Beautiful and Touching Actions.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 4, 22 January 1903, Page 29

Beautiful and Touching Actions.

A French paper, ' L'Echo de Paris,' hit on the happy thought of asking its readers for personal recollections of beautiful and touching actions currently performed by Catholic Sisters. The recollections are "printed in the paper day by day, to be afterwards collected m a book which) will be presented to President Loubet. The following are selected from the accounts already published :—: — Jn 188 L, during the bouibai dnient of Alexandria, the Arabs fire to the houses ol European residents in various' parts of the city. Coming to the French hospital, they started by knocking on the doors with the butt ends of their guns. Their avowed intention was to force an entrance, plunder the house, and then destroy it. Suddenly the door opened wide, and before the astonished incendiaries stood a bevy of nuns, headed by the superioress. She addressed herself to the madmen thus :—: — ' What do you want my children ? This is God's house. Aro you hungry ? We have bread for you. Are you thiisty ? Our jars are brimful with heaven's dew. Have you sick or wounded comrades in need of care ? Our beds are ready to receive them.' All this was spoken in the purest Idiom of the children of Ishmael. Jn the presence of the courage and nobility of soul of St. Vincent's daughters the wolves became meek as lambs. With one common accord they changed their minds, saluted the white cornets with due respect and walked off, shouting, ' Allah Kerim ! God is great ! ' Sister Peremond, then 75 years of asro. hnd saved the home of charity In August, 1887 she received from the hands of Count D'Aubigny, French Consul at Cairo, the cross of the Legion of Honor. Another : While the Paris Charity Bazaar was bla/inpr some fivo years ago a young Sister stood erect and calm near the chair whereon stepped one after another of the persons who escaped from the doomed building through an opening giving access to the Palace Hotel. She steadied the chair with one hand and with the othei assisted every one to escape ftom the flames. When none wore left to save she took her turn, got out half dead, frightfully burned and disfigured for life. Later on she was asked :—: — ' What did you think at the time ? Did you think o f God and of heaven, where you were on the point of filtering, a martyr of charily "> ' ' Not at all ° ' said she ' I thought only : how it burns and how 1 suffer But a Sister of Chnritv. jnu know, must stay at her post and sa\e all the others liefore she may think of herself.' 1 That was,' Fays the chronicler, ' perhaps more tho word of a soldier than of n Sister but it makes no (Inference, for the nriny of Sisters will bear comparison with any army It is a (supernatural army, commanded by Christ ' And still another • A young lady of « well-to-do family was stricken with a cancer in the face Her parents secured a Sister to help them in caring for thri poor unfortunate girl It would be impossible to pi\oan idea of the solicitude with which the devoted religious nuifvd her patient, but in spite of all the care the malady kept growing, and it soon spread over the whole face- After months of suffering the ngonv of death im.Mcifully net in — a terrible agony, if cs or there wn.s one Tho entiie family was present bending o\er the bed of the i\\ ing martyr She was fully conscious and f^lt death coming slowly but surely A crisis more Solent than any piecedinu; one was followed hv a lew momenta of rolriti\e calm — the calm that usually heralds death Slowly she raised her sunken, glassy eye to the assistants, her lips quivered an instant, nnd then with r supreme effoi t she. asked to be kissed once more before leaving tins earth Her relations looked at one another m bewilderment ; none dared approach not one hnd the courage to grant the drying request Then the Sister unaffectedly bent over and devoutly pressed her lips on the cankered, foul-smelling face She, a stranger, ga\e the longed-for parting kiss 1 Tho sufferer breathed hir last a few minutes later, her disfigured features transformed by the light of a heavenly joy.

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