if this be so in ordinary life, how much more complicated do matters become when the patient is too weak to bear to be removed for the necessary shaking, and is yet in a state to feel every discomfort with added force. Indeed, so true is this, that in serious illness, a feather-bed may be reckoned as an invincible enemy to comfort and cleanliness; and it is better not to allow your patient to remain under such unfavourable circumstances, even though it involve a few hours of dissatisfied grumbling. It may make things easier if the change is ushered in by allowing the feather-bed to remain under the mattress till the patient has become accustomed to the new order of things, when it will be well to substitute flock for feathers. If the nurse’s height will allow of two mattresses, it is a good plan to alternate them so that the under one of yesterday shall be the upper one of to-day. Those who have not tried this simple way of securing a change, will hardly believe the comfort it affords to a helpless patient. On the same principle, it is a great alleviation to the monotony of long illness if the room will allow of two beds, one for day, the other for night; and this arrangement permits the thorough airing of bed and bedding, which it is otherwise so difficult to secure. Bed-hangings are happily following the lead of the ancient four-poster, and will soon be only remembered as things of the past; and in illness, even the valance, still in use, had better be banished. Pillows should be firm and not too soft; and bolsters should have covers of their own, and not be rolled round in the under-sheet, according to a common and very shiftless process. I have known the sheet to be tucked round the bolster in such a careless way that by the patient’s merely getting into bed it has been pulled out of place, and has continued a fruitful source of irritation for the rest of the day. How to keep the under-sheet smooth and free alike from crumbs and wrinkles is one of the professed nurse’s arts, and is just one of those apparently small matters, neglected as such by inexperience, which make home-nursing the unsatisfactory thing it often is. Yet those who have gone through a tedious illness can hardly fail to remember the discomfort of what a tiny patient used to call ‘rucks.’ To him, poor little man, rucks made stopping in bed a misery; and his incessant demands to have them removed, suggested to even his inexperienced nurse the idea that there might be a right and a wrong way to such a commonplace thing as bed-making. The right and only proper way of arranging a bed for illness is to give special, minute attention to the placing of under-blanket and sheet. If the former can be dispensed with, especially in summer-time, it will be well; but very few patients will agree to this, and it is hardly of sufficient importance to argue about, except in special cases, when the doctor will probably give his veto.