240

THE ST. JAMES ORPHANAGE

Happy Days Spent by the Inmates of a Worthy Charitable Institution.

Excellent Discipline -- The Routine Work of the Day -- The Good Sisters and Their Charges.

The children call her Sister 'Lastics.

Her real name is Sister Mary Scholastics, and her duties, with thirteen other Sisters of Mercy, are to care for the children at the St. James orphanage.

This place of refuge is on that stretch of rolling, grass covered prairie northwest of the city. When this prairie is left as God made it it is beautiful in the extreme. It swells and undulates away into purple nothingness, and all over the bearded grass dandelions nod their delicate hands, and and yellow butterflies with eye like spots upon their wings submit [?] to the buffettings of the wind

But it sometimes happens that God proposes and man disposes. And man, who has a mania, in this part of the country, for cutting down hills, has resolved the place into a series of clay cuttings, which in wet weather are almost impassable because of the mud, and in dry weather are the home of the infant simoons, which pepper the eyes with torturing particles of clay.

By taking the Walnut Hill motor and riding to the western end of the line and then getting on the brisk little Benson place motor, which rocks over the road bed like a poorly balanced cat boat over a choppy bay, you come to a stretch of these clay cuttings in the midst of which, you get off, walk a quarter of a mile to a very substantial brick building in the midst of a clay plateau, and find yourself at the Orphanage.

In the facade stands St Joseph -- done in bisque -- with the Child in his arms, and playing literally under the shadow of their patron saint are ninety little children.

Meanwhile, tolling for them, praying for them, loving them, are Sister 'Lastics and her thirteen colaborers.

All of these good women bear the name of Mary -- name dear alike to sacred and to secular ears. And to distinguish them a very little one from another, another name is given, so that Mary Borgia, and Mary Benedictine, and Mary Celestine, may answer to earthly call.

But aside from that middle name, so often amusingly inappropriate, there is little to distinguish these gentle, strong, faithful women one from another. Their faces are [?] from lack of excitement, their steps are quick because they are ever bent on willing service, their eyes are soft because they are filled with kindness, their manners are gently authoritative, and their faces are framed in the white linen and the black drapings of their order

Sister Mary Michael is the superior -- a calm woman who looks at you with eyes which are not unsophisticated, as are those of some of her satellites. She is a woman who has ability, as you feel directly upon meeting her, and who could, if you asked her, tell you the exact amount of every item of expense of the Orphanage.

The building has not yet been occupied a year. It is substantial, commodious and very simple. It cost in the neighborhood of $70,000. Of this six sevenths are still owing

But it will be paid for The order of the Sisters of Mercy will do it. They will do it by their faithful minutes which reach into monotonous and beautiful years of toil The order is a great one and this branch of it here will be helpful if the need comes Meantime, by subscription, funds will be raised as much as possible, while the Sisters bend every energy toward paying for the expenses of the institution, and of meeting the interest, which, fortunately, is only 5 per cent.

It would be easier to do this if coal were not so high. But to beat a building that holds over 100 persons, who insist on their rights to a certain number of cubic feet of air per capita, is an expense almost as great as all the other expenses of living put together

There is no one so lowly, just as there is no one so powerful, that he is not plundered by the man who deliberately place coal above its value!

To have been held up on the highway and despoiled by a feudal baron, as honest men were three centuries ago, was preferable to being robbed in a country which makes its meaningless boasts of law and order, under the mistaken impressions that these things stand for equity and justice.

But in spite of coal combines and other damnable contrivances of a more or less cold world, ninety little boys and girls were kept warm and snug at the Orphanage last winter Ninety little folks, none of whom are provided with more than one parent, and some of whom have no parents of any sort or description knew what it was to be housed and clothed, and fed, and even loved.

In the morning they awoke in the dim early light to see the dormitories with their white shaped iron beds reaching north and south. They washed, dressed, combed, according to the inflexible rules, each boy and girl in his or her place.

Then, morning prayers in the chapel -- a chaste room with delicately colored windows The priest is a German and loves his own tongue better even than the Latin And he is old, and it maybe that he forgets just how hungry boys and girls may be! Not that anyone said so But it is impossible, for a very wordly person, with a good appetite, to think of ninety little boys and girls trying to pray when they are all thinking of porridge, with sugar and milk on it, without sighing in sympathy.

