Given a girl at an impressionable age, the proper convent atmosphere, and a prize of six hundred pounds for the Order, and it will go hard with the Reverend Mother if she can't work the girl up to a vocation.

It takes a man a lifetime to make six hundred pounds in a country shop, but there's many a one who does it by hard work and self-denial; then down come the nuns and sweep it away, and it's wasted.

It ought to be invested in a local factory or in waterworks, or gas-works, or fifty other things that would benefit the town it's made in.

It ought to be fructifying and bearing interest; instead of which off it goes to Munich for stained glass, or to Italy for a marble altar.
Is it any wonder Ireland is crying out with poverty ?' 'Yes,' said Maguire, 'and that's not the worst of it.

I'd be content to let them take the damned money and deck their churches with it, but the girls--there are hundreds of them caught every year for nuns, and swept out of life.