To tell the story of the journeyings from place to place all over France, the difficulty with which they took root in some of the larger cities, and the comparative welcome they met in the smaller towns, would fill a volume. From France they went to Belgium, to Spain, to Switzerland, and lately to Ireland, and even to Protestant England and Scotland. To-day one hundred and eight houses of this order are scattered over Europe, with a sisterhood of eighteen hundred women, who watch over, comfort, and maintain more than twelve thousand poor old men and women, without money and without price save the voluntary offerings of the cheerful giver! In England the appearance of the order excited at first much curiosity, but many turned away from them with aversion, the aversion which centuries of false teaching has planted in the minds of most Protestant communities against all religious orders; but their uniform humility, gentleness, and kindness won the day. In Park Row, Bristol, England, in Bayswater, in London, as well as in other places, their convents are admirably conducted, and they welcome visitors most cordially; wherever they go they become popular. "We get a good deal in England," said one of the sisters; "the English are very good to us, though they are Protestants." There is something in simple, honest trust in God which touches the heart, and often those who at first turned away from the begging sisters, in the end prove their warmest supporters. On his way to business a butcher, belonging in London, and glorying in the name of "a stanch Protestant," was induced to visit one of the convents. He was so delighted with the charity and with all he saw, that he told the "good mother" to let the convent cart call at his stall once a week, and he would give them soup-meat for the house. As he went away, his conscience reproached him; the "horns and hoofs" of the dreadful "beast" of whom he had so often heard appeared before him; he might be suspected of a leaning toward popery! But then his Anglo-Saxon common sense told him that to help the aged and infirm was right, popery or not, and he kept his word; the meat is always ready when the cart arrives, but no communication passes between the sister who takes and the man who gives; he has not yet lost his fear of the "seven heads and ten horns, and the number 666." {115} The institution of this order at least makes plain one fact: that numbers of poor can be well supported from the waste of the rich. It ought also to put to silence those who scoff at the idea of an overruling Providence--the _living_ God rather, who cares for the raven and the sparrow, and is constantly working miracles under our eyes, whereby the hungry are fed and the naked clothed.