ALICE'S LETTER TO HER READERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2057, 27 July 1893, Page 46

ALICE'S LETTER TO HER READERS.

A friend. was complaining to me this week that visitors at sick houses so often show want of tact. Without meaning anything at all but kindness and sympathy, they act in a manner which has the very reverse effect. Take the house in which no servants are kept, and the mother or daughters do aIT there is to be done, and an incessant stream of visitors come trooping in, compelling the woman who is housemaid, cook, housekeeper, and nurse all in one to play the hostess for weary hours. She has perhaps been disturbed much during the night, has had so much to do during the day that she has scarce had time to eat, and just when she sees the prospect of getting an hour or two for quiet attention to her patient, the well-meaningbutinconsiderate visitor arrives, and settles down for the best part of the remainder of the day. "It would seem unkind not to call" many will exclaim. So it would; but a call with kind inquiries and your gift of flowers or fruit, or any little delicacy that you think the patient might like, would be quite sufficient to remove all doubt of your kind thought, unless you are

the oheapest bargains in town, and what Miss Jones wore at the concert; but just then sleep, sleep, sleep— blessed Bleep— seems the only good and kind thing in the worldbetter than love, betttffcthan riches. And yet that voice talks on, growing louder and more excited as it talks, till the patient, exhausted and hysterical, hates the sound of it, hates the owner of it, hates all the world. "Well, my dear, I think I -must be going now," and she makes a move, says a lot more while she is standing up, says a lot more at the door, goes down the passage and says a lot more in the kitchen, and finally goes out and slams the gate. The patient sighs and turns to sleep again, but the agitated nerves will not be soothed, the pain comes on once more, and another weary night ensues! I may be wrong, but I believe sick people will ask to see those who inquire if they wish to see them. If one oalled at the door one week and went back the next, if the patient had any Wish to see the caller intimation of the fact would be given. If not, why be offended 7 All who have been ill know that this desire for silence argues no want of regard for friends. It simply means that the body has got the mastery ; that every ounce of flesh and every nerve is weary and is having its reveDge. There are only a few then who can be of any cheer, any help or comfort to us— only a very few. "I hate visitors," I heard a doctor say one day ; " I hate them with such bitter hatred that, if they knew it, they would fly from me as from the wrath to come." This when, he had been informed that no fewer than seven had spent tbe afternoon with his patient, whom he desired to lie still. ;

Some women are born nurses, mental and physical. They know just exactly what to say and to do. lam thinking of one sach woman as I write. She was a slight little thing, as bright and as sweet as 6 o'clock