508 THE H JOURNAL

nurse to tell her what to do. el” she had told the nurse, as

so many of her patients, 1‘ 0 many difl"erent circumstances,

had told her before.

It will always be so, I suppose. The one who enters our homes when we are in pain and makes us comfortable, or helps to keep death from our bedsides, will always seem near to our hearts. We sometimes delude ourselves into believing that they know about everything in the way of relief for trouble. We tell them our troubles and listen to -their advice and heed it as perhaps we would heed advice from no other source. And so it is in this way that the visiting nurse, while she is doing her bedside nursing day by day, probably learns more about the economic conditions which produce distress and unhappiness, than all of the so—called “inves- tigators” combined. ;

It is because the people who could remedy those conditions, cannot come closely enough in contact with them to see them as they are; and because they have not been as clearly presented as they should have been by those who do come in close contact, that they exist year after year. It is the privilege and honour of the Victorian Order of Nurses to be able toassist greatly in ridding Canada of many undesirable conditions with which we struggle day after day. Each nurse has been taught to exert all her influence to that end, and we have seen some of the fruit of our labors. We become discouraged at times, but the work is well worth while and we must keep on.

Our nurse is discouraged to-day, but she has done the best she can under the circumstances and she must wait for results. She has begged the mother to work, as she herself is working, for special teaching for those “different” children, whom we in our superior way, term defective. Different they may be, and not al- ways capable of “getting on” with a class in school, but that does not mean that they are defective in that which goes to make suc- cessful life. It does mean, however, that our school system is very defective, and that if their education is given over to the busy teacher of the public school, they are going to grow up useless and perhaps with some marvellous talent undeveloped. Lives which might be made useful and comfortable, to say the least, will be miserable and degraded, instead.

That is Wrong! wrong! We have no right to set aside as hope- less the child whoisimply does not happen to possess the “all around” kind of mind which most children have. What if he does