN WHOSE SERVICE ? 95
What a pity that so many actions should be wasted
by us Nurses in our Wards and in our " Home,"
when we might always be doing common things
uncommonly well !
Small things are of consequence small things
are of no consequence ; we say this often to
ourselves and to each other.
And both these sayings are true.
Every brick is of consequence, every dab of
mortar, that it may be as good as possible in
building up your house. A chain is no stronger
than its weakest link : therefore every link is of
consequence. And there can be no " small "
thing in Nursing. How often we have seen a
Nurse's life wrecked, in its usefulness, by some
apparently small fault ! Perhaps this is to say
that there can be no small things in the nursing
service of God.
But in the service of ourselves, oh ! how small
the things are ! Of no consequence indeed. How
small they will appear to us all some day !
For what does it profit a Nurse if she gain the
whole world to praise her, and lose her own soul
in conceit ? What does it profit if the judgment
of the whole world is for us Nurses, and God's
is against us ?
96 SALT OF THE EARTH iv
It is a real danger, in works like these, when
all men praise us. We must then see if we are
" rooted and grounded in Christ Himself," to nurse
as He would have us nurse, as He was in God, to
do His Saviour-work. Am I His, or am I not ?
It is a real danger, too, if in works like these
we do not uphold the credit of our School. That
is not bearing fruit. Can we hope, may we hope
that, at least, some day, Christ may say even to
our Training School, as He did once to His first
followers, " Ye are the salt of the earth " ? But
oh ! if we may hope this, let us never forget for
one moment the terrible conclusion of that verse.
If we can, in the faintest sense, be called " the
salt " of God's nursing world, let us watch, watch,
watch, that we may never lose our " savour."
One woman, as we well know, may be honoured
by God to be " the salt " to purify a whole Ward.
One woman may have lost her " savour," and a
Ward be left without its " salt," and untold harm
done.
We ought to be very much obliged to our
kind Medical Instructor for the pains he has taken
with us, and to show this by our careful attention.
Without this there can be no improvement.
There is a time for all things a time to be
iv THE PASSING YEAR 97
trained, and a time to use our training. And if
we have thrown away the year we have here, we
can hardly recover it. Besides, what a shame it
is to come here, as Probationers, at considerable
cost (to others, most of us), and then not to make
our improvement the chief business of our lives,
so that at the end of our year we go away not
much better but rather worse than we came !
What account can we give of such a waste of
time and opportunities, of the best gifts of God,
to ourselves and to Him ? " For God requireth
that which is past." If, when I was young,
there had been such opportunities of training for
Hospital work as you have, how eagerly I should
have made the most of them !
Therefore, " whatsoever thy hand findeth to
do, do it with all thy might " : be earnest in work,
be earnest also even in such things as taking
exercise and proper holiday. I say this particularly
to future Matrons and Sisters, for there should
be something of seriousness in keeping our bodies 1
too up to the mark.
1 Do you remember the word of one of the greatest poets of the Middle
Ages?
The soul
Which o'er the body keeps a holy ward,
Placed there by God, yielding alone to Him
The trust He pawe.
o
H
98 THE PARTING WORDS iv
Life is short, as preachers often tell us : that is,
each stage of it is apt to come to an end before
the work which belongs to it is finished. Let us
Act that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Let us be in earnest in work : above all,
because we believe this life to be the beginning of
another, into which we carry with us what we
have been and done here ; because we are work-
ing together with God (remember the Parting
Command !) and He is upholding us in our work
(remember the Parting Promise !) ; because, when
the hour of death approaches, we should wish to
think (like Christ) that we have completed life,
that we have finished the work which was given
us to do, that we have not lost one of those,
Patients or Nurses, who were entrusted to us.
What was the Parting Command ? What was
the Parting Promise ?
We Nurses have just kept Ascension Day and
Whit-Sunday. Shall we Nurses not remember the
Parting Command on Ascension Day to preach
the Gospel to every creature ? And the Parting
Promise : " And lo I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world."
That Command and that Promise were given,
iv PREACHING BY BEING 99
not to the Apostles or Disciples only, but to each
and every one of us Nurses : to each to herself in
her own Ward or Home.
Without the Promise the Command could not
be obeyed. Without we obey the Command the
Promise will not be fulfilled.
Christ tells us what He means by the Command.
He tells us, over and over again : it is by our-
selves, by what we are in ourselves, that we are " to
preach the Gospel." Not what we say, but what
we do, is the Preacher. Not saying " Lord, Lord,"
for how many ungodly things are done and said
in the name of God but " keeping his command-
ments," this it is which " preaches " Him ; it is
the bearing much " fruit," not the saying many
words. God's Spirit leads us rather to be silent
than to speak, to do good works rather than to
say fine things or to write them.
Over and over again, and especially in His first
and last discourses, He insists upon this. He
takes the sweet little child and places it in our
midst : it was as if He had said, " Ah ! that is the
best preacher of you all." And those who have
followed Him best have felt this most.
The most successful preacher the world has
probably seen since St. Paul's time said, some 300
100 A CONTINUAL SERMON iv
years ago, it was by showing an example, not by
delivering a discourse, that the Apostles' work
was really done, that the Gospel was really preached.
And well did he show his own belief in this truth.
For when all was ready for his mission to convert
China to Christianity, and the plague broke out
where he was, he stayed and nursed the plague.
We can, every one of us here present, though
our teaching may not be much, by our lives
" preach a continual sermon, that all who see may
understand." (These words were found in the last
letter, left unfinished, of a native convert of the
" greatest missionary of modern times," Bishop
Patteson, who was martyred in the South Sea
Islands, in September 1871, and this convert with
him. Oh, how he puts us to shame !)
It has happened to me I daresay it has
happened to every one of us to be told by a
Child-Patient, one who had been taught to say its
prayers, that it "was afraid" to kneel down and
"say its prayers" before a whole ward-full of
people. Do we encourage and take care of such
a little child ? Shall we, when we have Wards
under our own charge, take care that the Ward is
kept so that none at proper times shall be " afraid "
to kneel down and say their prayers ? Do we
iv MAKING GOD REAL 101
reflect on the immense responsibility of a Nurse
towards her helpless Sick, who depend upon her
almost entirely for quiet, and thought, and order ?
Do we think that, as was once said, we are to no
one as " rude " as we are to God ?
