health suffers from confinement and sedentary occupations, who might, I
think, be both usefully and agreeably employed in business of this sort,
and be recruiting their health at the same time."

"Then," said my wife, "there is the medical profession."

"Yes," said I. "The world is greatly obliged to Miss Blackwell and other
noble pioneers who faced and overcame the obstacles to the attainment of
a thorough medical education by females. Thanks to them, a new and
lucrative profession is now open to educated women in relieving the
distresses of their own sex; and we may hope that in time, through their
intervention, the care of the sick may also become the vocation of
cultivated, refined, intelligent women instead of being left, as
heretofore, to the ignorant and vulgar? The experience of our late war
has shown us what women of a high class morally and intellectually can
do in this capacity. Why should not this experience inaugurate a new and
sacred calling for refined and educated women? Why should not NURSING
become a vocation equal in dignity and in general esteem to the medical
profession, of which it is the right hand? Why should our dearest hopes,
in the hour of their greatest peril, be committed into the hands of
Sairey Gamps, when the world has seen Florence Nightingales?"

"Yes, indeed," said my wife; "I can testify, from my own experience,
that the sufferings and dangers of the sickbed, for the want of
intelligent, educated nursing, have been dreadful. A prejudiced,
pig-headed, snuff-taking old woman, narrow-minded and vulgar, and more
confident in her own way than seven men that can render a reason, enters
your house at just the hour and moment when all your dearest earthly
hopes are brought to a crisis. She becomes absolute dictator over your
delicate, helpless wife and your frail babe,--the absolute dictator of
all in the house. If it be her sovereign will and pleasure to enact all
sorts of physiological absurdities in the premises, who shall say her
nay? "She knows her business, she hopes!" And if it be her edict, as it
was of one of her class whom I knew, that each of her babies shall eat
four baked beans the day it is four days old, eat them it must; and if
the baby die in convulsions four days after, it is set down as the
mysterious will of an overruling Providence.

"I know and have seen women lying upon laced pillows under silken
curtains, who have been bullied and dominated over in the hour of thei