Another step in the ladder of success is a good business training from early youth. By this I mean correctness in listening to every word spoken, accuracy of observation, and logical deduction. Every faculty must be, as it were, on the alert and yet kept under the control of judgment. Yet there may be sound health, good education, and carefully trained faculties, and still a something lacking for success in life as physician. I call it a power of adaptation to the various temperaments and conditions of humanity; a moral courage; an ability to step forward and seek opportunities for practice; a kind of self-confidence and fearlessness in entering every class of life. Thus equipped, and backed by friends or pecuniary means to sustain the respectability of the beginner during the first few years of her attempts to seek practice, a young woman has still to overcome prejudices and obstacles which are not easily described, for they are of an intangible nature, relating sometimes to personal appearance and oftener to that indefinable quality--tact. Yet notwithstanding all these difficulties, it is far easier to-day for a woman to establish herself as physician than it was thirty years ago. The annoyance and tribulations which we pioneers had to endure were far greater than the natural ones which have always to be overcome. For women physicians were then looked upon not only as intruders upon the field hitherto occupied by men alone, but also as disreputable persons and they were constantly confounded with the women who, prefixing “Dr.” to their names, carried on a foul and illegal practice. So great was the prejudice against the first women physicians that friends and acquaintances hesitated to invite them into their social circles. Yet in spite of this hostility, I was inclined to encourage other women to study medicine; for, inexperienced like all young people and more enthusiastic than most, I imagined that every one who expressed a desire for some active work was as willing and as well prepared to undergo hardships and privations as I myself was. Years have made me wiser and, consequently, more cautious in advising these young seekers. Every physician, man or woman, who has acquired prominence through ability, finds himself or herself placed in the position of adviser to youth. No one claims infallibility in judgment; great talent is not always recognizable to the wisest counselor; but the duty is the same for all--a conscientious statement of what the medical profession demands. Its difficulties and the various obstacles should be stated clearly to the young man or woman who is so often dazzled by the brilliant success of the few, forgetting the many who are plodding along in economical, modest paths or have retired entirely, and who are therefore unknown.