I believe that one of our St. Thomas' Sisters,
who is just leaving us after years of good work, is
going to set up a " Home " for Sick Children,
where, under her, they will be cared for in all
ways. I am sure that we shall all bid her " God
speed." And I know that many of those who
have gone out from among us, and who are now
Hospital Sisters or Nurses they would not like
me to mention their names do care for their
Patients, Children and all, in all ways. Thank
God for it !
When a Patient, especially a child, sees you
acting in all things as if in the presence of God
and none are so quick to observe it then the
names he or she heard at the Chaplain's or the
Sister's or the Night Nurse's lips become names of
real things and real Persons. There is a God, a
Father ; there is a Christ, a Comforter ; there is
a Spirit of Goodness, of Holiness ; there is another
world, to such an one.
When a Patient, especially a Child, sees us
102 AN EXACT LIKENESS iv
acting as if there were no God, then there but too
often becomes no God to him. Then words be-
come to such a child mere words. And remember,
that when such a Nurse " salt " which has lost
its u savour " speaks to her Patients of God, she
puts a hindrance in their way to keep them from
God, instead of helping them to God. She had
better not speak to them at all.
It is a terrible thought I speak for myself
that we may prevent people from believing in God,
instead of bringing them to " believe in God the
Father Almighty."
What is it, " setting an example " ? An ex-
ample of what ? Who is our example, that we
are to set ? Christ is our example, our pattern :
this we all know and say. And when this was
once said a very common word before a very
uncommon man, he said : " When you have your
picture taken, the painter does not try to make it
rather like, or not very unlike. It is not a good
picture if it is not exactly like." Do we try to be
exactly like Christ ? If we do not, " are we His,
or are we not ? " Could it be said of each one
of us : " That Nurse is (or is trying to be) exactly
what Christ would have been in her place " ?
Yet this is what every Nurse has to aim at.
iv "WITH YOU ALWAY" 103
Aim lower : and you cannot say then, " Christ
is my example." Aim as high : and, after this
life, " we shall be satisfied when we awake in His
likeness."
But this aim cannot be carried out, it cannot
even be entertained, without the Parting Promise.
The Parting Promise was fulfilled to the disciples
ten days afterwards, on Whit-Sunday, when the
Holy Spirit was given them that is, when Christ
came as He promised, and was with them.
Christ comes to each Nurse of us all : and
stands at our little room-door and knocks. Do
we let Him in ?
The Holy Spirit comes, no more with outward
show but with no less inward power, to each
Ward and to each Nurse of us all, who is trying
to do her Nursing and her Ward work in God, to
live her hidden Nurse's life with Christ in God.
When your Patient asks you for a drink, you
do not give him a stone. And shall not our
Heavenly Father much more give His Spirit to
each one of us, His nurses, when she asks Him ?
(Are we His nurses ?)
What is meant by the Spirit descending upon us
Nurses, as it did on the first Whitsuntide ? Is it
not to put us in a state to nurse Him, by making
104 TRUE WORSHIP iv
our heart and our will His ? (He has really told
us that nursing our Patients is nursing Him.)
God asks the heart : that is, that we should conse-
crate all our self to Him within as well as with-
out, within even more than without in doing the
Nursing work He has given each one of us here
to do.
Is it not to have the spirit of love, of courtesy,
of justice, of right, of gentleness, of meekness, in
our Training School ; the spirit of truth, of in-
tegrity, of energy and activity, of purity, which
He /'j, in our Hospital ? This it is to worship
God in spirit and in truth. And we need not wait
to go into a church, or even to kneel down at
prayer, for this worship.
Is it not to feel that we desire really nothing
for ourselves in our Nursing life, present and future,
but only this, " Thy will be done," as we say in
our daily prayer ? Is it not to trust Him, that
His will is really the best for each one of us ?
How much there is in those two words, His will
the will of Almighty Wisdom and Goodness, which
always knows what is best for each one of us Nurses,
which always wills what is best, which always can
do what it wills for our best.
Is it not to feel that the care and thought of
iv "REJOICE IN THE LORD 11 105
ourselves is lost in the thought of God and the
care of our Patients and fellow-Nurses and Ward-
Maids? Is it not to feel that we are never so
happy as when we are working with Him and for
them ? And we Nurses can always do this, if we will.
Is not this what Christ meant when He said,
" The kingdom of heaven is within you " ? " The
kingdom of heaven " consists not in much speak-
ing but in doing, not in a sermon but in a heart.
" The kingdom of heaven " can always be in a
Nurse's blessed work, and even in her worries.
Is not this what the Apostle meant when he told
us to " rejoice in the Lord " ? That is, to rejoice,
whether Matrons, or Sisters, or Nurses, or Night
Nurses, in the service of God (which, with us,
means good Nursing of the Sick, good fellowship
and high example as relates to our fellow-workers);
to rejoice in the right, whoever does it ; to rejoice
in the truth, whoever has it ; to rejoice in every
good word and work, whoever it is ; to rejoice, in
one word, in what God rejoices in.
Let us thank God that some special aids to our
spiritual life have been given us lately, for which
I know many of us are thankful ; and some of us
have been able to keep this Whitsuntide as we
never did before
106 SCHOOL FELLOWSHIP iv
One little word more about our Training School.
Training " consists in teaching people to bear re-
sponsibilities, and laying the responsibilities on
them as they are able to bear them," as Bishop
Patteson said of Education. The year which we
spend here is generally the most important, as it
may be the happiest, of our lives.
Here we find many different characters. Here
we meet on a common stage, before we part com-
pany again to our several posts. If there are any
rich among us, they are not esteemed for their
riches. And the poor woman, the friendless, the
lonely woman, receives a generous welcome.
Every one who has any activity or sense of duty
may qualify herself for a future useful life. Every
one may receive situations without any reference,
except to individual capacity, and to a kind of
capacity which it is within the power of the most
humble and unfriended to work out. Every one
who has any natural kindness or courtesy in her,
and who is not too much wrapped up in herself,
may make pleasant friends.
Although we know how many and serious faults
we have, ought we not also to be able to find here
some virtues which do not equally flourish in the
larger world ? such as disinterested devotion to
iv NO SENTIMENTALISM 107
the calling we have chosen, and to which we can
here fully give ourselves up without anxiety ;
warm-hearted interest in each other, for no one of
us stands here in any other's way ; freedom from
jealousy and meanness ; a generous self-denial in
nursing our charges, and a generous sympathy with
other Nurses ; above all, an interest in our work,
and an earnestness in taking the means given us
to improve ourselves in what is to be so useful to
others.
And this is also the surest sign of our improve-
ment in it. This is what St. Paul calls : " Not
slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the
Lord."
