Sometimes I would stand and look around that small enclosure and think, “Shall I never in this life go farther than this garden surrounded with trees?” Often my brain seemed to turn at the very thought. If only I could have seen a great space, or a great sea, it would be better; but there were those trees in a flat country, and nothing beyond (a true type indeed). But then I would come back to my text, as above quoted, and think that as God is pleased with me, nothing else is of consequence. So I went on year after year, anything but happy, yet not _daring_ to let myself think of turning back. Often did I LONG to speak of mother and of the dear ones at home, but I could not without breaking the rule, “never to speak of our earthly relations except to God in prayer.” If we broke this rule, we had to confess it the same day, and perform the prescribed penance of losing the hour’s recreation, do some menial work, and keep silence during the only hour we had set apart for conversation.
At the end of my first year my mother wrote to Father Ignatius demanding me back. She wrote to me at the same time, telling me she was coming to fetch me; but the Father gave me no advice on the subject, and I could have gone back as far as consent from my superiors went. At that time they gave me my mother’s letter, which of course they had read (all letters are read by the Mother first); but what about the teaching and instruction that had gone before? What about the awful words I had heard that, “should I ever even look back, I should then be unmeet for the kingdom of God”? What about the example of Lot’s wife, so often set before us? She only _looked_ back, and how terrible the _immediate_ result! What would happen (I thought) to one espoused to Christ, if she not only looked back, but deliberately turned from the “path that leads to life,” as we were instructed? Not even for one second did I _dare_ to allow myself to think it. I would not go back, and did not.
My mother waited another year, and came this time to the convent without writing, so that I might not be influenced beforehand. Oh! mothers, little do you know the influence that is always at work: and yet your children dare not even wish to tell you, for it would be a terrible sin to tell even you anything about that influence,—it would be a grave scandal to do so. But it is equally a great sin to hide anything from our _Superior_; we are distinctly told never to conceal anything, not even our most secret thoughts, from our Superior. Should we have a great temptation to leave the life we had entered on, or any great temptation to rebel against convent rules, we were expressly told to make it known at once, that we might have the benefit of our Superior’s advice. Remember, too, that self-examination comes three times a day!