Full text of "The Catholic world"

^ 




THE 






CATHOLIC WORLD. 




MAGAZINE 



GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 



VOL. LIII. 
APRIL, 1891, TO SEPTEMBER, 1891, 



NEW YORK : 

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 
120-122 WEST SIXTIETH STREET. 



1891. 




Copyright, 1891, by 
VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT. 



THE COLUMBUS PRESS, 120-122 WEST 60 ST., NEW YORK. 



CONTENTS. 



American State and the Private School, 

The. Rev. E. A. Higgins, S.J., . 521 

Briggs on Authority in Religion, Pro- 
fessor. Rev, H. H, Wyman, . . 737 

Catholic Truth Society, The. William 

F. Markoe, 114 

Catholic Clergy and the Liquor-Traffic 
before the New York Legislature, 
The. Rev. Thomas McMillan, . 159 

Check to the Home-Rule Movement, 

The. R. O. K., . . . . 2 

Chunky. Edith Brower, . . . 362 

Columbian Reading Union, 150, 306, 459, 
621, 778, 931 

Convention of the National Education 
Association in Toronto. M. A., . 862 

Conversion, Story of a. Lady Herbert, 7 

Convert from Judaism, A. C. S. H., . 420 

Deacon's Trial, The. S. M. H. G., .808 

Encyclical and American Iron-Workers 
and Coal-Miners, The. Rev. Mor- 
gan M. Sheedy, 850 

" Educated above Their Station ? " B. 

N. Taylor, ...... 172 

Fiesta on a Mexican Hacienda. Chris- 
tian Reid, ...... 644 

Forerunner of the Metric System of 
Measures, The. -J. Howard Gore, 
Ph.D., 37 

Galveston Beach. Henry H. Neville, . 48 

Gavan Duffy's Life of Thomas Davis, 

Sir C. P. A. S., . . . .746 

House of the Rose and Sword, The. 

Harold Dijon, 688 

Indians of Canada, The./. A. J. 

McKenna, 350 

Juvenile Literature and the Formation 

of Character. Mary E. Blake, . 475 

Lady of Erin, The. Rev. E. McSweeny, 

D-D., 317 

Life of Father Hecker, The. Rev. Wal- 
ter Elliott, . 95, 254, 400, 544, 707, 874 

Madame Gradot. fF. M. Bangs, . . 867 



Mexico by Rail, Through. Charles E. 

Hodson, 81 

Old World Seen from the New, The, 

123, 283, 424, 603, 752, 906 
Old Irish Town, An. Katherine Tynan, 582 
Old Landlady's Album, The. M. M., . 528 
O'Reilly, John Boyle. Katherine E. 

Conway, ...... 198 

Pope and the Proletariat, The. Rev. 

E. B. Brady, 633 

Popular Science Monthly, The, on the 

Miracles of St. Francis Xavier. Rev. 

Thomas Hughes, S.J., . . .837 
Question of Growth, K.F. C. Farin- 

holt, 384, 496 

Question of Temperament, A. -John J. 

a Becket, 15, 234 

School Question in the Pennsylvania 

Legislature. Rev. M. M. Sheedy, . 485 
Scope and History of the Talmud. E. 

Raymond-Barker, .... 333 
Socialism and Labor. Right Rev. J. L. 

Spalding, D.D., . . . .791 

Some Plain Words with Agnostics. 

Rev. Charles W. Currier, C.SS.R., . 368 
Spider-Web all Glittering, A. M. T. 

Elder, 577 

Stage from Whipple's Corners, The. 

S. M. H. G., .."... 75 
St. Landry's Delinquency. Felix Gar- 

nett, ....... 177 

Talk about New Books, 136, 293, 437, 603, 

765, 9 T 7 

Tekakwitha, 830 

'Tonia. Marie Louise Sandrock, . . 655 
Warfare of Science, The. Very Rev. 

Augustine F. Hewit, . . 393, 567, 678 
"Was Christ a Buddhist ? "Mon- 

seigneur C. d'Harlez, . . . 219 
With the Publisher, 153, 311, 467, 627, 786, 939 
Witness of Science to Religion, The. 

Rev. William Barry, D.D., 60, 374, 510, 
727,821 



POETRY. 



Arriere Pensee. Maurice Francis Egan, 

Change. P.J. Coleman, 

Deus Lux Mea ! Rev. Hugh T. Henry, 

" Hast Thou seen Him whom My Soul 
Loveth ? "Rev. Alfred Young, 

Inspiration. P.J. Coleman, 

Ode: For the Silver Jubilee of Arch- 
bishop Williams. M. E. Blake, 



282 Paschal Moon, The. Alice Ward 

171 Bailey, i 

331 Reward for a Cup of Cold Water, The. 

Rev. Alfred Young, ... 520 
34 Trifles. P-J- Coleman, . . . 905 
484 Unknown Bound, The. -James Buck- 
ham, -654 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



An Artist, 

Armorel of Lyonesse, 
At Love's Extremes, 
Atman, 



Blessed Sacrament, The, 
Blind Apostle, The, 



917 
437 
437 
136 

4*7 
603 



Carmela, 437 

Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani, The, . . 9 1 ? 

Chivalrous Deed, A, . . . 9 1 ? 
Christian Apology, A, . . . .603 

Christian Woman, A, . 293 
Citation and Examination of William 

Shakespeare, . . 63 

Colonel Carter of Cartersville, . . 003 

De Insignibus Episcoporum Commen- 

taria, 9*7 

Disappearance of John Longworthy, 

The, 2 93 

Dreams, *3 6 

Edith, 437 

Edward VI. and the Book of Common 

Prayer, J 3 6 

Epic of the Inner Life, The, . . . 9*7 

Essays in Little, i3 6 

Exposition of the Epistles of St. Paul, . 293 

437 
. . 917 

. 603 

437 
765 



Fantastic Tale, A, . 
Felicia, .... 
Fourteen to One, . 
Friend of Death, The, . . 
From Shadow to Sunlight, 



Gallegher and other Stories, . . . 437 

Glencoonoge, 603 

Grandison, Mather, .... 437 

Health without Medicine, . . . 917 

History of the Worship of God, A, . 917 

His Honor the Mayor, . . . . 437 
History of Robert Bruce, . . -437 
History of the Catholic Church in the 

United States, 136 

History of the Last Caesars of Byzan- 
tium, ....... 437 

Holy Mass Explained, The, . . . 765 

How to Get On, 917 

lermola, 603 

Impressions and Opinions, . . . 917 

Interior of Jesus and Mary, The, . . 293 

Introduction to Philosophy, . . . 293 

Iron Game, The, 603 

Jacques-Coeur, ...... 437 

Japanese Girls and Women, . . . 765 

Jerry, 603 

Kahled, 603 

Knight of Bloemendale, . . . 437 

La Cite Chretienne, .... 603 

Lady Merton, 293 

Letters of Marie Bashkirtseff, . .917 

Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More, 917 

Lif^of Father John Curtis, S.J., . . 917 

Life around Us, 293 



Life of Christopher Columbus, 

Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha, 

Life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, 

Life of the Venerable Madeleine Barat, 

Madame Craven, 

Madame d'Orgevant's Husband, . 

Mademoiselle Ixe, 

Manual of Church History, . 
Marie-Louise and the Invasion of 1814, 
Marie-Louise, the Island of Elba, the 

Hundred Days, 

Mary in the Epistles, .... 
Meditations on the Gospels, . 
Mediaeval and Modern Cosmology, 
Memoir of Lawrence Oliphant, 

Mine Own People, 

Moor of Granada, The .... 

Mores Catholici, 

Mystery of the Campagna, A, 

New England Nun, A, . 

Noughts and Crosses, .... 

Old Maid's Love, An, .... 
Old Roclot's Millions, .... 
Original Charades, . . ... 

Our Common Birds, .... 
Oxford Movement, The, 

Pacific Coast Scenic Tour, The, . 

Percy Winn, 

Petrarch, 

Philippa ; or, Under a Cloud, 
Photochronograph, The, 

Rudder Grangers Abroad, The, 
Russian Traits and Terrors, . 

Sanctum Evangelium Secundum Lucam 
in Carmina Versum, .... 

Selected Sermons, 

Sensitive Plant, A, 

She Loved a Sailor, .... 

Shadow on a Wave, A, . 

Sisters' Tragedy, The, . 

Society as I have found it, ... 

Soul of Man, The, 

Spiritual Conferences, .... 

Story of an Abduction in the Seven- 
teenth Century, 

Story of Eleanor Lambert, The, . 

Story of the Filibusters, The, 

Strangers and Wayfarers, 

Summa Apologetica de Ecclesia Catho- 
lica, 

Talks with Athenian Youths, 

Ten Tales 

There is no Devil, 

Two Ways and Tomboy, 

Under the Trees, 

Wedding Ring, The, .... 

Wedding Trip, A, 

What's Bred in the Bone, 
Window in Thrums, A, . 

Zadoc Pine, 



136 

765 
603 
603 

603 

293 
136 

437 
136 

437 
437 
603 

43 J 

765 
603 

437 
603 

437 

293 

603 

917 

765 
293 
603 

437 
293 

43 I 
136 

917 
765 

603 
917 



293 
437 
136 
437 
437 
293 
437 
437 
437 

765 
437 
917 
603 

293 

136 
293 
437 
917 

603 

293 
917 
603 
603 

437 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. LIII. APRIL, 1891. No. 313. 



THE PASCHAL MOON. 

THROUGH seas of light, 

A vision bright, 

Slow moves the Paschal moon. 

Its sails are set, , 

Its prows are wet 

With the mist of night's still noon. 

To barren lands, 

To empty hands, 

To hearts that ache and wait, 

The buds of Spring, 

The hopes that sing, 

It bears, a shining freight. 

ALICE WARD BAILEY. 



Copyright. REV. A. F. HEWIT. 1891. 



THE CHECK TO THE HOME-RULE MOVEMENT. [April, 



THE CHECK TO THE HOME-RULE MOVEMENT. 

"AH ! but ourliopes were splendid, 
Annie, dear ! " 

wrote Thomas Davis, in one of those bursts of song, half ad- 
dressed to his country and half to his betrothed. In a second 
couplet he adds : 

" How sadly they have ended, 
Annie, dear! " 

And so the song goes on. The first, indeed, literally describes 
what our position had been ; but to the second, dark as our hopes 
are, we refuse to subscribe. 

Those who are now most despairing were the persons who 
had formed a wrong estimate of the future when our sun was 
in its zenith. Those were the persons who had reckoned that, 
immediately that a general election took place and Gladstone re- 
turned to power, Home Rule was a thing of the next day. Let 
us suppose for the moment that this untoward affair had not 
taken place in Irish politics ; let us suppose that there was still 
such a united party as there once had been, and that it was 
still led by the unquestioned skill and diplomacy of an innocent 
and stainless leader ; what would have taken place ? Gladstone 
would be returned to power. In due course he would introduce 
a Home-Rule bill, or he might possibly secure the passing of some 
act in the direction of extension of the franchise, in order to ren- 
der certain a Liberal return in the event of its being necessary 
to appeal once more to the country. Necessary it would have 
been, for the House of Lords would, without the shadow of a 
doubt, cast out the Home-Rule bill on its first appearance at their 
chamber after passing through the Commons. In any case, 
therefore, it is only after a second election that Home Rule could 
be carried. So far, then, we are not a whit worse off now than 
then. It is only after a second election that, tinder the most 
favorable circumstances, wa could expect the passing of the meas- 
ure ; and by the time of a second election the atmosphere here 
in Ireland will be so cleared that undoubtedly a compact and 
united party can and will be returned. 

Later on in this paper it may become necessary to expand 



1891.] THE CHECK TO THE HOME-RULE MOVEMENT. 3 

this matter somewhat. At present I put forward this question : 
Suppose nothing more could, by the present agitation, be gained 
than has been gained ; are we to look upon the work of the last 
ten or twelve years as so much waste of power ? By no means. 
Victories have been won the fruits of which cannot be filched 
from us. Waterloo may be won and rewon, the Rhine crossed 
and recrossed, but victories in the moral order once accomplished 
can never be undone. Slavery can never again, while the stars 
and stripes float in the breeze, become a legalized institution of 
the American Republic. And Ireland, poor Ireland, by the sacrifice 
and bravery of her women as well as her men, nay, even of her 
little ones, has secured victories in the moral and legislative order. 
Behind the ramparts we have built not alone a future generation, 
but even our own can stand and fight for larger liberties and na- 
tional self-government. 

Take the peasant-farmers, say ; you knew a man, bound neck 
and heels by the terms of a lease which he could not fulfil, and 
his landlord would not forego his pound of flesh. Let us say 
the man owned 100 acres of land, or thereabouts, at the yearly 
rent of 200. The farm did not yield a margin of 200, but 
Shylock was at liberty by law to demand the terms of his bond, 
and the executive government were prepared to enforce it. The 
result would be that out on the roadside the man would have to 
go with his family, two or three boys and one or two girls 
children of nice manner and character, like the growing boys or 
girls you know. Instead, the agitation has broken through the 
unjust sacredness of Shylock's bond ; the man is declared free 
to go into the courts, and they (one-sided even as they are) have 
declared that 150 is the full market value of the bond. That 
man is in his house ; his family are around him ; they have 
what little comforts they have among themselves, but they have 
the sweetest and most sacred pleasure of all, the blessing of one 
another's society and love. The father's hand is over the chil- 
dren ; the children's love is around the father. No money could 
buy that domestic joy and peace. 

But look at the money side of it. 50 is left that man 
yearly; two years 100, four years 200, and so on; and that 
$o, or 100, or .200, instead of being dragged away out of 
the country, and squandered in such a manner as to excite in 
Burns's Tiva Dogs the astonishment of one of them 

" Hech ! sir is that the gait 

They waste sae mony a braw estate ? " 
VOL. LIU. i 



4 THE CHECK TO THE HOME-RULE MOVEMENT. [April, 

is spent at home, and remains in the country. The grocer, and 
draper, and shoemaker, and school-master all come in for their 
share. In money, since the League began, that man did not 
subscribe more, perhaps, than half one year's reduction. Now, 
there he stands, ready at the 'first moment an opportunity offers 
to improve his position, and to help his fellows to do so. 
Broadly speaking, the agitation of the past ten years has been 
worth to Ireland some four or five millions sterling annually ; 
and has, moreover, by legislation as well as by organization, made 
them defiant of the arrogant feudalism that has ground them to 
the earth. 

The laborer, too, has succeeded in emancipating himself. 
Now he holds a little plot of land and a cottage secure " while 
grass grows or water runs" (to use one of our Irish expressions). 
He cannot be disturbed while he pays a certain weekly rent. 
That rent is being reduced almost universally through Ireland this 
year by reason of the distress ; and it is pretty safe to say that 
the thin end of the wedge is, all unconsciously, got in, and that 
year by year this weekly toll will grow " small by degrees and 
beautifully less." The laborer has, moreover, a vote. It is a loss 
to the poor man that the Nationalist vote so tremendously pre- 
dominates, else he might better his position if only he could stifle 
his patriotic tendencies. In the north of Ireland, however, where 
the labor vote would be a matter of importance, it may be that 
the Nationalists in the Board of Guardians will try by some means 
of this kind to win their votes. But, unless otherwise advised,- 
the poor Catholic laborer will vote Nationalist, and scarcely to 
save his children from starvation would vote otherwise ; whereas 
the poor Protestant laborer will, on the other hand, almost to a 
certainty vote with his religion. But this is by the way. The 
main fact is that both classes, the tenant-farming and the labor- 
ing, have gained advantages solid and pretio, estimabilia. Just 
now it is a mercy that it has been so, for were it not for those 
four or five millions of an annual reduction for the past few years, 
the bulk of the country would at present be undergoing the same 
agonies of famine that, unhappily, are felt along the western sea- 
board. The depreciation in the price of the staple commodities 
of the country i. e., in grain, butter, beef, and mutton has been 
such that were the onus of these few millions still hanging round 
the people's necks the effect could be none other than famine. 

