During our stay in New Orleans, we stopped at the convent of the Dominican Sisters. In conversing with some of these sisters, we learned how they recruited their ranks. Some of the most trust-worthy sisters would be sent to Ireland to talk the poor Irish girls into coming to this country and living good, pure, holy lives as sisters. We were also told that as a rule, these girls died very young, and generally of consumption. We saw some of them, and they surely looked like caged birds, sorry and discontented, home-sick and care-worn. Previous to this, feelers had been placed before the sisters in my community to see what sisters were willing to go to Europe to get recruits for the Sisters of Charity of Providence, and when I saw these girls, once, no doubt, rosy cheeked and beautiful, but now pale and care-worn from the unnatural, caged life they were living, I made a vow that I would never be the means of enticing any foreigners to leave their homes to become slaves for the Roman Hierarchy. When we were in Burlington, Vermont, a sister-member of the same order I belonged to, asked me to visit a relative sister of hers in the Ursuline Convent in New Orleans. On the twelfth day of September, 1907, we visited this convent--a monstrous prison-looking institution, about five hundred feet long. Within the entrance there was a hall along the outer wall and on the other side of the hall there were a number of small rooms, or "stalls," about eight by ten feet in size. These stalls were separated from the hall by iron bars, about one-half inch in diameter, running from the floor to the ceiling, about two inches apart. I asked to see the sister by name, and when she came we had to talk to her from the other side of these bars. She extended her hand through the bars to shake hands, and we kissed her the best we could with that barrier between us. This was a cloistered order, and yet there was a parochial school within the enclosure. The children's parents and other visitors were only permitted to see the children or sisters as we had seen this sister. About five feet from the floor, in the center of the grating of each of these stalls, was a little door about fifteen inches square, with a padlock on the inside. We were told these were used for articles brought there that were too large to pass between the bars. We visited some of the large plantations for which the South is famous, seeing the cotton plants in all their different stages, from the flowering to the picking of the cotton. Returning to the Pacific Coast we came by the southern route, through Texas, Arizona and California. We stopped a few hours in Los Angeles, and about ten days at San Francisco and Oakland. From Oakland we visited Stanford University, which was still very much demolished from the earthquake nearly eighteen months before.