over the bars, and every now and then she would softly call to her little spotted calf in the next yard. The calf would answer, and then Star Face would throw up her tail and dance around till she was tired. This was her first baby and she was quite foolish about it.

"Boss Linkom," the "four-eyed" yellow dog, came to the garden gate and tried to claw it open, but finding it held fast by the hoop over the top, he tried to dig under.

"Uh, huh! Wha' dis hyear? Sump'n sho' gointer die when de dawg dig holes in de ground-Lawd sabe us!" cried Aunt Penny, as she left off hoeing to attend to cow and chickens. "Quit dat, Boss Linkom-quit dat, does yo' hyear! Time 'nuff toh dig de grabe when de people done dead. G'way suh!"

Nearly a week had passed by this time since the Misses Washington had called upon their grandmother, and that length of time was about the limit.

Aunt Penny and Uncle Nero had completed their work for the day and were sitting on the front "stoop" smoking their pipes in blissful rest and silence. It was one of those strangely still evenings, when even the lightest sound travels far and has many echoes. There was no moon in the purple-like vault above, but twinkling stars were winking and blinking everywhere. The pleasant anthem of the wind in the pine tops passed on and on in its soft monotone of 0-0-0-0, and a sleepless old rooster raised his voice in a late but loud crowing.

"Uh, huh! Change of wedder, or hasty news when de rooster crow arter da'k," soliliquised Uncle Nero.

Aunt Penny smoked on in silence; she was thinking deeply-thinking of her son and granddaughters in the city, but nothing very definite was evolved from her thoughts. You know that we do sometimes think very intently, and vet when we suddenly bring ourselves to

ount, we find it difficult to gather one

definite thought from the multitude which dwelt within us.

Boss Linkom was asleep by the front steps, his forelegs stretched out and his head resting upon them; every now and then he would utter a soft growl in his sleep I haven't a single doubt against the supposition that he was dreaming of some fat and saucy coons and 'possums, or having a hard combat with larger game.

Some one came to the front gate and called out: "Mind de dawg," and Uncle Nero replied, "De dawg won't bite."

Boss Linkom was all ears at once; he was ready to defend that home with anything except his life, which essential article he generally carried under the cabin at the first sign of danger.

The man came in and profuse greetings were exchanged; then he told the old couple that he was sent with the information that their son, Jake Washington, was dying at his home in the city.

"Do, Bressed Lawd!" Aunt Penny piously ejaculated, and then she and Uncle Nero prepared to start for the city at once. They did not own a horse, and the plow-ox was too slow, so they set out to walk the three miles as fast as they could.

Jake was dead when they arrived. The Misses Washington and a few of their "society friends" were standing around in a helpless manner. There was but little food and no money in the house, and Aunt Penny found enough to do in putting things to rights, while Uncle Nero went out the next morning and made arrangements for the funeral.

It took nearly every cent the old folks had been so jealously holding back for "de rainy day," but they did their duty without murmuring.

When the funeral was over, Aunt Penny took the Misses Washington aside and revealed to them her plans for their near future.

"Now, if yo' gals wanter come an' lib. at mah house yo' kin come an' welcome,

but yo' sho' gotter wuck jess laik we does; an' yo' gotter stay home an' ten' toh yo' own b'isness-sho! Yo' kin bofe he'p in de gyarden, an' ten' toh de cow an' de chickens, an' when wash day come 'long yo' kin bofe fedder in an' he'p wash. Dere ain't much toh do, but dat little is sho' gotter be done!"

The Misses Washington did not much relish the proposition, nor the language in which it was clothed, but circumstances bade them accept in silence. It proved to be their salvation, and to-day they are proud to say that the hopelessly black and illiterate Aunt Penny was the best friend they ever had.

"Plants in a garden see best the sun's glory, They miss the green sward in a conservatory."

A

SCHOLAR, a cardinal, a saintly man expresses a fact by these words of a couplet and through its metaphors suggests to the mind mystical truths about a royal Gardener.

The most beautiful creation of plant life, the rose, is, in many ways, emblematic of the highest in human life, the soul. Then by substitution one has: "Roses in the garden see best the sun's glory,

They miss the green sward in a conservatory."

But who has time for roses in this work-a-day world-either hardy annuals or rare exotics? "Six dozen finest hybrids-four yards of best ribbon-Miss Starr-Auditorium-to-night-enclose card, C. A. Blank, with regrets"-came in gasps from a voice from afar into the ear of the florist. He obeyed perfectly. The sender of roses went on his way, glad of the inventions of man.

Roses fresh from the sward in the hand of an artist, in contemplation! What does he contemplate, a quick sale of "roses by the yard," a mention in fashionable art notes, or-? Perhaps, yet more, for the man is capable of more.

