Page:Rural Hygiene - Florence Nightingale.pdf/6

 truism to say the very same for England. We must not talk to them, or at them, but with them.

A great man who has just passed away from us used to advise his young men, when they entered life, to make personal acquaintance with the poor, whether they took or not to "works of philanthropy." He did not believe in any "philanthropy" which was not in fact what the word means—the love of men. But the knowledge of a man must go before the love for him—acquaintance, friendship, love can only come in this order; and the love that springs from the sympathy of a close and accurate knowledge of the ways, the habits, the lives of the poor is not a mere sentiment, but an active and a fruitful enthusiasm.

This is eminently the case with cottage mothers, in the matter of Rural Hygiene. You must know them, not as a class, but each one by herself, in order to do her service in this all-important matter.

And now I propose with your leave to touch upon—

1. The present machinery of Rural Public Health.

2. The present state of Rural Hygiene.

3. What the women have to do with it.

4. (In answer to many questions asked.) Some sketch of the scheme of Health-at-Home training and work.

5. What we mean by personal acquaintance and friendship between the women instructors and women to be instructed, always bearing in mind that the latter differ as widely from each other in character as they do in the circumstances of their lives