Always, however, we must be above our work
and our worries, keeping our souls free in that
" hidden life " of which it has been spoken.
Above all, let us pray that God will send real
workers into this immense " field " of Nursing,
made more immense this year by the opening out
of London District Nursing at the bedside of the
sick poor at home. A woman who takes a senti-
mental view of Nursing (which she calls a minister-
ing," as if she were an angel), is of course worse
than useless. A woman possessed with the idea
108 DOWNRIGHT WORK iv
that she is making a sacrifice will never do ; and
a woman who thinks any kind of Nursing work
" beneath a Nurse " will simply be in the way. But
if the right woman is moved by God to come to
us, what a welcome we will give her, and how
happy she will soon be in a work, the many
blessings of which none can know as we know
them, though we know the worries too ! (Good
Bishop Patteson used to talk to his assistants
something in this way ; would we were like
him!)
Nurses' work means downright work, in a
cheery, happy, hopeful, friendly spirit. An earnest,
bright, cheerful woman, without that notion of
" making sacrifices," etc., perpetually occurring to
her mind, is the real Nurse. Soldiers are sent
anywhere, and leave home and country for years ;
they think nothing of it, because they go " on
duty." Shall we have less self-denial than they,
and think less of " duty " than these men ? A
woman with a healthy, active tone of mind, plenty
of work in her, and some enthusiasm, who makes
the best of everything, and, above all, does not
think herself better than other people because she
is a " Nightingale Nurse," that is the woman we
want.
iv RECRUITING 109
(Must I tell you again, what I have had to tell
you before, that we have a great name in the world
for conceit ?)
I suppose, of course, that sound religious
principle is at the bottom of her.
Now, if there be any young persons really in
earnest whom any of you could wish to see engaged
in this work, if you know of any such, and feel
justified in writing to them, you will be aiding
materially in this work if you will put it in their
power to propose themselves as Candidates.
My every-day thought is "How will God
provide for the introduction of real Christianity
among all of us Nurses, and among our Patients ? "
My every-day prayer (and I know that the
prayer of many of you is the same) is that He will
give us the means and show us how to use them,
and give us the people. We ask you to pray for
us, who have to arrange for you, as we pray for
you, who have to nurse the Patients ; and I know
you do. The very vastness of the work raises
one's thoughts to God, as the only One by whom
it can be done. That is the solid comfort He
knows. He loves us all, and our Patients infinitely
more than we can. He is, we trust, sending us
to them ; He will bless honest endeavours to do
110 WITH ANGELS iv
His work among them. Without this belief and
support, it seems to me, when we look at the
greatness of the work, and how far, far we fall short
of it, instead of being conceited, we should not
have courage to work at all.
And when we say the words in the Communion
Service " Therefore with angels and archangels,"
do we think whether we are fit company for
angels? It may not be fanciful to believe that
" angels and archangels," to whom all must seem
so different, may see God's light breaking over the
Nursing Service, though perhaps in our time it
may not attain the perfect day. Only we must
work on, and bring no hindrances to that light.
And that not one of us may bring hindrances to
that light, believe me, let us pray daily.
I have been longer than I intended or hoped,
and will only say one more word.
May we each and all of us Nurses be faithful
to the end, remembering this, that no one Nurse
stands alone. May we not say, in the words of
the prophet, that it is "The Lord" who "hath
gathered " us Nurses " together out of the lands " ?
"It is because we do not praise as we proceed,"
said a good and great man, " that our progress is so
iv GATHERED TOGETHER 111
slow." Should not all this Training School be so
melted into one heart and mind, that we may with
one heart and mind act and nurse and sing together
our praise and thanksgiving, blessing and gratitude,
for mercies, every one of which seems to belong to
the whole School ? For every Nurse alike belongs
to the Mother School of which she is a part, and
to the Almighty Father, who has sent her here,
and to whom alone we each and all of us Nurses
owe everything we have and are.
F. N.
April 28, 1876.
MY DEAR FRIENDS, Again another year has
brought us together to rejoice at our successes,
and, if to grieve over some disappointments, to
try together to find out what it is that may have
brought them about, and to correct it.
God seems to have given His favour to the
manner in which you have been working.
Thanks to you, each and all of you, for the
pains you have taken to carry out the work. I
hope you feel how great have been the pains
bestowed upon you.
You are not " grumblers " at all : you do try to
justify the great care given you, the confidence
placed in you, and, after you have left this Home,
the freedom of action you enjoy by that intelligent
obedience to rules and orders, to render which is
alone worthy of the name of " Trained Nurse," of
God's soldier. We shall be poor soldiers indeed,
v THE TRAINED NURSE 113
if we don't train ourselves for the battle. But if
discipline is ever looked upon as interference, then
freedom has become lawlessness, and we are no
" Trained Nurses " at all.
The trained Englishwoman is the first Nurse in
the world : if- IF she knows how to unite this
intelligent obedience to commands with thoughtful
and godly command of herself.
" The greatest evils in life," said one of the
world's highest statesmen, " have had their rise
from something which was thought of too little
importance to attend to." How we Nurses can
echo that !
" Immense, incalculable misery " is due to " the
immoral thoughtlessness " he calls thoughtless-
ness immoral of women about little things. This
is what our training is to counteract in us. Think
nothing too small to be attended to in this way.
Think everything too small of personal trouble
or sensitiveness to be cared for in another way.
It is not knowledge only : it is practice we
want. We only know a thing if we can do it.
There is a famous Italian proverb which says :
"So much" and no more "each knows as
she does."
i
114 ANSWERING THE CALL v
What we did last year we may look upon
not as a matter of conceit, but of encourage-
ment. We must not fail this year, and we'll not
fail. We'll keep up to the mark : nay more,
we will press on to a higher mark. For our
" calling " is a high one (the " little things,"
remember: a high excellence in little things).
And we must answer to the call ever more and
more strenuously and ever more and more
humbly too.
We live together : let us live for each other's
comfort. We are all working together : grasp the
idea of this as a larger work than our own little
pet hobbies, which are very narrow, our own little
personal wishes, feelings, piques, or tempers. This
is not individual work. A real Nurse sinks self.
Remember we are not so many small selves, but
members of a community.
" Little children, love one another." To love,
that is, to help one another, to strive together, to
act together, to work for the same end, to bring
to perfection the sisterly feeling of fellow-workers,
without which nothing great is done, nothing good
lasts. Might not St. John have been thinking of
us Nurses in our Training Schools when he said
that ?
v WORK WE DONT LIKE 115
May God be with us all and we be one in Him
and in His work \
God speed us all !