He has chosen garden roses to express the subject of his picture-a trinity of virtues, humility, simplicity and purity. Form, color, proportion—some petals a trifle tip-tilted, perhaps, just to be picturesque-all are in beautiful harmony. There is unity in the variety of their parts, from their hearts of unhoneyed pollen to the tips of their curving calyxes-just as the good Gardener intended. Here is beauty that appeals to the soul of this true artist as an expression of the All-beautiful. The canvas, finished, is named "Christmas Roses"-white roses in a silver vase. On the impulse of an after-thought, the artist-does he recall the pretty tale of the angel's moss rose, or would he protect this child of his heart?-veils their snowy petals with shadows of mossy green.

A profusion of roses before a scientist, from which he must select a specimena perfect rose. It should have healthy chloraphyl in its veins, nothing in the least anemic. His specimen must not be crazed by cultivation-no metamorphosed petals from reluctantly yielding stamens, stamens, deprived of stamina and stretched supinely on long, languorouslooking stems. The botanist holds in his hand a garden-rose, hardy and perfect in all its parts-just as the Giver of

demonstrate a scientific principle.

Roses on an altar. Saints at their prie-dieus! Like a hound of heaven Assisi's saint tracks the Beloved of his soul through a maze of petals. Magdelene de Pazzi finds in the odor of the roses' sweet perfume an intention from all eternity for the delight of sinners. "Beautiful as thou art, thou art not my God!" exclaimed, not more than a hundred years ago, a vine-dresser's daughter of Joigny.

Such is the character of the rose to which art, science, and religion give testimony.

"Roses in the garden see best the sun's glory."

For its application in a metaphorical sense one steps aside from the broad highways into the byways of life, and finds himself in a beautiful garden, terrace above terrace. In this rich heritage of the Christian, regenerated, and fortified against a triple alliance, he may weed out, if he will, rank growths that are blights to the beauty of a rose. Truly the Church is a garden, terrace above terrace, in which the soul may become more beautiful than the rose of Damascus, more hardy than the liveforever of the wild-wood.

When a holy contemplative, the great Carmelite mystic, saw the highest place in heaven occupied by a certain Order of the Church, her testimony gave to spiritual life a wonderful impetus toward things of the heights. But sanctity, the powerful lens through which St. Teresa saw the things she knew through faith, is an acquirement. "Heaven is not reached by a single bound." The Scala Santa has many steps.

In her dogmatic utterances the Church gives the highest place on earth to religious Orders purely contemplative. To this the intellect readily submits, and dogma becomes an intellectual thesis-mind can be engaged in nothing

of its God. So the contemplative, the cliff-dweller of the garden, climbs into his terrace and draws his ladder up.

Lady Fullerton, in her preface to the life of a woman declared Venerable, writes: "Sanctity is attainable and should be aimed at, not by a few only, but by all baptized Christians"-roses in the one holy garden. Sanctity, that supernatural perfection, that acquirement through education, that requirement to meet the purpose, the why of life, from its alpha to its omega, is transmitted. from teacher to pupil.

It would be a vacation trip, a holy excursion worth while, to trace in human activities the working out of God's will. broad outlines between error and truth. and from historical facts depict the Or as Bossuet, the Eagle of Meaux, has written, "Unveil the workings of Providence in the government of mankind."

From the time that greatest personage of history first sat on the Throne of the Fisherman, holding in his hand the bond. of unity, till the time when all Europe sat at his feet, his eager pupil, the Sovereign Pontiff, has been the acknowl edged head of that great teaching body, the Church. Through the venerable Benedictines, the great conservators of Art, and the eloquent Dominicans, whose sermons have warned the unwary and given light to the unenlightened, and whose religious paintings have been the catechism of the ignorant, religious education was spread throughout Europe. The holy Carmelites and Franciscans, the learned Augustinians, the various Congregations and affiliated Societies lent their aid to the arduous task.

But the time came when Art rose up against its teacher; when philosophy became a euphemism for false teaching. Intellect, through pride, rebelled against the dogmatic teaching of the "Pillar and Ground of Truth," but against which the "gates of hell" did not prevail. Christian education, that training which

leads toward Heaven, was about to receive a strong impetus.

The last decade of the fifteenth century is memorable for two important events, the discovery of the New World and the birth of a great man. A man, it has been said, who reasoned like a philosopher, felt like a saint and held. his own like a man. A man who, from Pampeluna's heights through Manresa's depths, worked not only an heroic sanctity for himself, but formed "minute men" for the Church and an educational system for man.

