A patient has allowed some of her written prescriptions to be quoted. They were not of a kind to be made up by a chemist:—
‘I want you never to miss or delay meals. I want you to go to bed at a reasonable time and go to sleep early. I want you to do your work regularly, and to take an interest in outside things—such as your church and suffrage.’
‘We should not let these Things (with a capital T) affect us so much. Our cause is too righteous for it to be really affected by them—if we don’t weaken.’
‘My dear, the potter’s wheel isn’t a pleasant instrument.’
‘Go home and say your prayers.’
‘Realise what you are, a free born child of the Universe. Perfection your Polar Star.’
These stories of her healing of mind and body might be endlessly multiplied. Sorrow and disease are much the same whether they come to the rich or the poor, and poverty is not always the worst trial of many a sad tale. Dr. Elsie’s power of sympathy and understanding was as much called upon in her paying practice as among the very poor. She made no distinction in what she gave; her friendship was as ready as her trained skill. There was one patient whose sufferings were largely due to her own lack of will power. Elsie, after prescribing, bent down and kissed her. It awoke in the individual the sense that she was not ‘altogether bad,’ and from that day forward there was a newness of life.
From what sources of inner strength did she increasingly minister in that sphere in which she moved? ‘Thy touch has still its ancient power,’ and no one who knew this unresting, unhasting, well-balanced life, but felt it had drawn its spiritual strength from the deep wells of Salvation.
In these years the kindred points of heaven and home were always in the background of her life. Her sisters’ homes were near her in Edinburgh, and when her brother Ernest died in India, in 1910, his widow and her three daughters came back to her house. Her friendship and understanding of all the large circle that called her aunt was a very beautiful tie. The elder ones were near enough to her own age to be companions to her from her girlhood. Miss Simson says that she was more like an elder sister to them when she stayed with the family on their arrival from Tasmania. ‘The next thing I remember about her was when she went to school in Paris, she promised to bring us home Paris dolls. She asked us how we wanted them dressed, and when she returned we each received a beautiful one dressed in the manner chosen. Aunt Elsie was always most careful in the choice of presents for each individual. One always felt that she had thought of and got something that she knew you wanted. While on her way to Russia she sent me a cheque because she had not been able to see anything while at home. She wrote, “This is to spend on something frivolous that you want, and not on stockings or anything like that.”’
‘It is not her great gifts that I remember now,’ says another of that young circle, ‘it is that she was always such a darling.’
These nieces were often the companions of Dr. Elsie’s holidays. She had her own ideas as to how these should be spent. She always had September as her month of recreation. She used to go away, first of all, for a fortnight quite alone to some out-of-the-way place, when not even her letters were sent after her. She would book to a station, get out, and bicycle round the neighbourhood till she found a place she liked. She wanted scenery and housing accommodation according to her mind. Her first requirement was hot water for ‘baths.’ If that was found in abundance she was suited; if it could not be requisitioned, she went elsewhere. Her paintbox went with her, and when she returned to rejoin or fetch away her family she brought many impressions of what she had seen. The holidays were restful because always well planned. She loved enjoyment and happiness, and she sought them in the spirit of real relaxation and recreation. If weather or circumstances turned out adverse, she was amused in finding some way out, and if nothing else could be done she had a power of seeing the ludicrous under all conditions, which in itself turned the rain-clouds of life into bursts of sunlight.
Mrs. Inglis gives a happy picture of the life in 8 Walker Street, when she was the guest of Dr. Inglis. Her love for the three nieces, the one in particular who bore her name, and in whose medical education she deeply interested herself, was great.