dry,
but this is conducted exclusively by the nuns themselves. They do all
the washing of surplices, altar-cloths, etc. for most of the Catholic
churches of New York, for the convents and colleges, and for many
private families. The fluting on children's frocks and the polish on
shirts is something wonderful, and the young nun who superintends
the concern seemed to be a real enthusiast in the matter. The nuns'
dormitories, as well as those of the prisoners, are miracles of
neatness; the refectories likewise. There are various immense airy
halls where the nuns and girls sit sewing, and where a stranger sees
a spectacle new to most people, certainly unexpected by the greater
number--that of an assemblage of ugly faces, each belonging to
an _unfortunate_ whose temptations are usually understood to lie
originally in her fatal beauty. Many of them are scarcely fourteen,
and if once admitted, the melancholy chance is that they will be here
again time after time: the sentences are seldom long enough to afford
room for thought and conversion. Among the penitents the cases are
far more hopeful, but the gentle sisters never forget their kind,
conciliatory manner toward all; and unless a perverse demon whispers
to their ear that these nuns are their _jailers_, the poor prisoners
see little to remind them that they are not in a voluntarily chosen
home.

Nuns are by no means a shiftless, unbusiness-like set of women: they
can look after themselves as well as after the poor and forlorn:
many of them, were they in the world, would be called strong-minded,
blue-stockinged women. At Montreal there is a large establishment
of the Sisters of the Congregation de Notre Dame, generally called
Congregation Sisters, founded by Margaret Bourgeoys. They are the
great educational sisters of Lower Canada. They own St. Paul's Island,
some distance above the city: this is their farm, and one of the nuns,
called the sister econome, has to visit it frequently and superintend
matters, being the stewardess and committee of ways and means and
revenue department combined. Of course a good horse is desirable for
these drives, and their horses being one source of profit, the econome
feels that the reputation of the breed ought not to be depreciated
by her own "turnout." The young men of the town often meet her on the
road and try to distance her, but this she will never permit, and her
horse, faultlessly groomed and in splendid condition, always comes
off