Often men who have done well and even brilliantly up to middle life, are not equal to the tremendous demand upon the vital energies of beginning life over again after some disastrous visitation of Nature, or a panic, or an ill-advised personal venture has wrecked their own business or that of the concern in which they were a highly paid cog. In the mining States men are dependent upon the world's demand for their principal product. Farmers and stock-raisers are often cruelly visited, strikes or hard times paralyze mills and factories; and in times of panic and dry-rot the dealers in luxuries, including booksellers—to say nothing of the writers of books as well as the devotees of all the arts—are the first to suffer. And it is their women that suffer acutely, because although many of these men may hang on and recover, many more do not. They have used up their vital forces. It is not so much a matter of will as of physics. A woman in the same conditions who had been obliged to tax her vital organs for an equal number of years would no doubt have lasted as long.
Unless defective, there is not a girl alive, certainly not an American girl, who is wholly lacking in some sort of ability. The parasite type (who is growing rare in these days, by the way, for it is now the fashion to "do things") either fastens herself upon complacent relatives or friends when deserted by fortune, or drifts naturally into the half-world, always abundantly recruited from such as she.
Many girls have a certain facility in the arts and crafts, which, with severe training, might fit them for a second place in the class which owes its origin to Heaven-born gifts. If their facility manifests itself in writing they could be trained at college, or even on the small local newspaper to write a good mechanical story, constructed out of popular elements and eminently suited to the popular magazine. Or they may fit themselves for dramatic or musical criticism, or advertisement writing, which pays enormously but is not as easy as it sounds. Or if every school (I am saying nothing about girls' colleges) would train their promising "composition" writers in reporting, their graduates would plant their weary feet far more readily than they do now when they come to a great city and beseech a busy editor to give them a chance.
Almost anything can be done with the plastic mind. But not always. It is the better part of wisdom for proud parents to discover just what their offspring's facility amounts to before spending money on an art or a musical education, for instance. I had a painful experience, and no doubt it has been duplicated a thousand times, for Europe before the war was full of girls (many living on next to nothing) who were studying "art" or "voice culture," with neither the order of endowment nor the propelling brain-power to justify the sacrifice of their parents or the waste of their own time.
Some years ago, finding that a young relative, who was just finishing her school course, drew and painted in water colors with quite a notable facility, and the family for generations having manifested talents in one way or another, I decided to take her abroad and train her faculty that she might be spared the humiliation of dependence, nor feel a natural historic inclination to marry the first man who offered her an alternative dependence; and at the same time be enabled to support herself in a wholly congenial way. I did not delude myself with the notion that she was a genius, but I thought it likely she would become apt in illustrating, and I knew that I could throw any amount of work in her way, or secure her a position in the art department of some magazine.
I took her to the European city where I was then living and put her in the best of its art schools. To make a long story short, after I had expended some five thousand dollars on her, including traveling expenses and other incidentals, the net result was an elongated thumb. I was forced to the conclusion that she had not an atom of real talent, merely the treacherous American facility. Moreover, she lost all her interest in "art" when it meant hard work and persistent application. I was wondering what on earth I was to do with her when she solved the problem herself. She announced with unusual decision that she wanted to be a nurse, had always wanted to be a nurse (she had never mentioned the aspiration to me) and that nothing else interested her. Her mother had been an invalid; one way or another she had seen a good deal of illness.
Accordingly I sent her back to this country and entered her, through the influence of friends, at a hospital. She graduated at the head of her class, and although that was three or four years ago she has never been idle since. She elected to take infectious cases, as the remuneration is higher, and although she is very small, with such tiny hands and feet that while abroad her gloves and boots had to be made to order, no doubt she has so trained her body that the strains in nursing fall upon no particular member.
In that case I paid for my own mistake, and she found her level in ample time, which is as it should be. Of what use is experience if you are to be misled by family vanity? As she is pretty and quite mad about children, no doubt she will marry; but the point is that she can wait; or, later, if the man should prove inadequate, she can once more support herself, and with enthusiasm, for she loves the work.
To be a nurse is no bed of roses; but neither is anything else. To be dependent in the present stage of civilization is worse, and nothing real is accomplished in life without work and its accompaniment of hard knocks. Nursing is not only a natural vocation for a woman, but an occupation which increases her matrimonial chances about eighty per cent. Nor is it as arduous after the first year's training is over as certain other methods of wresting a livelihood from an unwilling world—reporting, for instance. It is true that only the fit survive the first year's ordeal, but on the other hand few girls are so foolish as to choose the nursing career who do not feel within themselves a certain stolid vitality. After graduation from the hospital course their future depends upon themselves. Doctors soon discover the most desirable among the new recruits, others find permanent places in hospitals; and, it may be added, the success of these young women depends upon a quality quite apart from mere skill—personality. In the spring of 1915 I was in a hospital and there was one nurse I would not have in the room. I was told that she was one of the most valuable nurses on the staff, but that was nothing to me.
I could not see that any of the nurses in this large hospital was overworked. All looked healthy and contented. My own "night special," save when I had a temperature and demanded ice, slept from the time she prepared me for the night until she rose to prepare me for the day, with the exception of the eleven o'clock supper which she shared with the hospital staff. Being very pretty and quite charming she will marry, no doubt, although she refuses to nurse men. But there are always the visiting doctors, the internes, and the unattached men in households, where in the most seductive of all garbs, she remains for weeks at a time.