Amen in our hearts.
These are some of the little things we need to
attend to :
To be a Nurse is to be a Nurse : not to be a
Nurse only when we are put to the work we like.
If we can't work when we are put to the work we
don't like and Patients can't always be fitted to
Nurses that is behaving like a spoilt child, like a
naughty girl : not like a Nurse.
If we can do the work we don't like from the
higher motive till we do like it, that is one test of
being a real Nurse. A Nurse is not one who can
only do what she does like, and can't do what she
does not like. For the Patients want according to
their wants, and not according to the Nurse's likes
or dislikes.
If you wish to be trained to do all Nursing
well, even what you do not like trained to per-
fection in little things that is Nursing for the
sake of Nursing, for the sake of God and of your
116 WHERE HONOUR LIES v
neighbour. And remember, in little things as in
great No Cross, no Crown.
Nursing is said, most truly said, to be a high
calling, an honourable calling.
But what does the honour lie in ? In working
hard during your training to learn and to do all
things perfectly. The honour does not lie in
putting on Nursing like your uniform, your dress ;
though dishonour often lies in being neat in your
uniform within doors and dressy in your finery out
of doors. Dishonour always lies in inconsistency.
Honour lies in loving perfection, consistency,
and in working hard for it : in being ready to
work patiently : ready to say not " How clever I
am ! " but " I am not yet worthy : but Nursing is
worthy ; and I will live to deserve and work to
deserve to be called a Trained Nurse."
Here are two of the plain, practical, little things
necessary to produce good Nurses, the want of
attention to which produces some of the " greatest
evils in life" : quietness, cleanliness. (#) Quietness
in moving about the u Home " ; in arranging your
rooms, in not slamming every door after you. No
noisy talking on the stairs and in the lobbies-
forgetting at times some unfortunate Night Nurse
in bed. But if you are Nurses, Nurses ought to
v PURPOSE IN DRESS 117
be going about quietly whether Night Nurses are
asleep or not. For a Sick Ward ought to be as
quiet as a Sick Room ; and a Sick Room, I need
not say, ought to be the quietest place in God's
Kingdom. Quietness in dress, especially being
consistent in this matter when off duty and going
out. And oh ! let the Lady Probationers realise
how important their example is in these things, so
little and so great ! If you are Nurses, Nurses
ought not to be dressy, whether in or out of their
uniform.
Do you remember that Christ holds up the wild
flowers as our example in dress ? Why ? He says :
God " clothes " the field flowers. How does He
clothe them ?
First : their " clothes " are exactly suitable for
the kind of place they are in and the kind of work
they have to do. So should ours be.
Second : field flowers are never double : double
flowers change their useful stamens for showy
petals, and so have no seeds. These double
flowers are like the useless appendages now
worn on the dress, and very much in your way.
Wild flowers have purpose in all their beauty.
So ought dress to have ; nothing purposeless
about it.
118 DRESSING LIKE FLOWERS v
Third : the colours of the wild flower are
perfect in harmony, and not many of them.
Fourth : there is not a speck on the freshness
with which flowers come out of the dirty earth.
Even when our clothes are getting rather old we
may imitate the flower : for we may make them
look as fresh as a daisy.
Whatsoever we do, whether we eat or drink or
dress, let us do all to the glory of God. But above
all remember, " Be not anxious what ye shall put
on," which is the real meaning of " Take no
thought."
This is not my own idea : it was in a Bible
lesson, never to be forgotten. And I knew a
Nurse who dressed so nicely and quietly after she
had heard this Bible lesson that you would think
of her as a model. And alas ! I have known, oh
how many ! whose dress was their snare.
Oh, my dear Nurses, whether gentlewomen or
not, don't let people say of you that you are like
" Girls of the Period " : let them say that you are
like " field flowers," and welcome.
() Cleanliness in person and in our rooms,
thinking nothing too small to be attended to in
this respect. And if these things are important
in the " Home," think how important they are in
v THE REAL DISINFECTANT 119
the Wards, where cleanliness and fresh air there
can be no pure air without cleanliness not so
much give life as are the very life of the Patients ;
where the smallest carelessness may turn the scale
from life to death ; where Disinfectants, as one of
your own Surgeons has said, are but a " mystic
rite." Cleanliness is the only real Disinfectant.
Remember that Typhoid Fever is distinctly a
filth disease ; that Consumption is distinctly the
product of breathing foul air, especially at night ;
that in surgical cases, Erysipelas and Pyaemia are
simply a poisoning of the blood generally thro'
some want of cleanliness or other. And do not
speak of these as little things, which determine
the most momentous issues of life and death. I
knew a Probationer who when washing a poor
man's ulcerated leg, actually wiped it on his sheet,
and excused herself by saying she had always seen
it done so in another place. The least carelessness
in not washing your hands between one bad case
and another, and many another carelessness which
it is plain I cannot mention here it would not
be nice, though it is much less nice to do it
the least carelessness, I say, in these things
which every Nurse can be careful or careless
in, may cost a life : aye, may cost your own, or
120 GOD'S HEALTH LAWS v
at least a finger. We have all seen poisoned
fingers.
I read with more interest than if they were
novels your case papers. Some are meagre,
especially in the " history." Some are good.
Please remember that, besides your own instruc-
tion, you can give me some too, by making these
most interesting cases as interesting as possible,
by making them full and accurate, and entering
the full history. If the history of every case were
recorded, especially of Typhoid Fever, which is,
as we said, a filth disease, it is impossible to over-
estimate the body of valuable information which
would thus be got together, and might go far, in
the hands of Officers of Health and by recent
laws, to prevent disease altogether. The District
Nurses are most useful in this respect.
When we obey all God's laws as to cleanliness,
fresh air, pure water, good habits, good dwellings,
good drains, food and drink, work and exercise,
health is the result. When we disobey, sickness.
110,000 lives are needlessly sacrificed every year
in this kingdom by our disobedience, and 220,000
people are needlessly sick all the year round.
And why ? Because we will not know, will not
obey God's simple Health laws.
v PHARISEES 121
No epidemic can resist thorough cleanliness and
fresh air.
Is there any Nurse here who is a Pharisee ?
This seems a very cruel and unjust question.
We think of the Pharisees, when we read the
terrible denunciation of them by our Master, as a
small, peculiar, antiquated sect of 2000 years ago.
