ng force. They form a valuable tie connecting
the sisters with sources of influence and aid that would otherwise be
closed to them. Nearly always they are ladies of independent means, and
come for longer or shorter periods to relieve the deaconesses, their
zeal often being as great as that of the sisters whose places they take.

Besides these houses there are homes located at Maidstone, Chester,
Bedford, Salisbury, and Portsmouth, in the respective dioceses of
Canterbury, Chester, Ely, Salisbury, and Winchester.

In the home at Portsmouth sisters not only engage in nursing and parish
work, but are also given special training for penitentiary and
out-of-door rescue work. They also have a home for the rescue of
neglected children.

The Salisbury Home is beautifully situated in the quiet cathedral city
of the same name. The house is a picturesque and venerable mansion,
covered with clinging green vines, opening out into a garden which in
olden times belonged to the convent. There is in connection with the
home an institution for training girls for domestic service, supported
by the funds of a charity given for that purpose. The whole service of
the house is done by the girls. They attend upon the deaconesses and the
ladies who board there to receive training in the hospital. Each
deaconess pays for board and lodging while training, and, if able to do
so, when she returns for rest, or a visit to her old home.

In other houses the deaconess is expected to keep her own room in order,
and may have some duties in the house, but servants do the rough work.
The social status of the English deaconesses is, as a rule, markedly
different from the German deaconesses. Here ladies of rank and inherited
social traditions, of refinement, of accomplishments, and of education,
many of them women of means, defraying their entire expenses and often
those of their poorer sisters, are largely represented among the
deaconesses. On the other hand, the German deaconesses, as we have seen,
are largely of that station in life that furnishes many for domestic
service. Although of course there are among them women of all ranks and
all degrees of education, still such women form the larger number; and
the conditions under which Fliedner began the work, as well as the
difference of custom and habit in the two countries, incline the German
houses to maintain the rules of service by which nearly every detail of
domestic service in their institutions i