AN EFFICIENT NURSE.
To show the capabilities of some of the women who thought they had a
mission for saving the country by acting as hospital nurses, I give the
history of one.
While I lay ill, a friend came and told of a most excellent woman who
had come from afar, and tendered her services to the Government, who had
exerted much influence and spent much effort to get into a hospital as
nurse, but had failed.
Hearing of my illness, her desire to be useful led her to tender her
services, so that if she could not nurse wounded soldiers she could
nurse one who had. The generous offer was accepted, and I was left an
afternoon in her care.
I wanted a cup of tea. She went to the kitchen to make it, and one hour
after came up with a cup of tea, only this and nothing more, save a
saucer. To taste the tea. I must have a spoon, and to get one she must
go along a hall, down a long flight of stairs, through another hall and
the kitchen, to the pantry. When she had made the trip the tea was so
much too strong that a spoonful would have made a cup. She went down
again for hot water, and after she had got to the kitchen remembered
that she had thrown it out, thinking it would not be wanted. The fire
had gone out, and she came up to inquire if she should make a new one,
and if so, where she should find kindling? She had spent almost two
hours running to and fro, was all in perspiration and a fluster, had
done me a great deal of harm and nobody any good, had wasted all the
kindlings for the evening fire, enough tea to have served a large family
for a meal, and fairly illustrated a large part of the hospital service
rendered by women oppressed with the nursing mission.
My sense of relief was inexpressible when Mrs. George B. Lincoln
returned from her visit to the White House, sent my tea-maker away and
took charge of me once more.