Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/61

 have its ‘prison’ I do not think that formal incarceration is now practised in any part of the world. Apart, however, from these penances the whole scheme of discipline is crushing and degrading. For speaking a word in time of silence a novice would be forced to carry a stick in his mouth during recreation: he would be called upon at any time, for no fault whatever, to stand against the wall or in a corner of the room and make a fool of himself in the most idiotic fashion. Everything is done to crush the last particle of self-respect, to distort and pervert character to monastic purposes.

I remember once nearly bringing my monastic life to a premature close by an act which any English schoolboy would feel bound in honour to do. A companion had playfully scattered a few blades of grass on me in the garden, and our instructor, inferring that I had been romping with him (a sin of the utmost gravity), asked me who was responsible for the presence of the grass on my habit. As the boy himself sat beside me on the bench I declined to speak, and the instructor departed without a word. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was seized with a religious scruple immediately afterwards, and hastened to apologise. I found the instructor holding a grave tête-à-tête with the superior on the matter, and had I not apologised in a public and humiliating manner for my ‘fault,’ I should have been forthwith expelled from the monastery. Certain characteristics of the Catholic clergy