e, and
discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My
acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with
them for years, and I could not gainsay their statement.

"I was reluctant to believe more than I had experienced the proof, however,
was destined to come in no dubious shape at a no distant day.... A dark and
sullied page of experience was fast opening upon me; but so unaccustomed
was the eye which scanned it, that I could not at all, at once, believe in
its truth! And it was of hypocrisy so hateful, of sacrilege so terrible,
and abuse so gross of all things pure and holy, and in the person of one
bound by his vows, his position, and every law of his church, as well as of
God, to set a high example, that, for a time, all confidence in the very
existence of sincerity and goodness was in danger of being shaken,
sacraments, deemed the most sacred, were profaned; vows disregarded,
vaunted secrecy of the confessional covertly infringed, and its sanctity
abused to an unhallowed purpose; while even private visitation was
converted into a channel for temptation, and made the occasion of unholy
freedom of words and manner. So ran the account of evil and a dire account
it was. By it, all serious thoughts of religion were well nigh
extinguished. The influence was fearful and polluting, the whirl of
excitement inexpressible: I cannot enter into minute particulars here,
every sense of feminine delicacy and womanly feeling shrink from such a
task. This much, however, I can say that I, in conjunction with two other
young friends, took a journey to a confessor, an inmate of a religious
house, who lived at some distance, to lay the affair before him; thinking
that he would take some remedial measures adequate to the urgency of the
case. He heard our united statements, expressed great indignation, and, at
once, commended us each to write and detail the circumstances of the case
to the Bishop of the district. This we did; but of course, never heard the
result. The reminiscences of these dreary and wretched months seem now like
some hideous and guilty dream. It was actual familiarization with unholiest
things! (page 63.)

"The romish religion teaches that if you omit to name anything in
confession, however repugnant or revolting to purity, which you even doubt
having committed, your subsequent confessions are thus rendered null and
sacrilegious; while it also inculcates that sins of t