“Now, my brother, let me give you an account related to me by a most worthy English family, most of the members of which have grown up in the country, confirmed also by common report, of the Convent of Capuchins, in Santiago.

“The number of inmates is limited to thirty-two young ladies.  The admittance fee is $2000.  When the nun enters she is dressed like a bride, in the most costly material that wealth can command.  There, beside the altar of consecration, she devotes herself in the most solemn, manner to a life of celibacy and mortification of the flesh and spirit, with the deluded hope that her works will merit a brighter mansion in the realms above.

“The forms of consecration being completed, she begins to cast off her rich veil, costly vestments, all her splendid diamonds and brilliants—­which, in many instances, have cost, perhaps, from ten to fifteen, or even twenty thousand dollars.  Then her beautiful locks are submitted to the tonsure; and to signify her deadness forever to the world, she is clothed in a dress of coarse grey cloth, called serge, in which she is to pass the miserable remnant of her days.  The dark sombre walls of her prison she can sever pass, and its iron-bound doors are shut forever upon their new, youthful, and sensitive occupant.  Rarely, if ever, is she permitted to speak, and never, never, to see her friends or The loved ones of home—­to enjoy the embraces of a fond mother, or devoted father, or the smiles of fraternal or sisterly affection.  If ever allowed to speak at all, it is through iron bars where she cannot be seen, and in the presence of the abbess, to see that no complaint escapes her lips.  However much her bosom may swell with anxiety at the sound of voices which were once music to her soul, and she may long to pour out her cries and tears to those who once soothed every sorrow of her heart; yet not a murmur must be uttered.  The soul must suffer its own sorrows solitary and alone, with none to sympathize, or grant relief, and none to listen to its moans but the cold gloomy walls of her tomb.  No, no, not even the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that great alleviator of all the sorrows of the heart, is allowed an entrance there.

“Nor is this all.  Besides being condemned to a meagre, insufficient and unwholesome diet which they themselves most cook, the nuns are not allowed to speak much with each other, except to say, ’Que morir tenemos, ’we are to die,’ or ‘we must die,’ and to reply, ‘Ya los sabemos,’ ‘we know it,’ or ‘already we know it’

“They pass most of their time in small lonely cells, where they sleep in a narrow place dug out in the ground, in the shape of a coffin, without bed of any kind, except a piece of coarse serge spread down; and their daily dress is their only covering.  Sleep!  Did I say?  Alas!  ’Tired nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep, no more with his downy pinions lights on his unsullied with a tear:’  For every hour of the twenty-four they are aroused by the bell to perform their ‘Ave Maria’s,’ count their rosaries, and such other blind devotions as may be imposed.  Thus they drag out a miserable existence, and when death calls the spirit to its last account, the other nuns dig the grave with their own hands, within the walls of the convent, and so perform the obsequies of their departed sister.