Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

[111] so vile and absurd as not to be credited for a moment by any intelligent person. The pupils and their parents knew these stories to be utterly false and unfounded.

A young woman who had sought admission to the convent as a matter of charity, ran away, while passing through her novitiate, saying to her friends that the labors were too hard and the religious observances too exacting, and that therefore she had concluded to leave. At first she said nothing against any of the inmates of the establishment, and spoke only of their strict discipline as religious teachers. She was immediately surrounded by sympathizers, and, as the body of her listeners grew in numbers, her stories increased in denunciation of the institution. At last she was induced by some clergymen to publish a brochure, called “Six months in a Convent.”

The superior of the school unwisely permitted herself to reply to it. That evoked a rejoinder filled with the vilest and uncleanest of accusations: It purported to be written by the young woman, under the sobriquet of “Maria Monk.” This pamphlet, for it was little more than that, had a large circulation among a certain class of people in that vicinity.

On the flats below Mount Benedict, and not far from it, there were extensive brickyards where large numbers of men, mainly from the State of New Hampshire, were employed during the summer, returning to their homes to spend the winter. Coming from a State where, from the earliest days, no Catholic was permitted to hold any office by its constitution, and whose traditions run back to the Catholic persecutions of the Irish Presbyterians in the north of Ireland, they were ready, through prejudice, to welcome this “Maria Monk” pamphlet, and take it home with them for winter reading. They came back to their employment at the brickyards in the spring, with their prejudices and passions inflamed against the convent, the supposed misdemeanors in which had formed the largest portion of the family winter-evening discussions.

The result was that, in August, 1834, combinations were formed among these men and their comrades to interfere with and harass the inmates of the school. The first open attack was made by setting dogs upon two of the female pupils who were walking in the grounds. This was reported to the authorities, but no redress was given. Divers outrages were perpetrated, and the selectmen of the town