IX

_Human Sympathy_





A NURSE who had been only a few weeks in the hospital
training-school, once saw--from her seat at the dinner-table--a man
brought into the house who was suffering intensely from a very
severe accident. The young woman started up to be of what service
she could, and when she returned to the table, had lost her appetite
entirely, because of her sympathy for the suffering man. She had
hardly begun her dinner, and would have gone without it if it had
not been for a sharp reprimand from the superintendent.

"If you really sympathize with that man," she said, "you will eat
your dinner to get strength to take care of him. Here is a man who
will need constant, steady, _healthy_ attention for some days to
come,--and special care all this afternoon and night, and it will be
your duty to look out for him. Your 'sympathy' is already pulling
you down and taking away your strength, and you are doing what you
can to lose more strength by refusing to eat your dinner. Such
sympathy as that is poor stuff; I call it weak sentimentality."

The reprimand was purposely sharp, and, by arousing the anger and
indignation of the nurse, it served as a counter-irritant which
restored her appetite. After her anger had subsided, she thanked the