Part 4

Trustworthy, in keeping our soul in our hands, never excited, but always ready to lift it up to God; unstained by the smallest flirtation, innocent of the smallest offence, even in thought.

Trustworthy, in doing our work as faithfully as if our superiors were always near us.

Trustworthy, in never prying into one another’s concerns, but ever acting behind another’s back as one would to her face.

Trustworthy, in avoiding every word that could injure, in the smallest degree, our patients, or our companions, who are our neighbours, remembering how St. Peter says that God made us _all_ “stewards of grace one to another.”

How can we be “stewards of grace” to one another? By giving the “grace” of our good example to all around us. And how can we become “untrustworthy stewards” to one another? By showing ourselves lax in our habits, irregular in our ways, not doing as we should do if our superiors were by. “Cripple leads the way.” Shall the better follow the worse?

It has happened to me to hear some of you say--perhaps it has happened to us all--“Indeed, I only did what I saw done.”

How glorious it would be if “only doing what we saw done” always led us right!

A master of a great public school once said that he could trust his whole school, because he could trust every single boy in it. Oh, could God but say that He can trust this Home and Hospital because He can trust every woman in it! Let us try this--every woman to work as though success depended on herself. Do you know that, in this great Indian Famine, every Englishman has worked as if success depended on himself? And in saving a population as large as that of England from death by starvation, do you not think that we have achieved the greatest victory we ever won in India? Suppose we work thus for this Home and Hospital.

Oh, my dear friends, how terrible it will be to any one of us, some day, to hear another say, that she only did what she saw us do, if that was on the “road that leadeth to destruction”!

Or taking it another way, how delightful--how delightful to have set another on her journey to heaven by our good example; how terrible to have delayed another on her journey to heaven by our bad example!

There is an old story--nearly six hundred years old--when a ploughboy said to a truly great man, whose name is known in history, that he “advised” him “always to live in such a way that those who had a good opinion of him might never be disappointed.”

The great man thanked him for his advice, and--kept it.

If our School has a good name, do we live so that people “may never be disappointed” in its Nurses?

Obedient: not wilful: not having such a sturdy will of our own. Common sense tells us that no training can do us any good, if we are always seeking our own way. I know that some have really sought in dedication to God to give up their own wills to His. For if you enter this Training School, is that not in effect a promise to Him to give up your own way for that way which you are taught?

Let us not question so much. You _must_ know that things have been thought over and arranged for your benefit. You are not bound to think us always right: perhaps you can’t. But are _you_ more likely to be right? And, at all events, you know you _are_ right, if you choose to enter our ways, to submit yours to them.

In a foreign Training School, I once heard a most excellent pastor, who was visiting there, say to a nurse: “Are you _dis_couraged?--say rather, you are _dis_obedient: they always mean the same thing.” And I thought how right he was. And, what is more, the Nurse thought so too; and she was not “discouraged” ever after, because she gave up being “disobedient.”

“Every one for herself” ought to have no footing here: and these strong wills of ours God will teach. If we do not let Him teach us here, He will teach us by some sterner discipline hereafter--teach our wills to bend first to the will of God, and then to the reasonable and lawful wills of those among whom our lot is cast.

I often say for myself, and I have no doubt you do, that line of the hymn:

Tell me, Thou yet wilt chide, Thou canst not spare, O Lord, Thy chastening rod.

Let Him reduce us to His discipline before it is too late. If we “kick against the pricks,” we can only pray that He will give us more “pricks,” till we cease to “kick.” And it is a proof of His fatherly love, and that He has not given us up, if He does.

For myself, I can say that I have never known what it was, since I can remember anything, not to have “prickly” discipline, more than any one knew of; and I hope I have not “kicked.”

To return to _Trustworthiness_.

Most of you, on leaving the Home, go first on night duty. Now there is nothing like night duty for trying our trustworthiness. A year hence you will tell me whether you have felt any temptation not to be quite honest in reporting cases the next morning to your Sister or Nurse: that is, to say you have observed when you have not observed; to slur over things in your report, which, for aught you know, may be of consequence to the patient: to slur over things in your work because there is no one watching you: no one but God.

It has indeed been known that the Night Nurse had stayed in the kitchen to talk; but we may trust such things will not happen again.

And, for all, let us _all_ say this word for ourselves: everything gets toppled over if we don’t make it a matter of conscience, a matter of reckoning between ourselves and our God. That is the only safeguard of real _trustworthiness_. If we treat it as a mere matter of business, of success in our career in life, never shall we give anything but eye-service, never shall we be really trustworthy.

_Orderly_: Let us never waste anything, even pins or paper, as some do, by beginning letters or resolutions, or “cases,” which they never take the trouble to finish.