These advantages have, however, been bought at a very dear 
price. War, even when it emancipates, leaves human corpses on 
the field. Groups of tenantry here and there have acted as the 



1891.] THE CHECK TO THE HOME-RULE MOVEMENT. 5 

vanguard in the tenant war. The Cloncurry tenantry, for instance, 
on the borders of Limerick and Tipperary, have been living in 
Land League huts ever since >8i, when they were evicted from 
their holdings. Look for a- moment at what that means. There 
were young children growing up in some of these homes. Their 
parents intended to give them a nice education, as well as their 
means would afford. The little girls were to be sent to convent 
boarding-schools our Catholic girls are sent nowhere else ; the 
boys prepared for trades or even professions. The fathers and 
mothers had, perhaps, some darling hopes. There the children 
remained. Should they be now reinstated they have grown too 
old to be sent to school or apprenticed to trades. Or, again, their 
girls and boys were grown, and the parents were looking to settle 
down their poor girls in life. The crow-bar and the battering ram 
came, and their hopes were as low as their homes. For a long, long 
decade these people have been enduring that deferring of hope 
that maketh the heart sick. Later came Clanricarde at Woodford, 
Smith Barry at Youghal, Massarene in Louth, Olphert in Donegal ; 
oh, 'tis a long litany ! Kenmare, Clongorey, Wicklow, Cashel, Tip- 
perary ! These are the prisoners of war on our side. Alone with 
ourselves, when we brood over the hardships and sufferings that 
these poor people have undergone, we are tempted to cry out that 
our victories have been dearly bought ; but without spilling of 
blood there is no conquest, and these seem the only serious draw- 
backs. Were it not for these the country at large may exult, 
for advantages of a broad and useful kind have been obtained, 
and while it would reasonably regret the present check, it could 
at the same time feel that the past ten years have not been all 
lean kine. But the present check does not cast us into despair. 
The pending cloud, dark as it is, is not without its silver lining. 
This is the way we look at it. 

Events never stand still, and their onward march must lead 
to greater privileges for our people. The river, flowing to the 
sea, might as well think of returning to its source as that we 
can be robbed of the liberties we have won. Slowly but surely 
we must go on from vantage ground to vantage ground. The 
ultimate goal we are fighting for viz.: the triumph of Home- 
Rule is to be won, not so much by ourselves single-handed 
as by an honorable alliance with one of the two great English 
parties. It cannot be won without both, much less despite of 
both. Either of the two must act as an ally; and our position 
of independence as a parliamentary party and their position of 
being evenly balanced, make the fact of alliance a matter of 



6 THE CHECK TO THE HOME-RULE MOVEMENT. [April, 

political necessity. But which ? Will it be with the Tories ? 
For two reasons no ! One reason is, they already made prom- 
ises and deceived. The second reason is, that the Tories, if they 
had the will, have not the way. The Liberals could not well 
oppose ; if they did oppose, "the majority of Tories and Irish 
Home-Rulers would swamp them to zero. Our alliance is, there- 
fore, almost necessarily with the Liberals. It has been prophe- 
sied, or attempted to be prophesied, by one who did not al- 
ways prophesy so, that the Liberals cannot return to. power at 
the next election. The very best proof of the falsity of that 
prophecy is shown in the hesitation of the Tories to appeal to 
the country. There is no man that would not willingly fling 
down two to gain seven if he saw the way of doing it. The 
Tories have two years yet of power to run, if they decide on 
holding to office ; but if they appealed to the country, and 
were victorious, they would, instead of two, have seven. Their 
hesitancy, therefore, does not corroborate the prophecy, and, if 
ever there was a favorable time for them, it is now. 

It is all but certain that the Liberals will return to power ; 
the one vital fact we ask of the future is to put Gladstone in 
office ; send us John Morley once again as Irish Secretary, and 
give the Irish electorate a fair field of squaring matters. Glad- 
stone in office means that Ireland would be freed, or at least 
eased, from three things that gall us most bitterly at present: 
ist, harsh or unjust evictions; 2d, the divisional magistrates' 
caricature of law courts ; 3d, the cruelty and autocracy of 
the police force. Remove these galling burdens, find just 
means of reinstating the evicted tenants, give the country a 
moment to draw its breath, and with one united and supreme 
effort it will, with God's blessing, cleave its way to legislative 
freedom. R. Q. K. 



1891.] THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION.- 



THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. 

THAT God in his overwhelming mercy is continually calling 
human souls from the depths ot ignorance and schism into the 
glorious light of the one true church is a fact too well known 
to us, both in England and America, to require any special ex- 
planation. But in the countries of the north of Europe such 
as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden where the light of faith has 
been so long extinguished, such miracles of grace are more 
rare, and the account of the conversion of a lady of high rank 
in the first-named country, through the intervention of the pres- 
ent Cardinal Mermillod, may not be uninteresting to our readers 
across the Atlantic. We will give it very nearly in her own 
words. 

" Brought up by a good and pious mother in the beautiful 

old Castle of H , my sisters and myself were trained in the 

straitest sect of Lutheranism. I learned all that our popular 
histories tell us of the horrors of the Catholic religion, and never 
failed to thank God for the purer light which had been reveal- 
ed to us. I remember trembling with indignation when the 
old professor who taught us used to dilate on the terrors of 
the Inquisition, the intrigues of the Jesuits, the vices of the 
popes, the brutality of Gregory VII., and the like. Then, when 
he went on to speak of the immorality of the priests, the ignor- 
ance of the monks, and the gradual but certain decay of the 
Catholic faith throughout the world, I felt myself greatly re- 
lieved, and used to look forward confidently to the glorious day 
when the pure Gospel would be everywhere preached, when 
the Bible should be once more given back to souls groaning 
under the Catholic yoke, and when the hymns of Luther would 
be sung in the basilica of St. Peter's, while all the idols which 
now filled it would be trampled under foot. I had never seen a 
Catholic in my life, for the mission of Svendborg did not then 
exist ; and if I had ever met one I should have been very care- 
ful to avoid so dangerous a contact. The very idea that such 
people existed filled me with a vague terror, mingled with a 
deep pity for their ignorance and superstitions. I had, in fact, 
such a fear of meeting one that I remember feeling quite faint 
when, in a railway carriage in Germany, I found myself for the 
first time face- to- face with a Catholic priest. 



8 THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. [April, 

The author of the Imitation says that " those who travel 
much sanctify themselves with difficulty." But he had evidently 
not been in northern lands. To such people I should, on the 
contrary, strongly urge the need of travel to open their eyes ; 
and advise them to leave countries where Catholicism does not 
exist and find out for themselves into what gross errors they 
had been led by those who speak only of the horrors and ini- 
quities of the Church of Rome. 

" God gave me this grace, for when I married my husband's 
delicate health obliged us to go south, and in 1880 we started 
for the Island of Corsica. I was then just twenty- one years of 
age, and, although I carried a great Bible in my trunk, I prac- 
tised my religion very little. I ased to like to go into the 
churches of Ajaccio, however, and felt a great sweetness in be- 
ing able to pray at any timej kneeling on those marble pave- 
ments, where everything seemed to speak to me of Gdd ; where- 
as in my Protestant home all the churches were shut except on 
Sundays. I went there so often, in fact, that my husband be- 
came alarmed and forbade it. A Protestant pastor, strangely 
enough, interposed in my favor, telling my husband that it was, 
after all, an innqcent pleasure ; that there was no fear of my 
orthodoxy being affected, and that there was no reason why I 
should not enjoy the beauty of the Corsican churches ; so that 
after that I was left alone. 

" One 'day I went to a great convent in the Rue * Cours 
Grandval' and, ringing at the cloister gate, asked 'to be allowed 
to visit it. It was the first time I had ever seen any Catholic 
nuns close at hand and my object was pure curiosity. They 
were very kind to me and showed me all over their beautiful 
gardens, which were full of roses and lilies. Then I was taken 
into the parlor, and there something that I said made them ask 
me if I were a Catholic. My answer filled them with surprise 
and pity, and when I went on to assure them that I came from 
a country where people had done without Catholicism very well 
for upwards of three hundred years, the disgust they evidently 
felt for me wounded my self-love and I hastened to take my 
leave, not, however, before the superior had gently said she 
' would pray for me/ I was much too indignant at the moment 
to feel any gratitude for her prayers, and was only relieved 
when I got outside and heard the convent gates close behind 
me. 

" When I came back to the hotel I mentioned my ' escapade ' 
to my friends at the table d'hote, who could not find words 



i8gi.] THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. 9 

strong enough to blame my imprudence. ' Thank God that you 
have been kept safely,' exclaimed one Anglican minister ; while 
a Calvinist added : ' To go off like that all alone without giv- 
ing us any warning ! What if you had disappeared altogether 
and never been allowed to come back ? ' A third said : ' You 
would not have been. the first victim, I assure you. You do not 
know, perhaps, that there are vast subterranean chambers in 
Catholic convents where people are constantly immured. I, who 
speak to you, have known more than one person who, having 
ventured as you did to-day, have been entombed in cold, damp, 
dark dungeons, where an abjuration was extorted from them by 
dint of hunger and ill-usage.' 

" I was horrified at these apparently truthful revelations, 
and took very good care never to venture again near a convent. 
After that I became indifferent to the subject. My curiosity 
had been satisfied, and the little I had seen and heard gave me 
(however absurd this may seem) a certainty that I knew all 
about it, and that the superiority of my education made Cath- 
olicism of no earthly danger to me. 

" Filled with this comfortable self-complacency I went to 
Switzerland, where we passed the summer of 1881. If others 
prepare themselves by prayer and solitude to listen to- the voice 
of God, my preparation was of a very different kind. We stayed 
at a beautiful hotel in Geneva, which was full of people of every 
nationality. English, Americans, Russians, Spanish, French, 
Poles, Austrian^, even Turks, met day by day round that 
crowded table d'hote and made more or less acquaintance. 
We happened to be placed at a table near a Polish family the 
Comtesse M and her son, with whom .we became very inti- 
mate till our acquaintance ripened into real friendship. Comtesse 

M was a fervent Catholic, but was very careful not to shock 

or wound my Protestant susceptibilities. When the men went 
to smoke we used to sit together and talk after dinner, and 
almost always the conversation turned on religious subjects. 

Comtesse M was not only very clever and intelligent, but a 

thorough woman of the world, so that with infinite tact she 
never uttered a word that I could take amiss, in spite of the 
ridiculous things which I said to her on Catholic subjects, which 
I had been told by my Lutheran advisers. When her son came 
in and joined us, he was less indulgent, and I used to see that 
he was convulsed with laughter now and then at my stories of 
popes and priests and nuns, though he tried to look grave and 
remained silent. He evidently thought me extraordinarily simple 



io THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. [April, 

and credulous (not to say stupid) for believing- such things, and 
I felt, inclined to be angry with him, yet could not but admire 
his own strong and honest convictions, so that we remained 
good friends. 

" It was about that time that Monseigneur Mermillod had re- 
turned from Sweden and settled himself at Monthoux, near 
Geneva, a beautiful villa belonging to the Comtesse Elise de 
Montailleur, which she had placed at his disposal. Comtesse 

M invited me to go with her and' pay him a little visit, 

saying it would interest me to hear about his journey to the 
north, and that he would be sure to receive me with kindness. 
I hesitated for a long time before I could make up my mind 
to visit a bishop of so terrible a sect as I still thought the 
Roman Catholics were, but at last yielded to her persuasions, 
saying to myself ' that he could not be more terrible than the 
brigands we had met in Corsica ; that my husband knew where 
I was going and would come and rescue me if necessary, and 

that Comtesse M herself would protect me.' So, the next 

morning, we started through the beautiful country round 
Geneva, with glimpses of the lake at every turn, till we reached 
the Swiss frontier and perceived on a height the church and 
house of Monthoux, partly hidden by the trees. Driving 
through a high gate, we came to a door covered with roses and 
beautiful creeping plants, in the midst of a lovely garden, which 
door opened into a pretty sitting-room on the ground-floor. 
Whilst the servant went to announce us, I made a rapid inven- 
tory of everything in the room so as to try and judge of the 
tastes of the owner. The pictures on the walls and the books 
and papers on the table all pleased my fastidious .taste. Then 
the bishop came in. Comtesse M presented me and he be- 
gan to talk of his Swedish journey, which put me at my ease 
at once. A little later he showed me some Danish newspapers 
which had been sent to him, giving an account of several 
episodes in his Scandinavian mission, and asked me to translate 
them for him, which I gladly undertook to do. But when a 
few words were said about religion I thought I ought to be on 
my guard, and I asked him not to make any attempt to con- 
vert me, as I was firmly resolved never to- become a Catholic. 

He only smiled, and then he and Comtesse M began talking 

of serious things and of those eternal truths which are common 
to both Protestants and Catholics, while I listened with more 
and more interest, thinking of my good and pious mother and 
feeling that, after all, good people felt alike on all really im- 



1891.] THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. n 

portant points. Before our visit ended the bishop had won not 
only my respect but my confidence and affection. 

" A few days later, his secretary, Canon Guillermin, came to 
fetch the translations I had promised him. We were then stay- 
ing at Veyrier-sous-Salere, the great heat of Geneva having 
compelled us to leave that town for the summer. I happened 
to be out when the canon called and he found my husband 
alone. This was really a providential circumstance, for they 
entered at once into a conversation on religious subjects, and my 
husband did not hesitate to pour out freely all his prejudices 
and erroneous ideas as to the Catholic Church ; but only to find 
them dispelled one by one. He never made any objection 
after that to my seeing the bishop, which I often did, either at 
his own house or in the great convent of Mere Emilie, which 
was near our home. Monseigneur Mermillod gave me many 
interesting Catholic books to read, and, as I had nothing else to 
do and the weather was too hot to go out in the middle of the 
day, my husband and I spent more than half our time in read- 
ing. I found out every day not only how absurd my ideas 
were about the ignorance, superstition, and idolatry of Catholics, 
but also that I really knew nothing whatever either of religion, 
philosophy, or history. In the evening I used often to meet and 
talk to the village children, and when I told one of them once 
that he worshipped the Virgin Mary the boy laughed in my 
face, and gave me so clear a theological answer that I was both 
ashamed and confused at my ignorance. Strangely enough, all 
this time I never dreamed of becoming a Catholic myself. I 
studied the question as I should have done natural history or 
any other science, without ever thinking of it as affecting my 
own soul. The good canon came very often to see us both, and 
we became very fond of him and used to enjoy the theological 
disputes we had together, in which, I am bound to say, we 
always came off second-best. But his patience and sweetness 
were unalterable, even when I .used to say to him: 'Yes! I see 
you are right ; but as for me, nothing would ever induce me to 
become a Catholic ! ' 

" At last I became secretly alarmed at the inclination I felt 
growing in me towards Catholicism. I remembered all I had 
been taught about guarding my pure Protestant faith against the 
insidious wiles of the papists ; so that I resolved to go and con- 
sult a noted Lutheran pastor at Geneva, to open my heart 
to him, and get him to reawaken my Protestant zeal and 
strengthen me against the ravening wolves who- were striv- 



12 THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. [April, 

ing to entrap and destroy my soul.' I went accordingly and 
knocked at the pastor's house. It was his wife who opened the 
door, together with half a dozen little children, who were sent 
in different directions to look for their papa. He was not, how- 
ever, to be found ; and his wife then suggested that I should 
tell her what I wanted and she would explain it all to her hus- 
band. But I had imbibed too many Catholic notions about con- 
fession to find such a proposal acceptable, and therefore begged 
her to ask the pastor to come and see me. He did so several 
times; but when I propounded my difficulties to him he 
answered me so vaguely and so unsatisfactorily that I was more 
perplexed than ever. The canon had only asked me to pray to 
God for light, and this I did with my -whole heart. My husband 
was in the same state of mind as myself; yet we neither of us 
thought it would be possible for us to become Catholics, know- 
ing the very strong Protestant feeling in both our families and 
the horror which such a step would inspire in their minds. My 
only consolation was in going to Monthoux and having long 
talks with the bishop, who, in spite of his overwhelming occupa- 
tions, always found time to give me an explanation of my diffi- 
culties and to say a few words of hope and encouragement, 
which were as balm to my troubled spirit. 

