though not assuredly "like an exhalation." In time, the Sisters organized a choir, whose services, by request, they put at the disposal of the parish church for Christmas and Easter, their best piano (for they now had more than one) being conveyed through the town to serve instead of an organ, the melodeon in its present form not having been invented at that time. Miss Sophie Menard played on these occasions, and the youthful choir sang their best in several parts, to the great satisfaction of the congregation, as well as of Father Condamine, justifying the compliment of " Aunt Hagar," an ancient negress in the service of the convent, who, when asked if there had been high mass at the church, said, "Not only high mass, but very high mass." This old woman, I ought to mention, at first a Methodist, and very prejudiced, became a fervent convert, and literally gave herself to the community, telling all who made inquiries that she had "jined the Sisters." She lived to be over a hundred, a pattern of every virtue, and dying, as she had lived, most holily. During the summer Mrs. Robert Morrison, who, although she had been a Catholic for a year or two, had not been baptized in the Church, holding her Protestant baptism valid, experienced a change of mind on this point, under circumstances deemed miraculous by those cognizant of them, and received Catholic baptism, as did her husband soon afterwards, and many others, acquainted likewise with her extraordinary experience. Mr. William Morrison's wife and children, it may as well be stated here, all became Catholics, and he himself was baptized on his death-bed about four years later. The presence of the Visitation nuns in Kaskaskia seemed the signal for a revival of Christianity as well as of education.

Meanwhile, the number of boarders no less than of day-scholars had increased so rapidly that the Sisters were again crowded for room, and had to look about for supplementary accommodations, which offered themselves in an unoccupied house, owned by a Mr. Mather, at the far corner of the same square, and which they rented for fifty dollars a year. It was a dismal-looking place; but convenient for their purpose. They took possession of it in the fall; and, as it was some two hundred feet distant from the Old Hotel, and they were compelled to cross the square many times a day regardless of weather, Mr. Wm. Morrison, solicitous for their health, made between the two houses a double pathway of long thick logs, whereon they could pass to and fro dry-shod, and, whenever it was fine overhead, walk two abreast for exercise and recreation. Mather's house now became the convent, while the hotel formed the academy, and the ball-room, lately the chapel, was converted to a use more in keeping with its original one, becoming the children's play-room, class-room, study-hall, and danc

ing-room. The change was convenient in every respect, though it did not relieve the sisters from the exercise of their abundant ingenuity in transformation. The new chapel in Mather's house adjoined the choir on one side and the children's apartment on another, the altar standing exactly opposite the choir door, which thrown open gave the Sisters a full view of the sanctuary, visible also from the children's apartment. The choir, during the summer, was used for prayer exclusively; but in the winter the Sisters had to make it their assembly-room, novitiate, confessional, and chapter-room. Here they kept a piano, which served for Benediction and for music lessons. In this room, too, the priest took his break

Under the chapel and choir were very good cellars, which the Sisters used for the children's wardrobe, and next the chapel stood a large turkey-house, roughly weather-boarded, which in summer they turned to account as a refectory, abandoning it in winter, however, to the icy blasts. Among the trials of these highsouled and devoted women, indeed, not the least was the intense cold of winter in this region. And now winter was upon them.

In Mather's house they took their first Christmas dinner, to which they invited Madam Menard, and in compliment to her dispensed with silence. In common with her hosts, she keenly enjoyed the entertainment, and, like them, was only amused at the snow drizzling through the roof over the table, and, despite a high fire in the fire-place, forming here and there tiny piles. The innocent hilarity of the company was brightened rather than dashed by these playful sallies of Old Winter. All the same, however, they shortly afterwards had the roof repaired. A few days later, as if fate were in a mood for sporting with them, the refectorian, having brought over the dinner and set it before the fire to keep warm while she went back to the kitchen at the hotel for something else, saw on returning a large dog, with a piece of meat in his mouth, come out of the refectory door, ajar from congenital defect, and sheer off with their dinner, a mishap which left them to dine that day on bread and molasses. But none knew better than they Their equa

how to make the best of worse hardships than this.

nimity seems to have been proof against every physical trial. Not bread frozen as hard as a stone, and cut with hatchets instead of knives, could subdue their invincible good humor; for by that crucial hardship it was not unfrequently assailed. Cleanliness, John Wesley said, is next to godliness; but we doubt if cheerfulness does not stand betwixt them.

