2. Another woman[3] once said to me:--“I was taught in my Training School never to have those long inward discussions with myself, those interminable conversations inside myself, which make up so much more of our own thoughts than we are aware. If it was something about my duties, I went straight to my Superiors, and asked for leave or advice; if it was any of those useless or ill-tempered thoughts about one another, or those that were put over us, we were taught to lay them before God and get the better of them, before they got the better of us.” A spark can be put out while it is a spark, if it falls on our dress, but not when it has set the whole dress in flames. So it is with an ill-tempered thought against another. And who will tell how much of our thoughts these occupy? I suppose, of course, that those who think themselves better than others are bent upon setting them a better example. II And this brings me to something else. (I can always correct others though I cannot always correct myself.) It is about jealousies and punctilios as to ranks, classes, and offices, when employed in one good work. What an injury this jealous woman is doing, not to others, or not to others so much as to herself; she is doing it to herself! She is not getting out of her work the advantage, the improvement to her own character, the nobleness (for to be useful is the only true nobleness) which God has appointed her that work to attain. She is not getting out of her work what God has given it her for; but just the contrary. (Nurses are not children, but women; and if they can’t do this for themselves, no one can for them.) I think it is one of Shakespeare’s heroes who says “I laboured to be wretched.” How true that is! How true it is of some people all their lives; and perhaps there is not one of us who could not say it with truth of herself at one time or other: I laboured to be mean and contemptible and small and ill-tempered, by being revengeful of petty slights. A woman once said: “What signifies it to me that this one does me an injury or the other speaks ill of me, if I do not deserve it? The injury strikes God before it strikes me, and if He forgives it, why should not I? I hope I love Him better than I do myself.” This may sound fanciful; but is there not truth in it? What a privilege it is, the work that God has given us Nurses to do, if we will only let Him have His own way with us--a greater privilege to my mind than He has given to any woman (except to those who are teachers), because _we_ can always be useful, always “ministering” to others, real followers of Him who said that He came “not to be ministered unto” but to minister. Cannot we fancy Him saying to _us_, If any one thinks herself greater among you, let her minister unto others.