Hospital housekeeping is intensely practical business. If it is to be successfully and satisfactorily conducted, it demands that the housekeeper be a woman of no inferior or uncertain attainments. All the elements that make for success in home housekeeping, and many more, are needed in a hospital. There must be breadth of vision, the qualities of an organizer, the ability to deal with large problems, a keen sense of justice, and the executive force needed to manage, without fear, fuss or favor, the various classes of people that touch the housekeeper’s realm. Many a man who is a success in managing a village store would utterly fail when placed in charge of even one section of a great department store. And the same may be said of the average woman in hospital housekeeping. Apart from the special knowledge of the business, that comes only by diligent study, accurate observation and experience—never by accident—the housekeeper needs special qualities of mind and heart. Indeed, special qualifications are needed by every one whose life work is to be wrought out in an institution. A hospital or any institution that has to deal with infirm, aged or unfortunate members of society, is no place for a person of strong racial antipathies. It is no place for the tale-bearer or the gossip, nor for the person who has a grudge against fate and feels she has never received justice. It is no place for the person who is discouraged, or who assumes the air of a martyr, and leads a crushed life, bemoaning the fact that her highest motives and best efforts are never appreciated. Those who would live happily in an institution must be prepared to be misunderstood, and fortified against discouragement from that source. Sympathy with the aims of the institution is a primary qualification. No one should enter an institution as a worker, and especially as head of a department, who is not prepared to have her interests centered in the people for whose benefit the institution was brought into existence. Ability to see things from more than one standpoint, to work comfortably with different classes of people, an infinite capacity for detail, and systematic business habits—these are a few of the qualities that should characterize the woman who undertakes to manage the domestic affairs of a hospital. It need hardly be mentioned that she needs a healthy body and a strong constitution. The hospital housekeeper needs, if anyone needs it, reliability of judgment, and poise of soul. If she is to control others, she must know how to control herself. The ability to reprimand without arousing antagonism must be hers. She should endeavor to cultivate the feeling of personal responsibility in all over whom she has authority, and to make them understand that the success of an institution depends not on perfection of equipment, nor in numbers, but in thorough co-ordination of the work in all the departments, and faithful service on the part of all.