Part 7

It is good to love our Training School and our body, and to wish to keep up its credit. We are bound to do so. That is helping God’s work in the world. We are bound to try to be the “salt of the world” in nursing; but if we are conceited, seeking _ourselves_ in this, then we are not “salt” but Pharisees.

We should have zeal for God’s sake and His work’s sake: but some seem to have zeal for zeal’s sake only. Zeal does not make a Christian Nurse if it is zeal for our own credit and glory--tho’ Christ was the most zealous mediciner that ever was. (He says: “The zeal of God’s house hath eaten me up.”) Zeal by itself does not make a good Nurse: it makes a Pharisee. Christ is so strong upon this point of not being conceited, of not nursing to show what “fine fellows” we are as Nurses, that He actually says “it is conceited of us to let one of our hands know what the other does.” What will He say if He sees one of us doing all her work to let not only her other hand but other people know she does it? Yet all our best work which looks so well _may_ be done from this motive.

And let me tell you a little secret. One of our Superintendents at a distance says that she finds she must not boast so much about St. Thomas’. Nor must you. People have heard too much about it. I dare say you remember the fine old Greek statesman who was banished because people were tired of hearing him called “The Just.” Don’t let people get tired of hearing you call St. Thomas’ “The Just” when you are away from us. We shall not at all complain of your proving it “The Just” by your training and conduct.

I read lately in a well-known medical journal, speaking of the “Nightingale Nurses,” that the day is quite gone by when a novel would give a caricature of a Nurse as a “Mrs. Gamp”--drinking, brutal, ignorant, coarse old woman. The “Nightingale Nurse” in a novel, it said, would be--what do you think?--an active, useful, clever Nurse. These are the parts I approve of. But what else do you think?--a lively, rather pert, and very conceited young woman. Ah, there’s the rub. You see what our name is “up” for in the world. That’s what I should like to be left out. This is what a friendly critic says of us, and we may be very sure that unfriendly critics say much worse. Do we deserve what they say of us? That is the question. Let us not have, each one of us, to say “yes” in our own hearts. Christ made no light matter of conceit.

Keep the usefulness, and let the conceit go.

* * * * *

And may I here say a few words of counsel to those who may be called upon to be Night Nurses? One of these asked me with tears to pray for her. I do pray for all of you, our dear Night Nurses. In my restless nights my thoughts turn to you incessantly by the bedsides of restless and suffering Patients, and I pray God that He will make, thro’ you, thro’ your patience, your skill, your hope, faith and charity, every Ward into a Church, and teach us that to _be_ the Gospel is the only way to “preach the Gospel,” which Christ tells us is the duty of every one of us “unto the end of the world”--every woman and Nurse of us all; and that a collection of any people trying to live like Christ is a Church. Did you ever think how Christ was a Nurse, and stood by the bed, and with His own hands nursed and “did for” the sufferers?

But, to return to those who may be called upon to be Night Nurses: do not abuse the liberty given you on emerging from the “Home,” where you are cared for as if you were our children. Keep to regular hours by day for your meals, your sleep, your exercise. If you do not, you will never be able to do and stand the night work perfectly; if you do, there is no reason why night nursing may not be as healthy as day. (I used to be very fond of the night when I was a Night Nurse; I know what it is. But then I had my day work to do besides; you have not.) Do not turn dressy in your goings out by day. It is vulgar, it is mean, to burst out into freedom in this way. There are circumstances of peculiar temptation when, after the restraint and motherly care of the “Home,” you, the young ones, are put into circumstances of peculiar liberty. Is it not the time to act like Daniel?... Let “the Judge, the Righteous Judge,” have to call us not the “Pharisees,” but Daniel’s band!

That is what I pray for you, for me, for all of us.

But what is it to be a Daniel’s band? What is God’s command to Night Nurses? It is--is it not?--not to slur over any duty--not the very least of all our duties--as Night Nurse: to be able to give a full, accurate, and minute account of each Patient the next morning: to be strictly reserved in your manner with gentlemen (“Thou God seest me”: no one else); to be honest and true. You don’t know how well the Patients know you, how accurately they judge you. You can do them no good unless they see that you _live_ what you say.