" At last I resolved on a desperate measure in order to test 
our real position; and that was, to ask the Lutheran pastor to 
admit us to holy Communion in his church. He, knowing our 
state of mind, hesitated to give us the permission ; and, in fact, 
refused it. Then I said to him: 'Well, I feel I must have 
Communion in some way or other; and if you will not give it 
to us, we will go to Monseigneur Mermillod.' 

"The poor man, alarmed at the bare thought of our leaving 
the Protestant Church, at once fixed on the Sunday following; 
and I went to the bishop to tell him what we had settled to do. 
I implored him to forget, for a moment, that he was a Catholic 
bishop and to advise me only as a kind and disinterested friend; 
for, of course, as a bishop, he could only condemn our intended 
action. He said only a few, wise words and did not attempt to 
dissuade us. 

" On the Sunday following, accordingly, after the table d'hote 
in the evening, when we had made a copious repast, I announc- 
ed to our astonished friends that we were going to the Protest- 
ant temple to make our Communion. 

" In Denmark the custom is as follows : 

" After what is called ' confession,' which consists in an ex- 



1891.] THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. 13 

hortation from the pastor, while the penitents say nothing, ev- 
ery one goes up to the communion table and kneels, while the 
minister pronounces the absolution and imposes his hands on the 
head of each person, after which he gives them the bread and 
wine. 

" But in Geneva, as the pastor's wife told me, this antiquated 
but reverent mode of action is entirely ' out of fashion' Every 
one stays in his or her place while the minister sits on a little 
stool, and then the communicants rise and receive the bread and 
wine standing before him. This was the last time that we either 
of us set our foot in a Protestant church. If we had our doubts 
Before, we then acquired a blessed certainty that the truth was 
only to be found in the Catholic faith. 

" We walked home in silence towards the hotel. It was late 
and the moon had just risen behind Mont Blanc. When we came' 
to the bridge, my husband stopped and, pointing in the direc- 
tion of Monthoux, said to me : ' I have had enough of this. We 
cannot lose our souls to please our families, and cannot resist 
God's grace any longer under the pretext of wanting still further 
time for reflection. I see clearly which is the true church of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, and I am determined to belong to it. If you 
think as I do, let us go to-morrow to Monthoux and ask.mon- 
seigneur to receive us ? ' 

" My joy may be imagined. I had never dared hope that 
my dearest husband would so soon share my convictions ; and now 
all difficulties had vanished, and together we were to take this, the 
most important step in our whole lives ! The next morning my 
husband was not very well, but he would not hear of any further 
delay, so that I went over alone to Monthoux and informed Mon- 
seigneur Mermillod of our determination and the result of our Pro- 
testant Communion. I added our earnest entreaty that he would 
himself receive us into the church. He assented most kindly, 
congratulating me warmly, and fixed on the 26th of October for 
the day of our joint reception. 

"The intervening time was spent in earnest preparation for the 
event. The good canon multiplied himself in giving us the need- 
ful instruction, while the Comtesse M , who was to be my 

godmother, gave me a beautiful rosary and crucifix blessed by 
the pope. 

" The day came, and the little church of Monthoux was gaily 
decked with flowers by our sympathizing friends. 

" My husband made his confession first, I walking up and 
down in an agony outside the church meanwhile, not knowing 



14 THE TRUE STORY OF A CONVERSION. [April, 

how great is the sweetness and ease of that sacrament when once 
it is fully understood. 

" Then on two prie-dieux, before the altar, we knelt and both 
made our abjuration ; after which Holy Mass' was said, and we 
received from the bishop's hand the Bread of Life. Then he 
deigned to give us the sacrament of Confirmation, addressing us 
in that paternal and beautiful language with which those who 
know him are so familiar. 

" Of the intense happiness of that hour I cannot speak. We 
both seemed flooded with grace and blessings, and as if life 
would never be long enough to express our deep and heartfelt 
gratitude. 

" Nine years have now elapsed since that day, and each year 
has only found us more thoroughly contented and more deeply 
grateful for the infinite grace vouchsafed to us, while so many of 
our countrymen are plunged in the darkness of heresy and 
schism." 

It is almost impossible for English or Americans, who see and 
hear so much of Catholicity, and so many of whom have some 
friend or relation in that faith, to believe the amount of ignor- 
ance, ^prejudice, and actual violence which exist in the northern 
countries of Europe against the Catholic Church. All we can do 
is to pray, and that earnestly, that the light may once more be 
vouchsafed to all "who sit in darkness and the shadow, of death," 
so that in God's good time all may be one in faith and hope 
and in that divine charity which " hopeth all things," " believeth 
all things," and which "never faileth." 

MARY ELIZABETH HERBERT. 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 15 

A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 

I. 

THE smile grew broader as Miss Garrison progressed through 
page after page of the voluminous letter, and by the time she 
read " Yours ever faithfully, Addie," it had developed to the 
extent of showing a set of very regular teeth of perfect white- 
ness. There was a merry twinkle in her eye also. In this 
good-natured merriment there was the faintest suggestion of 
cynicism. 

" So you have gone the way of the flesh, have you ? that 
is, of young and pretty feminine flesh," she thought to herself, as 
she tossed the letter on her writing-table. " I told her she 
would be engaged before the close of her first season, and she 
is. So much for my prophetic instinct. She was just the kind 
of a girl to fall in love with something. I suppose you have 
got to be congratulated, and, judging from the description which 
you give of your ' young man,' I think I can offer my felicita- 
tions with a good conscience. Let me see : ' tall, broad-shoul- 
dered, massive without being bulky, gray eyes that shade into 
violet.' O Addie!" and the white teeth flashed into view again, 
"I am afraid they are a watery light blue." 

Then she went on to herself with the phrases of the letter : 
" His features, not very sharply cut, are strong, and his mouth 
and chin are very handsome indeed; hair light brown, thick 
but fine and glossy, and with a waviness to it ; and his com- 
plexion bronzed but clear." 

Miss Garrison went over these details with great relish, and 
really tried to build up an image of the man to whom her 
friend had entrusted her heart, although such a process is al- 
ways unsatisfactory. " I wish she had sent a photograph with 
the description," she said tq herself. " No doubt she meant to 
be accurate. That remark about his ' not very sharply cut 
features,' with the supplementary one that ' his mouth and chin 
are very handsome indeed,' and the painful silence about Mr. 
Paul Arkenburgh's nose inclines me to the belief that it may 
be a good, honest turned-up one. I am sure Addie would not 
have omitted some word about it if it had been a definite nose 
of any other kind. Well, it would have to be almost a broken 



1 6 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

nose not to be amply compensated for by ' eyes that shade into 
violet' and a stunning mouth and chin. It is a dreary waste of 
countenance, indeed, which handsome eyes cannot redeem, and 
I have seen a fine mouth and smile make a perfectly ugly man 
fascinating. So, if Addie ha$ not hopelessly idealized her 
Launcelot, I should think he would do, as far as looks go." 

" By the way," she continued, in analytical revery over her 
friend's letter, " she hasn't said a word about his intelligence 
or his moral character. That he is a model of virtue is taken 
for granted, I suppose, and that he has been employed for some 
time as confidential clerk in the same office with Addie's father 
must be considered as a voucher for good business qualities at 
least. Nowadays that counts more than a taste for literature or 
philosophy. So I think on the whole I may congratulate you, 
Mrs. Paul Arkenburgh that is to be, with an approving con- 
science. I should have had to do it anyhow, but it is nicer 
to do it without having to say to one's self: 'What in the world 
could she have found in that man ? ' : 

Miss Garrison, having analyzed herself into this frame of mind, 
sat down and wrote straightway a sympathetic little note of 
felicitation to Miss Archer on having reached that delightful 
stage of young womanhood where an engagement ring on the 
finger notes a circumscription of horizon but a great access of 
delight within the contracted sphere. 

The two girls had been at Vassar together, and were very 
good friends despite a radical difference in temperaments. Miss 
Garrison felt to herselt that there was much in Addie Archer 
which the girl could have lacked advantageously, but there was 
much there which appealed to her. Miss Archer was a pretty 
blonde, quick and lively, and with a pronounced disposition to 
enjoy life as thoroughly as possible which made her forgivably 
frivolous. But constant high spirits are such a grateful thing in 
a friend, outside of a lachrymose or serious juncture, that they 
are recognized as a virtue. 

Miss Garrison was a young woman of character and ideas. 
She was quite capable of cutting her hair short and devoting 
herself to female suffrage if the admission of women to the 
polls should strike her as a desirable thing for her sex. For- 
tunately, nothing like this had ever struck her. She dominated 
her sprightly friend by the superior force of her will, and it had 
seemed the most natural thing in the world that Addie should 
have dutifully submitted to her a close description of the young 
man who had won her. 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 17 

After they were graduated at Vassar, Miss Garrison had 
gone to Europe with her uncle, who was her guardian and 
greatest friend. Nearer relatives she had not. She enjoyed an 
income ample enough for her individual needs, though not large 
enough to give her the prestige of an heiress. It was at Cannes 
that she received this letter from Addie Archer. After a few 
weeks there they were to go to Florence, Naples, Rome, and 
Venice ; then back to America. 

The Archers were people who were almost in the inner cir- 
cle of New York society. Miss Garrison was quite inside the 
invisible lines which hedge about that small, exclusive body from 
friction with the coarser outside people, who, poor things ! are 
doomed, not to " outer darkness," but to that gray mist which 
lies round and about the fancied sphere of golden light in which 
the elect of the great world rejoice and have their being. 

Mr. Archer was apparently a successful business man, and 
there was a well-founded hope in the hearts of his wife and 
daughter that some day, and that a not very distant one, they 
would reach the round of the social ladder which was the object 
of their ambitions. 

Mr. Archer was the president of a line of surface cars and 
Paul Arkenburgh was a confidential clerk in the company's 
office. Young Arkenburgh owed his promotion to the influence 
of Mr. Archer, who had recognized "his excellent business quali- 
ties, and by his recommendation and praise of the young man's 
clear head, fidelity to work, and integrity had secured his 
prompt advancement. Arkenburgh was more than grateful for 
this generous patronage. A disposition of great intensity and 
much warmth was somewhat masked in him by the reserve 
which so frequently accompanies great force of character. But 
gratitude with him was not an emotion to begin yesterday and 
end to-day. The sense of a kindness done to him abode in his 
soul with a fixity as tenacious as that of honor in the soul of 
a gentleman. 

Mr. Archer's interest in his promising clerk was not exhibited 
merely in their business relations. He frequently took him to 
his place at Irvington, and the young man gradually acquired a 
familiar footing in the family. When Paul Arkenburgh realized 
that the pretty, frolicsome daughter of his employer was the 
one fair maid to make " this and that other world " for him, 
before speaking to Addie Archer he had frankly spoken to the 
girl's father to learn whether he would object to receiving him 
as a son-in-law. 



1 8 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

To Mr. Archer's credit, although he had counted on a more 
distinguished alliance for his only child than one with his own 
clerk, he was too sensible a man to undertake to shape the 
destiny of the girl in contradiction to her wishes. Moreover, 
he not only had really a regard'for Arkenburgh, but he detected 
in him those qualities which require only opportunity to lead 
to success. It was with a quiet conviction of his own foresight 
in regard to Paul's future that he bade him urge his- suit with 
Miss Archer, and assured him that, if he found favor with the 
girl, he had nothing worse to anticipate than Mrs. Archer's dis- 
appointment. 

That worthy creature, working to break down the barriers 
which barred her entrance to the land of promise held by the 
chosen few, had waited for an influential son-in-law as a useful 
and expected auxiliary. She was not likely, then, to see her 
daughter marry Mr. Archer's clerk with perfect acquiescence. 

" But if Addie says ' Yes,' and you have me and her to back 
you, the mother will have, to come down, that is all," said Mr. 
Archer, with a nice estimate of the situation. 

What Addie said we already know from the warm letter to 
Miss Garrison announcing her engagement. It was written and 
sent off the day following a very charming interview with Mr. 
Paul Arkenburgh in the conservatory. That the strong, monu- 
mental young man should have won her airy fancy was one of those 
surprises which Cupid sometimes works for his own amusement 
and the wonder of the world. That a severe, earnest young 
fellow should lay his strongly beating heart at the feet of a gay, 
volatile girl was, on the other hand, a venture in love so much 
in the order of masculine selections for wifehood as to occasion 
no surprise in any one who has marked the course of love's 
currents, in the human male. 

It may be said here, however, that the thought which oc- 
curred to many minds when they received the news, to wit : 
that Arkenburgh had viewed the young girl in connection with 
her father's bank account, was entirely wrong. Paul had fallen 
as honestly in love as a healthy young man, heart-free, possibly 
could. Had Addie Archer been a shop-girl it would not have 
affected his suit in the least. He loved the bright, pretty creature, 
and men of his stamp, when they love, marry for it. He had 
too much confidence in his own ability to compass the goods of 
fortune to make their presence in the person of his beloved any- 
thing that could be called an inducement. Miss Archer had not 
enlarged upon his personal attractions to any extent in her letter 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 19 

to Miss Garrison. Paul Arkenburgh's grayish eyes did deepen 
into an exquisite violet, and though his nose was one of those 
resolute features which present more determination than form it 
was not ugly. The sturdy, broad-shouldered man, with the clear 
mastery in the expression of his gray eyes and the strong, 
square chin, with a mouth that resolved itself into an exceedingly 
winning smile, was to any woman's eyes a wonderfully attrac- 
tive youth. 

They loved each other so much that they were glad to rise 
earlier that they might the quicker renew the consciousness of 
how sweet it was. Thus the commencement of love's young 
dream was fair and smooth. 

II. 

Four months later, at the beginning of June, Kate Garrison 
and her uncle Hartwell returned to America as a large number 
of their compatriots were drifting across the ocean to Europe. 
Miss Garrison was not sorry to be back on her native shores 
once more. She had enjoyed her pleasant wanderings on the 
Continent in the genial companionship of an uncle who found in 
his niece such a reproduction of his cherished sister, the mother, 
of the girl, that he could not be kind enough to her. But she 
wanted to see old friends and old scenes. She was to re- 
main with her uncle for a fortnight, and then she had promised 
Miss Archer to put in a few weeks with her at Newport. 

It was only the second day after her return that she found 
herself in the lower part of the town. A very late wedding at 
Trinity Church had drawn her thither, and after it was over she 
decided, to go to her uncle's office on Broad Street and see if 
there were any prospect of his returning home with her, at 
least after luncheon. 

She found him bundling together two or three papers with 
heads neatly written in red ink, his hat on, ready to go out. 
He greeted her warmly, and when he had heard why she came 
said dubiously and with regret: 

" I have got to go to court, for there is every reason to 
think that a case of mine will be reached this morning. But it 
is not certain, and, if it does come up, there is a chance of 
old Wiggins getting another postponement. How would you 
like to go to court with me, and if the case is put off, or doesn't 
come up at all to-day, I'll go home with you. Were you ever 
in a court ? " 

"No, never,'' she replied, "and I had rather go than not." 

