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. III _July 23rd, 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 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, 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.: