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own, a trifle out of tune) announced the procession-very like the processions with which we are familiar in foreign churches, save that there were only two priests and no acolytes. The rest were Sisters; except two young ladies dressed in full bridal costume, who, with a motherly nun behind them, came and knelt before the altar. Neither looked excited nor agitated; and when the service began, with a series of solemn questions, something like those of a marriage ceremony, in the answers I recognised the voice of my girl, perfectly natural, collected, and firm.

The chaplain, or priest-his vestments were very like a Roman Catholic priest's, but every word be uttered might have come from an evangelical pulpit-calling each by her Christian name I had given my girl hers and would have been loth she should abjure it—asked if she were joining this community of her own free will? if she would take the vow of obedience to its rules? with a few other similar questions, to which she answered distinctly, I will, God being my helper.' Afterwards the dress of each—gown, veil, and cross-was brought to the altar and blessed, and the two girls went out, during the singing of a hymn. There was no cutting off of hair, or prostration under a black pall—as in Catholic countries-merely the change of dress.

But that was very great. When the procession re-entered, including the two newly-received Sisters, who walked up and knelt at the altar, with lighted tapers in their hands, I hardly recognised my girl, so spiritualised was her honest rosy face by the picturesqueness of the close white veil, and by her expression of entire content-as sweet as that I have seen on some young brides' features as they went down the aisle to the church-door.

6 Are you really content?' I said, when, service being ended, she came to me, in a large room, where Sisters, clergy, and friends were standing about, taking tea or coffee and chatting in a most mundane and secular fashion. 'Are you quite satisfied?'

'Perfectly,' she answered; and kissed me and her other friends and kindred, not without emotion, but with no excitement or exaltation; indeed, she was the last person in the world to be what the French call exaltée, or to give way to romantic impulses of any kind. But you must come to speak to the Mother. I do want you to see our Mother. It is she who has done it all.'

By which was meant the Orphanage-established almost entirely by this one woman's influence and energy. And when I saw the Mother I was not surprised.

Some people strike you at once with their personality, physical

and mental, which carries with it an influence that, you feel, must affect every one within their reach. Tall, stately, and beautiful-the beauty of middle-age just melting into old age—with a face that I can only describe by saying that it reminded me of Cardinal Newman's-of few words, but with a clasp of the hand and a smile beyond all speaking, I could understand how the Mother was just the woman to be head of a community like this.

I had a little talk with her, and also with the officiating priest -chaplain, spiritual director' the anti-Ritualists would call him; but, if a wolf in sheep's clothing, he looked the most harmless of vulpine foes, as he stood sipping his coffee and chatting to his cheerful flock, who fluttered around him as women always will round a clergyman, even in the world.' This, though a quasinunnery, seemed a very merry world, and all the nuns went about conversing much as people do at afternoon teas and garden parties, except that there was not one who had that jaded, bored, or cross look so often seen on the faces of the rich prosperous people who have nothing to do.

'We have plenty to do-oh yes! We have nearly two hundred orphans. We take them in from anywhere or anybody. One was picked up on a doorstep-another on a dust-heap. No recommendation is needed except that they are orphans, and destitute. We feed, clothe, and educate them until they are old enough to work, and then we find them work, chiefly as domestic servants. Come and look at them.'

Orphanages are at best a sad sight: the poor little souls seem such automatons, brought up by line and rule, without any human individuality, just No. 1, No. 2, No. 3—of nɔ importance to anybody. But this class-a sewing-class I think it was, chiefly of big girls, who rose with bright faces and showed their work with intelligent pride-was something quite different. More different still was the long procession of 'little ones' which we met as they were going out of the chapel to supper and bed.

'Children, don't you know me?' said the new-made Sister, stopping the three smallest-such tiny dots!—and calling them by their Christian names. They hesitated a minute, then with a cry of delight sprang right into her arms. She held them there: one over her shoulder, the other two clinging to her gown. Three orphans and a solitary woman, husbandless, childless, laughing and toying together, kissing and kissed, they made a group so pretty, so happy-so full of God's great mercy, compensation,that it brought the tears to one's eyes.

After having gone over the whole establishment, which I shall not describe, wishing neither to individualise nor to identify it, I went away; feeling that there was a great deal to be said-much more than we Protestants till lately had any idea of-on behalf of Sisterhoods.

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.

Alas! this is the experience of almost every woman who has any womanly qualities in her, long before she reaches old age! How to combine the two-how to arrange her life so that duty shall not draw all the beauty out of it, while mere beauty shall always be held subservient to duty-this is the crucial test, the great secret which must be learned during those years—most painful years they often are!-between the first decay of youth and the quiet acceptance of inevitable old age. If age comes and finds the lesson unlearnt, then it is too late.

Marriage is held to be the great end of a woman's being, and so it is. Few will deny that the perfect life is the married life— the happy married life-though I have heard people say that 'any husband is better than none.' Perhaps so; in the sense of his being a sort of domestic Attila, a scourge of God' to 'whip the offending Adam' out of a woman and turn her into an angel, as the wives of some bad husbands seem to become. But, in truth, any wife whose husband is not altogether vicious has a better chance of being educated into perfection, through that necessary altruism which it is the mystery of marriage to teach, than a woman sunk in luxurious single-blessedness, who has no work to do, and nobody to do it for, and so seems almost compelled into that fatal selfism which is at the root of half the evils and miseries of existence.

Thus we come back to the great question, becoming more difficult as we advance in-shall we call it civilisation? Those women who do not marry, what are they to do with their lives?

For some of them Fate decides, often severely enough, laying on them the sacred burthen of aged parents, or helpless brothers and sisters, or orphan nephews and nieces. Others, left without natural duties or ties, have the strength to make both for themselves. I know no position more happy, more useful (and therefore happy) than that of a single woman, who, having inherited or earned sufficient money and position, has courage to assume the

status and responsibilities of a married woman. She has, except the husband, all the advantages of the matronly position, and almost none of its drawbacks. So much lies in her power to do, unhindered, especially the power of doing good. She can be a friend to the friendless and a mother to the orphan; she can fill her house with happy guests, after the true Christian type-the guests that cannot repay her for her kindness. Free to dispose of herself in all ways, she can be a good neighbour, a good citizenwhether or not she attains the doubtful privilege of female suffrage. Her worldly goods, her time, and her affections are exclusively her own, to bestow wisely and well. Solitary, to a certain extent, her life must always be; but it need never be a morbid, selfish, or dreary life. I think it might be all the better for our girls of this generation, which understands the duties and destinies of women a little better than the last one, if we were to hold up to them-since they cannot all be wives and mothersthis ideal of a happy single life, which lies before any girl who either inherits an independence, or has the courage and capacity to earn one.

But such cases are, and must always be, exceptional. The great bulk of unmarried women are a very helpless race, either hampered with duties, or seeking feebly for duties that do not come; miserably overworked, or disgracefully idle; piteously dependent on male relations, or else angrily vituperating the opposite sex for their denied rights or perhaps not undeserved wrongs. Between these two lies a medium class, silent and suffering, who have just enough money to save them from the necessity of earning it, just enough brains and heart to make them feel the blankness of their life without strength to obviate it-longing for some occupation, and yet unable to strike out a career for themselves, and cheat Fate by making it neither a sad nor useless one. It is for these stray sheep, sure to wander if left alone, but safe enough in a flock with a steady shepherd to guide them, that I open up for consideration the question of Sisterhoods.

The medieval system of nunneries, where, from a combination of motives, good and bad, religious and worldly, girls were separated from all family ties and dedicated to the service of God, might have had its advantages in the middle ages, but can never be revived now, at least not, we trust, in our free England. It cannot be too strongly insisted that the family life is the first and most blessed life, and that family duties, in whatever shape they come, ought never to be set aside. Also that the service of

God is best fulfilled through the service of man-the utilising of an aimless existence for the good of others. But to this end is often needed the strength of community.. The mass of women are not clever enough, or brave enough, to carry out anything single-handed. Like sheep, they follow the leader; they will do excellent work if anyone will find it for them, but they cannot find it for themselves. How continually do we hear the cry, ‘I want something to do;'Tell me what to do, and I'll do it!'

Of course, a really capable woman would never ask this; she would under no circumstances be idle-she would find her work, or make it. But for one such, capable of organising, guiding, ruling, there are hundreds and thousands of women fitted only to obey, to whom the mere act of obedience is a relief, because it saves them from responsibility. To them a corporate institution, headed by such a woman as the Mother of that Orphanage of Mercy I visited, is an actual boon. It protects them from themselves-their weak, vacillating, uncertain selves-puts them under line and rule, gives them the shelter of numbers and the strength of a common object. It is astonishing what good can be done by a community, who, as individuals, would have done no good at all.

An institution which absorbed the waifs and strays of gentlewomanhood—ladies of limited income and equally limited capacity, yet excellent women so far as they go, which could take possession of them, income and all, saving and utilising both it and themselves-would be a real boon to society. For what does not society suffer from these helpless excrescences upon it-women with no ties, no duties, no ambitions-who drone away a hopeless, selfish existence, generally ending in confirmed invalidism, or hypochondria, or actual insanity-for diseased self-absorption is the very root of madness. It is a strange thing to say-but I dare to say it, for I believe it to be true-that entering a Sisterhood, almost any sort of Sisterhood where there was work to do, authority to compel the doing of it, and companionship to sweeten the same, would have saved many a woman from a lunatic asylum.

But it must be the ideal Sisterhood, not that corruption of it as seen in foreign countries which rouses the British ire at the very name of nun. It must be exactly opposite in many things to the Roman Catholic idea of a girl giving up 'the world' and becoming the spouse of Christ.' Many a wife and mother belonging to and living in the world is just as much the spouse of Christ-if that means devoting herself to good works for the love of Him-as any vowed nun.

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