hat little Joan had to begin early to
do her part of the work, which meant three meals a day to the family.

When she was old enough her father used to send her to watch over the
sheep all day long in the fields and woods near their home, and all
through these long hours, in the heat of summer or the cold of fall or
spring, she had nothing to do but think and watch sheep grazing. It was
a strange age in France four centuries and a half ago. People generally
believed in visions, in miracles, in supernatural powers, and were
easily influenced by fanaticism and enthusiasm in religious and
every-day matters. A huge crowd of men, women, and children would become
possessed with some idea, and would leave their daily work, their shops,
their house-keeping, and their games, and rush to market-place or field
to carry out this idea. In many towns the whole inhabitants would give
their labor to build an enormous cathedral. Hundreds of people would
catch hold of a long rope, and drag one of the big blocks of stone
through a city's streets to be placed on the cathedral walls, and
hundreds of unfortunate people and children were killed by different
kinds of accidents while working in this fanatical way.

Then it was common, too, for some one to say that he or she was inspired
by visions and voices to do or say one thing or another, and the people
would rush after the inspired one to hear or to do whatever was ordered,
or to try and be healed by touching the inspired person. Some were rank
fakirs, who every now and then grew rich before they were discovered.
Others really believed in all they said and did, and their confidence in
themselves made hundreds of people follow them.

It is a mistake to think this is all gone by nowadays, for as a matter
of fact it is not. Only a few years ago hundreds of people in all the
stages of consumption travelled to Berlin to be treated by Dr. Koch,
because he gave out, and no doubt, believed, that he had found a cure
for it. At Lourdes, a city in France, there is to-day a grotto where
people go for miles and miles around to be cured of all sorts of
incurable diseases. And if these things attract people to-day, when
nobody really believes much in such matters, you can begin to realize
what fearful enthusiasm there must have been in a day when every one was
only too glad to believe such things, and when most persons felt more or
less strongly that they were some day going to have visions or missions