ppled, must pass on.

There are about a dozen monks in the Hospice now, all of them young
men, devoted to their work, and some of them at least intelligent and
generously educated. The hard climate and the exposure of winter
breaks down their health before they are old. When they become unable
to carry on the duties of the Hospice, they are sent down the mountains
to Martigny, while others come up to take their places. There are
beautiful days in the summer-time, but no season of the year is free
from severity. Even in July and August the ground is half the time
white with snow. Terrible blasts sweep through the mountains; for the
commonest summer shower in the valleys below is, in these heights, a
raging snow-storm, and its snow-laden winds are never faced with
impunity.

We visited the Hospice in July, 1890. We drove from Aosta up to Saint
Remy, a little village crowded in on the side of the mountain, where
the pine-trees cease. The light rain which followed us out from Saint
Remy changed to snow as we came up the rocky slopes. By the time we
reached the Hospice it became a blinding sleet. The ground was only
whitened, so that the dogs who came barking to meet us had no need to
dig us out from the drifts. In this they seemed disappointed, and
barked again.

Once inside the walls, one cared not to go out. Many travelers came up
the mountain that day. Among them were a man and his wife, Italian
peasants, who had been over the mountains to spend a day or two with
friends in some village on the Swiss side, and were now returning home.
Man and woman were dressed in their peasants' best, and with them was a
little girl, some four years old. The child carried a toy horse in her
hands, the gift of some friend below. As they toiled up the steep path
in the blinding snow, all of them thinly clad and dressed only for
summer, they seemed chilled through and through, while the child was
almost frozen. The monks came out to meet them, took the child in
their arms, and brought her and her parents to the fire, covered her
shoulders with a warm shawl, and, after feeding them, sent them down
the mountain to their home in the valley, warmed and filled. This was
a simple act, the easiest of all their many duties, but it was a very
touching one. Such duties make up the simple round of their lives.

In the storms of winter the work of the Hospice takes a sterner cast.
From November to May the gales are incessant. The