It is: not to go out showily dressed, and not to keep irregular hours with others in the day time.

Dare to have a purpose firm, Dare to make it known.

Watch--watch. Christ seems to have had a special word for Night Nurses: “I say unto you, watch.” And He says: “Lo, I am with you alway,” when no one else is by.

And he divides us all, at this moment, into the “wise virgins” and the “foolish virgins.” Oh, let Him not find any “foolish virgins” among our Night Nurses! Each Night Nurse has to stand alone in her Ward.

Dare to stand alone.

Let our Master be able to say some day that every one of the Patients has been the better, not only in body but in spirit--whether going to life or to death--for having been nursed by each one of you.

* * * * *

But one is gone, perhaps the dearest of all--Nurse Martha Rice.

I was the last to see her in England. She was so pleased to be going to Miss Machin at Montreal. She said it was no sacrifice, except the leaving her parents. She almost wished it had been, that she might have had something to give to God.

Now she _has_ had something to give to God: her life.

“So young, so happy: all so happy together, when in their room they were always sitting round the table, so cheerful, reading their Bible together. She walked round the garden so happy that last night.”

So pure and fresh: there was something of the sweet savour of holiness about her. I could tell you of souls upon whom she made a great impression: all unknowing: simply by being herself.

A noble sort of girl: sound and holy in mind and heart: living with God. It is scarcely respectful to say how I liked her, now she is an angel in heaven; like a child to Miss Machin, who was like a mother to her, loved and nursed her day and night.

“So dear and bright a creature,” “liked and respected by every one in the Hospital,” “and, as a Nurse, hardly too much can be said in her favour.” “To the Doctors, Patients, and Superintendent, she was simply invaluable.” “The contrast between these Nurses and the best of others is to be keenly felt daily”; “doing bravely”; “perfectly obedient and pleasant to their Superintendent.”

Was Martha conceited with all this? She was one of the simplest humblest Christian women I have ever known. All noble souls are simple, natural, and humble.

Let us be like her, and, like her, not conceited with it all. She was too brave to be conceited: too brave not to be humble. _She_ had trained herself for the battle.

“With a nice, genial, respectful manner, which never left her, great firmness in duty, and steadiness that rendered her above suspicion”: “happy and interested in her charge.”

More above all petty calculations about self, all paltry wranglings, than almost any. How different for us, for her, had it not been so! Could we have mourned her as we do? The others of the small Montreal staff who miss her so terribly will like to hear how we feel this. They were all with her when she died. Miss Machin sat up with her every night, and either she or Miss Blower never left her, day or night, during the last nine days of her illness. She died of typhoid fever: peritonitis the last three weeks; but, as she had survived so long, they hoped against hope up to Easter Day.

About seven days before her death, during her delirium, she said: “The Lord has two wills: His will be done.” It is when we do not know what God’s will is to be, that it is the hardest to will what He wills.

Strange to say, on Good Friday, though she was so delirious that there was difficulty in keeping her in bed, and she did not know what day it was, Christ on the Cross was her theme all the day long. “Christ died on the Cross for me, and I want to go and die for Him.” She had indeed lived for Him. Then on Easter Day she said to Miss Blower: “I am happy, so happy: we are both happy, so very happy.” She said she was going to hear the eighth Psalm. Shall we remember Martha’s favourite psalm? She spoke often about St. Thomas’.

She died the day after Easter Day. The change came at 7 in the evening, and she lived till 5 o’clock the next morning, conscious to the last, repeating sentences, and answering by looks when she could speak no more. Her Saviour, whom she had so loved and followed in her life, was with her thro’ the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and she felt Him there. She was happy. “My best love,” she said, “tell them it is all for the best, and I am not sorry I came out.”

