hey have houses in New York and Philadelphia,
and already do an immense deal of good among the destitute aged poor.

The Order of Sion is a rather peculiar one, its principal object
being the conversion to Christianity and subsequent education of
young Jewesses. It has been founded within the last forty years by
the brothers Ratisbonne, both of them Jews of distinction converted
to Christianity. The elder brother (they are both priests now)
superintends the order in Europe: the younger resides at
the mother-house at Jerusalem. The convent is an educational
establishment, where the daughters of Orientals of all kinds are
received--Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Armenians, etc. In Europe the houses,
of course, do not confine themselves to Jewish pupils, else they would
find less work than their many hands could do, but receive boarders
and give a solid education like the other and more fashionable
convents. As a child I lived nearly a year in one of these houses, a
large, roomy, silent villa, two hours from Paris. Behind the house
was a garden and grove crossed in all directions by bewildering
little paths leading into unexpected hollows where a rustic altar
and statuette of Our Lady would be placed, or a crucifix erected in
startling loneliness on a little hillock. A wide avenue of lime trees,
where the pupils might be seen early in the morning studying their
tasks, or in the afternoon eating their luncheon of grapes and brown
bread, traversed this grove in a straight line, and here on certain
feast-days nuns and pupils would form picturesque processions, with
the customary banners, tapers, white veils and swelling hymns. Here
the Ratisbonne brothers came to rest from their work of furthering the
interests of the order--the elder a fatherly, portly man with white
hair and a gentle manner, the younger a bronzed, black-bearded man,
a true Oriental, with enthusiasm expressed in every line of his
countenance and every flash of his piercing eye. He was only on a
visit at that time, and then, as now, made Jerusalem his permanent
home. There are one or two convents of this order in England, but I
think none as yet in America.

The convent of the Assumption at Auteuil, a suburb of Paris, is one
renowned for its excellent educational advantages. I spent a week
there one winter on a visit to a near relative among the pupils, and
had an opportunity to observe the clock-like life of the place. All
the girls I have known to be educated ther