Although convents are religious houses occupied by nuns, who, under the names of Sisters of Charity, Mercy, etc., devote their lives to doing good by helping those who are sick or poor or in trouble, many of them are also schools. Young girls are received within their walls as scholars, and although they must all dress just alike, and submit to the strictest kind of discipline, they are trained in habits of simplicity, obedience, and industry that prove of great value to them in after-life.
These convent scholars are only allowed to see their friends from outside the convent walls on one day of the week, and even then in many convents they may only talk to them through iron gratings, as you may see several of the girls doing in the picture.
Although the amusements of the girls are very few, sometimes they are treated to a simple entertainment, such as a Punch-and-Judy show, which they enjoy much more heartily than children who are accustomed to seeing such things very often. In fact, you can see that one of the little girls in the picture is represented as laughing so loudly that the Sister who stands beside her touches her on the shoulder, and tells her that such loud and boisterous mirth is not lady-like nor becoming.
[THE DAISY COT.]
A STORY IN TWO PARTS.
BY MISS LILLIAS C. DAVIDSON.
PART I.
It was in a children's hospital. All down the long ward ran two rows of little iron bedsteads, each covered with its own red quilt with the white cross in the middle; but one cot was different from all the rest. It was all of shining brass, to begin with, and it had a little canopy, which none of the others had, and pretty soft curtains of pale blue, with a pattern of white daisies scattered all over them; even the bands that caught back the curtains were wreaths of daisies; and the dainty blue coverlet had the bright little flowers raised on it so naturally that you wanted to try and gather them.
Just opposite it, on the wall, hung a picture of little fleecy lambs, and the Good Shepherd carrying the smallest and weakest in His arms; and the frame of the picture was of daisies too. All down the walls of the ward there hung bright pictures, but none was so pretty as this, and it hung just where any one lying in the cot could see it best.