Moral objects.
Moral Objects attainable.
The most difficult part of a difficult thing, only perhaps it is at the same time the most important.
Need of Certificates.
I. I think that every nurse, before joining the Fund, should produce a certificate from her matron, stating her to be a respectable woman. In plain words, for the word respectable is certainly capable of most wondrous extension, the certificate should state her to be, in the matron’s belief, and to the best of her knowledge, a chaste woman, and should specify whether she be spinster, wife, or widow. In either of the latter cases, the marriage certificate, and in the last that of the husband’s death, should accompany the matron’s.
The matron’s certificate should, I consider, also state her to be sober; and it would be a question whether it should not also state her to have served for not less than a year in the hospital. The vagabond class are a terrible drag upon the whole order; and some of these might, from the novelty of the thing, be disposed to join it at first.
II. An important question would be: Should the matron’s certificate be renewed every year, and should the continuance of the nurse’s membership depend on its production? Men of business must advise as to this: I am quite unversed as to the details of Provident Societies.
So far as regards the contributor’s own money, the contract once entered into, must certainly be open to no further question; unless there has been fraud in the preliminary statement on which it was based. With regard to any assistance that may be given the question is different.
III. The preliminary certificate I do consider very important, and the subsequent ones, if they can be required.