Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/23

21 to the greatest agony for fear of laughing. Sometimes she would say she expected to be Superior herself one of those days.

While I was in the Congregational Nunnery, I had gone to the parish church, to confess, for although the nuns had a private confession-room in the building, the boarders were taken in parties through the street, by some of the nuns, to confess in the church; but in the Black Nunnery, as we had a chapel, and priests attending in the confessionals, we never left the building.

Our confessions there as novices were always performed in one way. Those of us who were to confess at a particular time, took our places on our knees near the confession-box, and after having repeated a number of prayers, etc., prescribed in our book, came up one at a time and kneeled beside a fine wooden lattice work, which entirely separated the confessor from us, yet permitted us to place our faces almost to his ear, and nearly concealed his countenance from our view. I recollect how the priests used to recline their heads on one side, and often cover their faces with their handkerchiefs, while they heard me confess my sins, and put questions to me, which were often of the most improper and revolting nature, naming crimes both unthought of and inhuman. Still, strange as it may seem, I was persuaded to believe that all this was their duty, or that it was done without sin.

Veiled nuns would often appear in the chapel at confession; though, as I understood, they generally confessed in private. Of the plan of their confession-rooms I had no information; but I supposed the ceremony to be conducted much on the same plan as in the chapel viz., with a lattice interposed between the confessor and the confessing.

Punishments were sometimes resorted to while I was a novice, though but seldom. The first time I ever saw a gag, was one day when a young novice had done somethings to offend the Superior. This