However after the good father has read his Latin with a German accent, all the people go stumbling down the bare halls to the dining room And the very little ones sit at a table which is not much higher than a bench, while the others go to higher tables, according to their size. And they have, porridge, and cakes, and coffee [?] milk, and hash or browned potatoes and stewed meat, quite after the manner of children at home. And when they have eaten there is a time for work for the older ones, and then school for all. Some of the boys study German with the venerable priest, who loves to teach the tongue of the fatherland. But it is the sisters who guide through the intricacies of those first perplexing lessons, and who, with the older pupils, teach the mystery of fractions, of geography and of physiology.

And above all, they teach gentleness, courtesy and kindness.

For to have a loving heart is thought to be of more kindness by the sisters, than to have a clever brain.

Then dinner -- a hearty meal this, with meat, vegetables and pudding -- then school, and after that relaxation, a little work, supper of bread and milk, the even prayer, and later benediction and bed.

But this skeleton of the day's duties tells nothing of how the big girls carry about the fretful, teething babies, soothing them, jabbering to them, playing with them. It tells nothing about the toil of the sister who cooks the meals for this great family, her pleasant face wearing so bright a smile that it obscures the pock marks on her face. It says nothing about maternal looking woman up in the sewing room, who, in the defect of the sweet trials of actual maternity takes her delight in sewing for the children of other women. It says nothing about the woman who watches over the beds of twenty babies and soothes them in the nights and stills their crying, tyring with soft touch to compensate for the mother hand that should have patted them back to dreams. It says nothing about those younger sisters, who, during recreating hours play games with the girls, and even so far forget their serious state, as to now and then emit a little shriek of excitement as the rollicking game progresses.

As for the boys, they have their own games, and very conspicuous is the diamond in the back yard, where the national game is pursued with an ardor not to be excelled on any diamond the country over

The other day when I was out, the boys from St. Patrick's were down there playing a match game, and the Orphanage got beat, and there wasn't a baby in the place who could not have told you by just how many points

The umpire was unpopular. I don't know who he was The captain of the Orphanage nine told me about him. The captain was undaunted, though suffering not only in mind, but in body. A ball, which, he assured me, cost $1.50, had crashed into the bridge of his nose straight from the hands of a most accomplished pitcher The captain seemed very proud of the fact that this black, palpitating, [?] mass of flesh had been brought to its condition by a ball that cost $1.50 I ventured to inquire what would have been the result if the ball had cost only 50 cents. And the captain gave it as his opinion that it would have split the ball. But, as I was saying he told me all about the umpire, and I am convinced that the decisions were villainous, and that if he was served right -- but I must not let my emotions run away with me.

There never was a place any cleaner than the Orphanage But there are some things I would like to change. For instance, there is a large play room, in which there are not many play things. I would like to remedy that. There is a many shelved blanket room, in which there are no blankets. That does not seem to be just as it should be. There are a lot of little hearts aching for stories, and I did not see any story books around There are yards and yards of wall, and no pictures on them. And I wondered why. There was a large yard but no lawn, and I would have dearly liked to have remedied that.

And I particularly noticed how well adapted those ninety little mouths looked for strawberries. A berry would consider it a happy fate to have got into one of those mouths, and the red lips would have found that it was filling its perfect destiny in slipping 'round a red berry -- a berry with a tang, and a subtle sweetness, and piquant little yellow touches -- something like the buttons the upholsterer puts in his cushions

The though somehow haunts me, and I wonder if some one with a real perception of the eternal fitness of things could not manage it so that some red, ripe berries would get in those redder and riper mouths

It's clinging kind of a thought -- eh?

ELIA W. PEATTIE.

A JEALOUS COW.

In Love With Thomas and She Resented His Attentions to a Puppy.

