REPORTED CASE OF CRUELTY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2091, 5 November 1880, Page 4

REPORTED CASE OF CRUELTY.

The following letter appears in this morning’s issue of the “Press ■ Sis, —Your issue of this morning contained an item about some revolting cruelty supposed to have been perpetrated in an Italian convent. In fairness to the Oatholio side of the question yon will perhaps kindly find place for the enclosed cutting from the “ Tablet ” of October 29th. Yours, &c., A.B. November 4.

"Another Calumny,—The editor of our contemporary, the “ Evening Star,” who, in consistency with his well known piety, possesses so delicate an instinct for the discovery of venomous paragraphs relating to all things Oatho'ic, and so ardent a zeal in republishing them, issued on Tuesday last an extract from the ‘Daily Telegraph’ that would almost have done honor to the genius of even that respectable female Maria Monk herself. It is a tale of horror connected with an Italian convent, in which the abbess and two sisters applied what they piously called the ‘ Torments of Purgatory ’ to a thievish lay sister, and roasted her eyes out. The story, however, is somewhat marred by ascribing a feeling of disgust and indignation to the rest of the sisterhood, and making them fetch the police. The inventive penny-a-liner went astray here; he should have accredited all the nuns with a share in the tragedy, and introduced a victim or two more in order to afford due scope for their barbarity. We feel on the whole disapEointed with this paragraph, it is not half so orrid as it might have been had the writer only followed up his idea to the full extent. He might have harrowed the feelings of his readers much more effectively with very little further exercise of his inventive powers. Or that kindred soul of hie, the editor of the ‘Evening Star,* might have touched up the extract alluded to and made it really suitable to the depraved appetites be so well panders to, had he only had the full courage of hie opinions, and not been once more, merely to come Blinking in at the rear of some bolder liar. The wit even of that paltry scandal-monger, who the other day manufactured a calumny for the Christchurch “Echo” touching a convent close at hand, would have enabled him to make » much batter impression, and to give fuller value for his subscribers’ penny. Meantime this paragraph does not seem to have made much sensation in London. We find no allusion to it in any of our Catholic exchanges, or tho non-Oatholic newspapers we otherwise receive, we conclude, therefore, that its origin was recognised and treated with contempt, and that not even any accident had happened in an Italian convent to afford grounds for so gross a calumny.’*