Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/60

 dignity. The tale of the old lady at Glasgow who lost her purse and prayed that it might not fall into the hands of a theologian is very shrewd. The conviviality of the priests, in our days, was confined to a small room at a safe distance from our wing of the house, but we frequently met one of the juniors moving stealthily along the corridor with the neck of a bottle peeping out from his mantle, and often, as we lay awake at midnight, we caught the faint echo from the distant room of ‘Killarney’ or ‘The Dear Little Shamrock.’

The penances, too, were an interesting feature of the life, when observed in the case of one’s companions. The common form of public penance is to kneel in the centre of the refectory during dinner, praying silently with arms outstretched until the superior gives permission to rise. The next in point of severity is to kneel without the hood, or with an inscription stating one’s crime, or with the fragments of anything one has broken. For graver faults, especially of insubordination, a culprit is condemned to eat his dinner on the floor in the centre, the observed of all observers, for one or more days; and for an exaggerated offence his diet is restricted to bread and water. Confinement to the monastery for a long period, suspension from sacerdotal functions, and, ultimately, expulsion from the order, are the more grievous forms of punishment. Though monastic constitutions still direct that each monastery must