In the London Spectator Mr. C. Hunter Bown of Nelson, New Zealand, toils the following odd story of a cow's jealous of a dog It will be observed that it was a New Zealand cow and a New Zealand dog

A few years ago I had a quiet milch cow, Rose, which certainly was fond of Thomas the man who milked her regularly, and she also showed an aversion to dogs even greater than is usual in her species. One night, for what reason I now forget, I had tied up a young colly dog in the little cow shed where she was accustomed to be milked. The following morning I had just begun to dress when I heard the puppy barking in the cowshed. "Oh!" thought I, "I forgot to tell Thomas about the puppy, and how the cow will get in first and gore it." The next minute I hear a roar of unmistakable fear and anguish -- a human roar I dashed down tot he spot, and at the same moment arrived my son, pitchfork in hand. There lay Thomas on his face in a dry gutter by the side of the road to the cow house and the cow butting angrily at him We drove off the cow and poor Thomas scuffled across the road, slipped through a wire fence, stood up and drew a breath

"Why Thomas," said I, "what's the matter with Rose?"

'Well, sir," said Thomas, "I heard the pup bark and untied him, and I was just coming out of the cow house, with the pup in my arms, when Rose came round the corner As soon as she seed the pup in my arms she rushed at me without more ado, knocked me down, and would have killed me if you hadn't come up"

Thomas had, indeed, had a narrow escape, his trousers were ripped up from end to end, and red marks all along his legs showed where Rose's horns had grazed along them

"Well," said I, "you'd better not-milk her this morning, since she s in such a fury"

"Oh! I'll milk her right enough, sir, by and by, just give her a little time to settle down like. It's only jealousy of that air pup, sir. She couldn't abide seeing me a fondling of it."

"Well, asyou like," said I. Only take care and mind what you're about."

"All right, sir!"

In about twenty minutes Thomas called me down to see the milk The cow had stood quiet enough to be milked. But the milk was deeply tinged with blood, sand in half an hour a copious red precipitate had settled to the bottom of the pail Till then I doubted the jealous theory, After that I believed

A STATESMANS' JOKE.

Washington Post: Congress is the subject of numerous jokes, but as it is alway sin a position to get even with the public for any remarks made concerning it there is no danger of its suffering to any great extent.

Some time ago a Washington man applied to a friend for a report on horses and got it. Later he asked for a copy of a report on mutes and pigs. The friend sent hima note as follows "I send you herewith a package which contains the best thing I could find in that line that you want."

The package contained a copy of the congressional directory.

THE ST. JAMES ORPHANAGE

Happy Days Spent by the Inmates of a Worthy Charitable Institution.

Excellent Discipline -- The Routine Work of the Day -- The Good Sisters and Their Charges.

The children call her Sister 'Lastics.

Her real name is Sister Mary Scholastics, and her duties, with thirteen other Sisters of Mercy, are to care for the children at the St. James orphanage.

This place of refuge is on that stretch of rolling, grass covered prairie northwest of the city. When this prairie is left as God made it it is beautiful in the extreme. It swells and undulates away into purple nothingness, and all over the bearded grass dandelions nod their delicate hands, and and yellow butterflies with eye like spots upon their wings submit [?] to the buffettings of the wind

But it sometimes happens that God proposes and man disposes. And man, who has a mania, in this part of the country, for cutting down hills, has resolved the place into a series of clay cuttings, which in wet weather are almost impassable because of the mud, and in dry weather are the home of the infant simoons, which pepper the eyes with torturing particles of clay.

By taking the Walnut Hill motor and riding to the western end of the line and then getting on the brisk little Benson place motor, which rocks over the road bed like a poorly balanced cat boat over a choppy bay, you come to a stretch of these clay cuttings in the midst of which, you get off, walk a quarter of a mile to a very substantial brick building in the midst of a clay plateau, and find yourself at the Orphanage.

In the facade stands St Joseph -- done in bisque -- with the Child in his arms, and playing literally under the shadow of their patron saint are ninety little children.

Meanwhile, tolling for them, praying for them, loving them, are Sister 'Lastics and her thirteen colaborers.

All of these good women bear the name of Mary -- name dear alike to sacred and to secular ears. And to distinguish them a very little one from another, another name is given, so that Mary Borgia, and Mary Benedictine, and Mary Celestine, may answer to earthly call.

