You cannot, by a bridge of sighs, attain the future's golden years,
But try a bridge of rainbow hopes erected on substantial piers
Of honest work, and you will find it leads you surely to the goal.
'Tis God that gives the dreamer's dreams, as radiant as the morning,
But, if the will to work is weak, they often die a-borning.

If this were a romance, instead of the simple account of the pilgrimage and development of a girl from childhood to womanhood, it would be permissible to say, "three years pass by in swift flight," or "drag by on weary feet," as the case may have been, and then resume the action.

But in everyday life, character is built out of everyday incidents, big and little, all of which have place in the moulding of it, and, since the years of Smiles' training within the Children's Hospital were vital ones for her, it is essential to touch briefly upon some of the occurrences which filled them.

On the other hand, it is by no means necessary to describe that period at length. It is doubtful if, in later life, she will herself look back upon the many days so filled to repletion with exacting, though interesting, tasks, as other than a dead level, for constant repetition of a thing, no matter how gripping it may be, produces a monotony. But there were special incidents—sometimes trivial in comparison with the importance of her sustained labor—which formed the high lights in the picture, and the memory of which will endure through all the after years. By recounting a few of these, and letting our imaginations fill in the interims, we can accompany Rose on her journey to the goal of her desires.

The day after Donald had taken her into his confidence regarding his plans, Rose made up her mind to keep a diary.

"Even though he may be thousands of miles away, I mean to keep myself as close to him as possible by writing him as I would talk to him, about all the things which happen in my life, and, unless I set them down as they happen, I shall forget," she told Miss Merriman, after the seal of secrecy had been removed from her lips.

"Perhaps you can succeed in keeping one. I never could," laughed her friend. "Each January First I start a new one, and register a solemn vow to keep it up longer, at least, than I did the one the previous year. If I follow that system until I am three hundred and fifty years old, I will complete just one before I die."

Smiles accepted the implied challenge, and, day by day, with few omissions, the dated pages bore new testimony to her application in performing a self-appointed task. The plan bore fruit, too, for Donald, in his rare replies to her confidential letters, which went to him each fortnight, was able to praise her as the best of correspondents, writing once, "You have an exceptional gift for making incidents seem real and people alive, in your letters, and of realizing that, with us who are so far away from home, it is the little things which count. Ethel, alas, is hopeless in this respect. She writes me faithfully; but invariably says that nothing has happened except the usual occurrences of everyday life, and thereby utterly misses the great fact that it is just those very things that the lonely exile most longs to hear about. I would actually rather have her write that they had baked beans on Saturday night than that so-and-so had given a charity whist at the Vendome."

Yet many a sentence went into the diary that was never copied or embellished for Donald's eyes. Some of them had to do with him, or her thoughts of him; some were too intimate for another to see.

Here the page bears a number of meaningless hieroglyphics, and then the words, stricken out, "I wonder."

Christmas night.

"If Donald might only have been here in person to-day, it would have been perfect. I think that he must have been, in spirit, for I 'felt' his presence quite near me several times; I confided as much to Dr. Bentley and he made an atrocious pun on the word 'presents.' I wish he wouldn't; it is the only thing about him that I don't like, but he will make them. Wasn't Donald thoughtful and dear to have bought a Christmas gift for me during those overcrowded days before he went away?—a whole set of books, beautifully bound, but better still, beautiful within. Books are the same as people, I think. We like to see both attractively clothed, but in each it is the soul that counts....

"What a lot of presents I received—from Miss Merriman and her mother, Mrs. Thayer and little Muriel, and, oh, so many of the girls here. I don't know why they are all so good to me—because I am looked upon as a lonely little savage, I suppose. And then there was that one from Dr. Bentley. The idea of a simple mountain girl from Webb's Gap having five whole pounds of candy at once!

