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Show Convent Days. Often, often, says Agnes Jlepplier, the .well-known .well-known writer, have I been asked the crucial question. ques-tion. 'Miss Iiepplier, what did you learn at the convent, and how do you think the convent systems sys-tems of your youth compare with the other systems sys-tems pf the same time, and of today t" That is always a very difficult question to answer. an-swer. It was so long ago. and education was not then the 'blistering" process that it is at prese-nt. AVith the many excellent branches thoroughly taught them, at the same time we were taught to read aloud with expression and intelligence, and to compose a note with elegance, conciseness and precision. Dr. Weir Alitchell said to me the other day that the two studies that were most shamefully neglected in our modern schools were how to read aloud agreeably agree-ably and to write a refined note. We were also forced against our will into some familiarity with French. Of that there is no doubt whatsoever. We were taught to curtsey, to come into and go out of the room with propriety, to be respectfully polite to older people, and to regard all religious things in the spirit of refined reverence. Of the five little girls who made up my circle of friends at my alma mater now, are all women of intellectual force and position in the world, and in no way bear testimony against the direct product or by-products of a good, solid Catholic education. It seems strange to me that any one could read any part of this little book, and not see imprinted upon every line my love. I was a very little girl when I went to the convent, only 11 years old, and I was only 14 when I was taken away, but those were not only three happy years, but were? the three happiest years of my life. I had no friends or companions of any kind when I was a child. Jt was a delight beyond me to describe, when I found myself with a circle of well bred, lively little girls, and their companionship was as a fairy story realized, to my 11-year-old mind, and I was just as' grogarious a child as I am a woman. Nevertheless, I have tried to write the book not from my present standpoint, which naturally is more sentimental, but from my standpoint as a child, as far as I can. We followed in some sort the rules of the convent, but we had, like all children, degrees and standards of our own. When I think of the sweet purity of our little hearts kept ever away from an acquaintance with common things and sin, and I contrast the knowledge knowl-edge and worldly wisdom of many of our young "misses" in the modern fashionable school, I think what is the trend of a modern hour, in shaping a Christian woman's character as compared with those ideals of thirty years ago. From Agnes Rep-plier's Rep-plier's Experience. |