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606 mott and Mrs. Sharpe, both widows. During the long voyage, they formed an intimate friendship with Alice and expressed the desire which they had long felt to enter the cloistered life and agreed that when they landed they would go to confession and communion and take the priest, whomsoever might be their confessor, as their spiritual director. They landed in Philadelphia, and the priest whom they found and accepted as their director was, happily, Father Neale. These three devout women brought so unexpectedly to his feet from beyond the sea were the women destined to co-operate with him in founding the community of his vision which he had never ceased to hope that he might realize. Although Alice Lalor felt bound by her promise to return to Ireland, Father Neale saw the greater service she could render to religion in America and offered to release her from her promise to return to her native land. Miss Lalor, Mrs. McDermott and Mrs. Sharpe settled in Philadelphia, hired a house and lived in community. Mrs. Sharpe had her daughter with her, a child of eight years. Suddenly the yellow fever broke out and Father Neale narrowly escaped death. Alice Lalor and her companions remained persistently in the path of danger, ministering to the pest-stricken people. In the winter of 1798-99, Father Neale was ordered to Georgetown as president of the Jesuit College. He sent for the three devoted religious converts and domiciled them for a time with three Poor Clares, who being driven from France to this country by the Revolution of 1793 had set up a little convent not far from the college. The Poor Clares attempted to keep a school as a means of support, but their poverty was so extreme and their life so rigorous that not many scholars applied. These women, poor and barefooted according to their rules, came of noble blood and had been born and reared to luxury. Alice Lalor and her two friends boarded and taught in this convent, but it soon became apparent that the austere rule of St.