Yes, I did contribute to a great extent to this gentleman's recovery when his two physicians and the special nurse had abandoned all hope. And from this letter it was apparent that he was pleased to hear that I had left the order. Then, why such a radical change in the mind of such a highly educated man? Had some of the "holy fathers" been to see him and demanded, and as a good "knight" he had to serve? Or, was his name placed on the committee for show? The latter is more probable.
I wish my readers to read the article very carefully and thoughtfully and then draw your own conclusions. The fact remains that I was lecturing and the effects were hurting somebody. These "somebodies" were busy in nearly every town where I would be billed to speak, endeavoring, with their threats of boycott and with their committees appointed to wait on the city officials, to close halls, and to even keep me from entering the city. What was evidently hurting them was the fact that I was telling the truth to their own adherents, and in several of the small cities where I spoke, some of them renounced the Roman Catholic faith; others would take their children or some relative out of a Roman Catholic orphanage or parochial school. "An institution that cannot stand the light, needs to have the light turned on it," and that is just what I was trying to do.
It makes no particular difference whether I was drawing large crowds or not (but I was drawing immense crowds), whether I was using language of the gutter or not, whether I produced any evidence to prove my contentions or not, whether the churches turned me down or not, I was doing the work I had started out to do, viz., tell the public of the treatment I had received while I was in the Roman Catholic convent and the treatment I had received since I left the convent at the instigation of the Roman Catholic system, and, thank God, I found the people eager to listen to the truth. It seems that the truth is the very worst thing that can be said about the Roman Catholic system.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Care of Old Sisters by the Roman Catholic System.
I cannot close this book without devoting a few lines to the care of the old sisters—those who have spent many years serving the Roman Catholic Church—who have passed their years of usefulness, and then—
It would seem only natural and human, that any institution after having received thirty, forty or more years of free service from a human being, would at least see to it that the person would spend their last few years of earthly existence in ease and comfort. Indeed, very few pass their years of usefulness in the Roman Catholic sisterhood—a great many dying in their twenties, and more in their thirties. And I might state right here that tuberculosis is a very common disease to take the sisters to a young grave. Probably forty to fifty per cent of the sisters I knew that died during my sisterhood life was caused by tuberculosis. Surely there must be some cause for this ravaging disease among this people. It is the unnatural, secluded life the girls are forced to live, together with the lack of proper care when they are taken sick.
That I might produce proof to substantiate what I say in regard to the care of the old sisters, I wish to call to your particular attention one dear, old lady I knew very well, and who suffered untold agonies after giving the Roman Catholic Church forty years' service, according to her own letters. I will print three of her letters written to a friend (a Protestant) in Portland, when this dear, sainted old lady, Sister Gabriel, was in Vancouver, Washington.