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"A superior's peril is all the greater because of the high office she holds."-ST. FRANCIS DE SALES. These pages were written in the presence of God, and we humbly ask Him to make them a useful work. Our object is to assist you, upon whom the heavy burden of superiorship has been imposed, and to help you in the very difficult labor of directing your house. We cannot lighten your burden, but we can increase your strength by teaching you to sanctify yourselves. Sanctity is to the soul what a soft and mild atmosphere is to exhausted or delicate lungs. Before printing these pages, submitted to the examination of those in authority over us, we placed them before the tabernacle, the dwelling of Jesus, as formerly, in the ages of faith, they placed the seed of the harvest upon the altar. The seed blessed by God was more fruitful, and so it will be with this little book. If some thought taken out of the context excite trouble in your soul, the one which follows will re-assure you and subdue the apparent severity of the first; moreover, let me repeat to you the words of a saint: It is always the delicate souls, that is the most beautiful, who tremble at sight of their obligations. We dedicate this little book to the Mother of Him who, being the Superior of superiors, willed to submit to a humble creature, and who, being the Master of masters, deigned to wash the feet of His Apostles, giving to them who were about to become the superiors of all the faithful this admirable precept: As I, your Master and Lord, have done to you, do you also do one another I came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.