786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cold-hearted and arrogant persons one is apt to meet, even among 

 trained nurses, must discourage the admission of any but the very best. 

 These will apply. The calling is an honorable one, it promises a com- 

 petence, it corresponds with the innermost nature of woman. It is not 

 true that the Church alone could raise the enthusiasm for hard work, the 

 performance of arduous duties, and self-sacrifice. One of the first nurses 

 I had in my division in Bellevue Hospital, many years ago, was an ac- 

 complished girl, the daughter of a rich man in the far West. After a 

 year and a half it took all the influence and begging of her family to 

 take her away from us and her hard work among the poorest of the poor. 

 The large number of ladies, wealthy and accomplished, who work as- 

 siduously and regularly under Felix Adler, and in other places, under 

 our very eyes, prove that the very best class of society can be prevailed 

 upon to do the hardest and most beneficent kind of work. And the fact 

 that the elite of the women of the city are willing and anxious to under- 

 take the arduous task of founding and supporting training-schools, in 

 the face of all sorts of difficulties, proves also that the work is in ac- 

 cordance with the requirements of both woman's nature and humanity. 

 There will be many trained nurses who will work for humanity's sake, 

 as centuries ago they claimed to serve for God's sake. Many a woman 

 who would have buried herself in a monastery centuries ago, driven 

 from the face of the living earth by misunderstood and unsatisfied long- 

 ing, I believe, would nowadays become a nurse, knowing and enthu- 

 siastic. 



Ladies of the graduating class : The remarks I was expected to 

 make have extended into a lecture. You have been used to lectures, 

 however ; if you had not enjoyed them, and profited by them, you 

 would not be here to-night, the most honored and most conspicuous of 

 this assembly. Thus I thought I might be permitted to speak, instead 

 of to you, of you, and your chosen calling and its history. From noth- 

 ing can any profession derive so much advantage as from the history 

 of its development. It is certainly an interesting spectacle to see how 

 your profession depended intimately on the changing conditions of 

 thought and feeling among mankind. You are happy enough to live 

 and work in a time when, while following individual tastes and having 

 individual motives, your labors are given to the suffering for no out- 

 side reason, no church command, but from the free choice of free 

 women in the interest of humanity. I had also to allude to several 

 subjects which may to some appear a little outside the legitimate do- 

 main of your ambition and duties. You know better. An intelli- 

 gent woman will not spend two of her young years in acquiring a 

 certain knowledge without enlarging her horizon in general. You 

 have chosen a profession as noble and as deserving as any there is 

 in existence. You will be the interpreter's and right hands of the 

 physician, and the connecting link between the physician and not 

 only the single patient, but also the public at large. My opinion 