But aside from that middle name, so often amusingly inappropriate, there is little to distinguish these gentle, strong, faithful women one from another. Their faces are [?] from lack of excitement, their steps are quick because they are ever bent on willing service, their eyes are soft because they are filled with kindness, their manners are gently authoritative, and their faces are framed in the white linen and the black drapings of their order

Sister Mary Michael is the superior -- a calm woman who looks at you with eyes which are not unsophisticated, as are those of some of her satellites. She is a woman who has ability, as you feel directly upon meeting her, and who could, if you asked her, tell you the exact amount of every item of expense of the Orphanage.

The building has not yet been occupied a year. It is substantial, commodious and very simple. It cost in the neighborhood of $70,000. Of this six sevenths are still owing

But it will be paid for The order of the Sisters of Mercy will do it. They will do it by their faithful minutes which reach into monotonous and beautiful years of toil The order is a great one and this branch of it here will be helpful if the need comes Meantime, by subscription, funds will be raised as much as possible, while the Sisters bend every energy toward paying for the expenses of the institution, and of meeting the interest, which, fortunately, is only 5 per cent.

It would be easier to do this if coal were not so high. But to beat a building that holds over 100 persons, who insist on their rights to a certain number of cubic feet of air per capita, is an expense almost as great as all the other expenses of living put together

There is no one so lowly, just as there is no one so powerful, that he is not plundered by the man who deliberately place coal above its value!

To have been held up on the highway and despoiled by a feudal baron, as honest men were three centuries ago, was preferable to being robbed in a country which makes its meaningless boasts of law and order, under the mistaken impressions that these things stand for equity and justice.

But in spite of coal combines and other damnable contrivances of a more or less cold world, ninety little boys and girls were kept warm and snug at the Orphanage last winter Ninety little folks, none of whom are provided with more than one parent, and some of whom have no parents of any sort or description knew what it was to be housed and clothed, and fed, and even loved.

In the morning they awoke in the dim early light to see the dormitories with their white shaped iron beds reaching north and south. They washed, dressed, combed, according to the inflexible rules, each boy and girl in his or her place.

Then, morning prayers in the chapel -- a chaste room with delicately colored windows The priest is a German and loves his own tongue better even than the Latin And he is old, and it maybe that he forgets just how hungry boys and girls may be! Not that anyone said so But it is impossible, for a very wordly person, with a good appetite, to think of ninety little boys and girls trying to pray when they are all thinking of porridge, with sugar and milk on it, without sighing in sympathy.

However after the good father has read his Latin with a German accent, all the people go stumbling down the bare halls to the dining room And the very little ones sit at a table which is not much higher than a bench, while the others go to higher tables, according to their size. And they have, porridge, and cakes, and coffee [?] milk, and hash or browned potatoes and stewed meat, quite after the manner of children at home. And when they have eaten there is a time for work for the older ones, and then school for all. Some of the boys study German with the venerable priest, who loves to teach the tongue of the fatherland. But it is the sisters who guide through the intricacies of those first perplexing lessons, and who, with the older pupils, teach the mystery of fractions, of geography and of physiology.

And above all, they teach gentleness, courtesy and kindness.

For to have a loving heart is thought to be of more kindness by the sisters, than to have a clever brain.

Then dinner -- a hearty meal this, with meat, vegetables and pudding -- then school, and after that relaxation, a little work, supper of bread and milk, the even prayer, and later benediction and bed.

But this skeleton of the day's duties tells nothing of how the big girls carry about the fretful, teething babies, soothing them, jabbering to them, playing with them. It tells nothing about the toil of the sister who cooks the meals for this great family, her pleasant face wearing so bright a smile that it obscures the pock marks on her face. It says nothing about maternal looking woman up in the sewing room, who, in the defect of the sweet trials of actual maternity takes her delight in sewing for the children of other women. It says nothing about the woman who watches over the beds of twenty babies and soothes them in the nights and stills their crying, tyring with soft touch to compensate for the mother hand that should have patted them back to dreams. It says nothing about those younger sisters, who, during recreating hours play games with the girls, and even so far forget their serious state, as to now and then emit a little shriek of excitement as the rollicking game progresses.

