The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1912-08-17
cHEERFULNEss OF NUNS.
Merriest of Girls Become Members of
the Sisterhoods.

In all my experiences of converts,
covering some thirty years, or more,
I have never heard a word of scandal
whispered concerning nun, writes
Katherine lyman in the Catholic
World. No one will deny the nuns
their foibles, they would hardly desire
that; but the image of the nun to
those who know her best is always
snOw-white; and ones thought of
nun is always a thought of the
Madonna.
In the country | know best the con-
vents are usually recruited from
young girls. 1t is one of the argu-
ments against them that girls go into
converts without knowing their own
minds. Very often they go in from
the convent school. Sometimes girl
will come home, and laugh and dance
and have her fun through a year or
two; then she will slip away to the
convent. They are the merriest girls
who become nuns. One hears now
and again of a girl dancing all night
at ball, coming home in the small
hours and taking off the fnery with
a laugh and a sigh; then slipping
away during the morning hours to
convent and putting on the black
gown and veil of the postulant.
The irresistible call is often an
swered with pangs. 1t is not a thing
one does lightly, and | have seen a
girl at a merry picnic turn suddenly
lott I1r1i
summoned her to the convent earlier
than she expected to go. But they go
willingly; and the great remuneration
being over you will find on visiting
the convent the girl who was the life
and soul of her home and the festivi-
ties she joined in, transformed into
still merry, demure little nun whose
jests delight the community room and
the recreation hour as lately they did
another audience.
All converts desire young postu-
lants. 1t is not disappointed, disillu-
stoned women who have grown rooted
in their own habits and their own
ways that make the best subjects for
the convent rule. Rather is the older
postulant one to be received with
anxiety at least; and though the
genuine vocation may and does come
to women over thirty, it is they who
in many cases leave the convent later,
who if they persevere suffer the most
in the, necessity of submitting their
own will in all things to anothers.
The Irish mother giving up her
young daughter to a convent will say,
between a smile and a sigh: "Ah,
well, sure she's safe, anyhow; safer
than those who get married" 1 have
often heard an Irish mother say that
she would rather see her daughter in
a convent than married, saying
country where the married state and
the bringing of children into the
world are held in peculiar honor.
But, to be sure the mother is right.
Life has many chances and changes.
The innocent child fresh from the
farming and shopkeeping classes in
strange contrast to the youths among
whom she may look to marry. The
convent schools make ladies of their
girls, as the monastery schools make
gentlemen of their boys. Perhaps the
monasteries, where no woman comes,
lack the exterior purity and refine
ment of the converts, which those
children from the farmhouse and shop
parlors take on as to the manner born.
Many a convent school girl finds her
dream and her ideal in the bare light
convent room and fields and flowers
where never rough word is spoken
nor voice raised, where all is gentle
ness, peace, purity and an almost
over-reinement, rather than a mar
riage with man of her own class.
What the nuns teach her she is not
able to put off; and the call of the
convent follows and finds her at the
hearth or at the dance.