CHAPTER I.

MY AUNT AND THE CATECHISM.

"There sister! I told you what would come of letting that dear child hear little Mary Ann recite the Romanist catechism. Here we have our little Kitty setting herself up as a judge in matters of religion, and quoting the answers she has learned by hearing them repeated! Not but that she is as good a child as her auntie or her mother could desire; but her brain is too thoroughly American, too much given to going to the bottom of any subject it is once interested in, to stop half-way in a matter of this kind. I knew all the time how it would end."

Here my maiden aunt paused, more in sorrow than in anger, and little Kitty remarked playfully,

"If _truth_ lies at the bottom of a well, as you once told me, auntie, how could we ever reach it without going to the bottom?" While Kitty's mother replied to her sister in a half-apologizing manner,

"Why, Laura, I consented to let her hear Mary Ann's catechism, simply because Kitty told me that the poor mother was so much occupied in striving to earn a living for her little fatherless ones that she could not hear it herself; and then the priest was expected to come here soon, to prepare the children for confirmation, which is to be given shortly by the bishop. So there was no time to lose. I certainly did not think there could be any danger in a mere act of kindness."

"Danger!" exclaimed grandmamma, in defence of her little pet. "If there's danger in a little knowledge of the Catholic catechism, it must be because our house is built on a sandy foundation, and hence we fear it will be destroyed by a little outside religious information. For my part, I have no objection to full examination in these matters; nor have I any fear for the result."

A long-drawn sigh and an ejaculation of grief from the corner of the room called our attention to where grandmamma's sister--"Aunt Ruby," the widow of a Congregational minister--sat knitting, removed from the light of the evening lamps because of the weakness of her eyes.

"O sister! sister! how can you talk so. The old adversary goeth about everywhere like a roaring lion. He lies hid even in that dish of meal. If he can only get our folks to questioning and examining, then the mischief is done; and we shall have popish priests coming here, carrying on their crossings and their blessings, offering to sell pardons for our sins, and making us all bow the knee to Baal, and pray to their graven images. I shudder to think of it!"

"They do not pray to graven images, Aunt Ruby; the catechism expressly forbids it!" replied Kitty.

"There comes that old catechism again!" exclaimed Aunt Laura. "If Mary Ann's catechism forbids it, then the book was trumped up to deceive American children, and is entirely different from the catechisms used in Ireland or France."

"As for that, auntie, Mary Ann's mother has one she brought from Ireland many years ago, and it teaches just the same things. But there is one thing in both that you will acknowledge as binding--'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor;' and the catechism explains that it forbids 'all false testimonies, rash judgments, and lies.' It seems to me that good people should be careful not to accuse the Catholic Church--"

"Romanist, if you please!"

"Well, the Roman Catholic Church, of things they do not know to be true; and I see no harm in inquiring what is true, and what false, in all that is brought against it. Here is our neighbor across the road, a pious Methodist, will not let her little girl, who was my best friend, play with me any more, because I said I thought lies about Catholics were just as bad as lies about Methodists. But I shall always think so, if I lose the friendship of every body."

A sigh and a groan were heard from the dark corner, and a voice, "O poor child! the poison is beginning to work, and there's no knowing where it will end. If things are to go on in this way, it is just as likely as any thing in the world that we shall have the Pope of Rome and all his cardinals down among us before we know it, letting folks out of purgatory, selling indulgences to commit sin, and doing so many other awful things!"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Kitty's father, who had just come in. "Never mind, Aunt Ruby, the pope will never take you, so you need not stand in fear of him. You are too much in the dark, and I fear never could bear the light sufficiently to become one of the children of holy church."

Kitty's eldest brother, who had been educated in a Catholic college, had come in with his father, and now whispered slyly to grandmamma,

"I don't know about that; I have great hopes for Aunt Ruby yet. When she left the Episcopal Church, and was propounded for admission into the Congregational, before she married the minister, you remember how the old deacons groaned in spirit over her because they could not get her to say she was 'willing to be damned.'[34] They insisted that the 'old carnal heart' was still too strong in her, and they protested with one voice that it would never do for their minister to marry a woman who was not 'willing to be damned.' Perhaps the dear old lady remains yet of the same mind. If so, she may escape, after all."