_Cheerful and Patient_: Let us never wish for more than is necessary, and be cheerful when what we should like is sometimes denied us, as it may be some day; or when people are unkind, or we are disregarded by those we love: remembering Him whose attendants at His death were mocking soldiers.

I assure you, my friends, that if we can practise those “duties” faithfully, we are practising the “heroic virtues.”

_Patient_, _cheerful_, _and kindly_: Now, is it being patient, cheerful, and kindly to be so only with those who are so to us? For, as St. Peter tells us, even ungodly people do that. But if we can do good to some one who has done us ill, oh, what a privilege that is! And even God will thank us for it, the Apostle says. Let us be kindest to the impatient and unkindly.

Now let me tell you of two Nurses whom we knew.

One was a lady, with just enough to live upon, who took an old widow to nurse into her house: recommended to her by her minister. One day she met him and reproached him. Why? Because the old widow was “too good”; “_any_body could nurse _her_.” Presently a grumbling old woman, never contented with anything anybody did, who thought she was never treated well enough, and that she never had “her due,” was found. And this old woman the lady took into her house and nursed till she died; because, she said, nobody else liked to do anything for her, and _she_ did. That was something like kindness, for there is no great kindness in doing good to any one who is grateful and thanks us for it.

But my other story is something much better still.

A poor Nurse, who had been left a widow, with nothing to live upon but her own earnings, inquired for some _tedious children_ to take care of. As you may suppose, there was no difficulty in finding this article. And from that day, for twenty years, she never had less than two, three, or four orphans with her, and sometimes five, whom she brought up as her own, training them for service. She taught them domestic work, for she herself went out to service at nine years old. She never had any difficulty in finding places for them, and for twenty years she had thus a succession of children. But she taught them something better.

She taught them that they had “nothing but their character to depend upon.” “I tell them,” she said, “it was all I had myself; God helps girls that watch over themselves. If a girl isn’t made to feel this early, it’s hard afterwards to make her feel it.”

These girls, so brought up, turned out much better than those brought up in most large Union schools, for asylums are not like homes. Of the children whom Nurse took in, one was a girl of such bad habits and such a mischief-maker that no one else could manage her. But Nurse did. She soon found she could not refuse boys. One was a boy of fourteen, just out of prison for bad ways, whom she took and reclaimed, and who became as good a boy as can be. These are only two specimens.

They called her “Mother.” And God, she used to say, gave them to her as her own. You will ask how she supported them. The larger number of them she supported by taking in washing, by charing one day a week, and bye and bye, by taking in journeymen as lodgers. Now and then a lady would pay for an orphan. Once she took in a sailor’s five motherless children for 5s. a week from the father: but she has taken in apprentices as lodgers, whose own fathers could not afford to keep them for their wages.

All this time she washed for a poor sick Irishwoman, who never gave her any thanks but that “the clothes were not well washed, nor was anything done as it ought to be done.” Yet she took in this woman’s child of two years old as her own, till the father came back, when he gave up drink and claimed it.

Every Friday she gave her earnings to some poor women, who bought goods with the money, which they sold again in the market on Saturday, and returned her money to her on Saturday night. She said she never lost a penny by this: and it kept several old women going.

She must have been a capital manager, you will say. Well, till she took in lodgers, she lived in a cellar which she painted with her own hands, and kept as clean as a new pin. Afterwards she let her cellar for 2s. a week, though she might have got 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week for it, because, she said, “the poor should not be hard on one another.” Milk she never tasted; meat seldom, and then she always stewed, never roasted it. She lived on potatoes, and potato pie was the luxury of herself and children.

On Sundays she filled her pot of four gallons and made broth: sometimes for six or eight poor old women besides her own family, as she called her orphans. _These_ must be satisfied with what she provided, little or much. She never let them touch what was sent her for her patients. Sometimes good things were sent her, which she always gave to sick neighbours; yet she has been accused of keeping for herself nice things sent to her care for others. She never owed a penny, for all her charity.

If this Nurse has not practised the “heroic virtues,” who has?

I mentioned this Nurse merely as an instance of one who literally fulfilled the precept to “do good” to them that “despitefully use you”: to be “patient, cheerful, and kindly.” There is no time to tell you how she was left a widow with two infants and a blind and insane mother, whom she kept till doctors compelled her to put her mother into a lunatic asylum: how one of her sons was a sickly cripple, whom she nursed till he died, working by day and sitting up with him at night for years: how the other boy was insane, and ran away: how, to ease her broken mother’s heart, she returned to sick-nursing, chiefly among the poor, nursed through two choleras, till her health broke down, and, by way of taking care of herself, then took up the “tedious” orphan system, which she never ceased. She felt, she said, as if she were doing something then for her “own dear boy.” As soon as she lived in a poor house of four rooms and an attic, she has had as many as ten carpenters’ men of a night, who had nowhere but the public-house to go to. She gave them a good fire, borrowed a newspaper for them, and made one read aloud. They brought her sixpence a week, and she laid it all out in supper for them, and cooked it. She gave the only good pair of shoes she had to one of these, because “he must go to work decent!”

