as only a child can, for the sight of a mother’s face, the sound of a mother’s voice, the cool, soothing touch of a mother’s hand passing over your brow?  They tried to crush down the natural love that God placed in your heart for your mother, but they could not.  The use of the discipline caused the blood to flow and gave you physical suffering; fasting and long prayers made you weak, and thus incapable of exercising will-power; and, when no other eye but God’s was upon you, when struggling with the desire to leave forever the hateful prison walls of the convent, the bitter tears forced their way.  Then, kneeling before the statue of the ‘Mother of Sorrows,’ you pleaded with her to help and intercede for you.  What comfort did you get?  What hope?  What consolation? None! You might make good confessions and communions, practice all the self-denials required of one in your vocation, and the only thing that the church could give you, the only gleam of hope she could offer, was that, through your works of supererogation, your purgatory would be lessened; and now, wasted through suffering and consumption, dreading the punishment of purgatory, endeavoring in your dying state to do something to lessen its pangs, you have walked with glass in your shoes and your poor feet give evidence of the agony you endured.  And this is Christianity!

“I applied cold cloths to her feet; I sat down in the dimly-lighted infirmary by the side of her bed, and, holding the fevered and trembling hand, I, in my ignorance, tried to give her some comfort.  I promised to remember her in my intentions, my communions, and at the sacrifice of the Mass.  I spoke to her of the mercy and compassion of Mary, the ‘Mother of Sorrows,’ and tried to give her hope by pointing to her as mediator between her soul and Christ, but I could see that she received no satisfaction, no assurance.  Then her eyes closed and she dozed for a few minutes, only to wake with a moan of pain—­’Oh, my feet! oh, my feet!’ And then again, ’If only I could see my mother!’ would issue from her parched and cracked lips.

“And so I sat through the night, soothing her as well as I knew how, and repeating aspirations for her, until the dawn crept in and the nuns’ bell rang out at 4:30 o’clock, arousing the inmates.  The quietness and deep stillness still remained throughout the institution, the sisters and penitents walking in the dimly-lighted cloisters with soft tread and down-cast eyes, as if in the land of the silent dead and not the living.”

As I write I wonder how it was possible for me to endure the paganism of Catholicism for thirty years, and the only rational reason I can give for this endurance is that I, like thousands of these poor nuns whom I have just written about, was raised to believe that the teachings of Catholicism were right and the only road that lead to eternal glory; therefore I look with pity and compassion upon those black-garbed nuns when I behold them tramping the streets of our large cities, as I realize that they actually believe they are performing God’s work, when the truth of the matter is that they are only following the practices of heathen nations.