Page:The poor sisters of Nazareth, Meynell, 1889.djvu/47

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THE POOR SISTERS OF NAZARETH.
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religious test is not applied at all. On Sundays they go at will to their various chapels, and their death is tended by their own ministers. But this charity is doubtless better known and more attractive to the Catholic poor than to the rest.

The separation of the very old people from the very young ones has made Nazareth House a complete home. The noise
Veterans.
which breaks out of the nursery and the schoolroom alike convinces us of the necessity. Extreme old age has slumbers which are light and short and few; it watches with wide-open eyes the flickering of a lamp through a long night, and if the wished-for sleep comes "when day is blue in the window-blind," it is hard to have it broken. And besides, when you come to ninety years, you like nothing louder than the tender voice of the Sister in your ward; and the dying love silence. Nor was