Are they not rather the least peculiar, the most
widely-spread people of every time? I am sure
I often ask myself, sadly enough, " Am I a
Pharisee ? " In this sense : Am I, or am I not,
doing this with a single eye to God's work, to
serving Him and my neighbour, even tho' my
" neighbour " is as hostile to me as the Jew was
to the Samaritan ? Or am I doing it because I
identify my selfish self with the work, and in
so doing serve myself and not God ? If so, then
I am a Pharisee.
It is good to love our Training School and our
body, and to wish to keep up its credit. We are
bound to do so. That is helping God's work in
the world. We are bound to try to be the " salt
of the world " in nursing ; but if we are conceited,
seeking ourselves in this, then we are not " salt "
but Pharisees.
122 ZEAL FOR WHAT? v
We should have zeal for God's sake and His
work's sake : but some seem to have zeal for
zeal's sake only. Zeal does not make a Christian
Nurse if it is zeal for our own credit and glory
tho' Christ was the most zealous mediciner
that ever was. (He says : " The zeal of God's
house hath eaten me up.") Zeal by itself does
not make a good Nurse : it makes a Pharisee.
Christ is so strong upon this point of not being
conceited, of not nursing to show what "fine
fellows " we are as Nurses, that He actually says
" it is conceited of us to let one of our hands
know what the other does." What will He say
if He sees one of us doing all her work to let not
only her other hand but other people know she
does it ? Yet all our best work which looks so
well may be done from this motive.
And let me tell you a little secret. One of
our Superintendents at a distance says that she
finds she must not boast so much about St.
Thomas'. Nor must you. People have heard
too much about it. I dare say you remember
the fine old Greek statesman who was banished
because people were tired of hearing him called
u The Just." Don't let people get tired of hearing
you call St. Thomas' " The Just " when you are
v THE NURSE IN A NOVEL 123
away from us. We shall not at all complain of
your proving it " The Just " by your training
and conduct.
I read lately in a well-known medical journal,
speaking of the " Nightingale Nurses," that the
day is quite gone by when a novel would give a
caricature of a Nurse as a " Mrs. Gamp " drinking,
brutal, ignorant, coarse old woman. The " Night-
ingale Nurse " in a novel, it said, would be what
do you think? an active, useful, clever Nurse.
These are the parts I approve of. But what else
do you think ? a lively, rather pert, and very con-
ceited young woman. Ah, there's the rub. You
see what our name is " up " for in the world.
That's what I should like to be left out. This is
what a friendly critic says of us, and we may be
very sure that unfriendly critics say much worse.
Do we deserve what they say of us ? That is the
question. Let us not have, each one of us, to say
" yes " in our own hearts. Christ made no light
matter of conceit.
Keep the usefulness, and let the conceit go.
And may I here say a few words of counsel to
those who may be called upon to be Night Nurses ?
One of these asked me with tears to pray for her.
124 NIGHT NURSING v
I do pray for all of you, our dear Night Nurses.
In my restless nights my thoughts turn to you
incessantly by the bedsides of restless and suffering
Patients, and I pray God that He will make, thro'
you, thro' your patience, your skill, your hope,
faith and charity, every Ward into a Church, and
teach us that to be the Gospel is the only way to
u preach the Gospel," which Christ tells us is the
duty of every one of us " unto the end of the
world " every woman and Nurse of us all ; and
that a collection of any people trying to live like
Christ is a Church. Did you ever think how Christ
was a Nurse, and stood by the bed, and with His
own hands nursed and " did for " the sufferers ?
But, to return to those who may be called upon
to be Night Nurses : do not abuse the liberty given
you on emerging from the " Home," where you
are cared for as if you were our children. Keep to
regular hours by day for your meals, your sleep,
your exercise. If you do not, you will never be
able to do and stand the night work perfectly ; if
you do, there is no reason why night nursing may
not be as healthy as day. (I used to be very fond
of the night when I was a Night Nurse ; I know
what it is. But then I had my day work to do
besides ; you have not.) Do not turn dressy in
v STANDING ALONE 125
your goings out by day. It is vulgar, it is mean,
to burst out into freedom in this way. There are
circumstances of peculiar temptation when, after
the restraint and motherly care of the " Home,"
you, the young ones, are put into circumstances of
peculiar liberty. Is it not the time to act like
Daniel ? . . . Let " the Judge, the Righteous
Judge," have to call us not the "Pharisees," but
Daniel's band !
That is what I pray for you, for me, for all of us.
But what is it to be a Daniel's band ? What is
God's command to Night Nurses ? It is is it
not ? not to slur over any duty not the very
least of all our duties as Night Nurse : to be able
to give a full, accurate, and minute account of each
Patient the next morning : to be strictly reserved
in your manner with gentlemen ("Thou God
seest me " : no one else) ; to be honest and true.
You don't know how well the Patients know you,
how accurately they judge you. You can do them
no good unless they see that you live what you say.
It is : not to go out showily dressed, and not to
keep irregular hours with others in the day time.
Dare to have a purpose firm,
Dare to make it known.
Watch watch. Christ seems to have had a
126 MARTHA RICE v
special word for Night Nurses : "I say unto you,
watch." And He says : " Lo, I am with you
alway," when no one else is by.
And he divides us all, at this moment, into the
" wise virgins " and the " foolish virgins." Oh, let
Him not find any " foolish virgins " among our
Night Nurses ! Each Night Nurse has to stand
alone in her Ward.
Dare to stand alone.
Let our Master be able to say some day that
every one of the Patients has been the better, not
only in body but in spirit whether going to life
or to death for having been nursed by each one
of you.
But one is gone, perhaps the dearest of all-
Nurse Martha Rice.
I was the last to see her in England. She was
so pleased to be going to Miss Machin at Montreal.
She said it was no sacrifice, except the leaving her
parents. She almost wished it had been, that she
might have had something to give to God.
Now she has had something to give to God :
her life.
" So young, so happy : all so happy together,
v A NOBLE SORT OF GIRL 127
when in their room they were always sitting round
the table, so cheerful, reading their Bible together.
She walked round the garden so happy that last
night."
So pure and fresh : there was something of the
sweet savour of holiness about her. I could tell
you of souls upon whom she made a great im-
pression : all unknowing : simply by being herself.
A noble sort of girl : sound and holy in mind
and heart : living with God. It is scarcely re-
spectful to say how I liked her, now she is an angel
in heaven ; like a child to Miss Machin, who was
like a mother to her, loved and nursed her day and
night.
" So dear and bright a creature," " liked and
respected by every one in the Hospital," " and, as a
Nurse, hardly too much can be said in her favour."
