PROSE BALLAD OF A NUN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 6 July 1925, Page 7

PROSE BALLAD OF A NUN.

BRIDAL BELLS ALTER CON VENT HAPPY EVER AFTER. NEW YORK. May 1(5. The engagement is anuouieed of Miss Maria A. Hirst, of Philadelphia, and Mr Webb Levering, of Baltimore. News item. . Behind the above prosaic statement lies a strange romance of a dashing vouiie society miss who turned mm, ■uid who after years spent behind convent walls, burst out to be reborn into the world as suddenly as she. had renounced it and its pomp and vanities. Daughter of Mr Anthony A. Hirst, a distinguished lawyer and civic leadei of Philadelphia, Miss Hirst, noted as a daredevil horsewoman and athlete, ’startled her companions and society o'enera'lv bv entering as a postulant the convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart at Kenilwood, near Albany. N.Y. That was in August. 1911. on the very eve of a brilliant reception and ball for which invitations bad been sent out bv her family. NOT IN LOVE AS YET. She was not known to have any . oye affair. Nohodv could understand this sudden retreat from the world. In due course she donned th e sombre vestments of a Sister of the Sacrec Heart and was assigned as a teacher to Eden Hall, a Snored Heart school at Torresdale. Philadelphia . During thirteen years she let her voutli «'0 bv. while the rigours of her devoted life, for which she realised she was not fitted, sapped her health. At bust she could hear it no longer. Through the Archdiocese of Philadelnliia. she petitioned the Pope to lelease her from her vows. In June last year her plea was granted. and she found herself restored to the outside world and the joys of horseback riding, motoring, tenuis, dances, and the theatre. . Miss Hirst’s fiance is a scum of one of the foremost fa.mi ies of Baltimore. He is a hanker, about her own age. which is thirty-one.