mand of herself that her very
presence be quieting, calming, happy; that her conversation with her
patient shall vibrate with a certain something that gives him courage
and strengthens the desire and the will to health; that her care of him
shall prove confidence-breeding. The patient's attitude, when he is at
all suggestible, is largely in the nurse's hands, and she can make his
illness a calamity by dishonest, fear-breeding, or suspicion-forming
suggestion. After all, the whole question here is one of the normality
of the nurse's own outlook on life and people. The happier, truer, and
more wholesome it is, the more really can she help her patient to both
bodily and mental health. Of one thing let the overzealous nurse beware.
Do not irritate your patient by a patent, blatant, hollow cheerfulness
that any one of any sense knows is assumed for his benefit. Personally I
know of no more aggravating stimulus.

_What We Attend To Determines What We Are._--This is one of the first
laws of education. If the child's attention from birth could be
controlled, his future would be absolutely assured. But attention is a
thing of free will and cannot be forced by others. It can be won through
interest or self-directed by will. The child's attention is entirely
determined by interest, interest in the morbid and painful as truly as
in the bright and happy. Punishment interests him tremendously because
it affects him, it interferes with his plan of life, it holds his entire
immediate attention to his injured self. But something more impelling
quickly makes him forget his hurt feelings and he is happy again. The
average sick person is emotionally very much like the child. His will at
the time, as we noted before, is tempted to take a rest, and his
interest is ready to follow bodily feeling unless something more
impelling is offered. The nurse who can direct attention to other
people, to analyzing the sounds of the street, to understanding
something of the new life of a hospital or sick room, to planning a
house, or choosing its furniture or equipping a library, or supplying a
store; to intelligent references to books or current events; or to
redecorating the room--all in his mind; to an appetizing tray, a dainty
flower, a bit of sunshine, a picture, etc., is fixing the patient's
attention on something constructive, helping him to get well by
forgetting to think of himself.

Thus the nurse, knowing the laws of attention, can keep hersel