As for the boys, they have their own games, and very conspicuous is the diamond in the back yard, where the national game is pursued with an ardor not to be excelled on any diamond the country over

The other day when I was out, the boys from St. Patrick's were down there playing a match game, and the Orphanage got beat, and there wasn't a baby in the place who could not have told you by just how many points

The umpire was unpopular. I don't know who he was The captain of the Orphanage nine told me about him. The captain was undaunted, though suffering not only in mind, but in body. A ball, which, he assured me, cost $1.50, had crashed into the bridge of his nose straight from the hands of a most accomplished pitcher The captain seemed very proud of the fact that this black, palpitating, [?] mass of flesh had been brought to its condition by a ball that cost $1.50 I ventured to inquire what would have been the result if the ball had cost only 50 cents. And the captain gave it as his opinion that it would have split the ball. But, as I was saying he told me all about the umpire, and I am convinced that the decisions were villainous, and that if he was served right -- but I must not let my emotions run away with me.

There never was a place any cleaner than the Orphanage But there are some things I would like to change. For instance, there is a large play room, in which there are not many play things. I would like to remedy that. There is a many shelved blanket room, in which there are no blankets. That does not seem to be just as it should be. There are a lot of little hearts aching for stories, and I did not see any story books around There are yards and yards of wall, and no pictures on them. And I wondered why. There was a large yard but no lawn, and I would have dearly liked to have remedied that.

And I particularly noticed how well adapted those ninety little mouths looked for strawberries. A berry would consider it a happy fate to have got into one of those mouths, and the red lips would have found that it was filling its perfect destiny in slipping 'round a red berry -- a berry with a tang, and a subtle sweetness, and piquant little yellow touches -- something like the buttons the upholsterer puts in his cushions

The though somehow haunts me, and I wonder if some one with a real perception of the eternal fitness of things could not manage it so that some red, ripe berries would get in those redder and riper mouths

It's clinging kind of a thought -- eh?

ELIA W. PEATTIE.

A JEALOUS COW.

In Love With Thomas and She Resented His Attentions to a Puppy.

In the London Spectator Mr. C. Hunter Bown of Nelson, New Zealand, toils the following odd story of a cow's jealous of a dog It will be observed that it was a New Zealand cow and a New Zealand dog

A few years ago I had a quiet milch cow, Rose, which certainly was fond of Thomas the man who milked her regularly, and she also showed an aversion to dogs even greater than is usual in her species. One night, for what reason I now forget, I had tied up a young colly dog in the little cow shed where she was accustomed to be milked. The following morning I had just begun to dress when I heard the puppy barking in the cowshed. "Oh!" thought I, "I forgot to tell Thomas about the puppy, and how the cow will get in first and gore it." The next minute I hear a roar of unmistakable fear and anguish -- a human roar I dashed down tot he spot, and at the same moment arrived my son, pitchfork in hand. There lay Thomas on his face in a dry gutter by the side of the road to the cow house and the cow butting angrily at him We drove off the cow and poor Thomas scuffled across the road, slipped through a wire fence, stood up and drew a breath

"Why Thomas," said I, "what's the matter with Rose?"

'Well, sir," said Thomas, "I heard the pup bark and untied him, and I was just coming out of the cow house, with the pup in my arms, when Rose came round the corner As soon as she seed the pup in my arms she rushed at me without more ado, knocked me down, and would have killed me if you hadn't come up"

Thomas had, indeed, had a narrow escape, his trousers were ripped up from end to end, and red marks all along his legs showed where Rose's horns had grazed along them

"Well," said I, "you'd better not-milk her this morning, since she s in such a fury"

"Oh! I'll milk her right enough, sir, by and by, just give her a little time to settle down like. It's only jealousy of that air pup, sir. She couldn't abide seeing me a fondling of it."

"Well, asyou like," said I. Only take care and mind what you're about."

"All right, sir!"

In about twenty minutes Thomas called me down to see the milk The cow had stood quiet enough to be milked. But the milk was deeply tinged with blood, sand in half an hour a copious red precipitate had settled to the bottom of the pail Till then I doubted the jealous theory, After that I believed

A STATESMANS' JOKE.

Washington Post: Congress is the subject of numerous jokes, but as it is alway sin a position to get even with the public for any remarks made concerning it there is no danger of its suffering to any great extent.

Some time ago a Washington man applied to a friend for a report on horses and got it. Later he asked for a copy of a report on mutes and pigs. The friend sent hima note as follows "I send you herewith a package which contains the best thing I could find in that line that you want."

The package contained a copy of the congressional directory.