Hygiene under difficulties / [Eliza Priestley].

  • Priestley, Eliza (Eliza Chambers), Lady.
Date:
[1891]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hygiene under difficulties / [Eliza Priestley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    wood-pigeons, and, turning to Nature in the midst of my hardships, sought and found consolation in her elevating and benign in- fluence. Day after day I came back fresh to my work, and evening after evening dragged myself weariedly away. There was a child- like innocence about the native workmen that defied anger. They regarded me not as a foreman of works—a position untenable with such independent people—but as an equal, a universal mother to whom they all came in their troubles, domestic and private, or professional and public. My only sure ground w’as that of a fellow-creature, a worker in the same field as their own. It was of no use trying to explain natural laws and scientific methods where custom had established her sway since the days of the Roman conquest. I had therefore to restrain my advanced ideas, and keep them locked in my own bosom, to come out some day per- haps by a process of more gradual develop- ment. Of all the tradesmen w-ith whom I had to deal, the paperhanger w'as the most enlightened. One day I w'as sitting on a