" To the Doctors, Patients, and Superintendent, she
was simply invaluable." " The contrast between
these Nurses and the best of others is to be keenly
felt daily " ; " doing bravely " ; " perfectly obedient
and pleasant to their Superintendent."
Was Martha conceited with all this ? She was
one of the simplest humblest Christian women I
have ever known. All noble souls are simple,
natural, and humble.
128 A YOUNG NURSE'S DEATH v
Let us be like her, and, like her, not conceited
with it all. She was too brave to be conceited :
too brave not to be humble. She had trained her-
self for the battle.
" With a nice, genial, respectful manner, which
never left her, great firmness in duty, and steadi-
ness that rendered her above suspicion " : " happy
and interested in her charge."
More above all petty calculations about self, all
paltry wranglings, than almost any. How different
for us, for her, had it not been so ! Could we
have mourned her as we do ? The others of the
small Montreal staff who miss her so terribly will
like to hear how we feel this. They were all with
her when she died. Miss Machin sat up with her
every night, and either she or Miss Blower never
left her, day or night, during the last nine days of
her illness. She died of typhoid fever : peritonitis
the last three weeks ; but, as she had survived so
long, they hoped against hope up to Easter Day.
About seven days before her death, during her
delirium, she said : " The Lord has two wills :
His will be done." It is when we do not know
what God's will is to be, that it is the hardest to
will what He wills.
Strange to say, on Good Friday, though she was
v MARTHA RICE 129
so delirious that there was difficulty in keeping
her in bed, and she did not know what day it was,
Christ on the Cross was her theme all the day long.
" Christ died on the Cross for me, and I want to
go and die for Him." She had indeed lived for
Him. Then on Easter Day she said to Miss
Blower : "I am happy, so happy : we are both
happy, so very happy." She said she was going
to hear the eighth Psalm. Shall we remember
Martha's favourite psalm ? She spoke often about
St. Thomas'.
She died the day after Easter Day. The change
came at 7 in the evening, and she lived till 5
o'clock the next morning, conscious to the last,
repeating sentences, and answering by looks when
she could speak no more. Her Saviour, whom
she had so loved and followed in her life, was with
her thro' the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
and she felt Him there. She was happy. " My
best love," she said, "tell them it is all for the
best, and I am not sorry I came out."
Her parents have given her up nobly, though with
bleeding hearts, with true submission to our Father's
will : they are satisfied it is " all for the best."
All the Montreal Hospital shared our sorrow.
The Doctors were full of kindness in their medical
K.
130 A GOOD SOLDIER v
attendance. Mr. Redpath, who is a principal
Director, and Mrs. Redpath were like a real father
and mother to our people. Martha's death-bed
and coffin were strewed with flowers.
Public and private prayers were offered up for
her at Montreal during her illness. Who can say
that they were not answered ?
She spoke of dying : but without fear. We
prayed that God would spare the child to us : but
He had need of her.
Our Father arranged her going out : for she
went, if ever woman did, with a single eye to please
Him and do her duty to the work and her Super-
intendent. " Is it well with the child ? " " It is
well." Let us who feel her loss so deeply in the
work not grudge her to God.
As one of you yourselves said : "She died like
a good soldier of Jesus Christ, well to the front."
Would any one of us wish it otherwise for her ?
Would any one of us wish a better lot for herself ?
There is but one feeling among us all about her :
that she lived as a noble Christian girl, and that
she has been permitted to die nobly : in the post
of honour, as a soldier thinks it glorious to die.
In the midst of our work, so surely do we Nurses
think it glorious to die.
v MARTHA RICE 131
But to be like her we must have a mind like
hers: "enduring, patient, firm, and meek." I
know that she sought of God the mind of Jesus
Christ, " active, like His ; like His, resigned " ;
copying His pattern : ready to "endure hardness."
We give her joy ; it is our loss, not hers. She
is gone to our Lord and her Lord, made ripe so
soon for her and our Father's house. Our tears
are her joy. She is in another room of our Father's
house. She bids us now give thanks for her.
Think of that Easter morn when she rose again !
She had indeed " another morn than ours " that
iyth of April.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
K 2
VI
Easter Eve, 1879, 6 A.M.
MY DEAR FRIENDS, I am always thinking of you,
and as my Easter greeting, I could not help copy-
ing for you part of a letter which one of my
brother-in-law's family had from Col. Degacher
(commanding one battalion of the 24th Regiment
in Natal), giving the names of men whom he
recommended for the Victoria Cross, when defend-
ing the Commissariat Stores at Rorke's Drift.
(His brother, Capt. Degacher, was killed at Isan-
dhlwana.) He says :
" Private John Williams was posted, together
with Private Joseph Williams and Private William
Harrison (i/24th Regiment), in a further ward of
the Hospital. They held it for more than an
hour so long as they had a round of ammunition
left, when, as communication was for the time cut
off, the Zulus were enabled to advance and burst
open the door. A hand-to-hand conflict then
132
vi RORKE'S DRIFT 133
ensued, during which Private Joseph Williams and
two of the Patients were dragged out and assegaied
(killed with a short spear or dagger).
" Whilst the Zulus were occupied with the
slaughter of these unfortunate men, a lull took
place, which enabled Private John Williams (who
with two of the Patients were by this time the only
men left alive in the Ward) to succeed in knocking
a hole in the partition and taking the two Patients
with him into the next ward, where he found
Private Henry Hook.
" These two men together, one man working
whilst the other fought and held the enemy at bay
with his bayonet, broke through three more parti-
tions, and were thus enabled to bring eight Patients
through a small window into the inner line of
defence.
" In another ward facing the hill, William Jones
and Private Robert Jones had been placed : they
defended their post to the last, and until six out
of seven Patients it contained had been removed.
The seventh, Sergeant Maxfield, 2/24th Regiment,
was delirious from fever, and although they had
previously dressed him, they were unable to induce
him to move ; and when Private Robert Jones
returned to endeavour to carry him off, he
134 FIGHTING THROUGH THE NIGHT vi
found him being stabbed on his bed by the
Zulus.
" Corporal Wm. Allen and Fd. Hitch, 2/24th
Regiment, must also be mentioned. It was chiefly
due to their courageous conduct that communica-
tion with the Hospital was kept up at all holding
together, at all costs, a most dangerous post, raked
in reverse by the enemy's fire from the hill. They
were both severely wounded, but their determined
conduct enabled the Patients to be withdrawn from
the Hospital. And when incapacitated from their
wounds from fighting themselves, they continued,
as soon as their wounds were dressed, to serve out
ammunition to their comrades throughout the
night."
