The morning meal is eaten in silence, except on Feast days or unusual occasions. During the noon and evening meal some sister is appointed to read, generally from the "Lives of the Saints" or "Roman Martyrology," narrations very repulsive and revolting to nature. In this manner we mortify the senses. If we wish something passed while we are eating, we make signs for it. Ten minutes is about the time spent in consuming the gout defying food supplied us. There is a dish-pan with about two quarts of warm water in it on the table, and the first sister finished eating has this pan passed to her and she washes her dishes, dries them and places them in her private drawer in the table at her place. From six to ten sisters wash their own dishes in this same water, and no difference if some of these sisters are diseased, as I have seen them, they would be wasting time to make a change of water, and that would be a breach of the vow of poverty. In all my thirty-one years of convent life, I never had a chair with a back to it more than a dozen times in the refectory (as the dining-room is called). It was either benches or stools.
The following will show the spirit in which a sister should receive her food, given at my spiritual instruction during retreat:
MEALS.
"Attention and devotion in saying the prayers before and after meals, eyes modestly cast down, a deep sense of my own misery, a pure intention in this animal exercise. Never to pick or choose of what comes to table. If anything is disagreeable, to thank God for having given me an opportunity of mortification."
According to rule, we are allowed two hours' recreation each day, which, in reality, are about the busiest two hours of the day. Oh, no, Rome does not give her sisters any two hours' real recreation, or rest, during her long hours of labor. Such work as preparing fruit for canning or vegetables for cooking, folding clothes that are often very damp, picking over unsanitary gauze, tearing rags for carpet, picking over feathers from old pillows, and other undesirable work is done during these two hours; and then they say the sisters have plenty of recreation and rest.
At three o'clock every afternoon the sister must repair to some private place for profound prostration. That is, she must kneel and bend forward and say: "Jesus Christ became obedient unto death, even unto the death of the cross. Son of God, dying upon the cross for the salvation of souls, we adore thee; eternal Father, we offer Thee this, thy divine Son; accept, we beseech thee, His merits in behalf of the suffering souls in purgatory, for the conversion of all poor sinners, and of all in their agony." In addition to this prayer, she must say the "Hail! Mary" and the "Our Father" three times each, or remain kneeling the time it would take to say them and meditate on the prayer said. Then, this exercise is completed by kissing the floor.
Three times each day, five minutes is spent in examining our conscience. We write in a little book provided for that purpose, our faults and imperfections. Before going to confession we are supposed to look over this book and in this manner we forget nothing the priest should know.
A bell called the "regulation bell" calls us to each and every one of these "holy" exercises, and no matter what the sister is doing when this bell rings, even if a patient is sorely in need of her care, she must stop and go to her religious duties. If she is late to any of them, it means punishment, either by reprimand or penance, or maybe both. My readers can draw their own conclusions as to the care a patient gets from a sister-nurse, when these religious duties comes before the duties of nursing.
One of the great inconveniences and discomforts of a sister-nurse is the clothes which she is compelled to wear. The garb which I wore for thirty-one years weighed about fifteen pounds, and there is no change of weight in this "holy habit" for cold or warm weather. Our petticoats and stockings are the only garments that are changed in weight for the different temperatures. We are allowed two garbs at a time, but a sister wears one nearly all the time until it is worn out. All the cleaning these garbs get is a little brushing with soap and water, and when it gets discolored, it is dyed to its original color. One of these garbs I had for twelve years, and when I discarded it, there was only a small piece of the original left. Think of the cleanliness and sanitation of these poor girls, wearing such clothes, perspiring over the sick, and from cooking and doing laundry work, and even being under the rule of asking permission to take a bath. Over all this when we cared for the sick, we tied a large white apron, slipped on a pair of white sleeves, and then the patients would say, "How sanitary these sisters were." Poor, deluded public; poor, secluded girls; they are not to blame, they do the very best they can under the gag-rule of Rome. Is it any wonder to you that the average sister dies between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five years, when they are compelled to live in this manner and endure the terrible practices I have mentioned in this chapter?