VOL. LIII. 2 



20 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

So Mr. Hartwell stuck two or three of the documents into 
the inside band of his hat and then set that rather antiquat- 
ed article with much precision on his head. They left the of- 
fice together, walked up Broadway and along Park Row un- 
til they came to City Hall Park, which they crossed. Miss 
Garrison next found herself entering a square brown-stone 
building, to the second floor of which they were borne in a 
lift. The Court of Special Sessions was on this floor, at least 
that part of it in which Mr. Hartwell had, or expected to 
have, his case. 

It was a large square room, with the sunlight streaming 
in from long windows, .which were open to allow the soft air 
to circulate through the room. At the end, to the left of 
the door, was the judge's seat with some red stuff draped 
back of it against the wall. Miss Garrison, felt that the dig- 
nity of the law would not have been impaired at all if the 
red drapery, had not been so obviously dusty. 

In front of the judge's desk, which stood on a platform 
two or three feet high, was an enclosure where the clerk, 
the district- attorney, and other court officials were. At the 
right of this space was the jury-box, in which twelve discon- 
solate-looking men were sitting in various stages of relaxation. 

Outside this enclosure was a larger space with benches in 
it, which was barred off by another railing from the last sec- 
tion of the court-room. Back of this was what looked like a 
large wardrobe. It was the enclosure in which the prisoners 
were kept when brought from their cells until they had to ap- 
pear before the court. 

Miss Garrison looked about the place with its cheaply fres- 
coed walls and long windows, and felt it was rather a mean-look- 
ing court-room. The people in it did not impress her much 
more favorably. They had a cheap look, too, and she began to 
think that those who attend the sessions of justice, even as 
spectators, are not drawn from the cream of humanity. 

Her uncle had put her in the enclosure just below the judge's 
desk. He told her his case was to come on next, and that she 
would not have to wait very long. The judge was a rather fine- 
looking man. He was tall and portly, and though his hair was 
liberally sown with gray he did not seem more than forty-five 
or six. He wore moustaches, had large, bright eyes, and also 
had a fashion of gnawing the finger-nails of a white, shapely 
hand. He was c4ean-shaven with the exception of his mous- 
taches. 



I 89i.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 21 

Miss Garrison did not have to wait long. She saw her uncle 
rise and address some remarks to the court. Then another 
lawyer got up and addressed remarks to the court. From what 
was said by the judge, Miss Garrison gathered that the case 
was put off till some other time. She saw her uncle put his 
papers promptly into his high-hat and pick up his cane. 

At that moment a noise and slight commotion at the other 
end of the court-room attracted her attention. She glanced that 
way and saw a tall, broad-shouldered young fellow walking 
down the aisle. He carried himself with notable dignity. Straight 
as an arrow, with a set expression on his face, and his resolute 
eyes betraying a stanch unacceptance of his surroundings, he 
approached the railing in front of the judge's desk like one who 
had come to call him to stern account. 

There was something in his carriage and looks which excited 
Miss Garrison's curiosity. 

"What is he going to do?" she whispered to her uncle, who 
had approached her side. She delayed, her gaze fastened on the 
young fellow. 

" He is going to be done, I believe," said her uncle with 
grim humor. " He stole a lot of money, and he is to be sen- 
tenced ' " 

A thief! Her first thought was that he looked like a man 
who would steal a great deal of money if he stole any. He did 
not suggest petty larceny in the least. But her next thought, 
as clear and strong as a logically deduced judgment, was that 
the young man had stolen nothing. His face, his clear, unflinch- 
ing eye, the calm dignity of his fine mouth and square chin, the 
character of the broad, smooth forehead, and, more than all, the 
peculiar dignity with which he carried himself made it a matter 
of no doubt to her mind that he was guiltless. Her intuition 
told her this. 

His eyes were fixed calmly on the judge : not defiantly, not 
resignedly only unshrinkingly, and with a sense of contained en- 
durance as of one who assists at a necessary but painful cere- 
mony. . There was not a flicker of change in the strong face as 
the learned judge declared that after an impartial trial he had 
been convicted of a gross breach of trust and had been adjudged 
guilty of having embezzled fifteen thousand dollars. 

" If I am disposed to accord you the lightest sentence which 
the statutes decree, it is because this is your first offence, and that 
your character seems to have been irreproachable before this 
lapse. But the evidence in your case, though circumstantial, has 



22 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

been of a kind to force conviction of your guilt on twelve impartial 
citizens. You have declined to enter any plea either of ' guilty ' 
or ' not guilty.' I sentence you, therefore, to five years of hard 
labor in Sing Sing. I hope that, as you have youth and so 
much that seems praiseworthy in your character, this term 
of imprisonment will not blight your life but may be a safeguard' 
to your future, career when you are released." 

During the slow, measured delivery of the judge's words Miss 
Garrison had not once removed her eyes from the face of the 
man. The longer she looked the more certain was she in her soul 
that he was innocent. At the close of the fatal speech he turned 
with the same calm repose and air of mastery and walked down 
the aisle erect and firm, the officer at his side. Not a shadow of 
emotion had crossed his face. 

" Come ! let us go," exclaimed Miss Garrison to her uncle. 

They followed after the sheriff and his prisoner. Something 
chanced to delay them so that Miss Garrison found herself by 
the side of the sentenced man. Pushed by the crowd behind her 
she was even forced against him for a moment. 

He moved a little, slowly turned toward her, and when he 
saw it was a lady made a slight bow as of apology. 

Her eyes were fixed upon him with a look of interest which 
she did not care to disguise. As he apologized by this 
quiet show of courtesy for something not his fault, his clear eyes 
were turned full upon her own. The girl had a conviction of 
her ability to read character, and the intimate sense that the man 
before her was guiltless of all crime struck her with such force 
that, in an impulse of honest sympathy, she stretched forth her 
hand and, looking straight into his eyes, said in a low, earnest 
voice : ' I believe you are perfectly innocent." 

He took her hand with a respectfully firm grasp, whicji was 
hardly a pressure of the fingers. " Thank you," he said, with 
intense feeling, while his eyes lit up with a light that would have 
confirmed her had she needed confirmation. The soft gray deep- 
ened with feeling. The firm lips relaxed into a softer expression,, 
lending a sudden charm to his rather stern face. She felt the 
full stress of gratitude conveyed by his words and kindled look. 
Then he bent his head slightly again and passed on. 

" My dear," said Mr. Hartwell, with some nervousness, " that 
was a very singular thing to do ! I do not think you should have 
spoken to that fellow at all. Certainly not to tell him that. The 
court has found him guilty. He is a criminal." 

" And I found him innocent," she cried warmly. " Uacle 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 23 

Hartwell, I am sure that he has not done the thing he was charged 
with. I .could not help letting him feel as he stood there, so 
alone and deserted, that there was one soul who believed in him. 
I should have felt like a coward not to have spoken to him as I 
did when I felt it so strongly. There is some mistake, I am sure. 
I would do the same thing again." 

" I am afraid you have made the mistake, my dear. What 
do you know about crime or criminals ? " Mr. Hartwell inquired 
with a proud disdain. 

" Nothing about criminals," she retorted quickly. 

Miss Garrison could not get the thought of the young fellow 
out of her mind. She felt glad that she had happened into the 
court-room and was thus able to say one cheering word to a 
stricken man. How his eyes had lit up as he neither con- 
firmed nor denied her conviction in regard to him ! There had 
been no need of words. 

The next day she eagerly read the morning papers to find out 
who he was and with what he was charged. When she found 
the account and read the prisoner's name she experienced a 
strange shock. It was none other than Paul Arkenburgh ! 

She got other papers of an earlier date to learn all she could 
of his alleged crime. In them she read the story, given at length 
on account of the criminal's engagement to the daughter of Mr. 
Archer, the president of the company from which the money 
had been stolen. It seemed that on a certain day of the week 
the company paid off the men. The money for this was deposit- 
ed in the safe two or three days before, and was put in envelopes 
ready for distribution on pay-day, Monday. 

Friday the money was in the safe. Saturday morning it was 
gone. By a singular coincidence, that same Saturday morning 
one of the men employed in the office, who lived some little 
distance up the Hudson, had noticed Arkenburgh at the window 
of a train going north, which passed the station where he was 
waiting to take the cars into town. Arkenburgh had not seen 
him. 

When this man got to the office he learned that the money 
was taken. Arkenburgh had left the key for the cashier in an 
envelope. Mr. Archer had been ill enough for two days to 
remain at Irvington, and he had not come down that morning. 
He was telegraphed at once that the money had been taken and 
that Paul Arkenburgh, the only one of the clerks who knew the 
combination for the safe, had been there yesterday until the 
office was closed and had been seen by chance that morning on 



24 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

a train going north ! Mr. Archer was asked if they had not 
better telegraph to Albany and the way-stations, ordering 
Arkenburgh's arrest. 

Mr. Archer wrote back that he was too ill to do anything 
himself that day, but to take such measures as they thought 
best 

Thereupon the official did take such measures that Paul 
Arkenburgh was arrested when he was leaving the train at 
Albany. He had seemed disturbed and vexed. He declared 
that it was a mistake and an insult, and that he would explain 
matters to Mr. Archer when he got to New York. 

Despite Mr. Archer's illness, he was at the station to meet 
him, and accompanied him to jail. There he had a long private 
talk with Arkenburgh. 

When Arkenburgh was brought to trial he declined to plead 
" not guilty," refusing to make any answer to the charge. The 
evidence was strongly against him. No one but he knew the 
combination for the safe, except Mr. Archer, who had been con- 
fined to his home for two days before the robbery, and for the 
greater part of the day following it. 

Testimony on all sides was in favor of the fine character 
Arkenburgh had always borne. The most the opposing counsel 
could get against him, as an offset in this respect, was his 
reserve. He seemed a quiet fellow, not accustomed to talk ot 
his plans or views, and yet very thoughtful. 

Everything seemed to tell against him as far as they told 
against any one. The safe had not been broken open. The 
result was his conviction. And Miss Garrison had witnessed the 
closing scene in the drama by being present in court the day 
he was sentenced. 

" It is thought," said the paper which gave the best account 
of the robbery, " that Mr. Archer hoped for Arkenburgh's 
acquittal in view of the fine character he had always borne. It 
is known that he strove to induce the company to decline pro- 
secuting the guilty clerk on the ground that he could probably 
be induced to refund the money.. And here was a strange 
feature in the case. Arkenburgh had nothing with him when he 
was arrested but a small travelling bag, in which there was no 
money. His room had been searched by the detectives, but no 
money found. All he had with him was one hundred and some 
odd dollars in bills, none of which were identified as of those 
stolen from the bank. 

" Arkenburgh must have had an accomplice to whom he en- 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 25 

trusted the money. He was not known to have any woman 
friend who could have assisted him. There was no woman in 
the case, apparently." 

"Paul Arkenburgh is innocent !" Miss Garrison exclaimed 
aloud upon finishing the paper. " But who could have taken 
the money, then ? Why did he say he could explain it all to 
Mr. Archer, and then decline to make any answer to the 
charge." 

She sat motionless, the paper in her lap, thinking very in- 
tently. For fully half an hour she remained quiet, her mind 
working, at the problem with great activity. She tried to divest 
herself of the idea that Arkenburgh was innocent that she might 
feel the force of the circumstances which had convinced the 
jury of his guilt. But she could not get any hypothesis which 
would make it plausible in this way. Was human nature capable 
of a hypocrisy so deep that this man, convicted of a crime 
which he had committed, and laboring under the sense that he 
had played his game and lost, could have flashed into his 
violet eyes that look of intense, quiet gratitude at her testimony 
of a belief in his innocence ? could have thrown into his voice 
that simple, earnest, manly dignity as he thanked her ? she, a 
stranger whom he had never seen before and could never ex- 
pect to behold again. 

No ! She had not sounded the depths either of human de- 
pravity nor risen to the heights of human rectitude, but there 
could be no sufficient reason for such duplicity as this, she 
thought. 

Then who had stolen the money, and why was this innocent 
man without a protest, without even the usual plea of "not 
guilty," passing to an ignominious punishment that would blast 
his career ? 

There could be no motive but policy or love. Which could 
it have been ? There seemed no room for the first. There ap- 
peared no ground for the second. 

The result of Kate Garrison's long deliberation was that she 
resolved to go to Newport and pay her visit to Miss Archer as 
soon as she had seen one or two legal persons in New York. 

III. 

"Oh! I am so glad to see you, Kate." 

Miss Archer's tone was. warm and eager, but there was the 
sound of tears in her voice as she greeted Miss Garrison. It 
was a week after that young woman's deep cogitation over the 



26 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

case of Mr. Paul Arkenburgh. Before she left New York for 
Newport she had had a long interview with the lawyers who 
had conducted the case against that unfortunate young man. 
At the end one of them had said to her : " It is a pity the 
prisoner did not have you to conduct his defence." 

Miss Garrison had smiled and remarked : " The defence may' 
be possible still." Then she had left him with her belief in the 
young man's complete innocence quite unimpaired and with a 
rather contemptuous opinion of the legal profession. 

She had hardly arrived at the cottage in Newport which Mr. 
Archer had rented for the season and' taken off her things be- 
fore Miss Archer dragged her into her bed -room and told her 
with tears and lamentations, and a touch of indignation, the 
story of the robbery. She was intensely vexed with Arkenburgh 
for exposing her to the mortification of public gossip and a 
scandal which threatened to impair her social interests. 

" You have no doubt of his guilt ? " asked Miss Garrison, 
when Miss Archer had finished her story of the robbery. 

" I wish I could have for my own sake," Miss Archer replied 
bitterly. "It is mortifying to think that one 'has been engaged 
to a thief. Unfortunately, there is no room for doubt. Poor 
papa is quite broken up over the thing. He implores me to be 
less severe in my feelings against Arkenburgh. He was really 
fond of him, and cannot reconcile himself to the thought of such 
perfidy. Oh ! why should I have gotten into such a dreadful 
complication ?" she exclaimed irritably, a look of vexation in 
her face. " It seemed sacrifice enough to marry only a clerk in 
papa's office and then to have him show his appreciation of my 
generous forgetfulness of the difference in our positions by dis- 
gracing himself and me. Isn't it awful, Kate ? O Kate ! don't 
you feel what this is to me ?" 

She looked at her friend imploringly, the flush of mortified 
vanity reddening her cheeks. Miss Garrison hardly knew what 
to say. If the girl believed her lover guilty of theft she could 
not be blamed for feeling so keenly hurt about the matter. But 
even so, Miss Garrison thought, with some severity, perhaps, that 
a more dignified bearing would have seemed better than the ready 
querulousness of outraged pride or vanity. Miss Archer had no 
room for any consideration except her humbled self. 

" Your father was ill at the time this thing happened ? " Miss 
Garrison asked after a moment, in which she had nodded her 
head in a slow, doubtful way, capable of being construed into 
sympathy for Miss Archer. 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 27 

" Yes ; that only made it worse. It seems as if Arkenburgh 
were taking advantage of papa's absence " 

" What was the matter with your father ? " inquired Miss 
Garrison with kindly interest. 

" He had a severe attack of rheumatism i-n his leg so that he 
could not move. He was unable to leave his room, and it was. 
only by the greatest effort that he could get to town to see Paul 
after he was brought back from Albany. But he would go to 
New York to see him. He did his best to prevent the company 
from pushing the case, he was so lenient toward Arkenburgh. 
Papa really made him. It was through him that Paul was so 
rapidly advanced. Don't you see how much worse that made it 
seem in him to act so shamefully ? " 

Miss Garrison did not make an immediate answer. She only 
took *her friend's hand and held it in her own. 

