At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh. The charm of these letters, it will at once be found, depends upon their simplicity, their artlessness, their obvious candour. They present a plain, untinted account of a nurse's career, of the difficulties she has to face, and the problems she has to solve. Those who wish to know something of a nurse's life and times will find in this writing a convincing narrative, unemotional and matter-of-fact. This is no small merit, since the record of nursing experiences is apt to be blurred by exaggeration or made nauseous by sickly romance.
There is pathos enough in the sick-room and in the presence of death, but those who come in touch with it would do better to hush the knowledge in their hearts, rather than to proclaim it on the house-tops.
Apart from this, the world must be a little weary of the astute sick child who lisps melodrama into the ear of the "kind nurse," as well as of the bizarre aphorisms of the dying tramp.
The faults of management and lapses of discipline which crop up incidentally in the story are now matters of the past, and are no longer to be found in either the "Children's Hospital" or the "General. The novice who is entering the profession of Nursing will find in these letters a sensible and exact view of the prospect that lies before her. She may further glean some insight as to the qualifications of the good [Pg vi] nurse. These qualifications are to be expressed neither by certificates nor by badges, neither by starched uniforms nor by examination results.
They are happily beyond the mechanical gauge of any examiner, and above the platitudes of the official testimonial. Of the perfect nurse it may be said that "her price is far above rubies," and that her place is high in the company of admirable women. She is versed in the elaborate ritual of her art, she has tact and sound judgment, she can give strength to the weak and confidence to the faint at heart, she has that rarest sight which can see the world through the patient's eyes, and she is possessed of those exquisite, intangible, most human sympathies which, in the fullest degree, belong alone to her sex.
