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It is these spiritual wrongs which cause woman so much feeble health, and break down the strongest constitutions.

Knowing this, I must try to fortify nature in every possible manner within my reach, so that the citadel of my health need not suffer detriment; for if that should fail, I fear my courage would fail with it.

The degree of faith, trust and confidence I am able to summon into this field of action, depends much upon the health-ful vigor and nervous energy I can command. Therefore to keep my faith strong, I must keep my health good."

CHAPTER XXV.
Miss Mary Tomlin -- A Model Attendant.

I never, saw Miss Mary Tomlin abuse a patient, and she was my attendant for nearly one year.

She, unlike most attendants, did not seem to become callous and indifferent towards them, because she would not allow herself to do the first unkind act.

It is very noticeable here that the beginning of wrong doing is like the letting out of water, over the edge of a fountain. When the first few drops have trickled over, there is apt to be a few more, and a few more, until a deep and broad channel is soon formed through which the waters of human kindness are allowed to pass into a state of annihilation.

When this groove was once made, it was never closed up under the Asylum influence.

The only security an employee or boarder could have of maintaining their integrity, lay in their not doing the first wrong act. This was the secret of her triumph over the contagion of that most corrupt house.

She was entered in my ward, and although initiated under our most unexemplary attendant, Mrs. De La Hay, she seemed to have moral courage enough to allow her own principles to control her.

Miss Tomlin exercised the utmost forbearance and kind endurance of the patient's weakness and frailties, such as I think was never surpassed by any attendant. She may justly be called a model attendant, so far as the treatment of the patients was concerned. Should asylums secure such, and only such attendants, they might justly be called asylums, so far as the attendants' duties are concerned.

I never feared for the fate of a patient when Miss Tomlin was in sight; even Miss Bonner's fierce spirit seemed subdued by her silent, gentle, but irresistible magnetism of kindness and tenderness.

I recollect once how I pitied her when she called me to see the condition of Miss Sallie Low, a filthy patient, occupying a screen-room at the time, while passing through one of her "spells" of excessive fury, where she had divested herself of all her clothing, and was standing nude when I saw her, with her hands both raised, with all her fingers spread, with her mouth wide open in laughter, and her large black eyes show-ing the white on the upper side in wildness -- her short, heavy, curly black hair standing all about her head in bristles, from the salve with which she had anointed both it and herself com-pletely over, so that her flesh was about the color of a monkey.

Besides, she had written her marks upon the wall, as high as her fingers could reach. My kind attendant instead of being angry at her exulting patient, in view of the labor she had caused in cleaning her and her room, only laughed in return, as she exclaimed:

"Did you ever see a human being so much resemble a monkey!"

With the help of another attendant she took her to the bath-room, and after patiently soaking her for a while in the bath-tub of warm water, she finally cleaned and dressed her, and introduced her into our dormitory as a woman who deserved our pity, instead of our censure, for --

"She is not to blame for causing me this trouble, and this is what I came here to do, to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves,"

"Even her bath was administered in such a gentle manner that Miss Low, instead of offering resistance, enjoyed the fun first-rate and came from it refreshed and invigorated, instead of being exhausted from death struggles such as Miss Bonner and such like attendants administered. .

In contrast to Miss Tomlin's method of administering the bath I will here give Mrs. J. C. Coe's (2) description of one which Miss Jane Smith gave Mrs. Commonsforth, as a specimen of what is common there. She says:

"Even modesty as well as sympathy and all the other Christian virtues are punished as insanity. For example, Mrs. Commonsforth, who had so far recovered her natural state as to feel a reluctance at being stripped naked in the presence of her attendant, Miss Jane Smith, ventured to ask her to let her take her bath alone.

"But instead of gratifying her, she became enraged at this request of her patient, and not only denied her wish, but commenced immediately to use violence in stripping her, and even got her down upon her back upon the floor, and literally tore her clothes from off her, with her own hands.

"Then, as if to punish her for trying to resist this brute force, she made the bath scalding hot, and forced her into it and held her down under the water with the back of her neck over where the hot water came bubbling up, so that it was literally scalded so deep as to leave a raw sore for weeks after-wards.