She who is best fitted is often the least inclined to rule: but if the necessity is laid upon her, she takes it up as a message from God. And she must no longer live in her own thoughts, making a heaven or hell of her own. For if she does not make a heaven for others, her charge will soon become something else. She must never become excited: and therefore I do impress upon you regularity and punctuality, and never to get hurried. Those often get most excited who are least in earnest. She who is fierce with her Nurses, her patients, or her ward-maid, is not truly above them: she is below them: and, although a harsh ward-mistress to her patients or Nurses, has no real superiority over them. There is no impudence like that of ignorance. Each night let us come to a knowledge of ourselves before going to rest: as the Psalm says: “Commune with your own heart upon your bed, _and be still_.” Is it possible that we who live among the sick and dying can be satisfied not to make _friends_ with _God_ each night? The future Sister should be neither mistress nor servant, but the _friend_ of every woman under her. If she is mistress of others when she is not mistress of herself, her jealous, faithless temper grows worse with command (oh, let not this be the case with any of us!)--wanting everything of everybody, yet not knowing how to get it of anybody. Always in fear, confusion, suspicion, and distraction, she becomes more and more faithless, envious, unrighteous, the cause of wretchedness to herself and others. She who has no control over herself, who cannot master her own temper, how can she be placed over others, to control them through the better principle? But she who is the most royal mistress of herself is the only woman fit to be in charge. For this is the whole intention of training, education, supervision, superintendence: to give self-control, to train or nurse up in us a higher principle; and when this is attained, you may go your ways safely into the world. But she who nurses, and does not nurse up in herself the “infant Christ,” who should be born again in us every day, is like an empty syringe--it pumps in only wind. The future Sister must be not of the governessing but of the Saviour turn of mind. Let her reason with the unjust woman who is not intentionally in error. She must know how to give good counsel, which will advise what is best under the circumstances; not making a lament, but finding a cure; regarding _that_ only as “bettering” their situation which _makes them better_. She must know and teach “how to refuse the evil and choose the good,” as Isaiah says. She must have an iron sense of truth and right for herself and others, and a golden sense of love and charity for them.