But what does the honour lie in? In working hard during your training to learn and to do all things perfectly. The honour does not lie in putting on Nursing like your uniform, your dress; though dishonour often lies in being neat in your uniform within doors and dressy in your finery out of doors. Dishonour always lies in inconsistency.
Honour lies in loving perfection, consistency, and in working hard for it: in being ready to work patiently: ready to say not “How clever I am!” but “I am not yet worthy: but Nursing is worthy; and I will live to deserve and work to deserve to be called a Trained Nurse.”
Here are two of the plain, practical, little things necessary to produce good Nurses, the want of attention to which produces some of the “greatest evils in life”: quietness, cleanliness, (a) Quietness in moving about the “Home”; in arranging your rooms, in not slamming every door after you. No noisy talking on the stairs and in the lobbies—forgetting at times some unfortunate Night Nurse in bed. But if you are Nurses, Nurses ought to be going about quietly whether Night Nurses are asleep or not. For a Sick Ward ought to be as quiet as a Sick Room; and a Sick Room, I need not say, ought to be the quietest place in God’s Kingdom. Quietness in dress, especially being consistent in this matter when off duty and going out. And oh! let the Lady Probationers realise how important their example is in these things, so little and so great! If you are Nurses, Nurses ought not to be dressy, whether in or out of their uniform.
Do you remember that Christ holds up the wild flowers as our example in dress? Why? He says: God “clothes” the field flowers. How does He clothe them?
First: their “clothes” are exactly suitable for the kind of place they are in and the kind of work they have to do. So should ours be.
Second: field flowers are never double: double flowers change their useful stamens for showy petals, and so have no seeds. These double flowers are like the useless appendages now worn on the dress, and very much in your way. Wild flowers have purpose in all their beauty. So ought dress to have; nothing purposeless about it.
Third: the colours of the wild flower are perfect in harmony, and not many of them.
Fourth: there is not a speck on the freshness with which flowers come out of the dirty earth. Even when our clothes are getting rather old we may imitate the flower: for we may make them look as fresh as a daisy.
Whatsoever we do, whether we eat or drink or dress, let us do all to the glory of God. But above all remember, “Be not anxious what ye shall put on,” which is the real meaning of “Take no thought.”
This is not my own idea: it was in a Bible lesson, never to be forgotten. And I knew a Nurse who dressed so nicely and quietly after she had heard this Bible lesson that you would think of her as a model. And alas! I have known, oh how many! whose dress was their snare.