Then she said quietly : " Do you love him still, Addie ? " 

Miss Archer raised her head indignantly, with the tear-drops 
clinging to the lashes of her eyes, and said, rather viciously : 
" Love a thief? Love a man who has been as ungrateful and 
cruel as that ? My shame and wonder is that I could have ever 
loved any one who could be capable of such things. At first I 
did not believe it, and wanted to go to him and ask him how he 
could have done such a thing," she went on with charming con- 
sistency. " But papa would not hear of it. He cannot bear to 
have the subject mentioned. Once when I spoke of Arkenburgh 
as a ' thief papa reproached me quite strongly for it. He said 
that Paul had always been kind to me and that it was unwomanly 
to throw stones at him when he was down. As if making me a 
byword were not doing, enough to offset any little good-natured 
kindness before," she exclaimed in another, burst of indig- 
nation. 

" Supposing it were all a mistake, and Mr. Arkenburgh were 
proved perfectly innocent," said Miss Garrison soothingly; 

"How can it be proven when they have tried him and found 
him guilty?" the other cried impatiently. "It is foolish to pity 
him or make such suppositions about him. No ; I do not care 
for him and I wish I had never seen him." 

" I am sorry for you, Addie," said Miss Garrison, " but it 
would be much worse if you still loved him, or if you had any 
doubt about his guilt. You will soon forget him. Do not 
think about him any more. These things have only to be lived 
down, and they are lived down pretty quickly in America. 
Everybody will sympathize with you. We won't talk about it 



28 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April,, 

any more) but just have as jolly a time as we can this summer. 
You must go out just as much as possible, and act as if this 
had never occurred." 

Then Miss Garrison began asking about friends and what kind 
of a season it was at Newport, etc., until she had brought Miss 
Archer to a more cheerful mind. After a little while, on the plea 
of fatigue, she bade her friend " good night," and retired to her room, 
glad to get by herself and think. Her fancy flew from the picture 
of the querulous girl full of wrathful feeling for her former lover to 
that lover as she had seen him, his eyes growing dark with the 
intensity of his gratitude for her declaration of belief in his inno- 
cence. He was in a prison now, coarse clothes, with stripes of 
ignominy on them, presenting him as an offender against society.. 
She found herself more in sympathy with the man who was a 
stranger to her' than with the petulant girl whom she called 
her friend. 

" You are innocent ! " she cried vehemently to herself, " and if 
I can help to prove you so I will." And Miss Garrison had 
the elements in her of almost quixotic devotion when her judg- 
ment and her feeling were alike touched. She had not been 
in Newport more than a day or two before she found an oppor- 
tunity to converse with Mr. Archer alone. It was something she 
had desired ever since her arrival. Miss Archer had been invited 
at the last moment to take a place left vacant in a coaching 
party, and had accepted with much pleasure on her friend's insis- 
tence that she should go. Mrs. Archer was sick with a headache, 
but she told Miss Garrison not to forego the afternoon drive on 
that account. Whereupon that young lady had proposed to 
Mr. Archer to accompany her, and to her surprise he had 
consented. 

The carriage bowled over the road along the cliffs, the velvety 
softness of the sea-air gently fanning their faces, while the blue 
water broke with a lisping contentedness upon the shore. Sud- 
denly, after a slight pause, Miss Garrison said : 

" I suppose you were awfully vexed by the conduct of your 
clerk, Mr. Archer, weren't you ?" 

A look of pain shot for a moment over the ruddy face of 
Mr. Archer and his brow contracted. His lips also were pressed 
tightly together for a moment. Then he said slowly : 

" Yes, more than can be imagined. It is an exceedingly 
painful subject. My daughter's relation to the young man made 
it doubly trying. Nobody would have suspected him of such 
a thing. But it is done, and there is nothing more to 



1891] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 29 

be said about it. It is too painful to be talked about, Miss 
Garrison. I rarely allude to the subject. There is no use in it 
now." 

"There is only one thing I wish you would tell me, Mr. 
Archer, and then we will let the subject drop. Why did he say 
when he was arrested that he would explain everything satisfac- 
torily and then, after he had come back, refuse to' say a 
word ? " 

Mr. Archer glanced at the girl, but she wore an expression 
of idle feminine interest only. Then he said : 

" He may have had some thought of defence which no one 
knew. He was quite excited when I saw him on his return to 
New York. But he agreed with me that in view of what had 
happened the simplest thing was to submit to whatever the trial 
would lead to. I did my best to get the company not to prose- 
cute the case, but could not prevail with the managers. He 
was a fine young fellow, and no one had a word against him 
before this trouble, ^ut, as I said, it is too painful to dwell 
upon, Miss Garrison, and I shall really feel obliged if you will 
quietly banish the whole thing as far' as possible. We never 
speak of it now. It is done and cannot be recalled. He was 
a fine fellow." 

He sighed heavily as he finished speaking and passed his 
hand over his forehead, which had contracted again. During the 
rest of the drive he was rather silent. Miss Garrison felt that 
she would gather very little from any conversation on the sub- 
ject, even had it been possible to broach it again after her host 
had so pointedly begged that all allusion to it should be 
avoided 

Miss Archer returned from her expedition in better spirits 
than her friend had yet experienced in her. In the course of 
her talk with Miss Garrison she mentioned meeting a Mr. Cald- 
well from the West, who was visiting a friend in Newport. 
According to her report, he was a young man of thirty, of 
agreeable manners, and rich. He had evidently awakened a 
pleasant feeling in Miss Archer. 

The next day the two girls went to the Casino in the morn- 
ing to attend the tennis championship games. It was a soft,, 
gray morning, the air cool with soft white clouds floating in the 
sky. Miss Garrison was absorbed to a degree she would not 
have cared to admit to everybody with the thought of discover- 
ing the truth, about Paul Arkenburgh. She must find out Be- 
lieving him innocent, she felt the injustice of the punishment 



3<D A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

he was undergoing, and he had no friends. She did not analyze 
very closely whether the personality of the stalwart young clerk 
had helped to arouse this desire to vindicate him or not. 

On the other hand, if she were utterly mistaken in which 
case Paul Arkenburgh was, to her mind, much worse than a 
thief she wished to know it too, because then she could dispel 
the thought of assisting him. If he had stolen the money she 
could not feel any interest in him, for he was an awful hypocrite 
as well as a thief. He had conveyed to her a sense of innocence 
in a way that could only have been the deepest, craftiest dis- 
simulation if he were guilty. Hypocrisy was a more odious crime 
to her than larceny. 

But in the meantime she could not think of any measure to 
pursue for the moment. As the subject was barred in the Archer 
family, there was no hope of getting any clue by talking about 
the matter. So she resolved to enjoy her visit to her friend and 
to help Addie as much as she could. 

The grounds of the Newport Casino, are very lovely, and 
they never show to better advantage than on a soft gray sum- 
mer day. A crowd of men and women were gathered about 
the tennis court and wandering about on the sward with a 
Watteau-like effect. The son of a New England millionaire was 
playing with a college champion from England, and the interest 
shown by the young women was not entirely due to the skill 
displayed by the players. 

The two girls .were standing a little outside of the crowd 
when Miss Archer greeted with some warmth a young fellow 
who strolled up. She presented him to Miss Garrison. It was 
Mr. Caldwell. He was a slender young man in a white flannel 
suit with white shoes. He was good-looking and talked ani- 
matedly. Miss Garrison was only moderately interested in him, 
but she saw that her friend considerably brightened under his 
advent. 

He asked permission to introduce a friend of his, also from 
the West, a Mr, Derwent. It was the first time he had been in 
Newport, and Miss Garrison graciously showed him about the 
Casino. He was a business man who had been successful in 
some ventures, and even in his outings and moments of recrea- 
tion he showed an inclination to touch on matters connected 
with profit and loss which amused the young woman. 

After a slight break in their conversation, he said to Miss 
Garrison : " Is the young lady with you the daughter of George 
Archer ? " 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 31 

" Yes/' said Miss Garrison. 

" Was she very badly broken up by the way Arkenburgh 
acted?" 

" Of course it was a great trial," she answered. "The 
young man never gave any indication of such a nature, and' 
naturally it was a terrible shock to a girl just engaged to- 
him." 

" I was very much surprised when I heard of it," Mr. Der- 
went continued. " I knew Arkenburgh slightly. I thought at 
one time he might go into a scheme with me. He was a fine 
business fellow, and I felt he would get ahead. The man who- 
introduced me to him tried to get him to join me. It had' 
some chance of turning the wrong way, and I suppose Arken- 
burgh did not want to risk what money he had laid by and 
throw up a good position. But he was thinking about it a good 
deal, for this other fellow told me only a little while before this 
robbery Arkenburgh had spoken to him about it again and 
wanted to know when I was coming East. I was in Albany at 
the time, and my friend told Arkenburgh that I would treat 
with him if he chose to see me. Perhaps he thought stealing 
fifteen thousand dollars was a surer thing than running 'the risk 
of losing two or three thousand," Mr. Derwent added with a 
laugh. 

Miss Garrison's interest had been aroused from the moment 
Paul Arkenburgh's name was mentioned, and she had listened 
most attentively. 

" Do you think he stole the money ? " she asked quietly. 

"Why, I thought they proved it at the trial, didn't they?" 
he returned nonchalantly. "You can imagine I had no such- 
opinion of him when I wanted him to go into a scheme with 
me." 

"There was strong circumstantial evidence, I believe," said 
Miss Garrison carelessly. Then, after a moment's pause she asked L 
" Was there any reason he could have had for not wishing it 
known that he was thinking of going into this scheme of 
yours ? " 

" Oh ! I don't know, unless he felt people might think he 
had a taste for speculation. The risk might have seemed too 
great for a man with not much money to go into it. But he 
would have made a good thing out of it. It is turning just as. 
I expected, and I will get good returns for my investment." 

" You were in Albany about the time he got into this, 
trouble, then ? " she said. 



32 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [April, 

"Just at that time. I had been there a week when I read 
the newspaper account of the robbery." 

" And your friend told you that Mr. Arkenburgh had talked 
with him. about a wish to see you in regard to this matter?'' 

" He said he wanted to know when I would come East, and 
I suppose he was thinking about this. It was only about two 
months before that I had broached it to him." 

" And you say your friend told him you were in Albany 
then ? " 

" Yes. Morris told him he had better not wait too long if 
he meant to go into it with me, and then Arkenburgh went 
into himself again and said no more about it one way or the 
other. He never talked much about anything." 

The conversation turned to something else. Miss Garrison 
was a little absent-minded at moments. She was saying to her- 
self: " This would account for his going to Albany just at the 
time of the robbery, which seemed so suspicious." Arkenburgh 
had declined to give any reason for this trip, and the prosecution 
had made quite a point of it. It had seemed strange to Miss 
Garrison, but now she felt that she had discovered a reason for 
this. He had gone there to confer with Derwent. With his 
usual secretiveness he had said nothing of his purpose. Then, 
when he was arrested for the robbery, the very fact that he 
kept silent on a point which seemed to tell against him fitted in 
with her idea that he was innocent, but for some reason cared 
to do nothing to clear himself of the charge. There could 
be. no motive in this except to screen some one. Who could 
it be ? 

She recalled his indignation oh being arrested. Then he had 
seen Mr. Archer and had said or done nothing to prove his 
innocence afterward. Could it be that Mr. Archer had made it 
clear to him that defence was useless ? 

She was very thoughtful while they were at the Casino. 
That night, when Miss Archer and herself were sitting together 
before going to bed, she strove to placate that young woman 
by a hearty sympathy with her hopes. At last she said care- 
lessly : 

"Adclie, was Mr. Arkenburgh of a very generous disposition? " 

" How strange you should take such an interest in that man ! " 
her friend replied, with a touch of the pettish indignation which 
the name of her former lover seemed to always awaken. " I 
thought he was very generous, but he was a reserved man and, 
as a rule, never showed his feelings very much. But it looks 



A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 33 

like generosity, doesn't it, to disgrace himself and thus put me 
and papa and mamma in such a hateful position ? If there was 
anybody he ought to have felt gratitude toward it was certainly 
papa. His advancement was due to papa's taking such an active 
interest in him. No ; I do not think he had any generosity," 
she concluded emphatically. " But why do you take such an 
interest in a thief?" she asked vindictively. 

" It certainly is not because he is a thief," Miss Garrison 
returned with some coldness. " Did. it never strike you as some- 
what surprising that so very exemplary a man should all at once 
steal fifteen thousand dollars ? " 

It was on the tip of her tongue to explain that Mr. Derwent, 
by what he had said to her that day, had confirmed her belief 
in Arkenburgh's innocence. But on second thought she said 
nothing about it. A rather startling suspicion had entered her 
mind while her friend had been speaking. It was one she was 
loath to entertain, but she could not dispel it. 

The time of her visit was drawing to a close. She was not 
sorry. Her interest in Miss Archer had somewhat faded when 
she saw how she bore herself in the matter of Paul Arkenburgh. 
She could not sympathize with the ease with which Miss Archer 
had rallied from her regard for him. Given that he had stolen 
the money, she need not have been so ready to vituperate one 
who had never shown her personally anything but the warmest 
devotion. A little pity would not have been misplaced, Miss 
Garrison thought. 

Another young friend of hers at this juncture afforded her a 
surprise, half pleasant and half a doubtful pleasure. This friend, 
who had rather fallen out of Miss Garrison's sight for some 
months, wrote and asked her to visit her. She was at a country 
residence her family had. Miss Garrison felt a curious sensation 
when she learned that they lived in Sing Sing ! 

Somehow it took a very short time for her to decide on 
accepting it, and. three days after leaving Newport she found 
herself in the same village with Paul Arkenburgh ; she the idle 
summer guest in a handsome house and he the State's prisoner, 
in a suit of brown and black, in the big prison down by the 
river. 

Something like a shudder passed over her as she was whirled 
along in the train by a big gray building with hundreds of nar- 
row windows from which the imprisoned light escaped in a sickly 
glow on the mist of a drizzly evening. She let herself fall back 
with a sigh, when she could no longer see it, into her com- 



34 "HAST THOU SEEN HIM WHOM MY SOUL LOVETH?" [April, 

fortable chair in the Pullman car. Was Arkenburgh innocent ? 
Or was he a cool, unsuccessful criminal, suffering just punishment, 
and she a foolish, quixotic creature of vain imaginings ? She 
could not assent to the latter possibility very well because she 
knew herself too perfectly, "f have good reasons for thinking 
he may be innocent ! " she said to her heart, in rebuttal of the 
idea of foolishness in such an opinion. She did not reflect that 
her first impression of Paul Arkenburgh's innocence was based 
entirely on feeling. Or would she have denied this, and have 
maintained that her firm, quick conviction on that point was an 
intuitional judgment based on premises existent if intangible, and 
deduced therefrom with unconscious logic ? She undoubtedly 

did so feel it. 

JOHN J. A BECKET. 

(TO BE CONCLUDED.) 



"HAST THOU SEEN HIM WHOM MY SOUL LOVETH?" 

(Cant. Hi. 3.) 

Jesus as the Gardener. 

WHOM seekest thou ? Whom wouldst thou bear away 

Within thy close embrace ? 
Who., thinkest thou, would choose the night to stray 

Unto this lonely place ? 

Thine own sweet child, perchance, from thy fond arms 

Escaped in playful mood, 
And wandered, fearing not the night's alarms, 

Unto this garden wood ? 

Mary Magdalen. 

Oh yes ! a wanderer He, indeed, who from Heaven's coast 

Down- gazing on this sin-shamed earth 
Pitied, then fell in love : who knoweth not the cost 

And sharp, deep pang of true love's birth ? 

Methinks the greatness of His love did more exhaust . 

Than life, with all its price, is worth. 
Prithee, didst thoa, perchance, this Lover e'er accost 

Somewhere on this wide, weary earth ? 



I8QI.] "HAST THOU SEEN HIM WHOM MY SOUL LOVETH?" 35 

Jesus. 