If, as it has been said, the philosophy of society is in the nature of man, then must education be along the lines which strengthen and bring into action the powers that constitute a human being. Cloisters, cathedral-schools and universities all had done their share in the educational world before the appearance of those renowned colleges which have done their work so silently that only the Day of Judgment will make known its.

extent.

When through persecution the current of their good works was broken, its force escaped here and there in levinflashes. One phase of its light was an establishment of Orders of women for the Christian education of youth. Another was sodalities and congregations through which homes become chapels by the wayside, and the apostolate, men and women of good thoughts and kind deeds.

From the time a handful of women of holy desire, through divine direction, occupied a modest house in the Rue de Touraine to the time of their residence in the fashionable Hotel Biron there was always the one admonition for their pupils: Be spotless. They were taught, not what sin is, but the awful malice of sin. This counsel was given as much to the young brides of the Faubourg St. Germaine as to the nuns who were sent to the New World to help, with other Or

ders, in the grand work of Christian education-an education in which college, academy and parochial school form at holy, intellectual triune for the good of youth. For boys and girls who are to become, in time, not only the "backbone" of their own country, but citizens of the world-men who will be Nestors of the nation and women who will be the Queen Esthers of its society.

"God is in the sky,

All's right with the world."

Little Pippa, spotless rose of the sunny South, those are beautiful words the poet has put into your mouth. But who trained your mind to those holy thoughts that fathered your beautiful words? And how do you keep God in the sky? This your bright brothers, the bevy of boys and myriad of maidens across the water, can answer as well as you.

After the sublimity of the priesthood and religious life, comes the beauty of the apostolate men and women trained in childhood to know, to love and to serve God; and through their membership with sodalities and congregations form a holy phalanx which becomes a bulwark of the Church, the school and the home.

These apostles, wherever found, are the red, red roses of the garden, in vases of gold

"Break the vase,

Shatter't if you will,

The scent of the rose

Will cling round it still."

There is that hardiness, that beauty in their lives acquired in early training which a world of temptation cannot destroy. Such an apostolate is not dumb, is not driven; it is heroic.

Education, to whom does it belong? He who runs may read:

"Roses in the garden see best the sun's glory,

They miss the green sward in a conservatory."

W

Ii

E now find the Princess Mary of England arrived at early girl hood and already the dark cloud of sorrow cast its gloom upon her young life. Cannot the reader imagine her bitter grief and feel sympathy for the trials of her young, haughty and sensitive heart? She idolized her parents; there was no brother nor sister to share with them her loveshe was their only one, and her whole soul had from infancy gone out in love to father and mother. In them she had beheld forms and characters perfect in her fond estimation. Henry, splendid, chivalrous, beautiful, and, better still, the most pious and learned prince in Christendom. Katherine, lovely, saintly and cultivated; both loving her with fond affection. Mary longed for the time when she might be permitted to share their society, but for years "a shadow no bigger than a man's hand" had been growing larger and darker, and now her heart ached with

"A gathering, certain sense of being on earth,

Still worse than orphaned."

When Queen Katherine was driven from Windsor by the mandate of the King, who found it necessary to proclaim his clandestine marriage with the Lady Anna Boleyn, Mary's anguish brought on a serious illness from the effects of which she never entirely recovered. The faultless perfection of her mother's character was the one consolation in her bitter shame and sorrowbut her soul turned with horror from the gay bridegroom of Anna Boleyn. How

dared he call her Queen-call her wife, -while that sainted mother lived?-she who was true queen, born in the purple who had been true wife for eighteen years! Once only since the Norman. Conquest did a King of England stoop from his high estate to wed a simple gentlewoman-and the Lady Elizabeth Grey was a very different character from this woman, who was a scandal to many at the court, the mark for gossip which had even reached the ear of the child Princess. Upon her mother's face she must never look again, and all the love and honor which was used to be shared by both parents now centred in that one idolized being whose presence, whose embrace, she wildly longed for. What was all this princely pomp which surrounded her when unshared by her royal mother! She felt that it in some sort wronged the banished Queen. Lady Şalisbury, who had known many griefs, strove to comfort her; but Mary's only consolation was derived from her mother's letters, which breathed charity and resignation in every line; letters in which she exhorted her daughter, "Agree to God's pleasure with a cheerful heart; take heed of His commandments and approach His sacraments; obey the King, your father, in all things save only what would offend God, and lose your soul; and in whatsoever company you shall find yourself, speak few words and meddle nothing." She prays the Countess of Salisbury to "have a good heart, for we never come to the kingdom of heaven but by troubles."

The birth of Elizabeth, September 1533, brought new sorrow and humiliation upon the Princess Mary. She was directed to call the new-born babe