A Hokitika Snake-yarn.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1, 5 January 1905, Page 18

A Hokitika Snake-yarn.

Ln the process of snapping up sundry unco'jisidcred trifles of ' late mail news,' the ' Hokitika Quardi'an ' recently inflicted uoo,n its readers the following painful yiarm : T"hlat a ' Roman Catholic sect 'in BiUdharest, kniowfa, as that of ' Notre D&me de Lira,' has ' for a number of years bee*n permitted to carry on educatianal wwrk in Roljniamifa ' ; tihat the lady heads of flhis ' sect ' have tiakefr a number of ' the daughters of the highest families,' tin stilled in/to them ' the tenets of Rome,' forced them t)o ' become nuns and sign over tihe whole of imeiir property to the sniper i'ors,' and then spirited them away to pJDaces unknown ; and that ' a rigorous investigation h^iS been ordered and is proceeding in tthe Roumjanian capital.'

No ijnformtaition is given by our Hpkitflka contemporary as ifo the .source of "Shis rawdieaid-and-bloiody-ho^nes tale. But our readers have legitimate grounds for dolibtiaig tfh'at it came from the alleged pliace of its origi/n— to wit, Bucharest, the capital of Rflumania. Its smbstance and diction, moreover, stamp it as apparently ana of tihe savage anti-convent fictions which (as we showed acme time aigo) are being indusitriolisly inventod and disseminated t'ltfoughout Eunope by a gang umldeT the lelaHderehi/p of a Swiss criminal) whose headquarters iajre in Milan. For the present, it will be sufficient to lay the following information before our readere : (1) Catholics are only abotit dne in forty 'of the totsal ipwpuliatiipn. of Rdumahia, flhe overwhelming majority of which belongs to the ' Orthodox ' Greek Cfeiutch. (2) There iis\ n.o ' Roman C&tHolic sect •' either in or out of Rqrumainia. (3) Inhere is no Catih'olic religious Order Ooargregation, or community, in all Roumaaiia— or, indeed, m amy part of the world— knowin as • Notire Dame de Lira.' There are only two Catholic Sisterhoods U that kfrigdlom. One is the famous teaching Gongregs-

tiion knowfi as the ' Dames Anglaises ' oc ' Sinters of Mary." 1 They have in Bucharest two boanding-sttaools atui an orphanage, ajitt 1 three other private schools in oUier partis of Riouni'ania proper, the only other Catholic teaching communities of religkms women in the ■kingdom are tine Sionites. And they Jia,ve two houses in Moldavia. A correspondent writing (as alleged) from Biuchlarest w^uld certainly avoid s 0 patent atad tell-tale a bliuWder as tio speak of ' the Romain Cattiolic sect ' of reliigioius teachers known as ' Notre Dame de Lira.' (4) Tthe dale assigned to the impOvS«>ible tale winder comBJderiation is October 2. We have been perusing a cctts|der,able rtumlber of European and American papers, secular and religions, before artd since tfiat kiate, and have faikjd to come across any 'trace <of this story, w'htch, if even ane-tenth true, would indeed be a Godscirtd tla t|he wiorlti's sensational press. (5) A liar might at least (pay his readers or hearers the compliment of trying tlo be pteuusi'ble. But tlhe wild romance about • fiorci/ng ' the non-Cattiolic ' daughters of the highest families ' Ho become nuns and tio sign away their possess iioiis— artd that, 1,0,0, in the 'heart of a strongjy antiCatfholic irtopiulati'on— is one which the disirepfatjable Margaret Shepherld or the Slattery impostors might be expected to s|pln to an Orange lodge or a corps of the horse-marines. The ' Hokitika Guardian ' probably published tihe preposterous story in solemn gojod Saith— in whkth aase the fooling of our western contemporary seems to /hteuvo been a conspicuously easy job. The 4 <jjua*dian ' has apparently a low estimate of the intelligence artd goio'd sense of its readers. We shall probably ha v e something more to aay at a later d;ate about UhW grotesque fairy-t*ale from a far-off laiid.