The world is full of lovers as of men ; 

And every one, from serf to king, 
Doth judge his own love past all others' ken 

Or e'en of their imagining. 

Nay, more : what lover e'er found what he sought ? 

Herein Ijes love's chief joy and pain : 
That which is past all price to give for naught, 

And yearn for love as great in vain. 


Yet would I know upon whose path thy eager feet 

Press forward in such amorous haste : 
That He hath won such love as thine doth prove a feat 

Of love like God's, as His as chaste. 

Mary. 

Dost not know HIM ? Thou speakest but in jest. 

'Tis He who deigned to look at me, and won 
By that sweet glance more love than heart confessed 

Since time its tireless course began to run. 

O hour of wondrous bliss and love untold ! 

In Heaven I'll smell the od'rous spikenard still. 
My contrite eyes may now naught else behold ; 

His image dear doth all their vision fill. 

No music, tho' of angels, to my list'ning ear 

May bring its charm. He sang a rapt'rous strain 

Which lifted me from hell to Heaven to hear : 
" Of many sins much love doth pardon gain." 

Hast thdu not heard what .all men surely know; 

Aye, every weeping angel in the skies ; 
Glad souls in Limbo, and those steeped in woe 

Beyond the limit where Hope's promise dies ? 

Alack ! He lost what a!4 true lovers lose, 

E'en I. What love, what seek I, more than Life ? 

And such I find not: but yet may not choose 
To die like Him and end the woeful strife. 

VOL. I.III. 3 



36 "HAST THO u SEEN HIM WHOM MY SOUL LO VE TH?" [April* 

What falleth to all lovers Him befell. 

His God-like love was scorned with rare despight, 
E'en direful death. Crown, spear, and torturing nail 

Poured forth His life-blood till His soul took flight. 

fc 

From Paschal moon the silver, shimmering light 

Fell full athwart His Body on the Rood. 
His locks were wet with dews of coming night. 

Himself, the cross, the ground, all drenched with blood. 

The arms that held Him until death did yield 
What never mine ! We bore the priceless load 

Earth gave to Heaven here. This silent field 
Became the grave of earth's own Maker, God. 

They rolled the heavy stone upon my heart; 

Ten thousand worlds as much would never weigh.. 
Yet was I joyful ; since no cunning art 

Could lift that stone and take my Love away. 

Now is the day when these fond eyes should see, 
And mine own hands anoint His blessed clay. 

Alack ! some power hath robbed earth's richest treasury^ 
And rapt the shrine that held my Life away! 

Good sir ! if Him who is all mine hast found, 
And hidden safe till love could claim its own, 

Show me where thou hast laid Him on the ground, 
And I will take Him I who should, alone ! 

Jesus. 
"Mary!" 

Mary. 
" Rabboni ! " 

ALFRED YOUNG. 



1891.] THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. 37 



THE FORERUNNER OF THE METRIC SYSTEM OF 

MEASURES. 

As we make use of a fact, endorse a creed, or utilize an 
invention we frequently lose sight of the mental effort which 
the devising and elaboration cost. In order to rightly appreciate 
what our antecedents have done for us it is well to occasionally 
make a halt in our rapid march long enough to contemplate the 
rise and development of those institutions which are now a part 
of our life which had only the beginnings in theirs. In doing 
this we frequently call up before us names of those long-for- 
gotten, and realize anew who first placed the principal from 
which we are incessantly drawing the interest. 

And now, while many wise men are glorifying the French 
nation for having given us such an elaborate, harmonious, and 
unique system of measures ; while learned bodies throughout the 
land are urging its adoption ; while governments are 'legalizing 
or enforcing its use, should not some mention be made of that 
modest priest who suggested the system long before its Aca- 
demician propounders knew aught of ife ? Judging from the 
life of Gabriel Mouton, he would care but little to have the 
memory of his notable labors revived, but it is due us to know 
who it is that deserves our gratitude, and in rescuing his name 
from oblivion others may be led to feel that if forgetfulness is 
to be their reward some one will find it his pleasure to throw 
aside the surrounding pall and give to their names a newness 
of life. 

In order to fully appreciate what our hero proposed and ac- 
complished it is necessary to go back to the beginning of the 
seventeenth century. At that time the sciences were only on 
the brink of being ; for it would be inaccurate to give the name 
of science to that mass of hypothetical speculation of which all 
natural philosophy previously consisted. The purpose of the 
ancients was to divine natural causes, not to investigate them. 
The art of examining nature in order to constrain her to reveal 
her secrets was unknown ; it remained for Galileo to make this 
discovery. He showed that the human mind is too feeble and 
too evanescent to progress by virtue of its own strength through 
the labyrinth of natural facts ; that it is necessary at every step 
to classify those phenomena which approximate to one another. 



38 THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. [April, 

To this Bacon added that, in the multiplied opportunities which 
nature offers for inquiry, experiments industriously prosecuted 
are necessary to conduct to a course of new phenomena which 
shall neither entangle nor mislead. 

It was while the sciences were in this formative period that 
Ferrara, a city of Italy, gave to the world one who was to soon 
become famous. At the age of sixteen John Baptist Riccioli 
was admitted into the society of the Jesuits, and before he had 
completed his course of study many regarded with amazement 
the progress which he made. Rhetoric, poetry, philosophy, and 
scholastic divinity were his favorite subjects, and these he was 
soon called upon to teach in the Jesuits' colleges at Parma and 
Bologna. While engaged in teaching he became interested in 
geography and astronomy. These he found so fascinating and so 
promising of rich fruit that he obtained permission from his 
superiors to quit all other employment that he might devote 
himself exclusively to those sciences. 

While studying everything on these subjects that fell in his 
way he met with Eratosthenes Batavorum, by Snellius, a geo- 
meter of Holland. In this book was described the means by 
which Snellius in 1615 determined the length of a degree of 
the earth's meridian, and hence the circumference of the earth. 
This important problem concerning the size and shape of the 
earth had received the earnest attention of Greek and Egyp- 
tian philosophers, and called forth methods puerile and ineffectual 
from Fernel, the court physician to Henry II. of France, and 
the Arabian Caliph Almamon. 

In order to know the length of a degree, it is necessary 
to know the exact latitude of two points on the earth's sur- 
face. The difference in these latitudes will give the ampli- 
tude of the arc which connects the parallels of these points. 
Now, if the linear distance between these parallels be also 
known, the length of one degree will bear the same ratio to 
the length of this arc that one degree bears to the ampli- 
tude of this arc. Therefore this problem is made up of two 
parts : to determine the amplitude of an arc, and to know 
its length. 

It is said that Ptolemy pointed out the fact that in order to 
determine the length of an arc it was not necessary to measure 
along a meridian. Still, no one was willing to accept this belief 
until Snellius demonstrated it to be a fact. He went still further, 
saying that, since it is not absolutely essential to measure on a 
meridian, it is not necessary that the terminal points should be 



1891.] THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. 39 

connected by a straight line, but the line may be broken that 
is, made up of a number of straight lines joined end to end. 
This, perhaps, suggested at once that at least some of the lines 
might have their lengths computed, thereby saving the trouble of 
measuring them. It was, of course, known at that time that in a 
triangle if one side and the angles be given the remaining sides 
can be found. The known side might be short, while the com- 
puted sides could be relatively longer. From this it was but a 
step to realize that a side which has been computed in one tri- 
angle may become the known side in an adjoining triangle, and 
aid in determining the remaining sides of the latter. Thus tri- 
angle could be joined to triangle, link by link, forming what is 
now called a chain or net ; with only one side, called the base, 
determined by direct measurement. 

Snellius measured a base on the frozen meadows of Sverter- 
woude, and laid out a chain of triangles stretching from Alkmaar 
to Bergen. He determined the angles by measurement and the 
sides by computation step by step from the base. Then, know- 
ing the length of each side, the summation of a set of contigu- 
ous lines, gave the length of the broken line joining the terminal 
points. However, these lines, not having the same direction, it 
was necessary to calculate what the length of each line would be 
if it had the direction of the imaginary line which connected the 
two ends ; that is, he found the projection of each line on this di- 
rection, then the sum of these projections gave the distance re- 
quired. With this oblique line and the bearing, it was easy to 
find its projection on the meridian, or the length of the arc 
which united the parallels of the terminal stations. The determi- 
nation of the latitudes gave the amplitude and the length of 
one degree, found as has been intimated. This method, then 
followed for the first time, contains the fundamental principles of 
all subsequent geodetic operations. 

It was the description of these operations which fell into the 
hands of Riccioli, just when he was anxious to make some valua- 
ble contribution to the world's stock of knowledge. He had al- 
ready projected a great work, the Almagestum Novum, following 
in the main the plan of Ptolemy's monumental work, but he 
wished to produce something more than a compilation he would 
hand down some original observations, and thereby stimulate 
others to reap as well as to gather. 

With his mind glowing with such noble aspirations, ready to 
enter upon any investigation which had the promise of results 
worthy of the effort, we find him upon Mount Serra-Paderno, 



40 THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. [April, 

where his order possessed a country place. While here he wrote 
his Astronomia Reformata and Chronologia Reformata. In the 
former he gave the diverse and divergent views of astronomers 
of all ages, and sought by diligent comparisons to bring order 
out of these chaotic beliefs and deduce principles broad enough 
to include all that was meritorious and accurate enough to 
accord with observed phenomena. As one of the divisions of 
his subject included a discussion of solar units, he found a var- 
iety of values for the distance from the sun to the earth and the 
latter's size. Then, as he looked away toward the Ghirlandina, 
that graceful tower of Modena's cathedral, he thought of what 
Snellius had accomplished in far-away Holland. Is it not natural 
that the thought should come to him that perhaps here was 
the desired opportunity to enrich the world's knowledge ? Per- 
haps his value of a degree might emphasize that found by his 
predecessor, and so one more authenticated result could take 
its place in his Reformata. 

In 1645, m connection with Grimaldi, also a member of the 
society of Jesuits, he began the task of measuring the arc be- 
tween Mount Serra-Paderno and Ghirlandina, following in many 
respects the method devised by Snellius, using a measured base 
and joining the terminal points by means of a net of triangles. 
The amplitude of the arc was only one-fourth of a degree, which 
would not establish great confidence in his results, but adverse 
criticism is forestalled by our ignorance as to the length of the 
unit which was employed. 

But, as it frequently happens, the work of Riccioli in this 
direction cannot be estimated by the value of his immediate re- 
sults. As the Chinese pay homage to the parents of a great 
man rather than to his children, so should we honor Riccioli, 
who laid the foundations for him who proposed a decimal metro- 
logy, and not to the French nation which adopted it. 

In the mutual interchange of courtesies a copy of Riccioli's 
work found its way to the College of St. Paul at Lyons, where 
it met at the hands of Gabriel Mouton a cordial reception. Of 
Mouton, unfortunately, but little is known ; we hear of him as 
choir-master at the collegiate church, and only in a few other 
places. He had sent a copy of tables of some trigonometric 
functions to the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and the secretary 
in presenting it to the Academy referred to Mouton as a very 
skilful mathematician. All encyclopaedias seem to be ignorant 
of his existence, and no bibliography gives more than the title 
of the one book which he wrote. This title has an unattractive 



I.89I.J THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. 41 

beginning : " Observationes Diametrorum soils et lunce apparen- 
tium . . . " ; nor is anything of importance referred to until 
after fifty-one words are given. One seldom reads a Latin title 
beyond this point, which explains why so few have noticed that 
" Huic adjecta est . . . una cum nova inensurarum geometri- 
carum idea" and even if one should read all the way through 
it is not probable that any great expectations would be aroused 
by this " nova idea " In recent times, at least, but few persons 
have had the opportunity of even seeing the book, judging 
from its apparent rarity, as evinced in a two years' search 
through the libraries of this country and Europe which revealed 
the existence of only one copy and that one is in a Boston 
library. And a dealer has sought for a year in vain for a copy. 
This scarcity does not detract from the credit due the pro- 
pounder of this " idea," but merely explains why he has been 
obliged to rest in oblivion so long. 

Let us now see what this scheme is which occupies pages 
427-448 of the above-named book. He begins very modestly, 
thinking perhaps others have hit upon a similar system, and 
does not show any desire to contend for priority. He says : 
" Although here matters of measurement are discussed, they 
are not perhaps new to all, from the fact that in the vast 
variety of measures that are in use to-day in all parts of the 
world it is possible that these which I propose may coincide 
with some of them. Nevertheless these measures are new both 
as to their nature and the method by which they are de- 
termined and protected against any danger of alteration." 
Then, appreciating the great advantages possessed by our deci- 
mal notation, he concluded that in his new system ten should 
be the number of times each unit should be contained in the 
next higher. This of itself was a grand proposition, devised 
without any reference to any system then in vogue and totally 
independent of all. 

In addition to this proposal, which alone is worthy of our 
commendation, he went far beyond the expectations of his time, 
by taking the length of his unit from the length of a terrestrial 
degree, using one minute of this degree for his longest unit, the 
milliar. Going down the scale from milliar we come to centuria, 
by hundreds ; decuria, by tens ; and virga, which was to be the 
primal or fundamental unit To know exactly how far to carry 
the subdivision of this unit it was necessary to know the length 
of the degree of the great circle of the earth, for the earth was 
then regarded as the perfect sphere. Just here we see the influ- 



42 THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. [April,. 

ence of our Jesuit astronomer. Mouton says : " Of all the ob- 
servations that I know, ancient as well as modern, those of John 
Baptist Riccioli please me most, both on account of their wonder- 
ful harmony and the singular diligence which the above-men- 
tioned author has exhibited irf treating of them, and also the 
industry manifested in the labor of twelve years, which he bore 
with an unwearied mind for the sake of the truth that was to be 
attained. Indeed, I have such confidence in these observations 
that I should regard my own, if I had any, as inferior to them. 
But hitherto I have been unable to accomplish anything in this 
subject, although I am very fond of such things." 

The twelve years here referred to were occupied by Riccioli in 
collating and comparing ancient earth measurements to see how 
they would harmonize with the work of Snellius or his own. He 
saw in these different results an endorsement of his value for a 
degree, 64,363 Bologna steps. Mouton accepted this value, and 
taking one-sixtieth of 321,815 feet, to which the above is equiva- 
lent, he gave 5363.58 feet as the value of his milliar, and one- 
thousandth of this was 5.36 + , -which represented a virga. With 
wonderful acumen he perceived that this would be too long for the 
.small unit, which would be in frequent demand, and therefore pro- 
posed a second unit one-tenth as long as the virga, which he 
called virgula i saying : " The virga is the smallest among the 
larger measures, and the virgula is the largest among the smaller 
measures." Then realizing that still smaller units might be pre- 
ferable to parts of a larger one, he subdivided the virgula by the 
scale of ten, giving decima, a tenth part; ttntesima, a hundredth 
part, and millesima, a thousandth part. 

This system can be expressed in English equivalents if we 
take the most recent value for the length of a mean degree as 
follows : 

Milliar 72908. inches. 

Centuria ; 7290. 8 

Decuria :....'.. 729 . 08 

Virga 72 . 908 

Virgula 7 . 2908 

Decima . 72908 

Centesima 072908 

Millesima 0072908 

In order to aid in the introduction of his system Mouton as- 
certained the relation between the foot of Bologna and that of 
Paris, perhaps hoping that the French government might see its 
merits and authorize its adoption ; or he might have desired that 



1891.] THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURED. 43 

it receive the commendation of the Academy. To give the reader 
an idea as to the length of the virgula, he had it, with its decimae 
and one decima, divided into centesimae, printed on the margin 
of a leaf, with the naive acknowledgment that it is not given 
with such accuracy that copies could be taken from it as if it were 
a standard, a remark made useless by the careless trimming of 
the binder. 

