ose of their relatives
after death, she expended in ministering to soul and body in this
world, leaving to God above the affairs of departed spirits, to deal
with them according to His mercy. She never presumed to add to the
torments of this life, or undertook to lighten the torments of the
departed. Her duties lay all in this world, and when her labors were
ended, she quietly lay down in death, leaving her future condition to
God. She never would pierce her bosom with an iron cross, though it had
often been pierced by the trials of life. She has seen enough of real
poverty and mortification, but never dreamed of such a thing as poverty
and mortification self-imposed, by wearing upon her flesh a garment of
sacking-cloth, or the ingenious invention of a bed so contrived as to
deprive herself of wholesome sleep. Images and holy water occupy no
place in her creed, though soap and water are almost too prominent. She
did her good deeds from a sense of duty which she owed to her kind, and
from the pleasure that it gave her to relieve misery while discharging
the ordinary duties of life, and never dreamed of the sweet odor her
good works left behind her--an odor which followed her to heaven--an
odor more acceptable to the Almighty than all the endowments she might
have left to pay for masses for the repose of her soul.

SELF-CASTIGATION.

There is so much that is monotonous in talking over the details of
affairs of the different orders of these female monks, from the Sister
of Guadalupe to the Sisterhood of Mercy, that it is as well to consider
them as one, as divers households of single women, who, to win
extraordinary favor of God, had separated themselves from their
families, and devoted their lives, some to repeating prayers and acts
of self-mortification, some to attending at the hospitals on the sick
or the blind, the idiotic, the deformed, the deaf and the dumb, others
to educating young ladies according to their peculiar notions of
education, others again consecrating themselves to pauperism, and
living upon charity; and when the daily supply of alms has failed,
these self-made poor sisters collect together, and there wait and pray,
and ring their bell, until some benevolent individual shall chance to
hear the well-known signal, and come and relieve them.

Such is the system of religion of all countries which bear the
Christian name, but where freedom does not exist, and where liberty can
not thrive. There is a tr