Her parents have given her up nobly, though with bleeding hearts, with true submission to our Father’s will: they _are_ satisfied it is “all for the best.”

All the Montreal Hospital shared our sorrow. The Doctors were full of kindness in their medical attendance. Mr. Redpath, who is a principal Director, and Mrs. Redpath were like a real father and mother to our people. Martha’s death-bed and coffin were strewed with flowers.

Public and private prayers were offered up for her at Montreal during her illness. Who can say that they were not answered?

She spoke of dying: but without fear. We prayed that God would spare the child to us: but He had need of her.

Our Father arranged her going out: for she went, if ever woman did, with a single eye to please Him and do her duty to the work and her Superintendent. “Is it well with the child?” “It is well.” Let us who feel her loss so deeply in the work not grudge her to God.

As one of you yourselves said: “She died like a good soldier of Jesus Christ, well to the front.” Would any one of us wish it otherwise for her? Would any one of us wish a better lot for herself? There is but one feeling among us all about her: that she lived as a noble Christian girl, and that she has been permitted to die nobly: in the post of honour, as a soldier thinks it glorious to die. In the midst of our work, so surely do we Nurses think it glorious to die.

But to be like her we must have a mind like hers: “enduring, patient, firm, and meek.” I know that she sought of God the mind of Jesus Christ, “active, like His; like His, resigned”; copying His pattern: ready to “endure hardness.”

We give her joy; it is our loss, not hers. She is gone to our Lord and her Lord, made ripe so soon for her and our Father’s house. Our tears are her joy. She is in another room of our Father’s house. She bids us now give thanks for her. Think of that Easter morn when she rose again! She had indeed “another morn than ours”--that 17th of April.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

VI

_Easter Eve, 1879_, 6 A.M.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,--I am always thinking of you, and as my Easter greeting, I could not help copying for you part of a letter which one of my brother-in-law’s family had from Col. Degacher (commanding one battalion of the 24th Regiment in Natal), giving the names of men whom he recommended for the Victoria Cross, when defending the Commissariat Stores at Rorke’s Drift. (His brother, Capt. Degacher, was killed at Isandhlwana.) He says:

“Private John Williams was posted, together with Private Joseph Williams and Private William Harrison (1/24th Regiment), in a further ward of the Hospital. They held it for more than an hour--so long as they had a round of ammunition left, when, as communication was for the time cut off, the Zulus were enabled to advance and burst open the door. A hand-to-hand conflict then ensued, during which Private Joseph Williams and two of the Patients were dragged out and assegaied (killed with a short spear or dagger).

“Whilst the Zulus were occupied with the slaughter of these unfortunate men, a lull took place, which enabled Private John Williams (who with two of the Patients were by this time the _only men left alive_ in the Ward) to succeed in knocking a hole in the partition and taking the two Patients with him into the next ward, where he found Private Henry Hook.

“These two men together, one man working whilst the other fought and held the enemy at bay with his bayonet, broke through three more partitions, and were thus enabled to bring eight Patients through a small window into the inner line of defence.

“In another ward facing the hill, William Jones and Private Robert Jones had been placed: they defended their post to the last, and until six out of seven Patients it contained had been removed. The seventh, Sergeant Maxfield, 2/24th Regiment, was delirious from fever, and although they had previously dressed him, they were unable to induce him to move; and when Private Robert Jones returned to endeavour to carry him off, he found him being stabbed on his bed by the Zulus.

“Corporal Wm. Allen and Fd. Hitch, 2/24th Regiment, must also be mentioned. It was chiefly due to their courageous conduct that communication with the Hospital was kept up at all--holding together, at all costs, a most dangerous post, raked in reverse by the enemy’s fire from the hill. They were both severely wounded, but their determined conduct enabled the Patients to be withdrawn from the Hospital. And when incapacitated from their wounds from fighting themselves, they continued, as soon as their wounds were dressed, to serve out ammunition to their comrades throughout the night.”

