Miss Nightingale thinks that Englishwomen are not naturally good observers, though capable of attaining to it by training. The French or Irish woman is much quicker. She records a homely little example of want of observation. “I remember when a child,” she writes, “hearing the story of an accident related by some one who sent two nieces to fetch a ‘bottle of sal-volatile from her room.’ ‘Mary could not stir,’ she said; ‘Fanny ran and fetched a bottle that was not sal-volatile, and that was not in my room.’ If Fanny had observed the bottle of sal-volatile in the aunt’s room every day she was there, she would have found it when it was suddenly wanted. This habit of inattention generally pursues a person through life, a woman is asked to fetch a large new-bound red book lying on the table by the window, and she fetches five small old boarded brown books lying on the shelf by the fire.” In contrast to this type of careless person, Miss Nightingale instances the trained observations of a famous actress. “I was once taken,” she writes, “to see a great actress in Lady Macbeth. To me it appeared the mere transference upon the stage of a death-bed, such as I had often witnessed. So, just before death, have I seen a patient get out of bed and feebly re-enact some scene of long ago, exactly as if walking in sleep.” The actress played her part so well because she had actually observed life. [Illustration: PARTHENOPE, LADY VERNEY. (_From the painting at Claydon by Sir William Richmond, R.A._) [_To face p. 283._ ] “The very alphabet of a nurse,” says Miss Nightingale, “is to observe so well that she is able to interpret every change which comes over a patient’s countenance, without causing him the exertion of saying what he feels.... A patient is not merely a piece of furniture, to be kept clean and arranged against the wall, and saved from injury or breakage--though to judge from what many a nurse does and does not do, you would say he was.” Then comes a caution that all sick people dislike being watched, and the nurse must observe without appearing to do so. Miss Nightingale relates that the best observer she ever knew was a distinguished doctor for lunacy. “He leans back in his chair, with half-shut eyes,” she relates, “and, meanwhile, he sees everything, observes everything, and you feel he knows you better than many who have lived with you twenty years. I believe it is this singular capacity of observation and of understanding what observed appearances imply which gives him his singular influence over lunatics.”