“One evening, after listening to a discourse filled with dark images of death, I returned to my room, and found the light set upon the ground.  I took it up and approached the table to place it there, but what was my horror and consternation at beholding spread out upon it, a whitened skeleton!  Before the reader can comprehend my dismay, it is necessary he should reflect for a moment on the peculiarities of childhood, especially in a Romish country, where children are seldom spoken to except in superstitious language, whether by their parents or teachers:  and domestics adopt the same style to answer their own purposes, menacing their disobedient charges with hobgoblins, phantoms and witches.  Such images as these make a profound impression on tender minds, leaving a panic terror which the reasoning of after years is often unable entirely to efface.  There can be no doubt but that this pernicious habit, is the fruit of the noxious plant fostered in the Vatican.  Rising generations must be brought up in superstitious terror, in order to render them susceptible to every kind of absurdity; for this terror is the powerful spring, employed by the priests and friars, to move at their pleasure families, cities, provinces, nations.  Although in families of the higher order, this method of alarming infancy is much discountenanced, nevertheless, it is impossible but that it should in some degree prevail in the nursery.  Nor was it probable that I should escape this infections malady, having passed my whole days in an atmosphere, charged more than any other with that impure miasma priest-craft.”]

Then immediately I heard the question, and it seemed to come from the figure of Christ, “Will you obey?  Will you leave off sin?” I answered in the affirmative as well as I could, for the convulsive sobs that shook my frame almost stopped my utterance.  I now know that when the priest left me, he placed himself, or an assistant, behind a curtain close to the images, and it was his voice that I heard.  But I was then too young to detect their treacherous practices and deceitful ways.

On being taken back to the Superior, I was immediately attacked with severe illness, and had fits all night.  It seemed to me that I could see that image of the devil everywhere.  If I closed my eyes, I thought I could feel him on my bed, pressing on my breast, and he was so heavy I could scarcely breathe.  I was very sick, and suffered much bodily pain, but the tortures of an excited imagination were greater by far, and harder to bear than any physical suffering.  For long years after, that image haunted my dreams, and even now I often, in sleep, live over again the terrors of that fearful scene.  I was sick a long time; how long I do not know; but I became so weak I could not raise myself in bed, and they had an apparatus affixed to the wall to raise me with.  For several days I took no nourishment, except a teaspoonful of brandy and water which was given me as often as I could take it I continued to have fits every day for more than two years, nor did I ever entirely recover from the effects of that fright.  Even now, though years have passed away, a little excitement or a sudden shock, will sometimes throw me into one of those fits.