lamentable. If they are still of a refined character such a practice is a source of exquisite pain, and often leads either to duplicity or to actual debasement; if they are less refined already the temptation to abuse their condition is overpowering.
When I first began to hear confession I was much impressed with the number of girls who unburdened their minds to me (I was practically a stranger to them) on some long-concealed transgression of an indelicate character. A Catholic girl usually selects a particular confessor (we were six in number at Forest Gate) and presents herself at his box every week, fortnight, or month. The priest learns to recognise her voice, if he does not know her already, and counts her amongst his regular penitents, of which every confessor is proud to possess a certain number. Week after week she comes with her small catalogue of the usual feminine maladies—fibs, tempers, and slanders—at last she is betrayed into some graver fault, or something she imagines, generally after it has taken place, to be serious. If she goes to another confessor her habitual director will know it, for she is bound to say how long it is since her last confession: he will in all probability form his own opinion on the matter—some confessors do not scruple to exact a repetition of the confession to themselves. To him, she is often quite unable to confess it after her long immunity from evil in his esteem; she therefore conceals, and continues her
