"In the year 1854, a girl who was a perfect idiot stood, one day, in Mr. Bost's lobby. The aspect of the hideous-looking little creature was so sickening that Mr. Bost could not permit her to be taken into the establishment, but still less could he send her away. If ever there was a subject for compassionate, saving love, it was here. The power of prayer and the perseverance of charity could now be put to the test. Mr. Bost resolved to keep the girl in his own house. The doctors declared it perfect folly. During three months, all his efforts to strike a spark of intellect out of this flint proved a total failure. But one evening, at worship, while the hymn was being sung, he heard an articulate and harmonious tone proceed from the brutishly shaped mouth. The child evidently tried to put its voice in accord with the sounds which it was hearing. Mr. Bost is a musician, and at once applied his talent to the benefit of his unhappy pupil. Under the softening and cheering influence of harmony, it was affecting to see how, first with painful struggles, and then, with growing ease, the mind of the child emerged from the dark deep in which it had been confined. By little and little, the idiot succeeded in uttering articulate sounds, then in uniting them into syllables, and finally into words. At the same time, her health improved visibly, her nervous system became less irritable, her face assumed more and more a rational expression. She began to show joy and surprise when receiving something that was agreeable to her. Then tokens of gratitude and of affection followed. {50} In short, after a lapse of two years, the idiot had disappeared to make room for a child which appeared to be behind but a few years only, when compared with other children of her own age. At present, that same child, formerly beneath the level of the brute, speaks well, sews, and knits, and might be the teacher of children less sunken in idiocy than herself when she first set foot on Mr. Bost's threshold." Such was the spirit and such the conduct which determined mediaeval Europe to entrust the religious orders with vast landed possessions, and with these the whole care of the poor, of the sick, and of the wayfarer, duties which they discharged with greater satisfaction to the people than any secular aristocracy of privilege known in the records of history. "For the uncertain dispositions of the rich, for their occasional and often capricious charity, was substituted the certain, the steady, the impartial hand of a constantly resident and unmarried administrator of bodily as well as spiritual comfort to the poor, the unfortunate, and the stranger." Now, still the question presses, whether, instead of confiding our sick to hired nurses, we shall not invite the willing sisterhood to extend their organization among us, and sustain them in this devotion. It is well ascertained that none can make a thousand dollars go so far as they can in the service of their sick.