hood. Women of suitable age, of fair bodily health, of good intelligence, of honest character, of natural good sense, of kindly but courageous spirit, and with the gift of devotion to a work for the work's sake as well as for their own, have a chance set before them by the modern training-school for nurses that they cannot altogether ignore, if they are really desirous of gaining an honourable independence in life. Those whose interests are directed toward helping women to help themselves should have an intelligent understanding of the means that modern progress has opened, and be ready to bring them to the attention of those who are capable of taking up the responsibilities of the professional nurse. A great city like Philadelphia ought to have hundreds of trained nurses where it scarcely has a score to-day. One of the reasons why it has so few of them is, that for a long while the training of women as nurses was restricted to a single department of practice, and the modern broad range of professional nursing has not yet taken hold sufficiently upon the mind of the feminine community. Many a girl who is waiting to-day, anxious to take up the weary drudgery of the public-school room, would find a far better, happier, more useful, and more profitable sphere, if she would turn her attention from that over-crowded and miserably rewarded field of labour to the training-school for nurses."

On the subject of the evolution of the human race, E. S. H. writes:

"It is the serious duty of all earnest men and women to concentrate their individual thought and united will with determined energy, that the great tidal sweep, now in full flow, shall not recede until man is left upon the firm, high ground of a reconstructed society. This result can only be obtained through the slow process of evolution of the race."

Evolution in conduct, says Herbert Spencer, considered under its normal aspect, is, like all other evolutions, toward equilibrium. The better a man fulfils every requirement of life, alike as regards his own body and mind, as regards the bodies and minds of those dependent on him, the more varied do his activities become. The conscientious man is

exact in all his transactions. He pays the full amount he bargained to do. In times, as well as in quantities and qualities, his acts answer completely to anticipations. If he has made a business contract, he is to the day; if an appointment, he is to the minute. Similarly in respect of truth; his statements correspond accurately with facts. He does the right thing with a simple feeling of satisfaction in doing it. The production of the highest type of man or woman can go only with the production of the highest type of society. The purpose of ethical inquiry is to establish rules of right living; and if the rules of right living are those of which the total results individual and general, direct and indirect are the most conducive to human happiness, then we must take into consideration the physical aspect of ethics. As human activities, in common with all expenditures of energy, conform to the law of the persistence of energy, moral principles must conform to physical necessities. Every pleasure increases vitality, every pain decreases vitality; every pleasure raises the tide of life, every pain lowers the tide of life. . . . Continued anxiety produces loss of appetite, diminishes strength, and even causes vomiting, in very sensitive organisations. Every power, bodily and mental, is increased by "good spirits," which is our name for a general emotional satisfaction. In exhilarating company, a large and varied dinner, including not very digestible things, may be eaten with impunity, and indeed with benefit; while a small, carefully chosen dinner of simple things, eaten in solitude, will be followed by indigestion. Equally certain is the effect on the circulation and the respiration. There is no such tonic as happiness. Accumulated experiences have produced the consciousness that guidance by feelings which refer to remote and general results is usually more conducive to welfare than guidance by feelings to be immediately gratified. The limit of evolu

tion of conduct is not reached until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others; the highest step being reached only when, besides helping to complete one another's lives by specified reciprocities of aid, men otherwise help to complete one another's lives. The evils suffered by those whose behaviour is unsympathetic, and the benefits to self which unselfish conduct brings, show our dependence upon altruistic actions for happiness. The wellbeing of each is involved with the well-being of all in many ways. By alienating family connections and those around, selfishness loses the unbought aid which they could render, shuts out a wide range of social enjoyments, and fails to receive those exaltations of pleasure and mitigations of pain which come from men's fellow-feeling with their kin and those they like. The sympathetic nature gets pleasure by giving pleasure; alike for public welfare and private welfare, sympathy is essential; and from the laws of life it must be concluded that unceasing social discipline will so mould human nature, that eventually sympathetic pleasures will be spontaneously pursued to the fullest extent advantageous to each and all. What now characterises the exceptionally high in nature may be expected eventually to characterise all. If only the law of the strongest is recognised, one whose nature will not allow him to inflict pain upon others must go to the wall. There is required a certain congruity between the conduct of each and every member of society. An absolutely just or perfectly sympathetic person could not live and act according to his nature in a tribe of cannibals.

Laws of right living are thus made necessary; moral codes emphasise those restraints on conduct which the presence of fellow-men of diverse naturcs entails. Ethics, then, under this view, becomes nothing else than a definite code of the

forms of conduct that are fitted to the associated state, in such wise that the lives of each and all may be the greatest possible, alike in length and breadth.

I conceive it to be the business of moral science, continues Herbert Spencer, to deduce from the laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce unhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recognised as laws of conduct, and are to be conformed to, irrespective of a direct estimation of happiness or misery. The rightness or wrongness of actions is determined by the goodness or badness of the effects that flow from them. The entanglement of social relations is such, that, by disregard of duty on the part of one, the happiness of a whole family may be wrecked. The careless or malicious propagation of false statements tends both to diminish a man's life and to diminish his ability to maintain life. The mental depression caused thereby partially incapacitates him for energetic activity, and perhaps brings on ill-health. Thus we see that the establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis is of pressing need; and should the suggestions for living by such rules, found in these pages, be uniformly acted upon by any of our readers, they will come to know the truth of the assertion that "approach to perfection really means approach to that which secures greater happiness."

CHAPTER II.

WOMAN'S TASK.

GOOD MANNERS.—TACT.—Culture. -THE "EVENING BULLETIN " ON DIFFERENCES IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SOCIETY. - FORMATION OF CHARACTER. - DISCIPLINES.

Good breeding differs, if at all, from high breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists upon its own rights.- CARLYLE.

Selfishness is the only deadly sin. - ROBERTSON.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. - MARK Xii. 31.

Remember, the world has some standards which are as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. All well-disposed persons conform to them; and our friends perform the kindest part when they remind us of them, if we by any chance forget or neglect them. — Noblesse Oblige.

And deeper than the vanities of power

Or the vain pomp of glory, there is writ

Gradation in its hidden characters.-N. P. WILLIS.

Ir is an artful fable of the ancients, which makes Narcissus pine away and die for the loss of his own image; for thereby they teach the great lesson that he who loves him