This is the “day” of Examinations in the turn that Education--Elementary, the Higher Education, Professional Education--seems taking. And it is a great step which has substituted this for what used to be called “interest.” Only let us never allow it to encroach upon what cannot be tested by examinations. Only let the “day” of _Practice_, the development of each individual’s thought and practice, character and dutifulness, keep up, through the materials given us for growth and for correct knowledge, with the “day of examinations” in the Nurse’s life, which is above all a moral and practical life, a life not of show, but of faithful action. But above all, dear comrades, let each one of us, each individual of us, not only bid “God speed” in her heart to this, our own School (or Association--call it so if you will), but _strive_ to _speed_ it with all the best that is in her, even as your “Association” and its dear heads strive to speed each one of you. Let each one of us take the abundant and excellent food for the mind which is offered us, in our training, our classes, our lectures, our examinations and reading--not as “Parasites,” no, none of you will ever do that--but as bright and vigorous fellow-workers, working out the better way every day to the end of life. Once more, my heartiest sympathy, my dearest love to each and to all of you, from your ever faithful old comrade, FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. FOOTNOTES: [1] The beginning of the first address will suggest a reason for this turn of phrase. A nurse who had been through training might not always be “worthy of the name of ‘Trained Nurse’” (Address of 1876). [2] There is a well-known Society abroad (for charitable works) of which the Members go through a two years’ probation on their first entering, but after ten years they return and go through a second probation of one year. This is one of the most striking recognitions I know of the fact that progress is always to be made: that grown-up people, even of middle-age, ought always to have their education going on. But only those _can_ learn _after_ middle age who have gone on learning up to middle age. [3] The Madre Santa Colomba, of the Convent of the Trinità dei Monti in Rome.--EDITOR’S NOTE. [4] There is a most suggestive story told of one, some 300 years ago, an able and learned man, who presented himself for admission into a Society for Preaching and Charitable Works. He was kept for many months on this query: _Are you a Christian?_ by his “Master of Probationers.” He took kindly and heartily to it; went with his whole soul and mind into this little momentous question, and solved it victoriously in his own course, and in his after course of usefulness for others. Am I a Christian? is most certainly the first and most important question for each one of us Nurses. Let us ask it, each of herself, every day.