Page 64: Excerpt from A Nickel and a Prayer
Dixie Hospital and Training School for Nurses at Hampton Institute, Virginia. The training I received here was excellent, but was attended with trials and tribulations. For three months I was a probationer, washing walls, scrubbing floors and a long corridor, helping in the kitchen and dining room. A kindly matron, Miss Mollie Williamson, assisted me in passing many ordeals until I was assigned to a ward and allowed to demonstrate my efficiency in nursing. Patients began to ask for “Nurse Hunter,” and the Superintendent showed her approval of my work by assigning me to the operating room, where I attracted the attention of the senior surgeon and was kept busy handling his cases.
The consciousness of greater success and new power in my profession made me very happy. My social life, too, had become fuller and more enjoyable. On Sunday in the Hampton Institute Chapel, I loved to listen to the students singing spirituals, again reviving the happiest memories of childhood. On Saturdays the Hampton boys were permitted to call on the Dixie nurses. While I enjoyed the friendship of a number of fine young men, among them a splendid machinist, I never permitted myself to become seriously interested. My marriage had been a failure; I must be careful not to encourage any of these young men.
How good it was to be in Dixie!
There was a cloud on the horizon, however, that I
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Hunter, Jane Edna. A Nickel and a Prayer. 2nd edition. Nashville: Elli Kani Publishing Co., 1941.
Dixie Hospital and Training School for Nurses at Hampton Institute, Virginia. The training I received here was excellent, but was attended with trials and tribulations. For three months I was a probationer, washing walls, scrubbing floors and a long corridor, helping in the kitchen and dining room. A kindly matron, Miss Mollie Williamson, assisted me in passing many ordeals until I was assigned to a ward and allowed to demonstrate my efficiency in nursing. Patients began to ask for “Nurse Hunter,” and the Superintendent showed her approval of my work by assigning me to the operating room, where I attracted the attention of the senior surgeon and was kept busy handling his cases.
The consciousness of greater success and new power in my profession made me very happy. My social life, too, had become fuller and more enjoyable. On Sunday in the Hampton Institute Chapel, I loved to listen to the students singing spirituals, again reviving the happiest memories of childhood. On Saturdays the Hampton boys were permitted to call on the Dixie nurses. While I enjoyed the friendship of a number of fine young men, among them a splendid machinist, I never permitted myself to become seriously interested. My marriage had been a failure; I must be careful not to encourage any of these young men.
How good it was to be in Dixie!
There was a cloud on the horizon, however, that I
(<<<previous) (next>>>)
Hunter, Jane Edna. A Nickel and a Prayer. 2nd edition. Nashville: Elli Kani Publishing Co., 1941.
© 2009 Jane Edna Hunter Project
