is too quick
of perception to be so sound an observer--the Teuton is too slow to be
so ready an observer as the English woman might be. Yet English women
lay themselves open to the charge so often made against them by men,
viz., that they are not to be trusted in handicrafts to which their
strength is quite equal, for want of a practised and steady observation.
In countries where women (with average intelligence certainly not
superior to that of Englishwomen) are employed, e.g., in dispensing,
men responsible for what these women do (not theorizing about man's and
woman's "missions"), have stated that they preferred the service of
women to that of men, as being more exact, more careful, and incurring
fewer mistakes of inadvertence.

Now certainly Englishwomen are peculiarly capable of attaining to this.

I remember when a child, hearing the story of an accident, related by
some one who sent two girls to fetch a "bottle of salvolatile from her
room;" "Mary could not stir," she said, "Fanny ran and fetched a bottle
that was not salvolatile, and that was not in my room."

Now this sort of thing pursues every one through life. A woman is asked
to fetch a large new bound red book, lying on the table by the window,
and she fetches five small old boarded brown books lying on the shelf by
the fire. And this, though she has "put that room to rights" every day
for a month perhaps, and must have observed the books every day, lying
in the same places, for a month, if she had any observation.

Habitual observation is the more necessary, when any sudden call arises.
If "Fanny" had observed "the bottle of salvolatile" in "the aunt's
room," every day she was there, she would more probably have found it
when it was suddenly wanted.

There are two causes for these mistakes of inadvertence. 1. A want of
ready attention; only part of the request is heard at all. 2. A want of
the habit of observation.

To a nurse I would add, take care that you always put the same things in
the same places; you don't know how suddenly you may be called on some
day to find something, and may not be able to remember in your haste
where you yourself had put it, if your memory is not in the habit of
seeing the thing there always.

[37]

[Sidenote: Approach of death, paleness by no means an invariable effect,
as we find in novels.]

It falls to few ever to have had the opportunity of observing the
different aspects which the human face puts on at the