"The funniest thing happened to-day, and I must not forget to write Donald all about it. He is sure to remember little red-headed Jimmy, who has to spend so much of his time in the hospital. Has he imagination enough, I wonder, to picture him sitting up in bed in the snow-white ward, with his flaming auburn hair and bright red jacket calling names at each other? I love the old custom to which the hospital still clings of putting all the little patients into those red flannel jackets on cold days, for it makes the wards look so cheerful—like Christmas fields dotted with bright berries. Jimmy is a dear, and so imaginative that I believe he lives every story that I tell him of the Cumberlands—certainly he likes them better than fairy stories. This afternoon, I had finished telling him about how grandpappy shot the turkey for Dr. MacDonald, and I found him looking up at me with his big blue eyes, which can be as serious as a saint's or as mischievous as an imp's. 'Your face is most always laughing, Miss Webb,' said he. 'I think I shall have to call you Nurse Smiles.' My roommate, Miss Roberts, happened to be in the room and heard him, and now it's all over the hospital. Everybody is calling me it, unless the superintendent or some of the older doctors are around. How odd it is that he should have struck on it, and given me my old nickname again....

"Dr. Bentley called me Smiles when he left after his evening visit."

May 17th, 1916.

"This has been a day of days for me. First I received a long and wonderful letter from Donald. It seemed like old times, for it was as kindly and simple, too, as those which he used to write to me at Webb's Gap. I wonder if he regards me as still a child? I suppose that I really am one, but somehow I feel very grown up, and much older than many of the girls who are years older than I. They constantly surprise me by acting so young when they are off duty ... but I love it in them.

"To-day I entered into the second year of my training. I wish that I had the power to set down on paper my feelings when I received that first narrow black band for my cap. I suppose that I had some of the same 'prideful' sensations that dear granddaddy did when he was very young, and cut the first notch in the stock of his rifle-gun. But how much better my notch is! It means that I am fast getting able to save lives, not to take them. I must always remember that—it will give a deeper meaning to the symbol. And now my room is going to be moved down a story—I'm so glad that Dorothy Roberts is to be with me still—and I can move in one table nearer the front wall in the dining room. That wall sometimes seems to me like a goal that I have got to reach before I will be safe, just as in a children's game of tag, and, when I get tired and discouraged—for I do, at times, little diary—it seems as though there were many, many things stretching out invisible hands to catch me before I get to it. Donald was right about the path being no road of roses.... Come, this will never do; I'm supposed to be happy to-night, and besides, now I've got to live up to my nickname again.

I wonder how much I really have changed in the year? a good deal, I'm sure. I remember that at first I used to laugh to myself over the 'class distinctions,' such as I have just been writing about; that was when I was fresh from the mountain, where every one called every one else by his or her first name—and also when I was in the lowest class myself. Once I was even bold enough to tell Dr. Bentley that I thought they were foolish, but he reminded me—as Donald had—that we are an army here, and that in an army a private can't eat and sleep with a captain, or a captain with a general. Now I don't mind the rules and regulations at all, for I have learned the lesson of discipline, and I know that, even if we do have to be strict in our conduct toward the older nurses and the doctors, we are all—from the senior surgeon down to the lowliest probationer—really one in a great spiritual fellowship, as the prayerbook says, and all working together in the same great cause."

August 19th, 1916.

"Little diary, I have been neglecting you lately, but now you and I must collect our thoughts, for we have got to write a long, long letter to Donald and tell him all about the vacation—the first that I ever had.

It was the first time that I was ever really at the seashore, too, except that one afternoon in June when Dr. Bentley took me down to Nahant in his car. Weren't the Thayers dear to have me as their guest at beautiful Manchester-by-the-Sea? Ethel (I wonder if Donald will be pleased to know that his real sister has asked me to call her by her first name?) insisted that they did it for my own sake, but I know that it was really on his account. They were two weeks of wonder for me; but I wish that he might have been there. How they all miss him—even Dr. Bentley. I think that there is nothing finer than such a friendship between two men. Why, he even calls on Donald's family still. He came to Manchester twice in the fortnight that I was there. Dr. Bentley wants me to call him 'Philip,' when we are not in the hospital, and I do ... sometimes. It seems perfectly natural, even though he is much older than I—he is over thirty; but I suppose that is because at home we called almost every one by his first name. (We are rambling, little diary. I don't believe that Donald would be particularly interested in the fact that I call Dr. Bentley, 'Philip.')

