Page:Old ninety-nine's cave.djvu/288

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that you are on the right trail and that training will develop an inherited talent for nursing."

"A high compliment truly, and one that I appreciate. Nursing is, indeed, a sacred calling, a calling that requires rare gifts; but I sometimes wonder if all nurses fully appreciate its true significance. It surely does not mean that we have forsaken the world and all its pleasures for the sweet joy of ministering to the afflicted, in other words, that the woman is wholly absorbed in the nurse. I see the force of Dr. Herschel's argument which is, that nursing is neither an order, a trade, nor a means of earning a livelihood; but that it must ultimate in a profession filled almost exclusively by women. Our American hospitals, though second only to those of England in point of equipment for the training of nurses, are still imperfect. From a small beginning actuated by humane motives, of necessity, nursing has assumed vast proportions. Like all other avenues of human activity, the bad crops out with the good and many a conscientious nurse suffers for the