Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1897 — WILL BE A DEACONESS. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WILL BE A DEACONESS.

Path of Life Chosen by a Daughter of Ex-Senator Ingalls. Miss Ethel Ingalls has entered upon her duties as a deaconess of the Protestant Episcopal Church? She has entered the house of deaconesses at Philadelphia for a probationary period. Then, if she feels herself spiritually, mentally and physically fit for the life and work of a deaconess and the board of admission approves of her she will enter upon her studies. After two years she may be ordained by the Bish-

op of Pennsylvania. A deaconess of the Episcopal Church renounces the happiness of married life. “If she were married,” the house mother of the deaconesses said naively, “she would have to obey her husband. If she is a deaconess she must give her first obedience to the bishop. The two men might clash.” A deaconess devotes herself to alleviating suffering, to helping those who need help, temporal or spiritual. She comforts the sick in the hospitals, she visits charitable institutions, she tries to obtain w’ork for the unemployed. Sometimes she goes out as a trained nurse, sometimes she furthers college settlement work. In a word, a deaconess is at once a woman and a ministering angel.

MISS ETHEL INGALLS.