Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/118

98 would all look at her with admiring eyes and whisper to each other, "Is it not easy to see that Miss C. is a Child of the Sacred Heart?"

Seriously, the training did give something that nothing else could, and an admirable training it was for which girls to-day might exchange more than one brain-bewildering course at College and be none the worse for it. In my own case, I admit, I should not mind having had more of the other training, as it has turned out that my work in life is of the sort where a quick intelligence counts for more than an elegant deportment. But I can find no fault with the Convent for neglect. Girls then were not educated to work. If you had asked any girl anywhere what was woman's mission, she would have answered promptly—had she been truthful—"to find a husband as soon as possible;" if she were a Convent girl,—a Child of the Sacred Heart—she would have added, "or else to become a nun." Her own struggles to fit herself for any other career the inconsiderate Fates might drive her into, so far from doing her any harm, were the healthiest and most bracing of tonics. Granted an average mind, she could teach herself through necessity just the important things school could not teach her through a routine she didn't see the use of. She emerged from the ordeal not only heroically but successfully, which was more to the point. A young graduate from Bryn Mawr said to me some few days ago that when she looked at her mother and the women