Mather's house, as we have said, was now the convent proper, and here the community lived, lodged, and had its conventual exercises, enjoying great quiet and retirement-virtual cloister life; for, the parlors being in the academy, the world scarce intruded. Yet it is

with the world very much as Horace says of nature: you may put it out at the door, but it will steal back through the chinks and crannies. Certain it is that in the course of the winter the convent became the scene of a species of manifestations which have cut a considerable figure in the world. Strange noises were heard, especially in the night: firing of pistols, moving of furniture, heavy steps as of men ascending the stairs. One night a loud rap came on the mantel near Sister Isabella's bed, and at the same moment the light was blown out. Three or four Sisters slept in that apartment, and all heard the rap, and saw the light extinguished. "Even in the daytime we heard these noises," says Sister Josephine, the convent historiographer, then a young novice, and noted always for her fearlessness. "Once I was going upstairs, when the Invisible, in heavy silk-robes, rustled close by me, and passed down. I turned my head, and gazed after the passer-by with all my might; but nothing but the sound of the rustling silk was discernible. The foot-fall was noiseless; and, though the robe seemed so close as to touch me, I felt and saw nothing." One evening during Compline the Sisters heard a heavy cannon-ball roll across the floor overhead, and then thump heavily down three steps. They raised their eyes, and exchanged glances, and Mother Agnes, looking at the Sister Infirmarian, signed to her to go up, for a sick Sister was in bed there. The Infirmarian found her patient trembling with fright. "Every night," Sister Josephine continues, "I used to hear a kind of clicking, an indescribable sound, something like the short chirp made by the turkey-hen. It seemed to be very near my pillow; and occasionally something seemed to strike my pillow, like a heavy drop of water falling on it. I mentioned this in recreation, and Mother Agnes and the Sisters told me to speak, and ask, 'In the name of God, who are you? and what do you want?' Night came, and with it my preternatural visitant, whom in a loud voice I interrogated according to orders; but, receiving no answer, said, as Mother Agnes had told me, 'In the name of God, depart!' It gave one click, and I heard no more of it that night. The next day, in recreation, the Sisters were joking over what had passed. They had heard me speak in the night, and, supposing I was holding colloquy with the ghost, lay still as mice in their beds, fearing to stir. But on being informed that, although obedient to the word Depart!' the nocturnal visitant had not deigned to disclose the purport of his visit, they told me I had spoken too loud. You must speak in a whisper,' said they. Next night I spoke in whispers, but with ast little success. Yet when I whispered, 'In the name of God, depart!' one click came, and there was no more of it. Every night my ghost came, and stood at my pillow as long as I chose to let him, ten, twenty, forty minutes, more or less, but instantly and invari

