If one physician is unskillful or unprincipled, the whole profession is not found fault with, but the individual is blamed and another one found who will do better, but it is not so in most cases where a nurse proves unsatisfactory. The whole profession suffers and every nurse sinks more or less if one of her sister nurses commits an indiscretion, or does any of the thousand things she ought not to do. I recollect very well, many years ago, a Brooklyn nurse, of about thirty-five years, married her patient, a boy nineteen years old. It made a great stir in the city, and, as I was living there at the time and the superintendent of a training school, I had to bear my share of the odium cast upon all nurses. For months after, almost every one I met took pains to tell me that hereafter they would keep their young sons out of the clutches of the designing nurse, and I doubt not, such slighting remarks were borne by every nurse in town, and it was not pleasant, to say the least of it, for any of us. Keep your standards high. Let nothing but the very best satisfy you, as far as you and your work are concerned. Keep your mind well informed; if it is full of scientific facts, of skillful methods, of good literature, or fine pictures, there will be no room in it for the memory of all the disagreeable things every one must encounter in one's work, and if you do not remember them, you cannot tell others of them. Finally, remember (and this lies at the root of it all) to keep your hearts right,--ever thankful that you are permitted to pursue this high calling, and ever striving to be more worthy of it, with many prayers that your life and conduct may show, what is better _lived_ than talked about, the grace and peace of God, which verily do pass man's understanding. IV THE NURSE AND HER PATIENT'S FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND SERVANTS Try to realize when you go to a house where there is dangerous illness, that the family is glad to see you when you come. You have come to help them, to stay with them, to comfort them by your presence, by your knowledge, by your experience. They have needed you, have sent for you, and are to pay you for your time. There is a general sense of relief when you are once fairly installed in your place by the bedside, yet you are a stranger. Your friend, the doctor, has told them what a treasure you are. Mrs. This and Mr. That have perhaps let them know how invaluable you were when at their houses; but yet they must look at you a little, they must note if you make a pleasant impression on the invalid, if you are as skillful here as you were somewhere else, if you look with scorn on the plain furniture, or how much you will be displeased that the bath-room is at the other end of the house. They do not feel exactly critical: they are too tired or too anxious for that; but still, unless everyone is too exhausted from watching to do anything but thankfully surrender everything to you, you will be pretty closely looked after at first.