Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/196

 know his own mother by sight; to shake hands with a woman is condemned by all monastic writers as a very grave action. Most Catholic young ladies are aware that the modern monk—above all, the Jesuit—is not all misogynous.

The Dominicans have several peculiar precepts in their rule which they are much tempted to think lightly of; they are entirely forbidden flesh-meat, and they are always forbidden to talk over dinner. I have had the pleasure of dining at their large house at Haverstock Hill on several festive occasions, and I noticed that they trim the constitution a little by adjourning to the library for dessert and wine—apart from the fact that my estimable neighbour did keep up a sotto voce conversation with me throughout dinner. I heard a much bolder feat of another Dominican convent. Their precept directs, I understand, that flesh-meat must not enter the refectory or dining-room; the good friars, however, wearied of the sempiternal fish, but saved their consciences on the days they took meat by dining in another room. It reminds one of the pia fraus of the Dublin Carmelites. They secured an excellent site for a church, but had to surmount an obstacle raised by a former proprietor. He, it appears, did not wish a church to be erected on the spot, so he stipulated that the land should only be sold to a person or persons agreeing to build a house thereon. That was too feeble a net for a theologian; the Carmelites bought