She was a famous sick cook, often carrying home fish-bones to stew them for the sick, who seldom thanked her; and the remains of damsons and currants, to boil over again as a drink for fever patients: who sometimes accused her of keeping back things sent for them.

“How much more the Lord has borne from me,” she used to say.

And of children she used to say: “We never can train up a child in the way it should go till we take it in our arms, as Jesus did, and feel: ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven’; and that there is a ‘heavenly principle’ (a ‘little angel,’ I think she said) in each child to be trained up in it.”

She said she had learnt this from the master in a factory where she had once nursed.

(How little he knew that he had been one means of forming this heroic Nurse.)

II

And now I have a word for the Ladies, and a word for the Nurse-Probationers. Which shall come first?

Do the ladies follow up their intellectual privileges? Or, are they lazy in their hours of study? Do they cultivate their powers of expression in answering Mr. Croft’s examinations?

Ought they not to look upon themselves as future leaders--as those who will have to train others? And to bear this in mind during the whole of their year’s training, so as to qualify themselves for being so? It is not just getting through the year anyhow, without being blamed. For the year leaves a stamp on everybody--this for the Nurses as well as the Ladies--and once gone can never be regained.

To the Special Probationers may I say one more word?

Do we look enough into the importance of giving ourselves thoroughly to study in the hours of study, of keeping careful _Notes of Lectures_, of keeping notes of all type cases, and of cases interesting from not being type cases, so as to improve our powers of observation--all essential _if we are in future to have charge_? Do we keep in view the importance of helping ourselves to understand these cases by reading at the time books where we can find them described, and by listening to the remarks made by Physicians and Surgeons in going round with their Students? (Take a sly note afterwards, when nobody sees, in order to have a correct remembrance.)

So shall we do everything in our power to become proficient, not only in knowing the symptoms and what is to be done, but in knowing the “Reason Why” of such symptoms, and _why_ such and such a thing is done; and so on, till we can some day TRAIN OTHERS _to know the “reason why.”_

Many say: “We have no time; the Ward work gives us no time.”

But it is so easy to degenerate into a mere drudgery about the Wards, when we have goodwill to do it, and are fonder of practical work than of giving ourselves the trouble of learning the “reason why.” Take care, or the Nurses, some of them, will catch you up.

Take ten minutes a day in the Ward to jot down things, and write them out afterwards: come punctually _from_ your Ward to have time for doing so. _It is far better to take these ten minutes to write your cases or to jot down your recollections in the Ward than to give the same ten minutes to bustling about._ I am sure the Sisters would help you to get this time if you asked them: and also to _leave_ the Ward punctually.

And do you not think this a religious duty?

Such observations are a religious meditation: for is it not the best part of religion to imitate the benevolence of God to man? And how can you do this--in this your calling especially--if you do not thoroughly understand your calling? And is not every study to do this a religious contemplation?

Without it, _May you not potter and cobble about the patients without ever once learning the reason of what you do, so as to be able to train others?_

(I do not say anything about the “cards,” for I take it for granted that you can read them easily.)

Our dear Matron, who is always thinking of arranging for us, is going to have a case-paper with printed headings given to you, and to keep this correctly ought to be a mere every-day necessity, and a very easy one, for you.

2. And for the Nurses:

They are placed, perhaps here only, on a footing of equality with educated gentlewomen. Do they show their appreciation of this by thinking, “We are as good as they”? Or, by obedience and respect, and trying to profit by the superior education of the gentlewomen?

Both we have known; we have known Nurse-Probationers who took the Ladies “under their protection” in saving them the harder work, and the Ladies have given them the full return back in helping them in their education.

And we have known--very much the reverse.

Also, do the Nurse-Probationers take advantage of their opportunities, in the excellent classes given them by the Home Sister, in keeping diaries and some cases?

Very few of the Nurse-Probationers have taken notes of Mr. Croft’s Lectures at all; it is not fair to Mr. Croft to give him people who do not benefit by his instruction.

3. And I have another word to say:

Are there parties in our Home?

Could we but be _not_ so tenacious of our own interests, but look at the thing in a larger way!

Is there a great deal of canvassing and misinterpreting Sisters and Matron and other authorities? every little saying and doing of theirs? talking among one another about the superiors (and then finding we were all wrong when we came to know them better)?

We must all of us know, without being told, that we cannot be trained at all, if in training this will of our own is not kept under.

