Chronicles of Notre Dame du Lac
Edward Sorin, CSC -- Translated by John M. Toohey, CSC, 1895

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1861

pg 459                             St. Joseph's Novitiate

                  This year has been as a year of new birth to the Brothers' 
             Novitiate.  Hardly had the building been finished on the plan of 
             the former house much enlarged, when it was filled with novices 
             and postulants.  Soon what had been considered sufficient for a 
             number of years was found to be too small, and it was deemed 
             necessary to think of adding the two towers [wings?] which had 
             been left for the future.  Fifty-five novices and postulants spent 
             the year there as models of regularity and of the observance of 
             the rules of the novitiate.  The classes were followed at the 
             college and there was greater regularity in the exercises, the 
             number there present representing piety became established, peace 
             reigned without interruption, and it can be said of the house that 
             it was truly a regular and edifying community.