THE SISTERS OF CHARITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 15, 31 July 1885, Page 9

THE SISTERS OF CHARITY.

{Bangalore Spectator.)

The death of one of the Sisters attached to the Bowring Hospital in this station, has drawn public attention to the nursing agency employed in that institution. These nurses are Frenchwomen, belonging to the order of St. Joseph, of Tarbes, whose head-quarters are in Cantaouse, in the South of France. Five of them came to Bangalore about three years ago, for the express purpose of nursing the sick in the Bowring Hospital, a duty wnich the small community has assiduously performed, and continues to perform, day and night. Of course these Sisters are Roman Catholics, but their work and their noble self-eacrifice command the respect and admiration of men and women of creeds other than their own, and also of those who have no creed of any sort. It must be something suparior to ordinary human nature — whatever it is — that leads delicate women, even many of good position and attainments, to cut themselves off irrevocably from all the pleasures of life, from kindred and friends, to perform disagreeable, and often repulsive, duties, in the wards of hospitals, where the sins, sorrows, and diseases of poor humanity, are constantly exhibited in their worst forms. The Sisters who attend at the Bowring are in a place where it is very seldom that they hear their mother tongue ; they have to wear a dress, too, which, besides its coarseness, is so quaint as to border on ugliness — no mean trial, in itself, to women, whose very instincts always lead them to dress becomingly. Occasionally one of these bisters is met with on the public road, walking rapidly, as though time was anobjeci to her, most frequently to or from the Blackpully Roman Catholic Church, which is near the Bowring, or between the Bowring and her own quarters ; and the severe homeliness of her costume immediately strikes a stranger, and makes him wonder if it is possible that a spark of vanity can survive under such a garb. Frenchwomen, who usually dress so charmingly, must find even the habit of a Sister of Charity no mean crux to bear at first. But, what is this trial to that of nursing the very poorest classes of the Natives of India — the sick and diseased Pariahs of the Bazar ? And to do this constantly day and night, year after year, without a month's "privilege leave," or even a day's holiday 1 The performance of an heroic act under a sense of peril, or from patriotism, or from love, or even plain prosaic duty, is but a little thing compared to the hfe-long sacrifice of a Sister of Charity, who casts away all hope of ever being absent from the sights, sounds, and smells of an hospital ward, until death releases her, or feeble old age compels her to retire into darkness and poverty. The heroine in secular life — even a Miss Nightingale, — receives her reward in the praises of the public ; but who hears anything of a Sister of Charity? She has no identity, — her very name w almost unknown 1 her deeds are not her's, but belong to her order ; and her order sometimes, so far from earning thanks, is abused and persecuted.

To spend a life in an Indian Hospital, where even the poor sympathy of the suffering patients of one's own nationality or creed, is not to be had, is one of the gloomiest prospects that could be presented to anyone ; yet this little band of Sisters chose it, Sister Gervaise, now deceased, being the most active and the most cheerful of them all. We can imagine that the life of Sisters in a Camp, ■where they have to attend to wounded and dying soldiers would_ be better in one point of view — that of the appreciation of mankind, — than the life of the Bowring Hospital Sisters.

The Sister who died yesterday in the Bowring, died literally in her hospital harness. Death met her in the ward, as she was walking in attendance on the Doctor. She suddenly stood still, and said she coald walk no further, she felt so ill. She was promptly attende t to, but she died in the hospital : even if she had any desire to retire to the privacy of the house where the little community have their home, that could not be gratified, and she died amidst those whom she had nursed.