Do not question so much. Does not a spirit of criticism go with ignorance? Are some of you in all the “opposition of irresponsibility”? Some day, when you are yourselves responsible, you will know what I mean.

Now could not the Ladies help the Nurse-Probationers in this: (1) in never themselves criticising; and (2) in saying a kindly word to check it when it is done?

Let me tell you a true story about this.

In a large college, questions--about things which the students could but imperfectly understand in the conduct of the college--had become too warm. The superintendent went into the hall one morning, and after complimenting the young men on their studies, he said: “This morning I heard two of the porters, while at their work, take up a Greek book lying on my table; one tried to read it, and the other declared it ought to be held upside down to be read. Neither could agree which _was_ upside down, but both thought themselves quite capable of arguing about Greek, though neither could read it. They were just coming to fisticuffs, when I sent the two on different errands.”

Not a word was added: the students laughed and retired, but they understood the moral well enough, and from that day there were few questions or disputes about the plans and superiors of the college, or about their own obedience to rules and discipline.

Do let us think of the two porters squabbling whether the Greek book was to be read upside down, when we feel inclined to be questioning about “things too high for us.”

We are constantly making mistakes in our judgment of our little world. We fancy that we have been harshly treated or misunderstood. Or we cannot bear our fellow-Probationers to laugh at us.

Believe me, there will come a time when all such troubles will simply seem ridiculous to us, and we shall be unable to imagine how we could ever have been the victims of them. (One of your number told me this herself. She has left St. Thomas’ for another post.) Let us not brood or sentimentalise over them. They should be met in a common-sense way. How much of our time has been spent in grieving over these trifles, how little in the real sorrow for sin, the real struggle for improvement.

4. As for obedience to rules and our superiors: “True obedience,” said one of the most efficient people who ever lived, “obeys not only the command, but also the intention” of those who have a right to command us. Of course, this is a truism: the thing is, _how to do it_. As it is a struggle, it requires a brave and intrepid spirit, which helps us to rise above trifles and look to God, and His leadings for us. Oh, when death comes, how sorry we shall be to have watched others so much and ourselves so little; to have dug so much in the field of others’ consciences and left our own fallow! What should we say of a “Leopold” Nurse who should try to nurse in “Edward” Ward, and neglect her own “Leopold”? Well, that is what we do. Or who should wash her patients’ hands and not her own?

It is of ourselves and not of others that we must give an account. Let us look to our own consciences as we do to our own hands, to see if they are dirty.

We take care of our dress, but do we take care of our words?

It is a very good rule to say and do nothing but what we can offer to God. Now we cannot offer Him backbiting, petty scandal, misrepresentation, flirtation, injustice, bad temper, bad thoughts, jealousy, murmuring, complaining. Do we ever think that we bear the responsibility of all the harm we do in this way?

Look at that busybody who fidgets, gossips, makes a bustle, always wanting to domineer, always thinking of herself, as if she wanted to tell the sun to get out of her way and let her light the world in its place, as the proverb says.

And when we might do all our actions and say all our words as unto God!

So many imperfections; so many thoughts of self-love; so many selfish satisfactions that we mix with our best actions! And when we might offer them all to God. What a pity!

5. One word more for the Ladies, or those who will have to train and look after others.

What must she be who is to be a Ward or “Home” Sister?

We see her in her nobleness and simplicity: being, not seeming: without name or reward in this world: “clothed” in her “righteousness” merely, as the Psalms would say, _not_ in her dignity: often having no gifts of money, speech, or strength: but never preferring seeming to being.

And if she rises still higher, she will find herself, in some measure, like the Great Example in Isaiah 1iii., bearing the sins and sorrows of others as if they were her own: her counsels often “despised and rejected,” yet “opening not her mouth” to be angry: “led as a lamb to the slaughter.”

She who rules best is she who loves best: and shows her love not by foolish indulgence to those of whom she is in charge, but by taking a real interest in them for their own sakes, and in their highest interests.

Her firmness must never degenerate into nervous irritability. And for this end let me advise you when you become Sisters, always to take your exercise time out of doors, your monthly day out, and your annual holiday.

Be a judge of the work of others of whom you are in charge, not a detective: your mere detective “is wonderful at suspicion and discovery,” but is often at fault, foolishly imagining that every one is bad.

The Head-Nurse must have been tested in the refiner’s fire, as the prophets would say: have been tried by many tests: and have come out of them stainless, in full command of herself and her principles: never losing her temper.

She never nurses well till she ceases to command for the sake of commanding, or for her own sake at all: till she nurses only for the sakes of those who are nursed. This is the highest exercise of self-denial; but without it the ruin of the nursing, of the charge, is sure to come.

Have we ever known such a Nurse?

She must be just, not unjust.