"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength." St. Francis de Sales
Gentleness
She would never forget the first time she held a human bone to inspect it. It was a pelvic bone and the professor had charged each pupil to glean as much information about the bone's owner as they could during the class period. Previous lectures had centered around how to do so and the professor had decided it was time to apply the knowledge practically.
For a half an hour, Temperance inspected the bone, turning it gently in her hands and using her fingers to feel for anomalies. Satisfied that she had uncovered as much as she could with the naked eye, she moved to one of the magnifiers and began a more thorough inspection. She spent the last half hour of the period peering at the surface of the bone in an effort to unlock its secrets. Confident that her findings had been comprehensive, she turned in her notes at the end of class and went back to her dorm room happy.
When the class convened several days later, their notes were returned to them, along with a master list of all of the information they should have obtained during the exercise, as well as a photograph of the bone's original owner. Temperance was stunned to find that she had only identified sixty percent of the master list's contents; which was far above most of her colleagues, but far below what she expected of herself.
As the professor spoke, she took in every word. He emphasized that each bone belonged to a human being and that their remains deserved the utmost respect. In awe, she watched as he demonstrated how to gently inspect a bone in order to get the most out of it as possible. It was a time-consuming and tedious process at times, he told them, but when read correctly, a skeleton could tell the story of a person's life.
The next time she inspected a bone it took her twice as long to finish, but her list matched the professor's one hundred percent.