82 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



The annals contain some curious entries about distinguished visitors. 

 Thus it is recorded that when King ^Yillia^l IV. paid a visit, as a young 

 naval officer of twenti}--t\vo, the nuns found him "most aiïable and 

 gracdous, although a sailor." Four j^ears later, in 1791, came the next 

 member of the Royal Family, Queen Victoria's father, then called Prince 

 Edward, who was colonel of the 7th Fusiliers stationed at Quebec. The 

 good Mothers were delighted with him. He took refreshments with the 

 bishop in the Superior's room, and bouglit some bark work for which 

 he insisted on paying twenty times its value. Again, in 1860, the greatest 

 of all their public receptions was given to King Edward VII, then on 

 his Canadian tour as Prince of ^Yales. The annalist records with par- 

 donable pride that the Prince spent two whole hours in going over the 

 convent, after the ceremony, and that " he showed as much interest in 

 observing the plain apartments, the bare floors, the simple cells, as any 

 one of us might have felt in seeing Windsor Castle." 



The Eefectory is where " plain living and high thinlcing" are 

 practised in excelsis. Here are the signs and symbols of both. This 

 room looks centuries older than the otliers. It is in perfect fitness for 

 its present use; but it is long and comparatively low; quaint steps lead 

 down into it from its garden door, the ceiling is massively ribbed with 

 huge dark beams, and the whole appearance of it is distinctly mediaeval. 

 The tables are long, bare, immensely heavy; so, too, are the deep and 

 narrow benches. You can't imagine that chairs and carpets have ever 

 been invented. The table is set for supper. There are white water 

 jugs at intervals; and heavy semi-globular pewter salt cellars on tliick 

 stems and solid bases. These are over two hundred years, old. At every 

 place there is a little birch-bark bread-basket, used to " gather up the 

 fragments that remain." A lectern, like a witness-box in shape, serves 

 for the lectrix who reads aloud during meals from some book of devotion. 

 It is all so simple, and so unstudiedly natural. A nun explains the bill 

 of fare, and the great difference between fast and feast days. You 

 would mistake the feast for the fast days, if you had not heard about 

 the latter first! But it seems that, beyond marking the difference in 

 the calendar by difference in diet, the Eefectory is merely a place to 

 refresh one's body for the sake of one's soul. " Won't you give us the 

 pleasure of your company at dinner?" lauglis a nun who has not been 

 cloistered many years, " you'll be better afterwards than if you dined 

 at the club'." And so you would. 1 



As you approach the class-rooms there is a quick, settling shuffle 

 of little feet, a tap with a wand, a soft " Hsh !" — and there is the nun 

 at her desk, and all the girls standing before her, exactly as teachers 

 and taught stand for inspection all the world over. The prize-winners 