These men who were defending the house at
Rorke's Drift were 120 of his (Col. Degacher's)
men against 5000 Zulus, and they fought from
3 P.M. of January 22nd, to 5 A.M. of the 2jrd.
There is a Night Nurse's work for you. " When
shall such heroes live again ? " In every Nurse
of us all. Every Nurse may at all costs serve her
Patients as these brave heroic men did at the risk
and the cost of their own lives.
Three cheers for these bravest of Night Nurses
of Rorke's Drift, who regarded not themselves,
vi COMRADESHIP 135
not their ease, not even their lives ; who regarded
duty and discipline ; who stood to the last by
God and their neighbour ; who saved their post
and their Patients. And may we Nurses all be
like them, and fight through the night for our
Patients' lives fight through every night and
day !
Do you see what a high feeling of comradeship
does for these men ? Many a soldier loses his life
in the field by going back to help a drowning or
a wounded comrade, who might have saved it.
Oh, let us Nurses all be comrades ; stick to the
honour of our flag and our corps, and help each
other to the best success, for the sake of Him
who died, as at this time, to save us all !
And let us remember that petty selfishnesses
and meannesses and self-indulgences hinder our
honour as good soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the
Unseen God, who sees all these little things when
no one else does !
What makes us endure to the end ? Discipline.
Do you think these men could thus have fought
at a desperate post through the livelong night if
they had not been trained to obedience to orders,
and to acting as a corps, yet each man doing his
own duty to the fullest extent rather than every
136 DISCIPLINE vi
man going his own way, thinking of his own
likings, and caring for himself ?
How great may be men and women, " little
lower than the angels," and also how little \
Humility to think our own life worth nothing
except as serving in a corps, God's nursing corps,
unflinching obedience, steadiness, and endurance in
carrying out His work that is true discipline,
that is true greatness, and may God give it to us
Nurses, and make us His own Nurses.
And let us not think that these things can be
done in a day or a night. No, they are the result
of no rough-and-ready method. The most im-
portant part of those efforts was to be found in
the patient labour of years. These great tasks
are not to be accomplished suddenly by raw fellows
in a night ; it is when discipline and training have
become a kind of second nature to us that they
can be accomplished every day and every night.
The raw Native levies ran away, determining our
fall at Isandhlwana. The well-trained English
soldiers, led by their Officers and their Non-
commissioned Officers, stuck to their posts.
Every feeling, every thought we have, stamps
a character upon us, especially in our year of
training, and in the next year or two.
vi PROMPT OBEDIENCE 137
The most unruly boys, weak in themselves
for unruliness is weakness when they have to
submit, it brings out all the good points in their
characters. These boys, so easily led astray, they
put themselves under the severest discipline, and
after training sometimes come out the best of us
all. The qualities which, when let alone, run to
seed and do themselves and others nothing but
harm, under proper discipline make fine fellows
of them.
And what is it to obey ? To obey means to do
what we are told, and to do it at once. With the
nurse, as with the soldier, whether we have been
accustomed to it or not, whether we think it right
or not, is not the question. Prompt obedience is
the question. We are not in control, but under
control. Prompt obedience is the first thing ; the
rest is traditional nonsense. But mind who we go
to for our orders. Go to headquarters. True
discipline is to uphold authority, and not to mind
trouble. We come into the work to do the
work. . . .
We Nurses are taught the " reason why," as
soldiers cannot be, of much of what we have to
do. But it would be making a poor use of this
" reason why " if we were to turn round in any
138 OBEDIENCE vi
part of our training and say, or not say, but feel
We know better than you.
Would we be of less use than the Elephant ?
The Elephant who could kill a hundred men, but
who alike pushes the artillery train with his head
when the horses cannot move it, and who minds
the children and carefully nurses them, and who
threads a needle with his trunk. Why ? Because
he has been taught to obey. He would be of no
use but to destroy, unless he had learnt that.
Sometimes he has a strong will, and it is not easy
for him to get his lesson perfect. We can feel
for him. We know a little about it ourselves.
But he does learn in time to go our way and not
his own, to carry a heavy load, which of course
he would rather not do, to turn to which ever side
we wish, and to stop when we want him to stop.
So God teaches each one of us in time to go
His way and not our own. And one of the best
things I can wish each one of us is that we may
learn the Elephant's lesson, that is to obey, in
good time and not too late.
Pray for me, my dear friends, that I may learn
it, even in my old age.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
VII
LONDON, May 16, 1888.
MY DEAR FRIENDS, Here, one year more, is my
very best love and heart-felt " good speed " to the
work.
To each and to all I wish the very highest
success, in the widest meaning of the word, in the
life's work you have chosen.
And I am more sorry than for anything else
that my illness, more than usually serious, has let
me know personally so little of you, except through
our dear Matron and dear Home Sister.
You are going steadily and devotedly on in
preparing yourselves for future work. Accept my
heartiest sympathy and thanks.
We hear much of " Associations " now. It is
impossible indeed to live in isolation : we are
dependent upon others for the supply of all our
wants, and others upon us.
Every Hospital is an " Association " in itself.
139
140 LIVING MEMBERS vn
We of this School are an Association in the deepest
sense, regulated at least we strive towards it on
high and generous principles ; through organisa-
tion working at once for our own and our fellow
Nurses' success. For, to make progress possible,
we must make this interdependence a source of
good : not a means of standing still.
There is no magic in the word " Association,"
but there is a secret, a mighty call in it, if we will
but listen to the " still small voice " in it, calling
upon each of us to do our best.
It calls upon our dear heads, and they answer.
It calls upon each of us.
We must never forget that the " Individual "
makes the Association. What the Association is
depends upon each of its members. A Nurses'
Association can never be a substitute for the
individual Nurse. It is she who must, each in her
measure, give life to the Association, while the
Association helps her.
We have our dear heads. Thank God for
them ! Let us each one of us be a living member,
according to her several ability. It is the individual
that signifies rather than the law or the rule.
Has not every one who has experience of the
world been struck by this : you may have the
vii INDIVIDUAL WORK 141
most admirable circumstances and organisations
and examinations and certificates, yet, if the in-
dividual allows herself to sink to a lower level, it
is all but a " tinkling cymbal " for her. It is
how the circumstances are worked that signifies.
Circumstances are opportunities.
Rules may become a dead letter. It is the
spirit of them that " giveth life." It is the in-
dividual, inside, that counts, the level she is upon
which tells. The rest is only the outward shell or
envelope. She must become a " rule of thought "
to herself through the Ruler.
