As an old reporter of things theatrical I had seen many plays with the trained nurse as heroine. One and all I abhorred them, even the gentle and artistic impersonation of Margaret Anglin in a piece whose name I've forgotten. I welcomed a novel by Edgar Saltus in which the nurse is depicted as a monster of crime incarnate. How mistaken I have been. Now, the trained nurse seems an angel without wings. She may not be the slender, dainty, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired girl of the footlights; she is often mature and stout and a lover of potatoes. But she is a sister when a man is down. She is severe, but her severity hath good cause. At first you feebly utter the word "nurse." Later she is any Irish royal family name. Follows, "Mary," and that way danger lies for the elderly invalid. When he calls her "Marie" he is doomed. Every day the newspapers tell us of marriages made in pillowland between the well-to-do widower, Mr. A. Sclerosis, and Miss Emma Metic of the Saint Petronius Hospital staff. Married sons and daughters may protest, but to no avail. A sentimental bachelor or widower in the lonesome latter years hasn't any more chance with a determined young nurse of the unfair sex than a "snowbird in hell"--as Brother Mencken phrases it.
However, every nurse has her day. She finally departs. Your eyes are wet. You are weeping over yourself. The nurse represented not only care for your precious carcass but also a surcease from the demands of the world. Her going means a return to work, and you hate to work if you are a convalescent of the true-blue sort. Hence your tears. But you soon recover. You are free. The doctor has lost interest in your case. You throw physic to the dogs. You march at a lenten tempo about your embattled bed. You begin sudden little arguments with your wife, just to see if you haven't lost any of your old-time virility in the technique of household squabbling. You haven't. You swell with masculine satisfaction and for at least five minutes you are the Man of the House. A sudden twinge, a momentary giddiness, send you scurrying back to your bailiwick, the bedroom, and the familiar leitmotiv is once more sounded, and with what humility of accent: "Mamma!" The Eternal Masculine? The Eternal Child! You mumble to her that it is nothing, and as you recline on that thrice-accursed couch, you endeavour to be haughty. But she knows you are simply a sick grumpy old person of the male species who needs be ruled with a rod of iron, although the metal be well hidden.