convents that they themselves will not conceal from you the importance nuns attach to dress, and their indifference to shabbily attired visitors. I still vividly remember a rebuke addressed to a girl in an Irish convent who had got into a scrape with a companion of inferior social rank. "I am surprised at your choice of companion," said the nun loftily. "Remember, should you and she encounter outside these walls, you will be in your carriage and she will be on foot, and she may count herself honoured if you are permitted to salute her." There is no reason why there should not be vulgar-minded women within convent walls as well as within the walls of pomp and fashion, for, alas! vulgarity and snobbishness abound; but it is significant that nuns, of whatever nationality you find them, have a strong predilection for the wealthy and well-*born. So, it will be said, have the large majority of people, regarding these as the elect of the earth. Well, if so, let girls, when they come to be women, find this out for themselves. But as children and girls, let not their freedom, their spontaneity, be hampered by such unlovely distinctions. Teach them to love all that is good and pleasant in humanity, and let the daughter of a marchioness at school make friends with the daughter of a grocer, without condescension on one side, or undue humility or concealment on the other. Why should not a school seek
