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| a nice, comfortable plank to sleep on |
At 9pm any given night nearly 280 years ago, eternal virgins dressed in white hooded robes entered dormitories in Lancaster County, where they would lay themselves to sleep on hard wooden planks only 18 inches wide, their heads resting on pine blocks where pillows should have been. The hooded slumberers in question were members of the monastic settlement known as Ephrata, and their story is a colorful one.
