I should like to have parried with Pinker (only my language is so much more complicated than it ought to be) that thinking in one's bath is a self-deception. I lay in my own bath last night and thought very deep thoughts, but often when we think our thoughts are deep they are only vague. Bath thoughts are wonderful, but there's nothing "to" them.
We had a heated discussion to-day as to whether the old lady who leaves a tract beneath a single rose by each bedside could longer be tolerated.
"She is a nuisance," said the Sister; "the men make more noise afterwards because they set her hymns to ragtime."
"What good does it do them?" said the V.A.D., " ... and I have to put the roses in water!"
I rode the highest horse of all: "Her inquiries about their souls are an impertinence. Why should they be bothered?"
These are the sort of things they say in debating societies. But Life talks differently....
Pinker said, "Makes the po'r ole lady 'appy!"
As one bends one's head low over the splint one sits unnoticed, a part of the furniture of the ward. The sounds of the ward rise and fill the ears; it is like listening to a kettle humming, bees round a bush of flowers, the ticking of a clock, the passing of life....
Now and then there are incidents, as just now. Two orderlies came in with a stretcher to fetch Mr. Smith (an older man than Smiff and a more dignified) away to a convalescent home. Mr. Smith has never been to France, but walked into our ward one day with a sore on his foot which had to be cut. He was up and dressed in his bedraggled khaki uniform when the stretcher-bearers came for him.
He looked down his nose at the stretcher. "I don't much like the look of that," he said. The stretcher-bearers waited for him.