He will be interested to know how the sea impressed me, though, and again I find myself wholly at a loss for words to express my feelings. It was so overwhelming in its grandeur and far-stretching expanse; so beautiful in its never-ending procession of colors; so terrible in its might, when aroused. I have seen it asleep as peacefully as one of my babies (all the hospital babies are children of my heart), and I have seen it in anger, like a brutal giant. I wish that I had not seen its latter mood, for, when it caught up the little boat that had been torn from the moorings, and hurled her again and again against the rocks until there was not a plank of her left unbroken—while the wind shrieked its horrid glee—my growing love for it was turned to fear. No, I can never care for the ocean as I do for my mountains. I cannot forget that it was the waters which stole my dearest treasures from me.

Still, the memory of that storm is nearly lost in the abounding happiness of those two weeks, and the third one which I spent with my Gertrude Merriman, who stole it from her many cases to be with me. When I set down each little incident of them in black and white, as I mean to in my letter to Don, they will appear commonplace enough, I'm afraid; but I shall tell him that their story is written on my heart in letters of gold and many colors.

He pretends to be interested in every foolish little thing that I have done, but I don't suppose that he would care to read about all the new dresses I have bought. I never realized before that a girl could get so much pleasure out of buying pretty things, and I am afraid that he would scold me if he knew how many leaves I have used out of my checkbook. Not that they have been all for clothes, little diary. I did not realize how much I had given to war charities, and I was a little frightened this morning when I made up my balance.

But I cannot help giving for the poor French and Belgian babies. It somehow seems as though I were giving the money to Don to spend for me."

There follow many entries, in the course of which the name of Donald appears, and many more in which that of Philip, from which one might reasonably draw the conclusion that the latter was conscientiously performing his part as ad interim guardian for Rose. There are also several mentions of impish, lovable Jimmy—he of the red hair, presumably—and of visits, on her afternoons off, to the cheap and somewhat squalid apartment where he lived with his thin, tired, but pitifully optimistic mother, and a stout, florid-faced father, who wore shabby, but very loud-checked, suits and was apparently a highly successful business man of big affairs, but frequently "temporarily out of funds." Indeed, it would seem as though there were times when the family—which included six other children from one to ten years old—would actually not have had enough to eat if Rose had not "loaned" the wherewithal to purchase it to the father of the household.

Under date of May 15th, 1916, appears the following.

"Two black bands on the little white cap! One round table nearer the wall! Materia medica, orthopedia, medical analysis, general surgery, bacteriology, therapeutics and anÆsthesia no longer mere words, whose very sound made me weak with dismay; but terms descriptive of new ways in which I can help weak and suffering babyhood. It has been hard, but soul-satisfying, work. I love it all, and have never regretted the decision made, centuries ago it seems, on the mountain. I have just been re-reading Donald's first letter to me—the one in which he frankly warned me of the hardships which would be mine to face, if I should attempt to carry out my plan. It was, I think, the only time that he was ever wrong ... no, I had forgotten that afternoon at Judd's still. Work may be hard, and yet entail no hardship, especially when it brings the satisfaction of winning against odds. I know that he did not really mean what he said in that letter. It was written merely as a test of my resolve; to deter me, if it wasn't strong enough to carry me through. There have been times when I have myself wondered if it would, but, thanks to dear old Mr. Talmadge, and his 'sermon on the mount' I have always been able to find the help that he told us about. I wonder if Donald has, too? Surely he must have, he has been doing such wonderful work 'over there.' It is like him to say so little about it in his letters, but Dr. Roland gave us a talk about what they have been doing in Toul and Leslie, when he returned from France, and he sang Donald's praises fortissimo. I was so happy, and so proud.

"They all tell me that the coming year is the hardest of all with its practical training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and in the Manhattan Maternity in New York. I have a feeling that I am not going to enjoy the former. Nursing 'grown-ups' does not appeal to me as the caring for the little flowers does. But I shall love the other. Motherhood is sacred and beautiful....

