the fifteen nunneries of the city of Mexico. In the flourishing times of the Inquisition, this business of inveigling choice victims into convents was more profitable, for then murmuring could be crushed into silence, and parents dreaded to oppose the wretched pimps of superstition who came to inveigle their daughters into convents.
NUNNERIES AND PRISONS.
The Quaker prison of Philadelphia is a paradise compared with such a place as this. If the reader has ever placed his eye at the keeper's eye-hole in that prison, he must have seen in many a cell a cheerful face, and the appearance of as much comfort as is compatible with an imprisoned condition; for ministering angels have been there—mothers in Israel, who have torn themselves from their domestic duties for a little time to minister consolation to the very criminals in prison; and, now that the prison-door has separated the poor wretch forever from society, whose laws have been outraged, she, by her kindness and teaching, has led the convict to look to Heaven with a hope of forgiveness, and daily to pray for those he has injured, while he reads in the holy book which she gave him, that a repenting thief accompanied the Son of God to Paradise.