"If she has no authority, but is meddling to make mischief, will you please see that she does it no longer. I know it is not the Deputy's business to be settling these little disagreements among the Matrons; but I have no one else to go to. We have no one to regulate these matters for us but you. You call them small matters; so they may be to one who looks on; but our life, every day, is made up of them. And if you take them home, and make them your own, you will not think them so very small. Neither you nor I would consider it a small matter to go dirty and ragged. Would you allow one of your male officers to keep the men who are under another officer dirty and ragged, out of sheer malice, or for any reason?" "They could not do it,--I should not allow it." "And you are there to see it, and have the authority to prevent it. And as you have undertaken to do the duty of the Head Officer on this side, I see no other way but to appeal to you in these cases of ours. I have no authority to prevent the mischievous interference of Mrs. Hardhack; and to aggravate, in return, I cannot. She has the advantage of me in the disposition and ability to do so. She has ample opportunity to meddle with the affairs of the other Matrons, because they are sent to her for instruction; and also to give her interpretation of the Rules. Mrs. Hardhack is not so much to blame for what she does. She is only following the bent of her own disposition, as the opportunity to do so is given her. The Head Matron comes to me, and says,--'Control your own place. Mrs. Hardhack has nothing to do with it. If she makes trouble with another Matron, she shall surely be discharged. She has been discharged three times, and begged herself back; but if we say to her, go again, she will surely go.' Then she goes to Mrs. Hardhack, and says,--'You go over to the wash-room and tell the Receiving Matron about her place. You know all about the Rules and things better than I do. I don't know what I should do without you.' That pleases Mrs. Hardhack, and she meddles with everything, and makes trouble all around." "I will do all I can to help you." "I know; but I am tired. The care is altogether too much, and the mismanagement of the place makes it intolerable. Explain to the Receiving Matron, if you please, that she is under obligation to wash and mend the clothes of my women the same that she does the others, and give them out another dress when one fails." "I will do that." That night I was speaking of the severe labor required of the officers in the institution to Mrs. Hardhack. She turned to me, and said roughly,-- "I find it easy enough." It was just the right moment for me to tell her why she found it so much easier than the rest of us.