I was the eighth child of a large family, and as my parents could not afford to send all of us to the convent or parochial school, it was my lot to go to the public school a few weeks occasionally for three years. This was when I was at the age of eight, nine and ten years. But, for fear of imbibing the "Protestant godless spirit," as my mother called it, I was given only a reader and speller. Nearly every day my mother would question me as to what the Protestant children would say to me at school. She cautioned me many, many times not to talk to them, as they were the children of bad Protestants, that they would grow up bad and wicked the same as their parents were, without belief in God and church, as Protestants were people who fell away from God by leaving the true church and following a very wicked man, named Luther, who became proud and disobedient to the Pope. These Protestant godless (public) schools were greatly deplored in my home by my mother, and yet my father was a teacher and director in these public schools for a great many years. Because the Roman Catholic people had to pay taxes to keep these schools running, there was much murmuring against that unjust government of an infidel people, as it was called. With these contentions continually wrangling in my home, it did not require serious excuses for my being kept out of school. I have heard my mother make the statement many times that it would be better to have no education than to have this Protestant godless public school education. When I was eleven years old, my mother and the priest decided that it was time for me to go to the convent school to learn my catechism, confession, my first communion, the rosary--my religion. In fact, during the three years I attended this school, that was about all I learned. True, there were classes of reading, spelling and arithmetic, but the books I used in these studies were of a lesser grade than those I used during the short time I went to the public school. By the order of the sister who taught arithmetic, I had to teach smaller children what little arithmetic I learned from blackboard study in the public school, having my class in the back of the room we occupied. The sister who taught reading (Sister Agnes) told us that before she came to that school to teach, she had been a cook in an Indian Mission. Well qualified, wasn't she? The catechism teacher (Sister Mary Rosary) taught sewing and catechism alternately, in that part of the building known as the wash-house. Three years of my life were wasted in this manner, learning practically nothing but Roman Catholic catechism and pagan religion. Three years of just that time of a child's life which should be spent laying the foundation for something nobler and grander.