really
am one, but somehow I feel very grown up, and much older than many of
the girls who are years older than I. They constantly surprise me by
acting so young when they are off duty ... but I love it in them.

"To-day I entered into the second year of my training. I wish that I had
the power to set down on paper my feelings when I received that first
narrow black band for my cap. I suppose that I had some of the same
'prideful' sensations that dear granddaddy did when he was very young,
and cut the first notch in the stock of his rifle-gun. But how much
better _my_ notch is! It means that I am fast getting able to save
lives, not to take them. I must always remember that--it will give a
deeper meaning to the symbol. And now my room is going to be moved down
a story--I'm so glad that Dorothy Roberts is to be with me still--and I
can move in one table nearer the front wall in the dining room. That
wall sometimes seems to me like a goal that I have got to reach before I
will be safe, just as in a children's game of tag, and, when I get tired
and discouraged--for I do, at times, little diary--it seems as though
there were many, many things stretching out invisible hands to catch me
before I get to it. Donald was right about the path being no road of
roses.... Come, this will never do; I'm supposed to be happy to-night,
and besides, now I've got to live up to my nickname again.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I wonder how much I really have changed in the year? a good deal, I'm
sure. I remember that at first I used to laugh to myself over the 'class
distinctions,' such as I have just been writing about; that was when I
was fresh from the mountain, where every one called every one else by
his or her first name--and also when I was in the lowest class myself.
Once I was even bold enough to tell Dr. Bentley that I thought they were
foolish, but he reminded me--as Donald had--that we are an army here,
and that in an army a private can't eat and sleep with a captain, or a
captain with a general. Now I don't mind the rules and regulations at
all, for I have learned the lesson of discipline, and I know that, even
if we do have to be strict in our conduct toward the older nurses and
the doctors, we are all--from the senior surgeon down to the lowliest
probationer--really one in a great spiritual fellowship, as the
prayerbook says, and all working together in the same great cause."

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