ts, and
detained me some time in talking. What share I took in the conversation, I
never knew and all that I remember, was my burning cheek, and inability to
raise my eyes from the ground.

"Here I would not be supposed to be intentionally casting a stigma upon an
individual. Nor am I throwing unqualified blame upon the priesthood. _It is
the system which is at fault_, a system which teaches that things, even at
the _remembrance_ of which degraded humanity must blush in the presence of
heaven and its angels, should be laid open, _dwelt upon, and exposed in
detail_, to the sullied ears of a corrupt and fallen fellow-mortal who of
like passions with the penitent at his feet, is thereby exposed to
temptations the most dark and dangerous. But what shall we say of woman?
Draw a veil! Oh purity, modesty! and every womanly feeling! a veil as
oblivion, over the fearfully, dangerous experience thou art called to pass
through! (page 37, and 38.")

"Ah! there are things that cannot be recorded! facts too startling, and at
the same time, too delicately intricate, to admit a public portrayal, or
meet the public gaze; But the cheek can blush in secret at the true images
which memory evokes, and the oppressed mind shrinks back, in horror, from
the dark shadows which have saddened and overwhelmed it. I appeal to
converts, to converts of the gentler sex, and ask them, fearlessly ask
them, what was the first impression made on your minds and feelings by the
confessional? I do not ask how subsequent familiarization has weakened the
effects: but when acquaintance was first made with it, how were you
affected by it? I ask not the impure, the already defiled, for to such, it
is sadly susceptible of being made a darker source of guilt and shame;--but
I appeal to the pure minded and delicate, the pure in heart and sentiment.
Was not your _first_ impression one of inexpressible dread and
bewilderment, followed by a sense of humiliation and degradation, not
easily to be defined or supported? (page 39.) "The memory of that time
(first auricular confession) will ever be painful and abhorent to me;
though subsequent experience has thrown, even that, far into the back
ground. It was my initiatory lesson upon subjects which ought never to
enter the imagination of girlhood: my introduction into a region which
should never be approached by the guileless and the pure." (page 61) One or
two individuals (Roman Catholic) soon formed a close intimacy with m