babies, and have to be lifted on their legs every
second, as they can never get up of
themselves.

I think I prefer her, and even Grimbones and
Muff, to Aunt Grewsome. When that little
grey woman hears that any of her family Is ill,
she starts by express train from any remote part
of the country to take possession of them, as if
they were an estate. Oh, those small, cold, stone-
coloured eyes; those chiselled, crisp curls; those
thin, tight lips; that long, lined, granite-coloured
countenance! The sensation of her— for she is
less a human being in a house, than a subtle
influence— is that skin-creeping which children
call goose-flesh. Not only you, but your wife
and your children, and your man-servant and
your maid-servant, and even the stranger that
is within your gates, succumb to her iron will.
Everybody obeys her sharp, short directions—
snapped off in broken sentences by her teeth—
as if subject to a spell. Only one will, one
opinion, is allowed to peep out from the screen
of timid obedience behind which everybody
cowers. Nobody must know anything but
Aunt Grewsome; but, alas, of domestic affairs,
few know so much. This may be the source
and secret of her mysterious power; which she
does not owe to graces of person or manner.
She is so short and so active (active in a
measured, angular way) that she never seems to sit
down; the most she can do is to lean her little
person against the edge of a seat. Then
comes the terrible moment for housemaids.
Then it is that Aunt Grewsome darts cutting
glances into the corners of rooms and under
sofas and beds. Then it is that you, helpless and
forlorn, feel that the management of the banished
wife of your bosom is being impugned, and your
whole establishment mercilessly criticised. Then
it is that all hope is shut out; for you know that,
in whatever opinion or objection Aunt Grewsome
may advance, there lurks the dreadful
probability that she is in the right. It gives
me, however, inexpressible pleasure to state
that this very merit of hers has been her ruin.
Since she read Miss Nightingale's book, and
found all her own nursing doctrines confirmed in
it, she has become— the foundation of her
character being conceit— utterly unbearable; and
a hunting cousin of ours, who had broken his
collar-bone, actually suborned one of his
outdoor servants (no in-door menial would have
dared) to do something so indescribably
insubordinate, that she left the house, and has never
ventured uninvited into any of our sick-rooms
since. I dare say Aunt Grewsome is not wholly
unknown to some of my readers.

But last and best of all, there is the dear fairy
nurse, who is never in the way at the wrong
time, and never out of the way at the right
time; who, when you wish for her, appears like
magic by your side, and, when you want anything
else, brings that very thing, by some marvellous
intuition, from some unexplained source;
who is always cheerful and never tired; who
seems fresher after sitting up for two or three
nights, than the rest of the household after
seven hours' bed; who, when you can sit up,
achieves worlds of ease and comfort with pillows,
and bits of board, and cozy footstools; who tells
you exactly what you ought to know, and won't
let you be bothered with any news that might
worry you; whose sympathy, though tender, is
invigorating, for she never " poor-fellows!"
you, as Muff does a hundred times a day; who
does your work for you in a quiet, unostentatious
way, and contrives to let you have the
impression that it did itself, like the tangled
wool or golden web of fairy tales; who makes
jellies which no confectioner could approach,
and mulls claret as if she had been taught
the process by a special secret. This fairy
nurse, this ideal of a sick-bed guardian, this
exquisite undertaking of nature, reconciles you
to nursing womanhood in general, and makes
you once more believe in the good gifts of
feminality. I know such a nurse; with heart,
head, and senses in unfailing harmony. Under
her delightful ministrations, it is almost a
pleasure to be ill. Such a nurse is like the poet,
"born, not made." But even she may be
benefited by scientific rules. Indeed, she is almost
the only kind of nurse who can be so benefited;
for all the rest only add a little scientific
pedantry to their other qualifications or
disqualifications for their work.

The most sensible book ever written on the
subject is Miss Nightingale's Notes on Nursing.
Her rule of rules, the one which stands as the
first commandment on which hang all the rest,
is "TO KEEP THE AIR THE PATIENT BREATHES AS
PURE AS THE EXTERNAL AIR, WITHOUT CHILLING
HIM." No airing of a sick-room by means of
inside windows, or doors opening into corridors,
passages, halls, courts, or any other enclosed
space. The outside air, and when it blows
freshest and freest, is all that she will admit.
With that commandment firmly established, next
comes the need of some special and additional
external warmth in the chilly hours of early
morning, when the patient's vital powers are
low, and before the food and warmth of the day
have roused him up, either to healthy action or
to feverish heat; and at all times— morning,
noon, and night alike— in weak, protracted, or
collapsed cases, where very often the patient is
lost for want of this one matter of simple care
and forethought. Hot bottles, hot flannels,
warm drinks, a good fire, and perpetual
attention to the bodily condition, are needed in such
cases; and all this extra external warmth can go
on together, with the prescribed amount of
ventilation from the outside. " People don't
catch cold in bed," says Miss Nightingale:
a truth that cannot be too strongly insisted
on those who have to attend to the sick or the
aged.

In the matter of cleanliness, it is enough to
say that nothing can be too fastidiously clean and
delicate for the proper management of a sick-
room. No dirty rags left fluttering about; no
airing of damp linen or steaming towels before
the sick-room fire; no superfluous drapery
anywhere, and not a rag of carpet, if possible to be