My family as you may guess, kicked up a horrid clamor at the idea of my entering for training here. The poor dears! I suppose it _was_ a shock! As usual, I was called absolutely hard, unfeeling, etc. However, they did not say the final word to prevent my coming, suspecting perhaps, an alternative even more dreadful. I didn’t tell them until my bag was packed, and I was ready to walk out of the house. Thus the scene was confined to one tempestuous half hour. I hadn’t told a soul else. Of course I have been getting letters in sheaves since I arrived. Sickening, isn’t it, how people give themselves away when they take their pens in hand? One or two of my friends wrote praising me for the step I had taken. Those letters infuriated me. I mean, that anybody should have the cheek to impute pious motives to me. I wrote deliberately insulting replies. Yet I suppose you’d call them my best friends. You don’t need to tell me that I am acting a bad part. I know it. How can I help myself? I have heard nothing from you. Perhaps you didn’t know where I was, since it has been kept out of the papers. As a probationer they have set me to work cleaning up the diet kitchens, dispensaries, etc. I have learned to scrub. Actually! Right down on my marrow bones with brush and pail. If the Avenue could see me now! We work from seven to seven. It’s a ghastly grind, because they deliberately overwork us at first in order to weed out the weak sisters. Well, I’m strong. I can stand it, but I’m getting as gaunt as an alley cat. On my afternoons off, I dress up in my most flaunting clothes, and rouge my cheeks, and sally forth.—And then I come back again! Never let anybody persuade you that there’s any dignity in filthy labor! Nor that it conduces to serenity of mind! I wouldn’t mind if there was any _use_ in it. Oh, God! how I hate this place! I can’t imagine why I ever came here. I can’t give it up either, after all the fuss that everybody has kicked up. The girls of my lot here have made a sort of hero out of me. They’re poor creatures. This is bad for me, because it leads me into a swagger. I’ve been in hot water more than once. I can’t stomach these head nurses, etc. Take a barren, starved woman, and give her authority over a lot of blooming, sniggering girls, and the result is hellish.