Abstract
(First paragraph) For one hundred years the Convent of the Sacred Heart in St. Joseph, Missouri, has been a radiating center of culture, whose influence ha$ extended far in to the surrounding region. From the first days when four intrepid Religious of the Sacred Heart disembarked from the river steamer at the port of this struggling little river town of a few thousand inhabitants, until today, when St. Joseph is a thriving western city of 84,000 inhabitants, there has been a continuity in the educational ideals handed down to posterity through the pupils of the Sacred Heart. For one hundred years, all that was best and loftiest and most cultural in past traditions has been integrated with what was finest in the needs and demands of the youth in a vigorous young city of the middle-western part of a new country. There have been the "fat years" and the "lean years"; there have been tempests and vicissitudes, but Hilltop has weathered every storm. Its beacon light, the cross upon its high tower, continues to shine forth--a symbol of Love Triumphant, the motivating force of the religious women who have lived, loved, and labored within its walls that the young hearts confided to them might be imbued with the spirit and the ideals of the Sacred Heart.