The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 218

LIFE IN A MARYLAND MONASTERY THIS IS A DAY AT ST. PETER AND PAUL'S, IK CUMBERLAND Photos by WILLIAM L. KLENDER By JOHN DORSEY Brother Benedict, left, and Brother Stephen doing bookbinding in the print shop of St. Peter and Paul's Monastery (at right) in Cumberland. This is the Cupuchin training center.

NE minute of six on a wintry morn ing in Cumberland. It is dark and cold Li 1 1 and still, and the monastery is asleep. Six o'clock, clang-clang. Clang-Clang. CLANG-CLANG.

The bell, from away off downstairs somewhere, begins to drag me toward consciousness, at first mingling with my dream, then dispelling it. By the time the brother ringing it up and down the halls gets to just outside my door, it sounds as if a fire truck is about to invade my room. Who would have thought such a little bell could have so much noise in it? As I grope around my room it is as bare as those of the brothers, with only a bed, a desk, a lamp, a chair, and a crude wardrobe I reflect that the photographer in the room just across the hall must be no less reluctant to respond to the call. And what of the brothers in the monastery? How many years of obedience does it take before the one who awakens them each morning no longer awakens-their resentment as well? But there is little time for such thoughts. As we rush over cold floors to the lavatory for a brief ablution, throw on some clothes and hurry down to the chapeL brothers in their chocolate habits glide by, giving us a nod and a smile, their sandals making less noise than would have seemed possible.

When we get to the plain little chapel, with its hard wooden benches and its simple Gothic windows, they are there ahead of us, kneeling in silent prayer. Their faces are a study, as various as their habits are similar. Brother Stephen looks the most monklike, his long, gaunt face and bit of beard giving him an aspect of ascetic severity that is dispelled when he smiles. Brother Philip, chubby and cherubic, looks the picture of childlike innocence, while Father Eugene, at 84 the oldest of the Capuchins here, wears that air of benevolence that must come with growing venerable in the service of one God. After a time Father James Hannan, Continued on Next Tage 15.