These men who were defending the house at Rorke’s Drift were 120 of his (Col. Degacher’s) men against 5000 Zulus, and they fought from 3 P.M. of January 22nd, to 5 A.M. of the 23rd. _There_ is a Night Nurse’s work for you. “When shall such heroes live again?” In every Nurse of us all. Every Nurse may at all costs serve her Patients as these brave heroic men did at the risk and the cost of their own lives.

Three cheers for these bravest of Night Nurses of Rorke’s Drift, who regarded not themselves, not their ease, not even their lives; who regarded duty and discipline; who stood to the last by God and their neighbour; who saved their post and their Patients. And may we Nurses all be like them, and fight through the night for our Patients’ lives--fight through every night and day!

Do you see what a high feeling of comradeship does for these men? Many a soldier loses his life in the field by going back to help a drowning or a wounded comrade, who might have saved it. Oh, let us Nurses all be _comrades_; stick to the honour of our flag and our corps, and help each other to the best success, for the sake of Him who died, as at this time, to save us all!

And let us remember that petty selfishnesses and meannesses and self-indulgences hinder our honour as good soldiers of Jesus Christ and of the Unseen God, who sees all these little things when no one else does!

What makes us endure to the end? Discipline. Do you think these men could thus have fought at a desperate post through the livelong night if they had not been trained to obedience to orders, and to acting as a corps, yet each man doing his own duty to the fullest extent--rather than every man going his own way, thinking of his own likings, and caring for himself?

How _great_ may be men and women, “little lower than the angels,” and also how _little_!

Humility--to think our own life worth nothing except as serving in a corps, God’s nursing corps, unflinching obedience, steadiness, and endurance in carrying out His work--that is true discipline, that is true greatness, and may God give it to us Nurses, and make us His own Nurses.

And let us not think that these things can be done in a day or a night. No, they are the result of no rough-and-ready method. The most important part of those efforts was to be found in the patient labour of years. These great tasks are not to be accomplished suddenly by raw fellows in a night; it is when discipline and training have become a kind of second nature to us that they can be accomplished every day and every night. The raw Native levies ran away, determining our fall at Isandhlwana. The well-trained English soldiers, led by their Officers and their Non-commissioned Officers, stuck to their posts.

Every feeling, every thought we have, stamps a character upon us, especially in our year of training, and in the next year or two.

The most unruly boys, weak in themselves--for unruliness is weakness--when they have to submit, it brings out all the good points in their characters. These boys, so easily led astray, they put themselves under the severest discipline, and after training sometimes come out the best of us all. The qualities which, when let alone, run to seed and do themselves and others nothing but harm, under proper discipline make fine fellows of them.

And what is it to obey? To obey means to do what we are told, and to do it at once. With the nurse, as with the soldier, whether we have been accustomed to it or not, whether we think it right or not, is not the question. Prompt obedience is the question. We are not in control, but under control. Prompt obedience is the first thing; the rest is traditional nonsense. But mind who we go to for our orders. Go to headquarters. True discipline is to uphold authority, and not to mind trouble. We come into the work to do the work....

We Nurses are taught the “reason why,” as soldiers cannot be, of much of what we have to do. But it would be making a poor use of this “reason why” if we were to turn round in any part of our training and say, or _not_ say, but _feel_--We know better than you.

Would we be of less use than the Elephant? The Elephant who could kill a hundred men, but who alike pushes the artillery train with his head when the horses cannot move it, and who minds the children and carefully nurses them, and who threads a needle with his trunk. Why? Because he has been taught to _obey_. He would be of no use but to destroy, unless he had learnt that. Sometimes he has a strong will, and it is not easy for him to get his lesson perfect. We can feel for him. We know a little about it ourselves. But he does learn in time to go our way and not his own, to carry a heavy load, which of course he would rather not do, to turn to which ever side we wish, and to stop when we want him to stop.

So God teaches each one of us in time to go His way and not our own. And one of the best things I can wish each one of us is that we may learn the Elephant’s lesson, that is to obey, in good time and not too late.

