banks of the East
River, overlooking Astoria and Long Island, and from its top windows
the eye reaches far up the Sound. Like all convents, it is marvelously
clean. The order is devoted to the reclaiming of fallen women, and in
this instance the house is a government reformatory. A certain
annual subsidy is guaranteed by the city authorities, but voluntary
contributions and the industry of the inmates give more than half
toward the real support of the house. Three sorts of women are
under the care of the nuns: (1) those whom the judges send there as
criminals for a specified term; (2) those whom their friends send
in hope of their being quietly reformed without the intervention of
justice; and (3) those who seek of their own accord to do penance and
earn forgiveness for their sins. This is of course the most hopeful
class, and it frequently happens that these penitents become in time
permanent inmates, and even nuns. In the latter case, as the rule of
the order does not allow of the reception of any woman with a stain on
her reputation, they are clothed in the habit of the Carmelite Third
Order (brown serge tunic and black veil), in which the austerities are
not very great. They go through the usual novitiate and make their
vows in the regular manner: they are then called "Magdalens," and
inhabit a portion of the house reserved for them, say their office
at stated hours in their own chapel, contiguous to that of the Good
Shepherd nuns, and live under obedience to the superioress of the
latter. I saw about a dozen of them taking their evening walk in a
pretty enclosed garden by the river-side. Other women who do not feel
inclined to so full a renunciation of their liberty bind themselves
by a promise, good for one year only, to the service of the house, and
wear a semi-religious kind of cap and a scarlet badge with the letter
_P_ or _F_: they are divided into two classes, under the patronage of
Saint Joseph and Saint Patrick. They renew the promise from year to
year, and often spend their lives in this lay sisterhood of penance.
Every inmate, be she prisoner or penitent, is taught to sew, first
by hand, then on the machine: many on their first entrance are so
ignorant that they do not know on which finger to place the thimble,
but after a while most are able to do a good day's work on common
shirts and linen articles which the order contracts for with the
wholesale shops. Another source of profit to the house is the laun