acklead for the stoves, metal-polish for the brass, rags for
cleaning the floor, floor-polish, one box of matches, bath-brick, soft
soap, and--soda. It is an extraordinary chemical, soda. Before I became
a ward orderly I had no idea of the remarkable properties of soda. A
handful of soda in boiling water, and behold the grease dissolve meekly
from the nastiest dinner-tin! It was miraculous. When a pitying
scrub-lady first showed me the trick I thought that all my troubles were
at an end. Soda made the ward-kitchen seem like heaven. Alas, the
supply of soda considered sufficient by the Dry Store authorities never
lasted beyond Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday the
dinner-tin had to be cleaned out not by alkaline agency, but by sheer
slogging hard labour. And when at last I stood it on edge to dry, and
thought to go off duty with a clear conscience, I generally found that I
had overlooked the waiting pudding-basin.

On the whole I am inclined to pronounce the pudding-basin a more
obdurate utensil than even the dinner-tin. The pudding-basin, however,
only appeared every second morning. On duff days (duff being served in
the same tin as the meat and vegetables, though in a separate
compartment) we had no pudding. By pudding I mean milk pudding--rice or
sago or tapioca. Now a milk pudding, such as those my patients received,
though perhaps it was looked askance at in the nursery, is food which,
as an adult, I am far from despising. Rice pudding I have come with
maturer years to regard as a delicacy. Sago and tapioca I still eat
rather with amiable resignation than from choice. But any milk pudding,
as I now know, has a most vicious habit of cleaving to the dish in which
it was cooked. Rice is the least evil offender. The others are
absolutely wicked. To clean oleaginous scum from a dinner-tin is not
easy, but it is a mere bagatelle compared with cleaning the scorched
high-tide-mark of tapioca or sago from the shores of a large metal
pudding-basin. I have tried scraping with a knife blade, I have tried
every reasonable form of friction, and I can simply state as a fact from
my own personal experience (perhaps I am unfortunate) that those metal
pudding-basins of ours would frequently yield to nothing less powerful
than sandpaper.

I need scarcely say that sandpaper was not supplied by the deities of
the Dry Store. Sandpaper did not come within their purview. It had no
recognised use in hospital. Therefore it