everybody knew that she was a saint. She
became abbess of a nunnery at Pastrana,
where a seraph visited her, and "tapped"
her with a red-hot arrow several times.
The pain was so sweet that she would
have liked it to continue for ever. The
Spaniards still celebrate the anniversary of
this red-hot tapping, on the 27th of August.

The nuns of St. Theresa had to go barefoot.
Blind obedience was their principal
law. A nun who made a wry face at bad
bread was stripped, tied to the crib of the
donkey, and had to share for ten days his
oats and hay. Such barbarous severity
enforced the blindest obedience. When a
nun once asked St. Theresa who was to
sing on that day at the evening mass, she
was in a bad humour, and said, "The
cat." Therefore the nun took the cat
under her arm, went to the altar, and, by
pinching its tail, made it sing as well as it
could.

The nuns of St. Theresa slept on thorns,
or in the snow; drank from spittoons,
dipped their bread in rotten eggs, and
pierced their tongues with pins if they
broke silence.

Nearly a contemporary of St. Theresa
was an Italian, Catherine de Cardone. She
lived in a cave, wore a dress interlaced
with thorns and wire, ate grass like a
beast without using her hands, and once
fasted forty days. In this state she lived
three years. St. Passidea, a Cistercian nun
of Sienna, beat herself with thorns, and
washed the wounds with vinegar, salt, and
pepper. She slept on cherry-stones and
peas, wore a mailed coat of sixty pounds
weight, immersed herself in freezing ponds,
and once hung herself for a time, feet
uppermost, in a smoky chimney!

St. Clara of Aniri lived very severely.
Instead of a shift, she wore a dog's skin,
or a garment made of horsehair; and she
was so humble, that she would kiss the
feet of a dirty peasant girl without
permitting her to wash them first. After she
had "sullied them by her kiss" (then why
kiss them, one would ask?) she washed
them herself! When St. Clara died, there
were found in her heart all the instruments
of the passion in miniature. There were
also found in her body three mysterious
stones, each of the same weight, but of
which one was as heavy as all three, two
were not heavier than one, and the smallest
was as heavy as all three together!

These are a few examples of the
miserable havoc that abject and degraded
superstition and lunacy, with its characteristic
dirt and vanity, once made of The
New Testament. It is scarcely conceivable
that such truths could be enacted, or such
lies told (for some of these things are
founded on fact and others are wholly
false), with an audacious reference to the
religion of Christ. The frequent
introduction of the Divine Master himself into
the lives of female saints, we have
purposely omitted to notice, as too shocking to
be remembered.

TWO RAINY DAYS.

FOR many years there was an old-
fashioned bookseller's shop in Little
Marlborough-street, London, kept by William
Row, who has been long since gathered to
his fathers. His son used to tell how he
owed his luck to one rainy day, and his life
or his leg to another, thus:

When my father first set up in business,
he took a little shop in Oxford-street. It
rained suddenly one morning, and a lady
ran in and said to him:

"May I ask for shelter until the rain is
over?"

"You are quite welcome, ma'am. Sit
down in this chair, out of the draught.
Here is a book; you can look at the
pictures, if you don't want to read."

The lady smiled, and sat for some time.
She appeared uneasy at the protracted rain,
and frequently went to the door to look for
signs of its abating. My father, seeing
this, said to her:

"Perhaps you would like me to send for
a hackney coach?"

"Why, no," said the lady; "I only want
to go as far as Hayward's" (about fifty
yards lower down), "to buy some lace."

My father fetched his umbrella.

"Here, ma'am, is a bran-new silk
umbrella, at your service; pray accept the
loan of it."

"You must be a very kind person
indeed," said the lady, "to offer me your
umbrella. I am quite a stranger to you."

"I'm sure you'll send it back. Let me
put it up for you. But, your shoes:
have they double soles? No. Black satin
slippers, as thin as dancing-pumps! Here,
Jessy, my dear, bring your pattens."

Pattens in those days were rather
formidable affairs. Clogs and goloshes were
not invented. Pattens were pieces of wood,
shaped and hollowed to fit the foot,
mounted on circular iron rings.