"I shall have to be very economical this year, little diary, and especially careful when I get to New York. When I paid the final installment on my tuition fee, I was frightened to find how little remained of what granddaddy left me, and what I had saved, myself. Nearly thirteen hundred dollars looked like a huge fortune to me in those days, but it is nothing at all in a city, where there is so much poverty, and there are so many appeals to one's heart. I know that Donald—or Philip—would lend me a little money until the time when I get to earning it for myself, if I should ask them. But of course I cannot do that. Perhaps I can earn a little during my afternoons and evenings off duty. The girls say that I can shampoo and manicure as well as a professional. Yes, I will try to do that this year."

January 15th, 1917.

"Thank goodness my worries about finances are almost over!

"The last few months have been simply terrible, and the hardest part of all, I think, has been my not being able to give anything to the number of splendid causes which so touch the sympathies these dark days. Perhaps I gave too much before; but I am not a bit sorry, especially now that some of the seed which I cast upon the waters is soon to bear golden fruit for me. I never believe the pessimistic people who say that those who receive charity are never really grateful, and now I know that they are wrong. Jimmy's father has been so appreciative of my pitifully small presents to them, that sometimes he has cried over them, and I knew that he was in earnest when he promised to repay me as soon as he possibly could. Now the chance has come. I was there yesterday and he said that he had been thinking about me just before I appeared.

"It seems that he sells stock, and has just obtained a wonderful position as agent, or whatever they call it, for a new copper mine which he says is better than the 'Calumet and Hecla.'

"He explained to me all about that one and showed me in the paper how high it was selling now—for $550 a share. He is the sole representative for all of New England, and he says that the company is at present selling its stock only to special friends in order to 'let them in on the ground floor.' The shares are only ten dollars apiece and are sure to be worth a hundred, or more, very soon, because of the war. It seems almost impossible! I told him that I had only about a hundred dollars in the world, but that, if he really felt that he wanted to do me a favor, I might 'invest' it (that word sounds quite impressive, doesn't it?) but that I should have to think it over, first. I remembered what Donald had told me about asking a man's advice—especially Philip's—in money matters. Perhaps it would have been wiser if I had done so before.

"I asked him this afternoon if he knew anything about the King Kopper Kompany, and he said that it was a 'get rich proposition' and that he had sunk a good deal of his own money into some just like it. I wanted to ask him more, but we were interrupted. However, I know that he is very well-to-do, so he must have made money in them and certainly I need to get rich quick. I'm going to make the investment to-morrow."

March 11th.

"Stung! I hate slang, but sometimes nothing else is quite so expressive. I thought that I was getting to be very wise, but, oh, what a little ignoramus I have been. And to think that I thought I was following Philip's advice, and did not realize what he really meant until I read a story about a man who was called 'Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.' Now I'd rather die than tell him that I have lost practically all of my worldly goods!"

Finally, late in May, is an entry, longer than any of its predecessors, and the last for many a day. Rose made it seated in the soft moonlight which came through the window of her hospital room, after her roommate had fallen asleep.

"I am in a strange mood to-night, little diary, and not quite sure whether I want to laugh or cry—indeed, I think that my heart has done both to-day. I don't feel like going to sleep, but perhaps I will be able to if I get the many thoughts out of my mind and down on paper—now they are like so many little imps beating against my brain with hammers.

"Surely I should be happy at the thought that to-morrow is to carry me to my goal at the top of the mountain path which Donald described. In twelve hours I shall (D. V.) be a graduate nurse; but, now that the journey is almost an accomplished fact, I positively shiver when I think of the nerve of that child who was I five years ago and who, blessed with ignorance, made up her mind to become one, or 'bust'—that is the way I put it, then. Friends have sometimes told me that they didn't see how I had the courage to attempt it; but I tell them, truthfully, that it isn't courage when one tackles a thing which she—or he—doesn't know is difficult to do, and that few things are insurmountably difficult which she tackles with confidence (which is as often the result of ignorance as of faith in one's own power). So how can I take any credit for succeeding?