Just when this scheme suggested itself to Mouton is not 
known, but it was prior to 1665, as some observations in con- 
nection with the fixing of his standards were made in March 
of that year. 

In 1673 Huyghens published his famous treatise concerning 
the movements of pendulums, wishing simply to establish his 
claim to priority in the application of the pendulum to clocks, 
but he had announced his invention to some friends as early 
as 1658, and had made some clocks about this time. Galileo 
had already shown that pendulums were isochronal, and others had 
proven that the squares of the number of vibrations of two 
pendulums are to each other in the reciprocal ratio of their 
lengths; but it remained for the transcendent genius of Mouton 
to combine these principles and establish the fact that the 
length of a pendulum in terms of any given measure which 
makes an oscillation in a fixed time can be made to pre- 
serve that measure and re-establish it should the standard be- 
come damaged or lost a method which was afterwards adopt- 
ed by the English Parliament without any reference to Mou- 
ton, its inventor. He, however, gives due credit to Huyghens 
when he writes : " In making use of the following and similar 
experiments a very exact knowledge is required of the time 
that has elapsed in the meanwhile. In order to obtain this 
knowledge we must have recourse to the clocks of Christian 
Huyghens, which are constructed with hanging weights. 

" This Huyghens was a man of remarkable learning, and one 
to whom posterity will always be largely indebted for his 
great assistance in mathematics. His clocks excel all others, 
and correspond so nearly to the daily revolution of the sun 
that nothing more accurate can be hoped for." 

So with a clock, which he regulated so as to record ex- 
actly twenty-four ^hours while the star Sirius was making a 
complete revolution, he made a number of experiments which 
resulted in his knowing the length of the pendulum *m terms 
of the virgula, which made an oscillation in a second of time 
as indicated by this clock. Nor did he stop here. He was so 



44 THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. [April, 

convinced of the accuracy of his work and the correctness of 
his method that he suggested that all nations could determine 
the relation of their measures to his by simply determining the 
length of the seconds' pendulum in terms of their units that is, 
to use the pendulum as a go-between. That one may not doubt 
his honesty, he gave in detail the observations themselves. 

If we should compare this system with the metric measures 
of length, we should find at least two important points of supe- 
riority : the unit is derived from the length of one minute, and is, 
therefore, an exact part of a degree, quadrant and circumference, 
while the metre has nine degrees as its smallest multiple ; then 
the names are etymologically far superior centuria, by hun- 
dreds, is better than hektometre ; and, besides, all of the terms 
are from one language and not from two Greek in addition to 
Latin. Then, again, those who use the metric system find that 
the metre is rather long for the class of measures which we ex- 
press as fractional parts of a foot, while it is too much of a jump 
to go to the centimetre and very few use the decimetre. The 
virga, about six feet, would come in very well for expressing 
distances for which we now use yards. If these views be cor- 
rect, Mouton's duplex units, virga and virgula, are preferable to 
the metre. 

It is hoped that this establishes the claim of Mouton as the 
originator of the decimal system and the inventor of a method 
of preserving linear units by means of the pendulum. The effort 
has also been made to show that he acknowledged the assistance 
which he received from Riccioli ; how Riccioli did not forget to 
mention Snellius, and the latter in the very name of his book 
erected a monument to Eratosthenes, the first to attempt to 
measure the length of a degree. But have Mouton's successors 
shown equal magnanimity ? If so, would his name have been so 
long forgotten and his book preserved by accident only ? 

To answer the first question we quite naturally turn to the 
history of the metre. The day around which the lustre of this 
work clings is June 17, 1799. After nearly nine years' labor an 
arc of the meridian had been measured, the earth's quadrant 
had been computed, and now a bar whose length was 
one-ten-millionth of this quadrant was formally presented 
to the two Conseils du Corps Legislatif, It is quite 
natural that the members of the Commission des Poids et Mesures 
should rejoice over the conclusion of their work, a work which 
readily sustained the severest criticism ; nor is it surprising that 
their spokesman should say: "To employ as a fundamental unit 



1891.] THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. 45 

of all measures a type taken from Nature herself, a type as un- 
alterable as the globe which we inhabit, to propose a metric 
system all of whose parts are intimately interdependent, 
and whose multiples and sub-divisions follow a natural pro- 
gression, simple, easy to comprehend, and always uniform, 
is certainly an idea beautiful, grand, sublime, worthy of the 
brilliant century in which we live." In the detailed account of 
the operations which were then given there is interspersed a 
large amount of praise for the participants from Talleyrand, 
who laid the proposition before the Assembly on May 8, 1790, 
down to the laborers who carried in the prototype on this 
august occasion. But one looks in vain for even a mention 
of the humble, conscientious, credit-giving priest who was the 
first to propose "a type taken from Nature herself, as unalterable 
as the globe which we inhabit." 

Was Mouton entirely forgotten in the interval which elapsed 
between the publication of his book and the adoption of the 
metric system ? To answer this question it has been necessary 
to look through the entire literature of astronomy and geodesy 
covering this period. 

In volume ii. of the Memoirs of the Paris Academy we find 
an account of the observations made in 1672, 1673, and 1674 
by Picard, that brilliant priest of Rille. Picard was elated over 
the success of his geodetic work which in itself amounted to 
but little, but which gave Newton a value for the earth's radius 
which enabled him to establish the hypothesis of universal gravi- 
tation. As this fact just alluded to is the most notable instance 
that ever occurred of theory pausing for practice, we may be 
pardoned for introducing it here. 

Newton had attempted to prove his theory of universal gravi- 
tation by comparing the force of gravity on a body at the 
moon's distance with the power required to hold the moon in 
her orbit. He used in his computations the diameter of the 
earth as somewhat less than 7,000 miles. The result failed to 
show the analogy he had conceived, but twenty years later, 
when Picard's length of a degree was made known, increasing 
the diameter of the earth by about one thousand miles, New- 
ton was able to demonstrate that the deflection of the orbit of 
the moon from a straight line was equal to a fall of sixteen 
feet in one minute, the same distance through which a body 
falls in one second at the surface of the earth. The distance 
fallen being as the square of the time, it followed that the 
force of gravity at the surface of the earth is 3,600 times as 



46 THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. [April, 

great as the force which holds the moon in her orbit This 
number is the square of sixty, which therefore expresses the 
number of times the moon is more distant than we are from 
the centre of the earth ; this required a diameter of 8,000 miles 
for the earth. 

Newton recognized the force drawing an apple to the ground 
from a tree-top, a stone from the top of the loftiest structure, 
a drop of water from the highest cloud, to be the same as 
that which draws the moon to the earth, both to the sun, with 
an equalizing centrifugal force to keep each in its place. But 
he did not regard an hypothesis as sufficient ; it needed verifi- 
cation, so when at twenty-three from inaccurate data his dem- 
onstration failed, he laid aside his theory, so brilliant in concep- 
tion, so insufficient in action. Had Picard announced his re- 
sult fifty years later, the ripeness of the time would have 
passed by with only Newton's failure to check the search for 
that grand essential theory without which we could have no 
exact astronomy, no celestial mechanics. The French geometer 
" builded more wisely than he knew"; the English philosopher 
harmonized theory with fact, applied the finite to the infinite, 
and harnessed the worlds with invisible traces. 

After making this great contribution, Picard sought new glory 
in making astronomic observations at some of the principal 
cities of France. One of these places was Lyons, and in dis- 
cussing his observations made when there he says: "M. Mou- 
ton in his discussion of a universal measure, said that at Lyons 
a simple pendulum whose length was equal to a Paris foot 
a length given him by Auzout made 2,140.4 vibrations iri 
half an hour, from which he concluded that the length of the 
seconds' pendulum would be 36 inches 6,3 lines." This appli- 
cation of the pendulum evidently pleased . Picard, for he takes 
from Mouton this idea: " If one had the length of a seconds* 
pendulum expressed in the usual measures of each country, one 
could know the relations of these measures as if they had been 
directly compared with one another besides this, one could de- 
tect at any time in the future a change in their lengths." 

As late as 1776 De la Condamine said: " M. Mouton, priest 
at Lyons, was .the first whom I know to propose a unit deduc- 
ible from the pendulum ; this was in 1570; proposed by him in 
1668 (it should be 1665), adopted by Picard in 1672, and by 
Huyghens in the same year." This is quoted by Todhunter with- 
out comment, as he could not see the original work. 

Cassini, in 1757, refers to Mouton as one whom "we know 



i89i.J THE METRIC SYSTEM OF MEASURES. 47 

only as a priest and master of the choir at the collegiate church 
of St. Paul." Perhaps this was to prevent people from suppos- 
ing that his own scheme was not taken partly or wholly from 
Mouton. He proposed to take one-six-millionth part of a minute 
of a terrestrial arc and call it a foot. He also suggested that the 
unit be a toise, 60,000 toises being contained in a degree. This 
was simply taking one-thousandth of a minute, which was Mou- 
ton 's identical plan. 

Thus it is seen that Mouton's idea was not lost sight of by 
those at least who wished to profit by it. He was quoted often 
enough and by such men as to make us believe that either con- 
spiracy or cruel fate threw over his name the shadow of forget- 
fulness. And when we come to that monumental work Base du 
Systeme Metrique, which recounts the incentives, beginnings, 
methods, and results of the commission which deduced a standard 
of length, following a scheme proposed a hundred and thirty 
years before, and using a nomenclature too much like the former 
to be original we seek in vain for a proper recognition of obli- 
gation and find in a few lines a mutilated account of Mouton's 
scheme, while he barely escapes condemnation in some words 
of faint, praise from those to whom he bequeathed the notion 
of a universal measure. 

It is confidently believed that he who was known only as a 
priest and chorister was the originator of the decimal system of 
measures based upon geodetic data, and the " brilliant century " 
which deserves credit for the inception of a system which now 
promises to become universal was not the eighteenth but the 

SEVENTEENTH. 

J. HOWARD GORE, PH.D. 

Columbian University, Washington, D. C. 



48 GALVESTON BEACH. [April, 



GALVESTON BEACH. 

I. 

WONDERFULLY beautiful is Galveston Beach. It stretches 
from where the tramway bounds it in front of the Beach Hotel 
out beyond the old ramshackle building of the Catholic orphan- 
age. At least this is the Galveston beach that I knew in the 
winter of 18 . Broad and smooth as marble, hard as marble to 
the foot, kissed all day by the spice-scented waters of the Mexi- 
can Gulf; and warm are those kisses and sweet, for all the world 
like the kisses that come from the lips of a young and chaste 
lover, shy and gentle, half-stolen, half-given, as the clear spread- 
ing of the surf washes up over the white sand, and murmurs and 
whispers in low, melancholy chords, singing the love-songs to the 
sands which only the sea can sing. 

I first saw it in the latter part of the month of November, 18 . 
It was early morning early, that is, for the easy-going ways of a 
delightfully easy-going clime. Six o'clock, and all the island was 
a flood of gold and silver light, from out a sky without a cloud, 
and the gulf and land a wealth of sun-brightness, and in from the 
sea came the breeze, gentle and sweet, and soft and cool, that 
wishes you a thousand welcomes genuine and true, over and 
over; a Southern welcome does the gulf breeze give you all the 
day long. 

I stood and looked down the long stretch of white sand. How 
broad it seemed and how straight away, as it lengthened out some 
miles in the distance ! Not a mere ribbon of sand by the surf, as 
many another beach, with turnings and twistings and pools 
of water, and litter of sea-weed, with broken timber, along 
which stand bizarre hotels, and railway tracks and merry-go- 
rounds, and side-shows, and dime museums, and catchpennies 
a thousand and one, with crowds of more bizarre people, gathered 
from east and west and north and south. No ; not a Coney Is- 
land, nor a Long Beach, nor an Old Orchard; but a grand, broad 
avenue, flanked on one side by the opal surf and on the other, one 
hundred feet away, by the sand-hills and sand-pines which hold 
the bank firm and guard the city in times of unusual tides. I 
stood and looked down this glorious beach of pure white sand, 
unspotted by even a foot-print, all aglow with flashing light, now 
silver, now golden. What is in this maze of atmosphere ? For, 



1891.] GALVESTON BEACH. 49 

though the sunlight flashes it does not dazzle. You cannot call 
it a mist, for out beyond the white curling surf miles and miles 
away you catch a glimpse of the sails and topmasts of a ship as 
she sinks out of vision beyond in the horizon, and like a purple 
scarf thrown across the sky is the smoke of a Morgan steamer 
yonder in the south. The very air is amber- tinted. How else 
describe it ? 

On this stretch of beach, as I stood and looked down the cool, 
inviting isle, there was naught of life save light ; neither bird 
nor beast nor man ; not even the flitting of the sand-piper 
in and out the crest of the surf, taking her dainty meal of dainty 
fishes or things that swim in the sea. No flocks of gulls nor 
gathering of pelicans; no chattering chickadee nor call of mocking- 
bird ; no sound nor sign of life save the murmur of the gult 
waves and glinting of mellow sunbeams on the opal water and 
the silvery land. Coming down from the North, hastening away 
from the slush and the mud and the cold, gray, smoke-laden sky of 
Chicago ; hastening away from the chill winds of that other sea,, 
that cold, steel-blue inland sea, Lake Michigan ; hastening away 
from the flurry of snow in bleak November in the bleak North win- 
ter, and coming to stand here on Galveston beach, in warmth and 
light, soothed by a breeze that had romped and played amidst 
the spice-groves of the southern islands before it scampered across 
the gulf to lose itself amidst these white sands, was like going 
from the hard realities of every- day life to the fairy-lands of child- 
hood's dreams. It is an unbroken sameness, is this beach of Gal- 
veston. Only the gulf waters are opal in color, though not al- 
ways so. I have seen them emerald and ruby and topaz ; I 
have seen them white with the clearness of the diamond, and I 
have seen them glow as though red of liquid fire. Only the 
great, broad, white beach is always white and smooth, and firm 
and clean. I have never seen the beach strewn with sea-weed 
nor littered over. After a fierce storm I have seen a great tree,, 
likely out of the Orinoco or some other South American stream, 
half-buried in the sand over against the hills. But the next storm 
took it away. Only the gray sand-hills that fringe the beach, 
and keep the tide-waters back from flooding the island, blown 
there by the wind, telling you that nature guards the life of the 
quaint and lovely city that lies beyond. 

There is an unbroken sameness, but yet the sight of it never tires 
you. Whether it is the breeze so sweet to breathe and feel which 
never f ails ; whether it is the never-clouded sky, save when the 
great white army of the day-clouds begin their lazy march across 



5o . GALVESTON BEACH. [April, 

the blue above you ; whether it is the wondrous atmosphere, amber 
and golden at noon, purple and golden at morning and night, an 
atmosphere that one seems to both feel and see ; or whether it is 
the great, mysterious gulf beyond you, so gentle, so calm, so reso- 
nant of mystic sounds, that shows you by day-time and by night 
a thousand changing hues, Galveston beach is never the same 
though always the same. You walk along it and it does not 
yield to your feet Where your foot has pressed it there is a 
white mark which outlines the shape of your foot. You look 
again and the mark is gone. 

