FOR many years the young have been industriously sought out and carefully educated by American Catholics, but, until recently, their aged poor of both sexes have been almost wholly neglected in all schemes of denominational charity. Their convents, institutions of learning, and cathedrals have risen rapidly in every part of the country, but not an institution for the infirm and indigent, who had given all their savings through life to the Church, was undertaken until about three years ago. About that time several members of the community known as the "Little Sisters of the Poor," organized in France in the year 1840, came to this country and established the first institution of their order in the city of Brooklyn. Eleven have now been organized in different parts of the country, and others are in contemplation.

The Sisters hold and manage their institutions, collecting and begging the means for their maintenance from door to door. The Institution in New York was opened at No. 443 West Thirty-fourth street, in a hired building, on the 27th of September, 1870, and removed to No. 447 West Thirty-second street on the 15th of the following December. There are twelve sisters connected with the enterprise, four of whom go out almost constantly gathering money and supplies from any and all available sources. The superioress, Mother Sidonie Joseph, is one of the group that came from France as before stated. The Sisters began without a chair or table, and with no money, we are told, but so pressing have been their importunities that the public has been compelled to heed their demands, and they now occupy three fine brick buildings adjoining each other, which they have leased for two and one-half years for the yearly rental of $1,700 each. Besides paying the rent of over $400 per month, they have managed to plainly furnish their buildings, and are now providing for a family of nearly one hundred aged and afflicted persons. Besides providing accommodations for the Sisters, the buildings contain space for about one hundred and ten persons, which will doubtless soon be filled. The Sisters occupy the central building, No. 447, the second floor of which has been converted into a chapel, where mass is said regularly by a priest. No. 445 is devoted to the aged men, and No. 449 to the aged women. Persons of good moral character in indigent circumstances are taken for life without money or goods, and without regard to sex or nationality. Several of the inmates are not active Roman Catholics, though they are not Protestants. We gladly chronicle this auspicious beginning of denominational charity for the relief of the aged and destitute of this sect, so populous in all our great cities, and hope these enterprises may be still more widely extended. Every society should, if possible, provide for the relief of the unfortunate and destitute of its own faith.