"Expounding Regulations" was always a part of Miss Nightingale's exhortation on such occasions. In this particular case she had a hand in making the Regulations. In other cases she often found them very stupid. They were generally made by men, who were incapable, she thought (as we have heard already), of devising suitable regulations for women. "Oh, how I wish there were no men," she wrote on one occasion when trying to compose a hospital quarrel. But even bad regulations must be observed, till they can be altered, and women did not always understand that some diplomacy was necessary to obtain the alteration. "Women," she said, "are unable to see that it requires wisdom as well as self-denial to establish any new work." As the work which the Nightingale Nurses had at this time to do was all new, there were many difficulties and most of them came up to Miss Nightingale for solution or advice. When a very long-winded letter arrived, she would often send it on unread to Dr. Sutherland, for him to digest and advise upon. It was her comfortable persuasion that he had nothing else to do, and she scolded him if there was any delay; but sooner or later he did the work for her, and his advice in such matters never failed in shrewd common sense. Sometimes he would say, "This letter shows a fit of temper on the nurse's part, and is a case for a little homily from you." In such homilies Miss Nightingale would mingle an appeal to higher motives with a reference to her own example and experience--as in the following letter:-- (_To a Discontented Nurse._) _April_ 22 [1869]. Do you think I should have succeeded in doing anything if I had kicked and resisted and resented? Is it our Master's command? Is it even common sense? I have been even shut out of hospitals into which I had been ordered to go by the Commander-in-Chief--obliged to stand outside the door in the snow till night--been refused rations for as much as 10 days at a time for the nurses I had brought by superior command.[119] And I have been as good friends the day after with the officials who did these things--have resolutely ignored these things _for the sake of the work_. What was I to my Master's work? When people offend, they offend the Master, before they do me. And who am I that I should not choose to bear what my Master chooses to bear? You have many high and noble points of character. Else I should not write to you as I do. But the spirit of opposition in which you are working (or rather _were_ at the time you wrote, for I am satisfied it was only an ebullition of the moment), and yet doing your work well and doing good, would, if it really were persisted in, materially increase the difficulties of that work to which, I am sure, you are devoted. [119] See Vol. I. p. 291. IV