CHAPTER XL.

Our Love of "Things."

OES a man live who understands how a woman clings to her " things," her furniture, her chairs and tables, her carpets and her curtains? I was talking a while ago with an elderly gentlewoman who has arrived at great estate, and she was somewhat wistfully recalling her day of small things, of modest beginnings. "When John and I set up our house," she said, "I did my own work, and kept everything as neat and dainty as a new pin. Later when we had larger means and I kept help, I found that I could not compel Bridgets and Gretchens to do the work so exquisitely as I had-it needed the lady's touch for that—but I yielded a little for peace, and tried to possess my soul in patience and equanimity, even though china was nicked, and pots and pans were ruined." She paused for breath and then proceeded:

"My good Betsey married and left me and I did not hasten to supply her place. The fact is, I am enjoying more than you would fancy, making acquaintance over again with my things; my tea caddy, and my oat-meal boiler, and my egg-whip and my sieves. It is a real pleasure to handle them, and arrange the closets in my own way."

A woman can understand this; any woman can. And a woman knows how fond she grows of the old desk where she writes her letters, of the rocking-chair in which she sang lullabys to her babies, of the old clock which has ticked away the happy hours of all her life. Inanimate things, but so interwoven with the very woof of our memories and the very fibre of our hearts, that they seem as if endowed with sense and emotion.

I read a pathetic story of an old lady, and it brought the tears to my eyes. Perhaps you have read it too. She was a Vermont woman, and she had dwelt for fifty years in a tiny farmhouse in the shelter of a valley in the Green Mountains. Then her good man died, and her children said that mother could not go on living there alone. So Katharine carried her off to her great beautiful home in Boston, and gave her a wide sunny chamber furnished sumptuously, and appointed a maid to wait on her, and asked her to do nothing except rest and fold her hands and be quiet and go out for drives in an elegant carriage.

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Was the old lady contented? Not in the least. She was desolate and homesick, and pined for the old-fashioned home and the familiar things: her rag carpet, her braided rugs, her stove, her cane-seat rocker with the chintz covered cushions. She pined and fretted and dwindled away and would have died before long, if a big-hearted, breezy and sensible daughter-in-law, arriving on a visit from the dear old country home, had not seen how the case stood, and taken her home again. Established within sight of her own old house, with her old things around her, she plucked up courage enough to live and be happy.

I have a little round pine stand, not one bit pretty, and old beyond belief; a thing which came to me from my great-great-grandmother, and it keeps company with my old old clock and that belonged to my grandfather's father, and money could not buy either of these treasures. They have stood faithfully by me in every vicissitude, always part of the household plenishing, and I love them. So you, dear lady, whose eyes fall on this page, have your own things which you prize more than silver or gold.

Laces, fragile as cobwebs, yet so strong that they survive dynasties and changing empires, fans which have been bequeathed by mother to daughter, and above all jewels which are ever enduring are among the things which women love. A ring, a brooch, a trinket, a string of pearls, but their very touch thrills you, their loss fills you with a sorrow too deep to pass easily away.

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CHAPTER XLI.

A Duty to the Community.

NE of our manifest obligations to the community in which we live is to do whatever lies in our power to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. If we have diphtheria or scarlet fever within our doors, we owe it to our neighbors to obey every precautionary edict and rigidly to quarantine the patient and his nurses, so that there shall be the minimum of danger, that the trouble will spread. Thoughtless people sometimes overlook this duty, and suffer visitors to enter their households, or themselves go forth and mingle freely with those to whom the malady may be a menace. In no such instance can a willful transgressor be held guiltless. Death may not ensue from his action, but pain and illness may, and in any event he has threatened society by indiscreet and selfish behavior.

When a child in any home has shown symptoms of a disease which is probably infectious or contagious, the proper course is to isolate him until you are sure that it is safe for the other children in the family to be in his company. If a child in your household is ill with any dangerous or dreaded malady, notify his teacher and withdraw from school the remaining children in your home. that in you lies to keep the disease from spreading.

to the community.

This is your bounden duty

Equally, if there is anywhere near your home a well or stream or cesspool, or any place which may breed disease, you as a householder must at once take measures to purify it, and you must not protest if you are held responsible in case of negligence on your part, which is followed by evil consequences. In this world no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself, but we are bound in one bundle irrevocably.

It may not be amiss here to acknowledge our great debt of gratitude to one profession, that of the trained nurse. Formerly in every town and in our country villages and rural farming communities, there were always notable women, kind. and self-sacrificing, who would go to a friend or neighbor in her extremity and help to nurse the children through an epidemic of measles, watch by the fevered patient and soothe the last moments of the dying. Blessings on their capable hands and their compassionate hearts! Still, wherever these friendly helpers are

and

found, they are uncanonized Sisters of Mercy, God's own angels of rescue and relief. In our more complex city life, where you may live actually under the same roof with a neighbor and know nothing of her except her name, and that only because it is over her doorbell, this old neighborly exchange of kind offices is now unknown. Therefore in critical and serious illness we send a messenger for the trained nurse, she comes to us, serene, efficient, gentle, and equipped for her campaign, doing quite as much for her patient and the family, as the physician does. Trained nurses are obtained by application to a bureau where their names are registered, or to the hospital where they have received their training. nurse takes a course of two or more years before she receives her diploma. In order to be accepted at the hospital where she desires to study, she must present a certificate of proficiency in ordinary English branches from her teachers at school, and a letter from her pastor testifying to her moral character;

A

THE TRAINED NURSE.

also a letter from her doctor, witnessing that she is in good health and has sufficient stamina to endure the hardships of her novitiate.

She is paid a small sum, increased at intervals, while she pursues her studies. She wears a uniform of cambric gown, apron and cap, while at her duty, and she submits to rules as a soldier to discipline. When she has been graduated, she knows what she has been taught.