ster
community and the hospital. She could act and do as she wished and
desired. So Nelka agreed with the stipulation that she would
undertake this job for one year, and having made her arrangements
left for Kovno. The whole picture of the Kovno enterprise is very
vividly seen from a number of letters written by Nelka during 1914.

Kovno 1913.

"I think life is a great mystery and thus far renounciation seems to
me the only achievement."

Kovno 1914.

"Kovno is a little different from what I expected. It is much more of
a hospital than I thought but it is to be completely made over. It is
now for 50 beds and a separate house for eye illnesses with two wards
in it. There are 40 sisters and 18 servants."

"Two hours after I arrived I attacked their hair (the sisters), and
now it is as flat as paper on the wall. I also berated a doctor
within the first 24 hours for not appearing for his lecture. I
thought I better acquire the habit of discipline at once for the
position is rather appalling and I am trying my best to impose
terror. When I feel the terror getting rooted, I will try for a
little affection and good will."

"I am now racking my brains how to get 180 dresses and aprons made by
Easter and keep within the limit for cost."

"I am preparing different and complete charts for all the wards and a
laboratory is to be opened in a month. The planning is not the most
difficult; it is arranging things within given conditions and in a
certain sense in a margin, and appeasing demands and complaints from
all sides. The new division of the work was very complicated, too. In
one ward, every sister, who was ordered to it either wept, flatly
refused or prepared to lose everything and leave on account of the
nature of the sister at the head of it. Of course I had to insist on
acceptance of the distribution of service, on principle, but I am
glad to have found good reason to get rid of the said sister, in
time. Finally the young sister who has to go there now, and who
reiterated for days that she would rather wash dishes for the rest of
her days than go there, after a frank talk of half an hour, said she
would, and that I wouldn't hear another word from her. I was reduced
to real tears of gratitude and admiration for the effort."

Kovno 1914.

"My head I know is not as strong and clear as it was."

"I have a very nice room which is in the most immaculate order
imaginable--I am never in it. Next to it I have what is cal