Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/358

Rh air, by sunshine and the song of birds among the whispering trees. The contrast was delightful. Ah, said I to myself, this is a different life! After all, that is not good; no, it is not good, it has not the freshness of nature, that life which so many ladies lead in this country; that life of twilight in comfortable rooms, rocking themselves by the fire-side from one year's end to another; that life of effeminate warmth and inactivity, by which means they exclude themselves from the fresh air, from fresh invigorating life! And the physical weakness of the ladies of this country must in great measure be ascribed to their effeminate education. It is a sort of harem-life, although with this difference, that, they, unlike the Oriental women, are here in the Western country regarded as sultanesses, and the men as their subjects. It has, nevertheless, the tendency to circumscribe their development and to divert them from their highest and noblest purpose. The harems of the West, no less than those of the East, degrade the life and the consciousness of woman.

After my visit to the bride, I visited various Catholic asylums and religious institutions, under the care of nuns. It was another aspect of female development which I beheld here. I saw, in two large asylums for poor orphan children, and in an institution for the restoration of fallen women (the Good Herder's Asylum), as well as at the hospital for the sick, the women who call themselves “sisters,” living a true and great life as mothers of the orphan, as sisters and nurses of the fallen and the suffering. That was a refreshing, that was a strengthening sight!

I must observe, that Catholicism seems to me at this time to go beyond Protestantism, in the living imitation of Christ in good works. The Catholic Church of the New World has commenced a new life. It has cast off the old cloak of superstition and fanaticism, and it steps