You must use all the tact you possess; you will not find two
houses just alike, or two patients with the same tastes. A "lady"
in an emergency does many things she usually leaves to the
servants. So must you. There is sickness, trouble with the
servants, every domestic wheel turning with difficulty, and, if
you have time, if you can leave your patient without doing her an
injury, you can, perhaps, by some little service earn much
gratitude from the family, and help to remove the impression that
trained nurses are "so helpless and need so much waiting on."

In conclusion, let me tell you, with all the earnestness of which
I am capable, that upon each one of you rests not only the
reputation of your school, but, in a measure, the reputation of
the profession. No one needs to be told how much more widely known
is an inconsistent Christian than a faithful one, how much harm
one does and how comparatively little good comes of the others'
faithfulness. And it is just so with you nurses, a careless nurse
makes a far wider reputation than a careful one.

If one physician is unskillful or unprincipled, the whole
profession is not found fault with, but the individual is blamed
and another one found who will do better, but it is not so in most
cases where a nurse proves unsatisfactory. The whole profession
suffers and every nurse sinks more or less if one of her sister
nurses commits an indiscretion, or does any of the thousand things
she ought not to do. I recollect very well, many years ago, a
Brooklyn nurse, of about thirty-five years, married her patient, a
boy nineteen years old. It made a great stir in the city, and, as
I was living there at the time and the superintendent of a
training school, I had to bear my share of the odium cast upon all