[Sidenote: Noise of female dress.]

It is, I think, alarming, peculiarly at this time, when the female
ink-bottles are perpetually impressing upon us "woman's" "particular
worth and general missionariness," to see that the dress of women is
daily more and more unfitting them for any "mission," or usefulness at
all. It is equally unfitted for all poetic and all domestic purposes. A
man is now a more handy and far less objectionable being in a sick room
than a woman. Compelled by her dress, every woman now either shuffles or
waddles--only a man can cross the floor of a sick-room without shaking
it! What is become of woman's light step?--the firm, light, quick step
we have been asking for?

Unnecessary noise, then, is the most cruel absence of care which can be
inflicted either on sick or well. For, in all these remarks, the sick
are only mentioned as suffering in a greater proportion than the well
from precisely the same causes.

Unnecessary (although slight) noise injures a sick person much more than
necessary noise (of a much greater amount).


[Sidenote: Patient's repulsion to nurses who rustle.]

All doctrines about mysterious affinities and aversions will be found to
resolve themselves very much, if not entirely, into presence or absence
of care in these things.

A nurse who rustles (I am speaking of nurses professional and