Here is a sketch from life. A young French gentleman, the eldest son of a rich man, leaves father and mother and a luxurious home to join one of the teaching orders. The discipline is severe. To begin with, the aspirant must be ordained, and therefore renounces marriage. He also renounces wealth by taking the vow of voluntary poverty, and he gives up his liberty by the vow of obedience. In this instance, the young man went into exile, as his order was one of the unauthorised congregations, and he sacrificed health because the discipline was more than his delicate frame could bear. The work to be done, year after year, is tedious. Imagine a rich and cultivated young gentleman doing usher’s work in a poor school for less than usher’s pay, indeed for no pay, except a providing of the barest necessaries! The separation from home and family, without being absolutely complete, as in some orders, is nearly so. Rarely, very rarely, the teacher revisited his old home, where his place knew him no more. [Sidenote: Explanation by Supernatural Support.] I have talked with his father about the immensity of this sacrifice. The father (who is himself a profoundly religious man) feels unable to conceive adequately the strength of a man’s natural will, that can carry out such a sacrifice through life, and accounts for it by the supposition (in his own mind a certainty) that the devotee receives an unfailing supernatural support. It is, at any rate, clear evidence of genuine faith. [Sidenote: Case of a Peasant Girl.] In the feminine world we find many examples of sacrifice at least equivalent to this. Not a week before I write this page the daughter of a neighbouring farmer came to say good-bye to us. She belongs to the best class of French peasants, is a comely, well-grown, healthy girl, and might easily have married. She has chosen rather to join a teaching Order, and an Order that is principally employed in the French colonies. It is an austere and hard life that she has before her, and it is highly improbable that she will ever revisit her old home. This case also is evidently one of genuine conviction. [Sidenote: The Working Orders in the Church of Rome.] It is unnecessary to multiply examples. It is not the splendour of the Papacy or the episcopate that is the true glory of the Church of Rome, but the steady and modest devotion of her working Orders. What is more beautiful than the life of a Sister of Charity or a “Little Sister of the Poor”? Good Catholics call them “My Sister” when speaking to each of them individually, and so do I who am not a Catholic, for are they not sisters of all of us who may be laid one day on a bed of sickness? If we do not need their gentle watching for ourselves, it soothes our suffering brethren. [Sidenote: The “Little Sisters of the Poor.”]