ked of at home,
but it is really lived in the colonies. Those who brace themselves to
its hardness find a vigour and resourcefulness within them which they
had never suspected, and the pride of personal achievement in making a
home brings out possibilities which in softer circumstances might have
remained for ever dormant, with their treasure of happiness and hardy
virtues. It is possible, no doubt, in that severe and plain life to lose
many things which are not replaced by its self-reliance and hardihood.
It is possible to drop into merely material preoccupation in the
struggle for existence. But it is also possible not to do so, and the
difference lies in having an ideal.

To Catholics even work in the wilderness and life in the backwoods are
not dissociated from the most spiritual ideals. The pioneers of the
Church, St. Benedict's monks, have gone before in the very same labour
of civilization when Europe was to a great extent still in backwoods.
And, when they sanctified their days in prayer and hard labour, poetry
did not forsake them, and learning even took refuge with them in their
solitude to wait for better times. It was religion which attracted both.
Without their daily service of prayer, the _Opus Dei_, and the assiduous
copying of books, and the desire to build worthy churches for the
worship of God, arts and learning would not have followed the monks into
the wilderness, but their life would have dropped to the dead level of
the squatter's existence. In the same way family life, if toilsome,
either at home or in a new country, may be inspired by the example of
the Holy Family in Nazareth; and in lonely and hard conditions, as well
as in the stress of our crowded ways of living, the influence of that
ideal reaches down to the foundations and transfigures the very humblest
service of the household.

These primitive services which are at the foundation of all home life
are in themselves the same in all places and times. There is in them
something almost sacred; they are sane, wholesome, stable, amid the
weary perpetual change of artificial additions which add much to the
cares but little to the joys of life. There is a long distance between
the labours of Benedictine monks and the domestic work possible for
school girls, but the principles fundamental to both are the
same--happiness in willing work, honour to manual labour, service of God
in humble offices. The work of lay-sisters in some religious houses,
w