ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 40, 3 October 1901, Page 17

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

RAKAIA Ovebdale. — Application should be made to the editor of the paper advertised. We know nothing- of the matter beyond what is stated in the advertisement supplied to us.

Reader (Oamaru). — The Tablet paragraph i> quite correct in its statement of the facts of the case. The young man, misled by his mother's example, fell away for a time. The lady has long been noted for the eccentricity of her behavior. She joined, are believe, the Plymouth Brethren and other sects for a time, and has lately married a Unitarian clergyman, and probably attached herself to his form of belief.

M.H. — Maria Monk was not a Catholic. She was the child of Presbyterian parents, who lived in Montreal. She was of weak intellect, followed the evil trade of a fallen woman, spent a considerable part of her time in a Canadian prison, and was for a time an inmate of a refuge for ' soiled doves ' kept by a Catholic Sisterhood in Montreal. She gravitated to New York, was discovered in a den there by a reprobate named Hoyte, and made his paramour. Hoyte and some other lewd fellows reprinted as a speculation a filthy pamphlet published in 1781. altered names, etc., in it, attributed its authorship to the halt-witted Maria, and laid the scene in a convent in Montreal. The whole imposture was exposed by Maria Monk's mother, on affidavit, by a number of Prottstant editors, and by several committees of prominent Protestants of Montreal, New York, and elsewhere. Maria Monk continued 'on the streets' till 1849, when she was arrested in a den at Five Points, on a charge of theft, lodged in prison, and died miserably there. Write to the nearest Catholic bookseller for the Catholic Truth Society's penny pamphlet, The True Story of Maria Monk.