Six years before I entered the sisterhood, I had nothing to do outside the few home chores, kept in inexcusable ignorance, deprived of every opportunity for any enlightenment, even for my own future home life. I could hear nothing but punishments, purgatory, hell-fire and everlasting damnation. Prayer to the crucifix in honor of the five holy wounds, to the holy Virgin Mary and her badge--the scapular--for protection; confession, the church, the priest-Christ--these were my schooling. No reading, no society, except one Catholic neighbor family, and I was being continually cautioned to beware of them, as they had little of the Roman Catholic religion, were too worldly and were given almost entirely to dress and nice times. Be assured that I had a real Roman Catholic raising, absolute ignorance, steeped in Popery, superstition, idolatry filled with Roman fanaticism. One of the Popes has said, "Ignorance is the mother of devotion." Yes, superstition was the name of my Roman Catholic mother; indifference was the name, in effect, of my Roman Catholic father. But the Lord God, the pope, through the priest, the devil's hellish system, was the school I was raised in. It was this cunningly devised, diabolical system which was responsible for the ignorance and mental blindness of my good, honest, but deluded parents, as it was to blame for the awful wrongs, injustice and the wretched life of abject convent slavery I had to live so many years. So I had been compelled to hear and see nothing but the one sided teaching of the Roman Catholic catechism, the priest's hell and damnation preaching, had been held back and down in Roman Catholic ignorance, darkness and superstition, until at length I became as one deaf, dumb and blind, which very well explains the principle of the teachings of the Roman Catholic system. During the last few years of my home life, all home and priestly influence was brought to bear on the convent life as the preferable choice for a girl. I had a great ambition to be a teacher, and the Jesuit priests (Father Jordan and Father Cathaldo) assured me that in the convent the sisters taught everything a girl needed to know; music, singing, needlework and the necessary education for teaching. The beautiful, glowing picture of convent and a sister's life were constantly being brought to my mind, till I could at last think of nothing else. The world was pictured as terrible and sinful; the people being educated in the public schools, living under the influence of an unbelieving government, parents having no religion, people of irresponsible character and loose morals, caring for nothing but the material things of this world and good times, which consisted of sinful pleasures. And, living in this manner, there was no hope of eternal life for them, as there was no one to whom they could confess their sins, and "nothing defiled can enter heaven."