To keep up your patient’s courage be, or at all events seem, cheerful.  Wise old Solomon, in his day, knew that a merry heart did good like a medicine, and the morsel of wisdom is no less true now than then.  Such being the case, bring into the presence of the sufferer a bright face and undisturbed demeanor.

Much may be said on the other side of the question, i.e., from the nurse’s standpoint.  There are patients and patients, and some of them are impatients.  It is a pity for a sick person to allow himself to so far lose control over his temper and manners as to be disagreeable when all that tender care and nursing can do is his.  But really ill people are seldom cross, and the tried nurse may take to heart the comforting thought that one rarely hears of a man dying in a bad humor.  It is undoubtedly discouraging to have a patient turn away from a carefully prepared dainty with a shudder of disgust and revulsion.  It may sound harsh to say it, but nobody, sick or well, has the right to do such an unkind and rude thing.  Any one in extreme bodily discomfort cannot be always smiling and uttering thanks, but he can be gentle and appreciative of the efforts that are made toward mitigating his distress.  On his own account, as well as for the sake of his attendant, he should keep up a semblance of cheerfulness, the moral force of which is great.  On the part of patient and nurse there must be self control and forbearance, which if closely practiced may bring sunshine into the most darkly shaded chamber of suffering.

CHAPTER XXXI.

A TEMPERANCE TALK.

(Frank and Personal.)

A correspondent sends me, under cover of a personal letter, this request: 

“Will Marion Harland show her hand upon the temperance question?  The occasional mention of wine, brandy, etc., in her cookery-books, and her silence upon a subject of such vital moment to humanity, may predispose many to doubt her soundness as to the apostle’s injunction to be ‘temperate in all things.’”

To clear decks for action, I observe that the text quoted by my catechist contains no “injunction” but an impersonal statement of the truth that “Every man that striveth for the mastery” (or in the games) “is temperate in all things.”  The apostle is likening the running and wrestling of the Olympic games to the Christian warfare, and throws in the pregnant reminder that he who is training for race or fight must, as he says elsewhere, “Keep his body under.”  The same rules hold good with the athlete of to-day.  While training, he neither drinks strong liquors nor smokes.

The stringency of the regulation, I interject in passing, is a powerful argument laid ready to the hand of the advocates of total abstinence.  A habit that so far injures the physical powers as to tell upon the action of heart, brains, lungs or muscles, must be an evil to any human being, however healthy.