Page:Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Truslove & Bray).djvu/65

61 that we were afraid even to look at it, and we often heard the following story related, when the subject was introduced.

A priest in Jerusalem had a vision, when he was informed that the house in which the Virgin had lived, should be removed from its foundations, and transported to a distance. He did not think the communication was from God, and disregarded it, but the house was soon after missed, which convinced him that the vision was true, and he told where the house might be found. A picture of the house is preserved in the Nunnery, and was shown us. There are also wax figures of Joseph sawing wood, and Jesus, as a child, picking up the chips. We were taught to sing a song relating to this, the chorus of which I remember:

(St. Joseph was a carpenter, little Jesus collected chips to make the pot boil!) I recollect a story about a family in Italy saved from shipwreck by a priest, who were in consequence converted, and had two sons honoured with the priest's office.

I had heard, before I entered the Convent, about a great fire which had destroyed a number of houses in the Quebec suburbs, and which some said the Bishop extinguished with holy water. I once heard a Catholic and a Protestant disputing on this subject, and when I went to the Congregational Nunnery, I sometimes heard the children, alluding to the same story, say at an alarm of fire, "Is it a Catholic fire? Then why does not the Bishop run?"

Among the topics on which the Bishop addressed the nuns in the Convent, this was one. He told us the story one day, that he could have sooner interfered and stopped the flames, but that at last, finding