“Peter had pneumonia, complicated with whooping-cough. He is a beautiful yellow-haired boy, and even if the hospital could have admitted him, or his mother would have agreed to his removal (which she wouldn’t), I should not have liked to send him. The sense of responsibility for the sick child seemed a force that could not be spared for rousing an erring father. He is, apparently, devoted to the child, but had been drinking, and there was not a dollar in the house. The child, desperately ill, clung to him, calling upon him with endearing names. During the illness he worked all day (he is a driver) and sat up all night, and I think he will never forget his shame and remorse. The doctor had ordered bath treatments every two hours. These I gave until eight o’clock and the mother continued them after my last visit, but when the temperature was highest she was worn out, and active night-nursing seemed imperative. This Miss S⸺ willingly undertook—a service more difficult than appears in the mere telling, for the vermin in these old houses are horribly active at night, and this sweet girl ended her first vigil with neck and face inflamed from bites. Yet the people themselves were clean, and in this were not blameworthy. There is nothing harder to endure than to watch by a night sick-bed in these old, worn houses and see the crawling creatures and the babes so accustomed to them that their sleep is scarcely disturbed. Peter has had a beautiful recovery, rewarding his nurses by a most satisfactory return to a normal state of good health.” [Illustration: Convalescent Home—“The Rest.”] The staff, which in the beginning consisted of two nurses, my friend and myself, has been increased until it is now large enough to answer calls from the sick anywhere in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, and the calls in the year 1913-14 came from nearly 1,100 more patients than the combined total of those treated during the same period in three of the large hospitals in New York—a comparison valuable chiefly as measuring the growing demand of the sick for the visiting nurse. The service, though covering so wide a territory, is capable of control and supervision. The division into districts, with separate staffs for contagious and obstetrical cases, may be compared to the hospital division into wards. Like the hospital, it has a system of bedside notes, case records, and an established etiquette between physicians, nurses, and patients. Those that can best be cared for in the hospitals are sent there, the sifting process being accomplished by the doctors and nurses working together. Approximately ten per cent. of our patients are sent to the hospitals. Serious nurses are gratified that the former casual and almost sentimental attitude of the public toward them and their work has been replaced by a demand for standards of efficiency.