n the brow of the
slave to be a perpetual witness of his shame and servitude.

"The confessional box is the place where our wives and daughters learn
things which would make the most degraded woman of our cities blush!

"Why are all Roman Catholic nations inferior to nations belonging to
Protestanism? only in the confessional can the solution of that problem be
found. And why are Roman Catholic nations degraded in proportion to their
submission to their priests? It is because the more often the individuals
composing those nations go to confess, the more rapidly they sink in the
sphere of intelligence and morality. A terrible example of the auricular
confession depravity has just occurred in my own family.

"As I have said a moment ago, I was against my own daughter going to
confession, but her poor mother, who is under the control of the priest,
earnestly wanted her to go. Not to have a disagreeable scene in my house, I
had to yield to the tears of my wife.

"On the following day of the confession, they believed I was absent, but I
was in my office, with the door sufficiently opened to hear every thing
which could be said by my wife and the child. And the following
conversation took place:

"What makes you so thoughtful and sad my dear Lucy, since you went to
confess? It seems to me you should feel happier since you had the privilege
of confessing your sins."

My child answered not a word, she remained absolutely silent.

After two or three minutes of silence, I heard the mother saying: "Why do
you weep, my dear Lucy? are you sick?"

But no answer yet from the child!

"You may well suppose that I was all attention, I had my secret suspicions
about the dreadful mystery which had taken place. My heart throbbed with
uneasiness and anger.

"After a short silence, my wife spoke again to her child, but with
sufficient firmness to decide her to answer at last. In a trembling voice,
she said:

"Oh I dear Mamma, if you knew what the priest has asked me and what he said
to me when I confessed, you would perhaps be sad as I am."

"But what can he have said to you? He is a holy man, you must have
misunderstood him, if you think that he has said anything wrong."

"My child threw herself in her mother's arms, and answered with a voice
half suffocated with her sobs: "Do not ask me to tell you what the priest
has said--it is so shameful that I can not repeat it--His words have stuck
to my heart as the leech put upon the