taught, fed, and
clothed, in most cases gratuitously, at worst at a nominal charge."

"The sisters are bright and cheerful, and keep their various dwellings
so exquisitely neat and clean, with their white-washed walls adorned
with Scripture texts and pictures. No work, however menial, is beneath
them. I have myself seen one scrubbing the stairs, and in turns they
sleep on a hard straw bed on the floor, ready to rise in the night as
often as a bell summons them to the aid of a suffering invalid or a
refractory lunatic."

There are a few institutions that exist independently of those
represented at the Kaiserswerth General Conference. They stand alone for
various reasons; perhaps they have not met the conditions required of
those which belong to the association. Any house whose administration
rests exclusively either in the hands of a man or a woman is excluded
from the Conference. In every mother-house there represented the
administrative head is twofold, consisting of a gentleman, who, with
rare exceptions, is a clergyman, and a lady who is a deaconess. The
Kaiserswerth authorities regard this joint management as an
indispensable condition.

The rector, as he is usually called, cares for the intellectual and
spiritual instruction of the probationers, conducts public services in
the chapel, and issues the publications and reports of the house.

The oberin, or house-mother, is the direct head of the sisters. She is
responsible for the interior management, regulates the duties of the
sisters, and gives practical instruction. The two are jointly
responsible for the acceptance and dismissal of probationers, for the
assignment of the sisters to different fields of labor, and the kind of
labor required. Every mother-house has its own peculiarities. The
personal characteristics of those who conduct it are naturally impressed
upon the house.

Then, too, the influence of environment is to be reckoned with. The
house may be located in a large city or in a small one; in the country
or in towns. It may be under the influence of a State Church, as in
Germany, or of Christians of all Churches, as at Mildmay. It will share
the characteristics of the race of people from which come its workers.
Doubtless in the Methodist Episcopal Church in America the deaconesses
that eventually become recognized as set apart to special Christian
service, through the training that is provided for them, will be women
who are peculiarly adapted to t