The St. Johns herald., 1898-07-02
WORK OF NEGRO NUNS.
The Only Order of Its Kind-Is Located
 in New Orleans.

The Only Order of Its Kind-Is Located
 in New Orleans.
 In the old French quarter of New Or leans with Its narrow streets, latticed windows and jealously guarded courts, where the fig and orange tree grow, is a square of rather miscellaneous archi- lecture. Its central building, TIT Or leans street, is several hundred years old. It has a stately entrance, with great pillars and old-fashioned, ornate ly carved doors. It was once the old Creole opera house and ball room of the early days. Now it is the home of the colored nuns.
 The powdered and ringleted damsels with hoop-distended skirts who step- ped daintily across that threshold to scenes of gayety In bygone years have given place to dark-robed figures whose white ruff1ed caps only bring into stronger relief the bronze and ebony of their skins. The very names of the streets here are rich in history and TO- nance. There are Orleans and Bour- bon, Chartress and-him of the iron hand and gentle heart-Tonty. Shades of the past are jostling one another, though in a gentle, shade-like way, at every street corner. and at nothing do they seem to be more astonished than at the sight of the colored nuns.
 Yet, the order is not such a very mod ern one after all, for 1t was founded in New Orleans over half a century ago. It's members are now well-known fig ures on the streets of the Crescent City. The special object Of Its Institution was the education and moral training of young coIored girls and the care of or phans and aged lpfirm people Of the race. It has had the cordial support of such eminent churchmen as Arch bishops Blane, Odin, Perche. Leroy and Janssens, who successively filled the archepiscopal see of New Orleans. It was also a novitiate where young col ored girls are trained for the work of the order with the view of extending that work to every parish In Louisiana, and, If possible, into every Southern State.
 One of the most interesting parts of the convent Is the orphan asylum, where children ranging in age from the wee tots just beginning to walk to girls of 12 and 14 years are cared for. One of the sisters In charge of the babies was an ex-slave. She Is a real nanny" still.
 "But, reverend mother, you seem to have some white children here," said the Northern visitor, commenting on the fair white skin of some of the chill dren.
 "Oh, no," said the nun, smiling bit wistfully at the ignorance of her visit or; ''they all have colored blood in their veins. Maybe they are only Quadroons, some of them, indeed, have only one-tenth colored blood, but that one-tenth black counts more than the nine-tenths white, and makes them be- long forever to the colored people,"
 One is reminded of some of Cables stories, the pathos and the tragedy thereof.
 In the orphan asylum 135 children are sheltered who would otherwise be thrown upon the State. These, as we'll as the sixty poor old colored men and women, and many of the women in the school, are dependent upon the sisters for their daily bread. Formerly the sisters obtained 6 fair revenue by go- Ing through the streets of New Orleans, from door to door, and Into business houses and railroad offices, soliciting aims for their charges. So quietly did they labor that few outside the city were even aware of the existence Of the | order, the only coiored siSterLood !n the United States. But the yellow fever which broke out in the South In Au- gust caused that section to be hemmed | In by quarantine, and the wheels of stopped. AS pathetic let ter just received from one of the sis ters says:
 "Our friends have always been | the poor laboring classes, who seem to feel most for us, and since this class has suffered particularly through l ack of employment for three months, | and their distress at present Is almost l IS great as ours, we cannot in con- science apply to them for aid. Even if we did, 1t would not be forthcoming, IS they have not the means."-St. Louis Republic.
 No Map of the United States.
 "The school children of the Bermu- das know nothing of American his tory," says a New York woman who |