Chapter IV

May I pay ourselves even the least little compliment, as to our being a little less conceited than last year? Were we not as conceited in 1872 as it was possible to be? You shall tell. Are we, in 1873, rather less so? And, without having any one particularly in my head--for what I am going to ask is in fact a truism--is not our conceit always in exact proportion to our ignorance? For those who really know something know how little it is.

Would that this could be a “secret” among us! But, unfortunately, is not our name “up” and “abroad” for conceit? And has it not even been said (“tell it not in Gath”): “And these conceited ‘Nightingale’ women scarcely know how to read and write?”

Now let no one look to see our blushes. But shall we not get rid of this which makes us ridiculous as fast as we can?

But enough of this joke; let us be serious, remembering that the greatest trust which is committed to any woman of us all is, _herself_; and that she is living in the presence of God as well as of her fellow-women.

To know whether we know our Nursing business or not is a great result of training; and to think that we know it when we do _not_ is as great a proof of want of training.

The world, more especially the Hospital world, is in such a hurry, is moving so fast, that it is too easy to slide into bad habits before we are aware. And it is easier still to let our year’s training slip away without forming any real plan of training ourselves.

For, after all, all that any training is to do for us is: to teach us how to train ourselves, how to observe for ourselves, how to think out things for ourselves. Don’t let us allow the first week, the second week, the third week to pass by--I will not say in idleness, but in bustle. Begin, for instance, at once making notes of your cases. From the first moment you see a case, you can observe it. Nay, it is one of the first things a Nurse is strictly called upon to do: to observe her sick. Mr. Croft has taught you how to take notes; and you have now, every one of you, two leisure times a week to work up your notes.

But give but one-quarter of an hour a _day_ to jot down, even in words which no one can understand but yourself, the progress or change of two or three individual cases, not to forget or confuse them. You can then write them out at your two leisure times. To those who have not much education, I am sure that our kind Home Sister, or the Special Probationer in the same Ward, or nearest in any way, will give help. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and “line upon line”--_one_ line every day--in the steady, observing, humble Nurse has often won the race over the smarter “genius” in what constitutes real Nursing. But few of us women seriously think of improving our own mind or character _every day_. And this is fatal to our improving in Nursing. We do not calculate the future by our experience of the past. What right have we to expect that, if we have not improved during the last six months, we shall during the next six? Then, we do not allow for the changes which circumstances make in us--the being put on Staff duty, when we certainly shall not have more time, but less, for improving ourselves, or the growing older or more feeble in health. We believe that we shall always have the same powers or opportunities for learning our business which we now have. Our time of training slips away in this unimproving manner. And when a woman begins to see how many things might have been better in her, she is too old to change, or it is too late, too late. And she confesses to herself, or oftener she does not confess--“How all her life she had been in the wrong.”

We are all of us, as we believe, passing into an unknown world, of which this is only a part. We have been here a year, or part of a year. What are we making of our own lives? Are we where we were a year ago? Or are we fitter for that work of after-life which we have undertaken?

Do our faults, and weaknesses, and vanities, tend to diminish? Or are we still listless, inefficient, slow, bustling, conceited, unkind, hard judges of others, instead of helping them where we can? There is no greater softener of hard judgments than is the trying to help the person whom we so judge, as I can tell from my own experience; and in this you will tell me whether we have been deficient to each other. There is a true story told of Captain Marryat when a boy; that he jumped overboard to save an older midshipman who had made the boy’s life a misery to him by his filthy cruelties. And the boy Marryat wrote home to his mother “that he loved this midshipman now--and wasn’t it lucky that his life was saved--even better than his own darling mother.”

Do we keep before our minds constantly the sense of our duty here, of our duty to others--Nurses, Sisters, Matron--as well as to ourselves, our fellow Probationers, and our Home Sister, and to the whole School of which we are members?

If we thought of this more, we might hope to attain that quiet mind and self-control, which is the “liberty” spoken of by St. Paul. We might learn how truly to use and enjoy both our fellow Probationers, and this Home and our School, if we were more anxious about following the example of Christ than about the opinion of our “world.” “We are the ‘world,’ which we often seem to think includes every one but _us_.”

But few comparatively have the power of disengaging themselves, even in thought, from those about them. They take the view of their own set. If it is the fashion to conceal, they conceal; if to carry tales, they carry tales. There are a few who never allow themselves to speak against others, and exercise such a kind of authority as to prevent others being spoken against in their hearing. These are the “peacemakers” of whom Christ speaks. These are they who keep a Home or Institution together, and seem more than any others in this our little world to bear the image of Christ until His coming again.

Do we ever do things because they are right, without regard to our own credit? When we ask ourselves only “What is right?” or (which is the same question), “What is the will of God?” then we are truly entering His “kingdom.” We are no longer grovelling among the opinions of men and women. We can see God in all things, and all things in God, the Eternal Father shining through the accidents of our lives--which sometimes shake us more, though less conspicuous, than the accidents we see brought into our Surgical Wards--the accidents of the characters of those under whom we are placed, and of our own inner life.

One of the greatest missionaries that ever was, wrote more than 300 years ago to his pupils and fellow-missionaries:

“Self-knowledge”--(the knowledge by which we see ourselves in God)--“self-knowledge is the nurse of confidence in God. It is from distrust of ourselves that confidence in God is born. This will be the way for us to gain that true interior lowliness of mind which, in all places, and especially here, is far more necessary than you think. I warn you also not to let the good opinion which men have of you be too much of a pleasure to you, unless perhaps in order that you may be the more ashamed of yourselves on that account. It is that which leads people to neglect themselves, and this negligence, in many cases, upsets, _as by a kind of trick_, all that lowliness of which I speak, and puts conceit and arrogance in its place. And thus so many do not see for a long time how much they have lost, and gradually lose all care for piety, and all tranquillity of mind, and thus are always troubled and anxious, finding no comfort either from without or within themselves.”

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” says our Lord, “and I will give you rest.” But He adds immediately who those are to whom He will give this “rest” or quietness of mind--namely those, who, like Himself, are “meek and lowly of heart.”

These words may seem in a Hospital life “like dreams.” But they are not dreams if we take them for the spirit of our School and the rule of our Nursing. “To practise them, to feel them, to make them our own,” this is not far from the “kingdom of Heaven” in a Hospital.

Pray for me, as I do for you, that “piety” and a “quiet mind”--but these always and only in the strenuous effort to _press forwards_--may be ours.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.