A few weeks afterwards, the city petitioned to have a number of women instructed in the practice of midwifery. These women were all experienced nurses, who had taken the liberty to practise this art to a greater or less extent from what they had learned of it while nursing; and, to put an end to this unlawful practice, they had been summoned before an examining committee, and the youngest and best educated chosen to be instructed as the law required. Dr. Müller, the pathologist, was appointed to superintend the theoretical, and Dr. Ebert the practical, instruction. Dr. Müller, who never had given this kind of instruction before, and who was a special friend of mine, immediately surrendered the whole into my hands; while Dr. Ebert, whose time was almost wholly absorbed in the department of the diseases of children, appointed me as his assistant. Both gentlemen gave me certificates of this when I determined to emigrate to America. The marked preference for my wards that had always been shown by the male students was shared by these women when they came. Sister Catherine was neither ambitious nor envious; yet she felt that she was the second in place. Drs. Müller and Ebert never addressed themselves to her; neither did they impress the nurses and the servants with the idea that she was any thing more than the head-nurse. All these things together made her a spy; and, though nothing happened for which I could be reproved, all that I said and did was watched and secretly reported. Under a despotic government, the spy is as necessary as the corporal. The annoyance of this reporting is, that the secrecy exists only for the one whom it concerns; while the subaltern officers and servants receive hints that such a person is kept under constant surveillance. When it was found that no occasion offered to find fault with me, our administrative inspector was removed, and a surly old corporal put in his place, with the hint that the government of the hospital thought that the former inspector did not perform his duty rightly, since he never reported disturbance in a ward that had been notorious as being the most disorderly in former times. The truth was, that, in my innocence of heart, I had been striving to gain the respect and friendship of my enemies by doing my work better than any before me had done. To go to bed at night regularly was a thing unknown to me. Once I was not undressed for twenty-one days and nights; superintending and giving instructions on six or eight confinement cases in every twenty-four hours; lecturing three hours every afternoon to the class of midwives; giving clinical lectures to them twice a week, for an hour in the morning; superintending the care of some twenty infants, who were epidemically attacked with purulent ophthalmia; and having, besides, the general supervision of the whole department. But all this could not overcome the hostility of my enemies, the chief cause of which lay in the