At this time in Benham the doctrine that sewage must be diverted from the sources of water supply used for drinking purposes was firmly established, and the doctrine that not every woman able to read and write is qualified to teach school was being gradually, if grudgingly, admitted to be not altogether un-American. So swift had been the change of attitude toward special knowledge that there had even been a revolution in regard to the theory advocated by the original board of trustees of the Silas S. Parsons Free Hospital that every woman is a born nurse, and is competent, after a fortnight's training at the utmost, to take charge of the sickest patients. Those familiar with affairs in Benham will recall that the original ruling spirit of that institution was Mrs. Selma Lyons, wife of United States Senator Lyons. She disapproved of special training and was a strong champion of the principle that an American woman with aspirations is more likely to be fettered than helped by conventional standards, and that individuality should be given free play in order to attain brilliant results. Yet though this principle was reverenced at first in the employment of nurses for the hospital, progress, that stern derider even of the American woman, gradually set it at naught during the period when Mrs. Lyons was resident in Washington and unable to give that close personal attention to the affairs of the institution which she desired. It so happened that after her husband's defeat at the end of his first term through the hostility of Horace Elton, one of the financial magnates of that section of the country, who harbored a grudge against him for alleged duplicity when Governor, the President of the United States threw a sop to the defeated candidate in the form of the Spanish mission. Selma, who was still engaged in the effort to chastise her enemies and to reëstablish what she regarded as true American social principles, was sorry to leave Washington, but she found some consolation in the thought of introducing American ethical standards at a foreign court, especially of dealing a death-blow to bull-fights by her personal influence. She was obliged, however, to relax considerably her vigilance in regard to the hospital; even, to consent to an enlargement of the board of trustees. This in its new form presently adopted what the members regarded as modern methods. Mrs. Wilson had been one of the recent additions to the body. Yet, under her regimen, though every applicant for a nurse's diploma was obliged to serve a rigorous apprenticeship of two years at the hospital, the idea of scrutinizing the antecedents and previous education of the young women offering themselves was still novel. Selma would have regarded an inquiry of this kind as aristocratic and hostile to the free development of the individual. Now--but a few years later--such a system of scrutiny is in vogue in Benham; but at the date of Loretta Davis's admittance to the Silas S.