acknowledge that she was saved from exposure to the suffering, or even
the ruin, often the consequences of a Convent education, by the
disinterested warning given in this book; while its author, disheartened
at length by the powerful combination of Protestants and Papists against
her, led to distrust even the few who remained her friends, destitute of
the means of living, and alternately persecuted and tempted by her ever
watchful and insidious enemies, died some years since, under
condemnation (whether just or unjust) for one of the slightest of the
crimes which she had charged against them--thus falling at last their
victim.

American parents have here a book written for the salvation of their
daughters; American patriots, one designed to secure society against one
of the most destructive but insidious institutions of popery; American
females, an appeal to them of the most solemn kind, to beware of
Convents, and all who attempt to inveigle our unsuspecting daughters
into them, by the secret apparatus of Jesuit schools. The author of this
book was a small, slender, uneducated, and persecuted young woman, who
sought refuge in our country without a protector; but she showed the
resolution and boldness of a heroine, in confronting her powerful
enemies in their strong hold, and proved, by the simple force of truth,
victorious in the violent conflicts which were waged against her by the
Romish hierarchy of America and the popular press of the United States.

The publishers have thought the present an opportune period to place
this work again in the hands of American readers, with such information,
in a preface, as is necessary to acquaint readers of the present day
with the leading circumstances attending and succeeding its original
publication. They have examined most of the evidence supporting the
truth of the narrative, of which the public can judge as well as