And on the other hand, it strikes you often, as
a great man has said, if the individual finds herself
O '
afterwards in less admirable circumstances, but
keeps her high level, and rises to a higher and a
higher level still if she makes of her difficulties,
her opportunities steps to ascend she commands
her circumstances ; she is capable of the best
Nursing work and spirit, capable of the best
influence over her Patients.
It is again, what the individual Nurse is and
can do during her living training and living work
that signifies, not what she is certified for, like a
steam-boiler, which is certified to stand so much
pressure of work.
142 CERTIFICATES MI
She may have gone through a first-rate course,
plenty of examinations, and we may find nothing
inside. It may be the difference between a Nurse
nursing, and a Nurse reading a book on Nursing.
Unless it bear fruit, it is all gilding and veneering :
the reality is not there, growing, growing every
year. Every Nurse must grow. No Nurse can
stand still. She must go forward or she will go
backward every year.
And how can a Certificate or public Register
show this ? Rather, she ought to have a moral
" Clinical " Thermometer in herself. Our stature
does not grow every year after we are "grown
up." Neither does it grow down. It is otherwise
with our moral stature and our Nursing stature.
We grow down, if we don't grow up, every year.
At the present time, when there are so many
Associations, when periodicals and publicity are so
much the fashion, when there is such a dragging
of everything before the public, there is some
danger of our forgetting that any true Nursing
work must be quiet work an individual work.
Anything else is contrary to the whole realness of
the work. Where am /, the individual, in my
inmost soul ? What am /, the inner woman called
" I " ? That is the question.
vii PROFESSION 143
This " I " must be quiet yet quick ; quick
without hurry ; gentle without slowness, discreet
without self-importance. " In quietness and in
confidence must be her strength."
I must be trustworthy, to carry out directions
intelligently and perfectly, unseen as well as seen ;
" unto the Lord " as well as unto men ; no mere
eye service. (How can this be if she is a mere
Association Nurse, and not an individual Nurse ?)
I must have moral influence over my Patients.
And I can only have this by being what I appear,
especially now that everybody is educated, so that
Patients become my keen critics and judges. My
Patients are watching me. They know what my
profession, my calling is : to devote myself to the
good of the sick. They are asking themselves :
does that Nurse act up to her profession ? This
is no supposition. It is a fact. It is a call to
us, to each individual Nurse, to act up to her
profession.
We hear a good deal nowadays about Nursing
being made a " profession." Rather, is it not
the question for me : am I living up to my
" profession " ?
But I must not crave for the Patient to be
always recognising my services. On the contrary :
144 A WORK, NOT A WORD vii
the best service I can give is that the Patient
shall scarcely be aware of any shall recognise my
presence most by recognising that he has no wants.
(Shakespeare tells me that to be " nurse like "
is to be to the Patient
So kind, so duteous, diligent,
So tender over his occasions, true,
So feat.)
I must be thorough a work, not a word a
Nurse, not a book, not an answer, not a certificate,
not a mechanism, a mere piece of a mechanism or
Association.
At the same time, in as far as Associations
really give help and pledges for progress, are not
mere crutches, stereotypes for standing still, let us
bid them " God speed " with our whole hearts.
We all know what " parasites " are, plants or
animals which live upon others and don't work
for their own food, and so degenerate. For the
work to get food is quite as necessary as the food
itself for healthy active life and development.
Now, there is a danger in the air of becoming
Parasites in Nursing (and also Midwifery) of
our becoming Nurses (and Midwives) by deputy,
a danger now when there is so great an inclination
to make school and college education, all sorts of
vii PARASITES 145
Sciences and Arts, even Nursing and Midwifery,
a book and examination business, a profession in
the low, not in the high sense of the word. And
the danger is that we shall be content to let the
book and the theory and the words do for us.
One of the most religious of men says that we let
the going to Church and the clergyman do for us
instead 0/~the learning and the practice, if we have
the Parasite tendency, and that even the better
the service and the better the sermon and the
theory and the teaching, the more danger there is
that we may let it do. He says that we may
become satisfied to be prayed for instead of
praying to have our work for Christ done by a
paid deputy to be fed by a deputy who gives us
our supply for a week to substitute for thought
what is meant as a stimulus to thought and
practice. This is the parasite of the pew he says
(as the literary parasite thinks he knows everything
because he has a " good library "). He enjoys
his weekly, perhaps his daily worship, while
character and life, will and practice are not only
not making progress, but are actually deteriorat-
ing.
Do you remember Tennyson's farmer, who
says of the clergyman :
146 PRACTICE
VII
I 'card 'urn a bummin' awaiiy . . . ower my 'ead, . . .
An' I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a said an' I coom'd awaay.
We laugh at that. But is the Parasite much
better than that ?
Now the Ambulance Classes, the Registration,
the Certificates of Nursing and of Nurses (and of
midwifery), especially any which may demand
the minimum of practice, which may substitute for
personal progress in active proficiency, mere
literary or word progress, instead of making it the
material for growth in correct knowledge and
practice, all such like things may tend this way.
It is not the certificate which makes the Nurse
or the Midwife. It may un-make her. The
danger is lest she let the certificate be instead of
herself, instead of her own never ceasing going up
higher as a woman and a Nurse.
This is the " day " of Examinations in the
turn that Education Elementary, the Higher
Education, Professional Education seems taking.
And it is a great step which has substituted this
for what used to be called " interest." Only let
us never allow it to encroach upon what cannot
be tested by examinations. Only let the " day "
of Practice, the development of each individual's
thought and practice, character and dutifulness,
vii FAITHFUL ACTION 147
keep up, through the materials given us for growth
and for correct knowledge, with the u day of
examinations " in the Nurse's life, which is above
all a moral and practical life, a life not of show,
but of faithful action.
But above all, dear comrades, let each one
of us, each individual of us, not only bid " God
speed " in her heart to this, our own School (or
Association call it so if you will), but strive to
speed it with all the best that is in her, even as
your " Association " and its dear heads strive to
speed each one of you.
Let each one of us take the abundant and
excellent food for the mind which is offered us,
in our training, our classes, our lectures, our
examinations and reading not as "Parasites,"
no, none of you will ever do that but as bright
and vigorous fellow - workers, working out the
better way every day to the end of life.
Once more, my heartiest sympathy, my dearest
love to each and to all of you,
from your ever faithful old comrade,
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
Printed by K. & K. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
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