We are always apt—we worldly folk—to think that no woman becomes a nun, unless she has had some bitter disappointment in love, or seeks to do penance for wordly error, or to escape from sorrow or suffering. Sister Annunciata sought the religious life for none of these reasons. She had enjoyed a happy, careless girlhood, the world had offered her no trials; the pleasures of youth were open to her, as were the joys of happy womanhood. But her sensibilities were not yet awakened, she had never known what love meant, though she had been sought in marriage. So the ordinary social gaieties took but slight hold upon her, and life meant nothing to her but home affections and a passion for the arts. But one day she saw a strong man suddenly smitten with paralysis, and she realised all at once the littleness of life, and how it should be used, such as it is, as a preparation for a greater. Then all her religious tendencies developed, and she bethought her how to make her life most useful while she was striving for Divine grace. To devote herself entirely to prayer, as many sisterhoods do, seemed to her selfish, and so, while she elected to renounce the world for the sake of her own soul, she felt that she could use such gifts and knowledge as she possessed for the instruction of the youth of her own sex, who sought the educational influence of the convent. Therefore, with the enthusiasm of a lofty purpose she entered upon her novitiate, and then, after two years, as no one questioned her vocation for the religious life, she took the final irrevocable vows that severed her from home and from the world. Her life as a novice had been made smooth for her, and all had endeavoured to show her the alluring side of the religious life, and strengthen her in the sense of duty that impelled her to adopt it. But no one warned her of the arduous life of self-suppression that was before her: no one told her that she was actually more fitted for the world than the cloister; that the sensibilities still dormant in her might some day awaken, when too late to be warmed with the human sympathy that they needed, and then be frozen in her heart, after much pain. So when I knew Sister Annunciata she had lived “unspotted from the world” some ten years or so, and had brought herself seemingly into a spirit of sublime submissiveness. But had she not suffered terrible affliction of the soul during those years? For her spirit was proud and sensitive, and in small and narrow communities there are small and narrow jealousies, and authority is sometimes tyrannical. But Sister Annunciata is a woman of iron will and indomitable self-command, while she makes the light of faith the only beacon of her life. Therefore she has schooled herself to accept every cross with equanimity, while the natural cheerfulness of her disposition enables her to seem content and happy, as well as to inspire happiness in others.