Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Once more overcome with fatigue, we sat down on a bench, to rest before leaving, when a wonderful little maiden passed, cleanly but very poorly dressed for these days, with beautifully and yet fashionably dressed hair, and far-away dreamy eyes. ' That, no doubt, is a young artist A DAY IN LONDON 295 treading the Asphodel meadows of her youth.' My friend answered, ' I daresay it is true. Let us tell her of the picture we have enjoyed so much ; ' and running after her she brought her back, all smiles, saying to me, ' This lady is not an artist, as we thought, but the next thing to it, a model, enjoying the pictures she has helped to make.' Seeing she had no catalogue, we presented her with ours, and left her in that undying Elysian world of Art, while we slowly went down the steps with the strong conviction upon us that age had not yet robbed us of the power of spending a happy grey summer morning in London. 296 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN HEALTH Nurses — * Janet's Kepentance ' — Private hospitals— Sick -nursing- Convalescence— Medical books. OUR home-coming this September was an agitating and painful one. We had been warned by telegraph that we should find grave sickness in the house, and so indeed it was. Doctors, nurses, everything provided before we were able to get back. How little can the young of the present day understand the complete revolution that has come over family life in the last half-century, and how changed are our relations towards the sick, though the invalid may be our nearest and dearest ! Thirty years ago, even in the houses of the comparatively rich, it was exceedingly difficult to get help in illness ; an old char- woman, a coachman's wife, or a servant out of place, was considered all that was necessary. Even a partially trained nurse was a very rare thing, and never sought for except in cases of severe operation or dangerous fevers. It seems almost impossible to believe that chloroform was not used till the middle of the 'Forties, and that Liston's first great operation with the patient unconscious from ether was in 1848. Now, in spite of the many blessings nurses generally bring to the patients, I think the fact that they are usually good and very easily obtained is one cause of the deterio- ration in home-life clearly perceptible to all of us who are of a certain age. Sickness does not now strain every nerve, nor bring the same occupation, the same real HEALTH 297 work, mental and physical, that it used to do. The feeling of responsibility, of constant anxiety, is taken off our shoulders and laid on the nurse. Loving members of a family have just to continue their ordinary lives, for mere occupation's sake, and to avoid the reproach of giving way to useless grief, however anxious they may be. Ministering to those we love is too often denied us, and the patient's gentle gratitude, which used to tighten for life the bonds of affection, either does not now exist, or is given to a hard- worked, perhaps overworked, woman who does not want it, and who is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Her services, however excellent and efficient, are given for money, and are and ought to be perfectly different from the tender and devoted services prompted by love. All sensible doctors recognise this.