ably obeyed at the words, 'In the name of God, depart!' I do not know whether our Sisters sleeping in the same and adjoining rooms made use of any such adjuration; but I know their health seemed seriously threatened from the consequences of fear and loss of sleep." Father Timon (afterwards Visitor of the Lazarists and Bishop of Buffalo), who resided hard by at a place called "The Barrens," used frequently to stop at the convent, in pursuance of his duty as extraordinary confessor, and to see that all was well. On the occasion of one of his calls Sister Josephine told him of these strange" voices of the night," which he at first treated lightly, saying it might be owing to the state of her blood. "But, Father," she said, “I am not at all afraid." "Even so,” he replied, “it may be attributable to some physical, natural cause." She assured him that Mother Agnes and all the Sisters heard the sounds, and that all, except Mother Agnes and herself, were harassed with fear and want of rest. Then Father Timon, cutting the gordian knot, said: "My child, it is a good sign. If the devil got what he wanted, inwardly, he would not have recourse to such outward disturbance." The next morning Father Timon said mass-for they did not have mass daily, as there was only one priest in Kaskaskia-and took Holy Communion to the sick Sister who slept in one of the haunted chambers. "From that time forth," Sister Josephine concludes, "we never heard any noise in the house." We have taken the liberty to cite verbatim a part of Sister Josephine's testimony, not merely on account of the vivid force with which she gives it, but to authenticate the experiences for the sake of those, embracing at present representatives of all grades of intellect, who indulge in speculations concerning the cause of such phenomena. For the rest, it must be said that no seclusion, not the holiest or most inviolable, can avail to shut out the devil, or his senior partner in the triple firm named by the Litany. Paradise did not. Nor did Heaven itself. So our Sisters, although the world forgetting, were not by the world forgot; but it must be owned they came off very well. Other experiences not less remarkable and more edifying, we may say, marked the history of the community at Kaskaskia; but the relation of these does not fall within the scope of this paper.

About two years had now passed since the arrival of the Sisters in Kaskaskia; and their foundation, no longer an experiment, bid fair to stand. In view of the palmy future that seemed opening before them, they resolved to erect a building of their own; to which end Mother Agnes conferred with Bishop Rosati during one of his visits, who, accompanied by some others, went with her to see the proposed site, and, it appearing eligible, the ground was purchased, Col. P. Menard advancing the money. The next step. was more difficult. The building was to be of brick; but neither

bricks nor bricklayers were to be found in Kaskaskia. In this strait the Sisters wrote to Mr. Wheeler, of Baltimore, son of the architect who built the convent in Georgetown in 1831, and he, in response to their appeal, went out west, and took charge of their enterprise. In conjunction with Col. Menard, he at once set up a brick-yard in Kaskaskia, solely to supply bricks for the building in hand, there being no other demand for them in the place, and two years or so elapsing, in point of fact, before the second kiln was burnt. For the work, owing to the scarcity of workmen, went on slowly, and often, owing to their absence altogether, came to a stand-still, in such wise that when Mother Agnes resigned her office in May, 1836, nearly a year after ground was broken, little more than the foundations had been laid. Under these circumstances, Mr. Wheeler, himself a carpenter, proposed to erect a frame building, at right angles to the foundations of brick, and on a line with their east end, his view being that the frame building, which, anyhow, would be needed as a convent, might be put up expeditiously, seeing that he could assist in the work on this structure, as well as overlook that on the other, and have the former, he assured them, ready for occupancy before the next autumn. This assurance he made good; and in the summer vacation of 1837, about the last of August, they bade good-bye to the old hotel and to Mather's house, and removed to their new habitation.

Sister Helen Flannigan was now the Superior. Up to this time the community had lost none of its original members, and the previous year had received from Georgetown an important accession in Sister Augustine Barber, Sister Josephine's mother, who brought with her a lay postulant with whom she had become acquainted in Cincinnati, and was followed a few months later by two other postulants from the same city. In Kaskaskia there seemed no such thing as a religious vocation. Of the ten Sisters professed in the eleven years at Kaskaskia, not one was a native or denizen of the place; nor was one of the postulants.

The house of which the Sisters now took possession was two stories high, one hundred and forty-two feet by twenty, and, with its fresh paint, green blinds, and piazzas fore and aft, "looked," Sister Josephine says, "like a long steamboat," a comparison that may or may not imply disparagement, for in those days, to a western eye, a steamboat was the flower of architectural beauty. At all events, the building was their own. But hardly had they got into it when the death of a postulant occurred, followed by the death of Sister Ambrosia Cooper, October 2d, and that of Sister Gonzaga Jones, December 3d. The sadness occasioned by these afflictions. was not lightened by the absence at that time of a stationary pastor in Kaskaskia, Father Condamine having returned to Paris, and his