We (Sisters) think that we must often make allowances for them, and sometimes put ourselves in their place. And I will appeal to Sisters to say whether we must not observe more than we speak, instead of speaking more than we observe. We must not give an order, much less a reproof, without being fully acquainted with both sides of the case. Else, having scolded wrongfully, we look rather foolish.
The person in charge every one must see to be just and candid, looking at both sides, not moved by entreaties or, by likes and dislikes, but only by justice; and always reasonable, remembering and not forgetting the wants of those of whom she is in charge.
She must have a keen though generous insight into the characters of those she has to control. They must know that she _cares for_ them even while she is checking them; or rather that she checks them _because_ she cares for them. A woman _thus_ reproved is often made your friend for life; a word dropped in this way by a Sister in charge (I am speaking now solely to Sisters and Head Nurses) may sometimes show a probationer the unspeakable importance of this year of her life, when she must sow the seed of her future nursing in this world, and of her future life through eternity. For although future years are of importance to train the plant and make it come up, yet if there is no seed nothing will come up.
Nay, I appeal again to Sisters’ own experience, whether they have not known patients feel the same of words dropped before _them_.
We had in one of the Hospitals which we nurse a little girl patient of seven years old, the child of a bad mother, who used to pray on her knees (when she did not know she was heard) her own little prayer that she might not forget, when she went away to what she already knew to be a bad life, the good words she had been taught. (In this great London, the time that children spend in Hospital is sometimes the only time in their lives that they hear good words.) And sometimes we have had patients, widows of journeymen for instance, who had striven to the last to do for their children and place them all out in service or at work, die in our Hospitals, thanking God that they had had this time to collect their thoughts before death, and to die “so comfortably” as they expressed it.