Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

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XLV. on visiting the sick.

It is a curious fact, and one not quite creditable to the good-sense of the human race, that the one duty which is sure to devolve on everybody first or last is so often ill done. Everybody, from the roughest frontiersman to the most luxurious city-bred woman, is pretty sure, in the course of years, to be called on to visit some person who is ill. having been brought, through circumstances, somewhat in contact with invalids, I have never ceased to be astonished to see how poorly, on the whole, we discharge this inevitable and most important duty.

The first error is in regard to quantity, the second in regard to quality. We cannot, perhaps, visit the sick too much, if we have time for it; but we can easily visit them a great deal too much at any one time. Many a sick-room would be helped and gladdened by a glimpse of a friendly face every few days, for three minutes at a time. But wait for a month, and consolidate these scattered minutes into three-quarters of an hour, and how different the result! The new face soon becomes a burden, the