Page:The poor sisters of Nazareth, Meynell, 1889.djvu/21

Rh then that a Sister should go in and allay the political passion. So the Irish Question has entered even Nazareth House; for it is not over General Boulanger or Disestablishment that the old men are tempted to shoulder their crutches.

But first of the Sisters themselves. The remarkable thing in their Order is that it combines the contemplative life and the active with a completeness, a severity, and an integrity of self-sacrifice, ohne hast, ohne rast. The duty of prayer is so continuous and so absorbing that it would seem to leave neither time nor strength for the duty of labour, whereas the poor and the little ones are tended with a solicitude that would exhaust ordinary women in a day. In this Order there are no lay Sisters. The whole service of the house is fulfilled by these educated ladies—the cooking, the washing and ironing, the making and mending, the