Pray for me, my dear friends, that I may learn it, even in my old age.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

VII

LONDON, _May 16, 1888_.

MY DEAR FRIENDS,--Here, one year more, is my very best love and heart-felt “good speed” to the work.

To each and to all I wish the very highest success, in the widest meaning of the word, in the life’s work you have chosen.

And I am more sorry than for anything else that my illness, more than usually serious, has let me know personally so little of you, except through our dear Matron and dear Home Sister.

You are going steadily and devotedly on in preparing yourselves for future work. Accept my heartiest sympathy and thanks.

* * * * *

We hear much of “Associations” now. It is impossible indeed to live in isolation: we are dependent upon others for the supply of all our wants, and others upon us.

Every Hospital is an “Association” in itself. _We_ of this School are an Association in the deepest sense, regulated--at least we strive towards it--on high and generous principles; through organisation working at once for our own and our fellow Nurses’ success. For, to make progress possible, we must make this interdependence a source of good: not a means of standing still.

There is no magic in the word “Association,” but there is a secret, a mighty call in it, _if_ we will but listen to the “still small voice” in it, calling upon each of us to do our best.

It calls upon our dear heads, and they answer. It calls upon each of us.

We must never forget that the “Individual” makes the Association. What the Association _is_ depends upon each of its members. A Nurses’ Association can never be a substitute for the individual Nurse. It is she who must, each in her measure, give life to the Association, while the Association helps _her_.

We _have_ our dear heads. Thank God for them! Let us each one of us be a living member, according to her several ability. It is the individual that signifies--rather than the law or the rule.

Has not every one who has experience of the world been struck by this: you may have the most admirable circumstances and organisations and examinations and certificates, yet, if the individual allows herself to sink to a lower level, it is all but a “tinkling cymbal” for her. It is how the circumstances are worked that signifies. Circumstances are opportunities.

Rules may become a dead letter. It is the spirit of them that “giveth life.” It is the individual, inside, that counts, the level she is upon which tells. The rest is only the outward shell or envelope. She must become a “rule of thought” to herself through the Ruler.

And on the other hand, it strikes you often, as a great man has said, if the individual finds herself afterwards in less admirable circumstances, but keeps her high level, and rises to a higher and a higher level still--if she makes of her difficulties, her opportunities--steps to ascend--she commands her circumstances; she is capable of the best Nursing work and spirit, capable of the best influence over her Patients.

It is again, what the individual Nurse _is_ and can do during her _living_ training and _living_ work that signifies, not what she is certified for, like a steam-boiler, which is certified to stand so much pressure of work.

She may have gone through a first-rate course, plenty of examinations, and we may find nothing inside. It may be the difference between a Nurse nursing, and a Nurse reading a book on Nursing. Unless it bear fruit, it is all gilding and veneering: the reality is not there, growing, growing every year. Every Nurse must grow. No Nurse can stand still. She must go forward or she will go backward every year.

And how can a Certificate or public Register show this? Rather, she ought to have a moral “Clinical” Thermometer in herself. Our stature does not grow every year after we are “grown up.” Neither does it grow down. It is otherwise with our moral stature and our Nursing stature. We grow down, if we don’t grow up, every year.

At the present time, when there are so many Associations, when periodicals and publicity are so much the fashion, when there is such a dragging of everything before the public, there is some danger of our forgetting that any true Nursing work must be quiet work--an individual work. Anything else is contrary to the whole realness of the work. _Where_ am _I_, the individual, in my inmost soul? _What_ am _I_, the inner woman called “I”? That is the question.

This “I” must be quiet yet quick; quick without hurry; gentle without slowness, discreet without self-importance. “In quietness and in confidence must be her strength.”

I must be trustworthy, to carry out directions intelligently and perfectly, _unseen_ as well as seen; “unto the Lord” _as well as_ unto men; no mere eye service. (How can this be if she is a mere Association Nurse, and not an individual Nurse?)