published by American Motherhood, 188 Main Street, Cooperstown, New York; Publications of the American Association of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, New York City, JOURNAL OF NURSING, February, 1912. One last word and I have finished. Be careful, oh so careful, that your instructions are acceptable, that your pupil is anxious to be taught. Most mothers are anxious on these subjects; if one is encountered who does not care, first try to make her care (and this is a task, indeed), and then teach her what to do and how to do it. IX CONVALESCENCE One frequently hears the private duty nurse deplore the necessity of her remaining with a patient during convalescence. "I wish," such a one would say, "that I never need stay with a patient after the temperature has been normal for ten days," or, "I do not mind the first two weeks of an obstetric case, then there is something to do, but after that I am ready to leave," or again, "When my patient is ready to go out driving, I always wish she would drive me home; half-sick people are not to my taste." I have often wondered if this feeling is not caused by the atmosphere of the hospital which has, during training, been the nurse's home,--the hospital, where the patient leaves at the earliest possible moment of recovery, to make room for someone else. The pupil nurse gets used to the excitement of critical illness, used to the hard work of constant watching and fighting for the patients' lives, and that, and only that, it seems to her, is nursing. So when she goes to her private cases, and her patient has a long period of convalescence, she feels out of place, she does not seem to be doing what she was trained to do, and she frets over it, until some happy day when the doctor releases her, and she is at liberty to go once more to some one who is at death's door. Nurses seem to feel that caring for a convalescent is not "nursing," but there they are mistaken. After a serious illness it takes a long time to restore the patient to perfect health, some function may need the close watching which only trained eyes can give, and it is not beneath the dignity of the nurse to remain, and keep watch until every part is once more in perfect working order. Many nurses feel that it is not nursing to amuse a patient, but it is nursing to help him on to the healthy plane from which he has fallen, to play games with an invalid and to watch him, to read with him, and to watch, to walk or ride or travel with him, and to watch, always to watch, that the dreaded symptom does not appear, that the one part which still needs care gets it.