n its walls hung
pictures in oil and water color, engravings, vignettes, and all the
artistic odds and ends given or lent by sympathetic patrons.

Each story was supplied with bath-rooms, and the entire work of the
various departments was performed by the appointed corps of inmates;
the Sisters of the wash tub, and of the broom brigade, being selected
for the work best adapted to their physical and intellectual
development.

Visitors lingered longest in the great kitchen with its arched recess
where the range was fitted; where like organ pipes glittering copper
boilers rose, and burnished copper measures and buckets glinted on the
carved shelves running along one side. The adjoining pastry room was
tiled with stone, furnished with counters covered with marble slabs,
and with refrigerators built into the wall; and here the white-capped,
white-aproned priestesses of pots, pans and pestles moved quietly to
and fro, performing the labor upon which depended in great degree the
usefulness of artificers in all other departments.

The refectory opened on a narrow terrace at the rear of the building,
which was sodded with turf and starred with pansies and ox-eyed
daisies, and on the wide, stone window sills sat boxes and vases filled
with maiden-hair ferns and oxalis, with heliotrope and double white
violets. Three lines of tables ran down this bright pretty room, and in
the centre rose a spiral stair to a cushioned seat, where when "Grace"
had been pronounced, the Reader for the day made selections from such
volumes of prose or poetry as were deemed by the Matron elevating and
purifying in influence; tonic for the soul, stimulant for the brain,
balm for the heart.

Close to the rear wall overhanging the lake, ran a treillage of grape
vines, and on the small grass sown plat of garden, belated paeonies
tossed up their brilliant balls, as play-things for the wind that swept
over the blue waves, breaking into a fringe of foam beyond the stone
enclosure.

Except at meals, and during the last half hour in the dormitory, night
and morning, no restriction of silence was imposed, and one hour was
set apart at noon for merely social intercourse, or any individual
scheme of labor. Busy, tranquil, cheerful, often merry, they endeavored
to eschew evil thoughts; and cultivated that rare charity which makes
each tolerant of the failings of the other, which broadens a sympathy
that can excuse individual differences of opinion, and that c