When I felt rather overcome with [my father's] opposition, I said as firmly as I could, that I must have this or something else, that I could not live without some real work.

At first he was very discouraging, to my astonishment then, but now I fancy he did it as a forlorn hope to check me; he said the whole idea was so disgusting that he could not entertain it for a moment.

[My mother] speaks of my step being a source of life-long pain to her, that it is a living death, etc. By the same post I had several letters from anxious relatives, telling me that it was my duty to come home and thus ease my mother's anxiety.

I asked [my father] what there was to make doctoring more disgusting than nursing, which women were always doing, and which ladies had done publicly in the Crimea. He could not tell me.

When I felt rather overcome with [my father's] opposition, I said as firmly as I could, that I must have this or something else, that I could not live without some real work.

I think he will probably come round in time, I mean to renew the subject pretty often.