other things.

[25] In making coffee, it is absolutely necessary to buy it in the berry
and grind it at home. Otherwise you may reckon upon its containing a
certain amount of chicory, _at least_. This is not a question of the
taste or of the wholesomeness of chicory. It is that chicory has nothing
at all of the properties for which you give coffee. And therefore you
may as well not give it.

Again, all laundresses, mistresses of dairy-farms, head nurses (I speak
of the good old sort only--women who unite a good deal of hard manual
labour with the head-work necessary for arranging the day's business, so
that none of it shall tread upon the heels of something else) set great
value, I have observed, upon having a high-priced tea. This is called
extravagant. But these women are "extravagant" in nothing else. And they
are right in this. Real tea-leaf tea alone contains the restorative they
want; which is not to be found in sloe-leaf tea.

The mistresses of houses, who cannot even go over their own house once a
day, are incapable of judging for these women. For they are incapable
themselves, to all appearance, of the spirit of arrangement (no small
task) necessary for managing a large ward or dairy.

[26]

[Sidenote: Nurses often do not think the sick room any business of
theirs, but only the sick.]

I once told a "very good nurse" that the way in which her patient's room
was kept was quite enough to account for his sleeplessness; and she
answered quite good-humouredly she was not at all surprised at it--as if
the state of the room were, like the state of the weather, entirely out
of her power. Now in what sense was this woman to be called a "nurse?"

[27] For the same reason if, after washing a patient, you must put the
same night-dress on him again, always give it a preliminary warm at the
fire. The night-gown he has worn must be, to a certain extent, damp. It
has now got cold from having been off him for a few minutes. The fire
will dry and at the same time air it. This is much more important than
with clean things.

[28]

[Sidenote: How a room is _dusted_.]

If you like to clean your furniture by laying out your clean clothes
upon your dirty chairs or sofa, this is one way certainly of doing it.
Having witnessed the morning process called "tidying the room," for many
years, and with ever-increasing astonishment, I can describe what it is.
From the chairs, tables, or sofa, upon which the "things" have lain
du