n 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