use. Then suddenly she raised swimming eyes to Hildeguard's: 'I
do want Mummy,' she said.

"'Darling,' cried Hildeguard, catching Baby with her right arm, so
as to free the other to draw Eileen to her--'Darling, so we all
do.'"

It is a simple account of the little ways of shy children. Many a mother
could have written it equally well.

But the interest of Elsie Inglis's descriptions of children lies in the
fact that they come from the pen of a woman of action, a woman of iron
nerve, and they give us the other side of her character.

And then--she was a woman whom no child called mother! But thank God the
instinct is not one that can be dammed up or lost, and in these writings
we get a glimpse of that motherhood which was hers, and which her life
showed to be deep enough and wide enough to sweep under its wing the
human souls, men, women, and children, who, passing near it, and being
in need, cried out for help, and never cried in vain. To quote a
fellow-woman:

"The emotions which are the strongest force in a woman must not live in
the past; they must not be used introspectively, nor for personal
pleasure and gratification. Used thus, they destroy the woman and weaken
the race. But _flung forward_, flung into interests outside of the woman
herself, and thus transmuted into power, they become to her her
salvation, and to the race a constructive element."

FOOTNOTE:

[11] _Dr. Elsie Inglis_, by Lady Frances Balfour.

CHAPTER VII

THE HOSPICE

During her medical career Dr. Inglis never lost sight of one aim, equal
opportunity for the woman with the man in all branches of education and
practical training and responsibility. She recognized that young women
doctors in Edinburgh suffered under a serious disadvantage in being
ineligible for the post of resident medical officer in the Royal
Infirmary and the chief maternity hospital. "But," writes a friend, "it
was characteristic of her and her inherent inability to visualize
obstacles except as incentive to greater effort that she set herself to
remedy this disadvantage instead of accepting it as an insurmountable
difficulty. _Women doctors must found a maternity hospital of their
own._ That was her first decision. A committee was formed, and the
public responded generously to an appeal for funds." Through the
kindness of Dr. Hugh Barbour, a house in George Square was put at the
committee's disposal. But Dr. Inglis felt that it must b