nd weak for a long
time after. When in her eighteenth year she was apprenticed at Coesfeld
to a dressmaker, with whom she passed two years, and then returned to
her parents. She asked to be received at the Convents of the
Augustinians at Borken, of the Trappists at Darfeld, and of the Poor
Clares at Munster; but her poverty, and that of these convents, always
presented an insuperable obstacle to her being received. At the age of
twenty, having saved twenty thalers (about 3l. English), which she had
earned by her sewing, she went with this little sum--a perfect fortune for
a poor peasant-girl--to a pious organist of Coesfeld, whose daughter she
had known when she first lived in the town. Her hope was that, by
learning to play on the organ, she might succeed in obtaining
admittance into a convent. But her irresistible desire to serve the
poor and give them everything she possessed left her no time to learn
music, and before long she had so completely stripped herself of
everything, that her good mother was obliged to bring her bread, milk,
and eggs, for her own wants and those of the poor, with whom she shared
everything. Then her mother said: 'Your desire to leave your father and
myself, and enter a convent, gives us much pain; but you are still my
beloved child, and when I look at your vacant seat at home, and reflect
that you have given away all your savings, so as to be now in want, my
heart is filled with sorrow, and I have now brought you enough to keep
you for some time.' Anne Catherine replied: 'Yes, dear mother, it is true
that I have nothing at all left, because it was the holy will of God
that others should be assisted by me; and since I have given all to
him, he will now take care of me, and bestow his divine assistance upon
us all.' She remained some years at Coesfeld, employed in labour, good
works, and prayer, being always guided by the same inward inspirations.
She was docile and submissive as a child in the hands of her
guardian-angel.

Although in this brief sketch of her life we are obliged to omit
many interesting circumstances, there is one which we must not pass
over in silence. When about twenty-four years of age, she received a
favour from our Lord, which has been granted to many persons devoted in
an especial manner to meditation on his painful Passion; namely, to
experience the actual and visible sufferings of his sacred Head, when
crowned with thorns. The following is the account she herself has