Believe me, there will come a time when all such troubles will simply seem ridiculous to us, and we shall be unable to imagine how we could ever have been the victims of them. (One of your number told me this herself. She has left St. Thomas’ for another post.) Let us not brood or sentimentalise over them. They should be met in a common-sense way. How much of our time has been spent in grieving over these trifles, how little in the real sorrow for sin, the real struggle for improvement. 4. As for obedience to rules and our superiors: “True obedience,” said one of the most efficient people who ever lived, “obeys not only the command, but also the intention” of those who have a right to command us. Of course, this is a truism: the thing is, _how to do it_. As it is a struggle, it requires a brave and intrepid spirit, which helps us to rise above trifles and look to God, and His leadings for us. Oh, when death comes, how sorry we shall be to have watched others so much and ourselves so little; to have dug so much in the field of others’ consciences and left our own fallow! What should we say of a “Leopold” Nurse who should try to nurse in “Edward” Ward, and neglect her own “Leopold”? Well, that is what we do. Or who should wash her patients’ hands and not her own? It is of ourselves and not of others that we must give an account. Let us look to our own consciences as we do to our own hands, to see if they are dirty. We take care of our dress, but do we take care of our words? It is a very good rule to say and do nothing but what we can offer to God. Now we cannot offer Him backbiting, petty scandal, misrepresentation, flirtation, injustice, bad temper, bad thoughts, jealousy, murmuring, complaining. Do we ever think that we bear the responsibility of all the harm we do in this way? Look at that busybody who fidgets, gossips, makes a bustle, always wanting to domineer, always thinking of herself, as if she wanted to tell the sun to get out of her way and let her light the world in its place, as the proverb says. And when we might do all our actions and say all our words as unto God! So many imperfections; so many thoughts of self-love; so many selfish satisfactions that we mix with our best actions! And when we might offer them all to God. What a pity! 5. One word more for the Ladies, or those who will have to train and look after others. What must she be who is to be a Ward or “Home” Sister? We see her in her nobleness and simplicity: being, not seeming: without name or reward in this world: “clothed” in her “righteousness” merely, as the Psalms would say, _not_ in her dignity: often having no gifts of money, speech, or strength: but never preferring seeming to being.