The age-herald., 1898-01-20
The Origin of Sisters of Charity
 And Their Noble Work

HtlQ ihU0tS ssO'N The following paper was read by Miss Virginia Earle Walker on Tuesday after noon before the Nineteenth Century Liter ary club, of this city:
 One Sunday morning over two hundred and fifty years ago there was poor fami- ly in suffering and distress in sunny France. Nothing strange or unusual Tn that fact, you will say, as never since the world began has there been any lack of suffering among the sons of men. But this case is particularly striking, owing to the stupenduous results which followed us bringing into notice. The man whom Bossuet one of the celebrated French pull pit orators called the greatest of modern saints, was about to ascend his pulpit on this same morning to preach to his hocK when an earnest appeal in behalf or poor family was brought to him-a tale or woe unutterable, that touched the heart or the good man. St. Paul de Vincent decldeo to forego the sermon which he had already prepared for the day and instead to tell the people of the needs of the poor. It was this small and seemingly insignificant lh- cident that suggested to the heart anu mind of this great man the idea or an oroer of devoted and pious women whose speciai sphere of duty was to be the care Of those in want and distress and the alleviation o1 suffering and pain. Through the enorts or St. Vincent de Paul. aided by a wealthy and pious widow, Madame le Gras, a httie band of fifteen devoted women was proush. together and the order of the Sisters or Charity was founded.
 "For an hundred years and more ,his institution of noble women had grown and fourisbed when the storm whose muiheo roar had been heard in the time of the grand monarch burst with all its fury upon the aristocracy of France and upon the luckless head of it's youthful king ana queen
 The Sisters of Charity had so entwned themselves around the hearts of the French people of every class by their lnnumeraoie deeds of mercy that even the reVoiu'ion' that respector of neither person nor Pos'- tion. spared them. For when the edlct oi 17so was issued, suppressing the religious orders, it failed of effect so far as thls sis- terhood was concerned. Its work went oh' and in 1sOO after the passing Of the storm' Napoleon having placed the order uhoer the protection of his mother, directed that # be given such support that it's ministra- lions were increased and its benefits en- larged.
 The sister of charity made her first ap- pearance in America in 1909, when Mrs. Elizabeth Seton, a convert from Protestant ism. in connection with her two slsters-lh- law. founded at Emmettsburg, Maryland' the community which took for it's guidance the rule of St. Vincent de Paul. And now at the end of this nineteenth century, after two centuries and half. we find the Sis- ters of Charity increased to over thirty thousand souls, and the good accomplished almost incalculable.
 There is something especially pleasing to us who are of Protestant faith in the fact that the vows of the sister of charity are binding for one year only, and hence are by no means perpetual or for life. To the three cardinal vows of poverty, charity and obedience, she adds "the care of the SICK poor" In cases of sickness she is never to refuse to nurse any, even if afflicted with loathsome and repulsive diseases, never to stand in fear of death, always to render implicit obedience to her superior and to do all for the love of Christ and nothing for praise of men.
 It's members have ever been representa- tves of the families moving in the highest ranks of society as well as those of hum ble reign. To no woman perhaps is ac- corded wider recognition or deeper respect than to the sister of charity. She is known to all men by her ministrations to the afflicted in mind and body; to the sol- dier wounded upon the battlefield; to the criminal under sentence of death; to the orphan founding and outcase-recognizing no difference of color, creed, race or con- dition of life.
 She is the Inspiration of the poet the painter, the romancer, and even skepticism does not withhold the merited need of respect.
 This sketch would indeed be incomplete without some mention of those good wo- men who, while not being numbered among the Sisters of Charity have yet shown themselves worthy to be called such by their deeds of charity and mercy.
 Follow me, if you will, into one of the poorest streets of the lower Eastside of New York city, for there, in an old brick tenement the walls of which are musty and of disagreeable odor is located the germ of the newest form of charity which assumes the task of caring for the incura- ble cancer patients. It is a very poor cen ter for so large a circle of charity, and the moving spirit is but a tiny David be- fore such a huge Goliath of pain. But the spirit is there and it, through all time, has ever proved unconquerable.
 Here the daughter of the greatest Amer ican novelist and the wife of another well known writer, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop has established her mission to the afflicted and dedicated the work of her life to the alleviation of their pain and the Tighten ing of their burdens.
 Surely you could not find in the whole length and breadth of this land more beautiful example of Christian charity or one to whom could be more fittingly ap- piled owen Meredith's exquisite lines:
 Born to nurse,
 And to soothe, and to solace, to help and
 to heal
 The sick world that leans on her.
 Some Notes of Interest