Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/54

 confusion worse confounded. The method which our instructor selected for us was quite an elaborate treatise in itself. I remember one of our novices confiding to me the trouble it occasioned him. The method was, of course, merely an abstract form of thought to be filled in with the subject one chose to meditate about. But my comrade, a clever ex-solicitor, had by some incomprehensible confusion actually mistaken it for the subject of meditation, and complained that the bell usually rang before he had got through the scheme, and that he had no time left to tackle the particular virtue or vice he had wished to meditate upon. On the whole, it will be readily understood that of the seven hours of prayer which were imposed upon us at that period six at least were a pure waste of time.

At seven we were summoned to supper—a simple meal of eggs or cold meat, potatoes and beer. Afterwards, on three evenings per week, we took the discipline or self-scourging. Each friar repaired to his cell for the purpose and flogged himself (at his own discretion) across the shoulders with a knotted cord, whilst the superior, kneeling in the middle of the corridor, recited the ‘Miserere’ aloud. Knowing that our instructor used to listen at our doors during the performance, we frequently gave him an exaggerated impression of our fervour by religiously flogging the desk or any other resonant surface. However, our instruments of torture were guaranteed to be perfectly