71

A WORD WITH THE WOMEN
(By Elia W Peattie)

The courage, decision, efficiency and
system which the modern trained nurse
exhibits are too well known to need
comment. The little white cap, the
striped gown and the spotless apron
have come to be the insignia of her comfortable
office. Physicians depend upon
her trust in the most hazardous operations,
trusting to the deftness, rapidity, delicacy
of perception--the almost clairvoyant
sympathy-as they would not
trust in one of their own sex. The endurance
of these trained women is remarkable.
They have added to the
self-control that has been acquired by
their training a devotion to duty which
is of a feminine type. An instance of
the passion for self-immolation that occasionally
appears in woman was
shown by Miss Minnie Baumer, a nurse
at the Jennings Avenue hospital at
Cleveland, which burned yesterday.
When she found that her patients could
not be moved from the burning building
she refused to leave them, and was
found dead by the bedside of an old
man who was in her charge. Was the
heroism superfluous? Perhaps so. She
benefited no one by this consummate
sacrifice. But she satisfied her own
sense of duty. She indulged herself in
the luxury of martyrdom, which, after
all, may be a sort of vanity. But she
attained her ideal. That, surely, is the
best one can do. And she demonstrated
what training for self-control can do.
For it takes more than moral courage to
sit calmly down in a burning building
at the post of duty and wait for death.
It takes well-trained nerves, a masterful
will and an indomitable physical
courage.

The woman's department of the Cotton
States and International exposition
is one of the most important and interesting
features of the fair. This branch
of the work was organized early in the
history of the exposition and has already
attained large proportions. The women
have more than matched the appropriation
allowed from the general fund,
and from the present outlook they will
quadruple it before the year is out.
The sources of the fund are entertainments,
bazars and a variety of enterprises,
some of which are of a very
unique chaacter. The latest and most
notable of these is the Valentine Journal.
Mr. W. H. Cabanis, manager of
the Atlanta Journal, generously offered
to give the woman's department of the
exposition the proceeds of the day's
advertisements in the Journal if the
women would edit. They promptly accepted,
and the Journal of February 10
will be made and edited entirely by
women. Mrs. Joseph Thompson, president
of the woman's board will be
editor-in-chief, Mrs. Loulie Gordon will
be telegraph editor and Mrs. W. H.
Felton the brilliant wife of ex-Congressman
Felton, will write articles on the
tariff and finance. An elaborate variety
of special matter and a score of the
brightest young women in Atlanta have
been assigned to report the courts the
capitol, police headquarters and court,
the railroads, the exposition and other
departments. The prospect is that the
Valentine Journal will be a brilliant
number, and advertisements will be
more numerous than ever.

The women will invite the Daughters
of the Revolution to meet in Atlanta
next fall, and is expected that they
will accept. This would bring to Atlanta
13,000 ladies prominent in their
respective communities, and many of
them women of national reputation.

By a recent vote of the board of
women managers, it was decided to ask
congress for a special appropriation to
make the collection of woman's work
exhibits a national one. Mrs. William
Dixon, Miss Loulie M. Gordon and Mrs.
Sarah Grant Jackson were appointed
a committee to bring this matter before
congress.

The new moire sash ribbons come
in all colors, daintily figured in Dresden
patterns, or with vines of delicate flowers
through the center.

Mrs. Gladstone receives most of her
husband's callers, and seeks to save
him from the visitors actuated by curiosity,
or who have some favor to ask.

Artificial flowers are developing some
new varieties for decking spring bonnets,
and the upretentious potato blossom
is among the novelties.

Miss Crabtree, otherwise Lotta, the
ever effervescent and perennial, is
passing the winter in Cleopatra's land,
and is much benefited by her prolonged
rest.

The craze for English open-work embroidery
has attacked the ribbons, and
some of the new varieties have a pattern
of very open embroidery down the
center.