As I stood there looking down this long v;sta of surf and 
sand there came an impulse to saunter onward which was 
stronger than resistance. And so I started onward, and strolled 
for two miles along this gulf shore. Sometimes' I would pause 
to look out at the gulf itself. There was nothing but the chang- 
ing waters flashing back the softened sun-rays. Then on I would 
saunter and again pause to look back, half expecting to see a 
crowd following me, who like myself had discovered this wonder- 
land and were coming out to enjoy. You reluctantly yielded to 
the influence of -the silence about you and became silent yourself. 
I remember I began to hum to myself the music to which Jean 
Ingelow's "O Fair Dove! O Fond Dove ! " is set, but gave it up, 
as I was frightfully out of tune with the minor chord that the 
surf made falling on the sand. Then, like a boy who wants to 
keep his courage up, I began to whistle " When the Flowing 
Tide comes in," and the breeze sighed disapprobation. And then 
I paused again and yielded me to the influence of the sea, of 
the sun, of the sweet zephyrs, of the silence, and from that day 
to this I have loved the beach of Galveston. My return to the 
city was prosaic enough. I had no eye for its quaintness, nor 
heart of sympathy for its warm, hospitable people. I sat about 
the dingy old hotel up-town somewhere ; I dreamed all day of 
my new love and longed for the cool of evening to visit the beach 
again. 

II. 

One afternoon in December I happened to be on the beach, 
when I witnessed a scene I shall never forget. A " norther " 
had been blowing for three days previous. Any one who has 
ever visited Galveston, or in fact any part of the gulf coast, and 
remained for any considerable time during the winter months 
knows what a very disagreeable thing a " norther " is. First 
there comes a spell of sultry, clammy weather, when your clothes 
stick to you and everything is humid to the touch. Then sud- 



1891.] GALVESTON BEACH. 51 

denly and without warning there comes hissing from the north 
a wind so cold, so keen and cutting, that it penetrates your very 
bones. You are wise to get into flannels and stay indoors. It 
is sure to blow for three days, and it may blow for nine. But 
a nine days' " norther " is an exception. In fact, I did not ex- 
perience one during my winter on the gulf. The only one dis- 
agreeable remembrance I have of my stay in the island city is 
of this particular " norther " to which I refer. It had kept me 
indoors and had deprived me of my usual walk along the beach. 
About noon this day the sky had cleared, and gently the south 
breeze began to beat up against the north wind, till it gained 
way and at last conquered. It was like an invitation to me to 
hasten to the lovely beach. So forth I went, to gaze on the 
lovely waters of the gulf, to ramble along the white sands, to 
feel the fanning of the lazy, sweet south wind in my face, to 
be warmed, too, by the wondrous sunlight, everywhere streaming 
out from the west, as a glorious December sun slowly sank toward 
the western horizon. 

I had gone for a mile or so down the beach, and over 
against the sand-hills, where a great cypress-tree lay embedded 
in the sand, a waif of the three days' storm just passed. I sat 
down to rest and enjoy the scene. Suddenly my ear caught the 
sound of gleeful shouting and laughter, and turning I saw com- 
ing up the beach in the hurry-skurry of a mad gallop a troupe 
of children on Texan ponies. It was a veritable game of chase 
and tag. First a slender girl on a spotted pony led the van, 
her broad hat dangling by its strings, her fair, curly locks 
all awave in the breeze, her small riding-whip plied fore and 
aft with vim, her left arm extended, full and loose rein given 
to her pony, her shouts of laughter mingled with her shouts to 
her horse : " On, Rocco ; forward, Rocco ; go 'long, go 'long ! " 
The sleek little brute seemed to enjoy the sport. For, with his 
ears thrown back and neck and head extended, he strained 
every nerve to keep the lead. She rode with the ease and grace 
and skill of an Indian. Her body took every motion of the 
pony. Pressing hard after came a boy on a slate -colored pony, 
which, were it not for its ugly large head, so common among these 
Texan ponies, might have been taken for a two-year old thor- 
oughbred racer, so light of limb, so deep of chest, so sleek of 
coat was he. The boy brought his pony up till his nose was 
even with the rider of the spotted animal, and then with a 
bound he passed, " tagging" as he went. He had sent his 
spurs home to get that bound and spring out of the little ani- 

VOL. LIII. 4 



52 GALVESTON BEACH. [April, 

mal he was riding. Then I saw a feat of horsemanship by the 
girl that even a rider in a Wild West show might have envied. 
While at full speed she whirled her pony about and rode him 
directly across the track of the third rider. Surely there will be 
an accident, I exclaimed as I rose to my feet, for they cannot 
check the ponies in time to avert a ccrllision. But just as I 
thought they would come together and go down there was a 
swift slant movement and they passed. The girl on the spotted 
pony threw out her arm as she passed, and laughingly cried, as 
she touched the other rider: "You are it, Fannie!" Nor was 
I through witnessing this wonderful equestrian performance by 
these children. Fannie and her opponent by their movements 
had fallen somewhat behind the other children. I saw Fannie, 
after she had been " tagged," deliberately raise herself in her 
saddle and select her victim from among the group of the three 
riders before her. It was the boy who had tagged the girl on 
the spotted pony. On she flew, bending forward and patting 
her little animal on the neck, and I could see that she was 
talking to him. Then she began to whip and to spur at the 
same time. There was a grand response from her pony. In a 
burst of speed he gained on the boy's pony. He seemed to 
know what was wanted of him ; he strained every muscle and 
nerve. When the boy saw that he was to be overtaken, he too 
gave whip and spur. But there was no response. He had 
already ridden hard and fast, and had winded his horse in his 
first effort. The girl was now close on his right quarter. With 
shout and call and whip and spur he urged his pony on. See- 
ing that he was about taken he whirled and made straight for 
the surf. Quick as a flash she whirled, and as his pony plunged 
into the water she reached out her hand and, touching him, 
cried " tag," and quickly whirling again avoided the surf. From 
the other children there came a shout of natural compliment to a 
wonderfully fine bit of riding. And this brought the game to an 
end, for both children and ponies were tired indeed, for they had 
ridden over a mile in the game, and fast and hard riding it was. 
They had dismounted and had thrown themselves on the sand 
and were hotly discussing the game just ended. My landlady 
had given me a magnificent Marshal Neil rose as I was leaving 
the house. I was wearing it in my coat. Rising, I walked 
over to/ where the children were gathered, and as I came up I 
overheard them saying : " You never would have ' tagged ' me, 
Tom, had I known you were so near before I began to spurt." 
"Yes, I would," said Tom, the boy who had "tagged" the first 



1891.] GALVESTON BEACH. 53 

-girl, " for my pony can outrun yours on a long stretch. And, 
Fannie, if Topsy were not afraid of th'e surf you never would 
have touched me." As I came up, I unpinned the rose from 
my coat, and going up to the child they called Fannie, I said : 
" Will you permit me to offer you this as a prize for your 
beautiful riding," as I extended her the rose. " Why, did you 
see me ? Papa says that I ride well, but that I am too bold." 
And then she blushed, remembering she had not thanked me, 
and rising she made me a very pretty bow, and with the grace 
of a studied actress said : " I thank you very much, sir." I 
got to know Tom, and Fannie and Bell, Will and Nora well 
"before I left Galveston. I often met them on the beach, and 
have witnessed races between Rocco and Topsy, Bay and 
Gilder and Star, their ponies. They .were the children of two 
families of circus riders, who, like myself, had come to Gal- 
veston for the winter, for Fannie's papa, like myself too, 
could not stand the winter of the North. I will never forget- 
the look of intense pleasure, and also of intense surprise, on 
Tom's face when one day he saw a pair of beads in my hand. 

Somehow the melodies of the beach, the sweet anthems of 
the gently falling surf, the quiet and the peace of the place lead 
one to prayer. It was my custom to say my rosary here during 
my afternoon walks. Tom had ridden out in search of me, and 
had come on me while I was thus engaged. Before I could slip 
my beads in my pocket he had discovered them. " Why, Mr. 
Neville, we are all Catholics, too" his face a very picture of sur- 
prised pleasure. And right good little Christians they were, too. 
For I had often seen them in the old cathedral at High Mass 
on Sunday. And very devout and attentive they were, those 
little circus riders. Many a hard lesson have I watched them go 
through away out there on the lonesome beach, with only Uncle 
Tom and myself for an audience and papa for a master. As I 
walked back along the water's edge that afternoon, with the surf 
throwing golden- red kisses to the golden-red sun, as he sank 
out of sight, I could not help but ask myself, Was there ever 
given such a glorious play-ground for lovely children as this 
glorious old beach of Galveston ? And yet the only children I 
ever saw in winter were children from the North and strangers. 

III. 

If I desired to study either light or sound I surely would go 
somewhere on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Nowhere 'can 
you find such weird and strange effects of light so weird and 



54 GALVESTON BEACH. [April, 

strange at times as to thrill you with a feeling of mystery as 
here by these gulf waters. Nowhere does sound, coming you 
know not whence, take on such rhythmic music in minor chords 
as along these sand-shores. I remember a day and an evening 
spent on Galveston beach how "can I ever forget the one or the 
other ? when it seemed to me that I was in the midst of the 
mystery of light and sound. The day had dawned in a haze 
and the sun had come from the east blood-red, nor did it fight 
its way through the mist and clouds in clear bright light till 
long after noon. And yet, though ill-defined and uncertain, the 
sunlight was blinding, coming as it did in reflection from great 
banks of fog that hung over the waters, reflected, too, back and 
forth from the waves of an angry gulf, then reflected back again 
from the glistening white sand of the beach, and again reflect- 
ed by the mist in the atmosphere, glaring red sunlight every- 
where, baffling and mystifying you and wearying your eyes till 
you shaded them again and again with your hat brim and 
hand. There was a whispering and a moaning, a sound of sigh- 
ing and calling, a ballad of heart-aches, a melancholy sounding in 
the fitful wind that came straight from the south, so unlike 
the gentle, steady breeze that usually welcomed my coming to 
the beach. I walked far that morning, nor had I a companion, 
nor did I meet one on my return an hour or more after noon. 
By^ the time I had come to the. tramway that skirts the beach 
for a short space it had cleared entirely, nor mist, nor fog, nor 
cloud was there anywhere, and the breeze had resumed its gentle, 
steady blowing from the South. If the sunlight effects had as- 
tonished me during the day, the light which came from moon 
and stars, and the phosphorescent glow of the waters, delighted 
and soothed me as I strolled along the beach that same night 

in company with Col. . 

Never were heavens more beautiful, never were stars more 
wonderfully aglow, nor was moonlight so creamy silver as on 
that night. The colonel and I had come down to the beach 
late in the evening to stroll and smoke a cigar. He was one of 
the few Galvestonians with whom I had become intimately ac- 
quainted, a Southern gentleman of the old school, a man much 
my senior, but with a gentle, genial nature, a manner so refined 
and winning, a joyousness of soul almost boyish, that made him 
companionable to any one fortunate enough to know him. Of 
course he had been through the war, a commander of a regi- 
ment of cavalry. Though he bore the marks of both sabre and 
ball, he had escaped death ; he had never been captured, nor 



1891.] GALVESTON BEACH. 55 

had he ever surrendered. When they heard ot Lee's surrender 
to Grant, he had turned his war-horse south, and rode home 
and turned the noble animal out to his old pasture; had hung 
up his sword and pistols. The war was over, to be sure, but his 
commission as colonel was in his desk at home, his sword was 
on the wall above it, his pistols flanked it on either side. He 
was unconquered and, if you will, unconquerable. He was a 
gentleman and would respect your opinions ; but you felt he 
pitied you if you could not see that which was so entirely 
true to him, namely, the States were the development of the 
colonies. The colonies, as a fact of history, were each indepen- 
dently sovereign ; so therefore the States. Each State being 
independently sovereign could, as an exercise of that sovereign 
right, withdraw' from the Union, and that hence secession had 
not been a crime, but merely an exercise of a just right. 

We had gone farther down the beach than we had intended, 
being fascinated by the beauty of the night. Sitting there on 
the sand we watched the moon go down a blood-red moon 
like the sun of the dawn. We sat on and smoked and were 
talking of the wonders of the night, and the sea before us gave 
evidence of the existence of God. Suddenly in the south, low 
against the horizon, there was a flash of pale blue light and 
quickly another, by the flash of which we saw the arm of an 
ugly-looking cloud. Then we noticed that the breeze had ceased, 
and then we knew that a storm would soon be on us, and we 
were three miles down the beach. The colonel was a man who 
did not know fear, and I did not fear because I was ignorant of 
what was before us. But the way he said, " Neville, we must 
hurry," made me apprehensive. 

We had not made half a mile before the lightning flashing 
showed us the nature and extent of the storm fast driving in 
toward the shore. The surf began to beat on the sand and it 
was evident that a high tide would run. On we hurried, with 
the spreading waters from the surf coming higher and higher on 
the beach. Never had I seen a storm so sudden in its coming. 
Twenty minutes before and the moon had gently gone down and 
all the heaven was ablaze with starlight. And now there was 
inky darkness with only the lightning flashes to guide us. 
" Colonel, we are in the water," I cried, as I felt the waves run 
over my feet. " Go farther in toward the sand-hills." But then 
a flash of light showed me the colonel just in advance and hard 
against the hills. His only answer was " For God's sake, hurry, 
Neville!" We pushed ahead, soon wading in the incoming tide, 



5 6 GALVESTON BEACH. [April r 

which washed about our feet. The play of lightning was now 
incessant. I fancied I could hear the swish and swash of it as 
it fell and flashed and darted among the waves and clouds. 
The great mass of black clouds^ rolling on towards the island 
seemed to kiss the very waves. Now there came a blinding flash 
and crash of thunder that seemed to take us from our feet, and 
I threw out my arms vainly grasping at the darkness for support. 
In that flash of lightning I saw a surf, white and direful, that 
seemed scarce a yard away, and the next instant I was in water 
to my waist. " Keep your feet, Neville, and come this way," 
shouted the colonel. Though I knew I was all but within reach 
of him, I could not see him, and could scarce hear his voice 
above the incessant peals of thunder. "This way, Neville, for 
God's sake, quick ! " he called. " Here ! This way, over the 
sand-hills ! " And then I felt him sway against me as we both 
went down, and a great wave went over us.. Then I felt myself 
thrown forward and I struck hard against something. Instinctively 
I threw out my arms and grasped and held fast to what I struck 
against. I was now above water again. " Colonel ! " I cried. 
" Here ! " he answered, and again a great wave swept over us and 
I saw just as we went under that we were in the second fall 
of the surf, and not in the worst of it, and that gave me hope. 
In an instant I knew where we were. We had come back as 
far as the cypress-tree, my trysting-place, and were now cling- 
ing to it. When the next wave came I tried to notice if it 
moved, and it did not, and I thought we were safe. And so we 
were. Clinging to it we had passed through the worst, for the 
storm had rolled on and swept across the island. It was one of 
those sudden, awful storms of the gulf coast. One half hour later 
we were on the beach, along the white line of which was beating 
a surf so strong and heavy as to make the very island tremble. 

Never can I forget the colonel's simple and touching piety 
as he asked me to kneel with him there on the wet sand that 
we might "thank" the good God for the tender mercy he had 
shown us this night." He prayed out loud, and, there was a 
tender pathos in his voice, and earnest manliness in his words, 
that touched my heart to hear. He asked God to teach him ta 
know that he was ever in his hands. Then he asked " that the 
same sweet mercy that we this night have tasted " might ever be 
shown to the dear ones over there in his home in the island city. 

The next morning, before I was up, his black man was 
at my boarding-house with a great bunch of roses and a note 
to inquire if I were all right. And very shortly after breakfast 



1891.] GALVESTON BEACH. 57 

the colonel himself came along, and we went and sat on the gallery 
and smoked and talked over the night's experience. As he left 
me he said: "Mr. Neville, you must excuse me for having kept 
you kneeling so long there in the wet and in your wet clothes 
last night, but I was very much affected by the thought of God's 
goodness." Excuse him ! Dear old colonel! that prayer is a sweet 
memory for a lifetime. 

IV. 

One of the ways I had of amusing myself as I strolled 
along the Galveston beach was watching the fishermen, and 
there were many of them. Many weeks I had envied them as I 
watched them standing waist-deep in the water only half clad, in- 
tent on their lines. How stupid it seemed to me. Why do they 
not "set" their lines and take a jolly swim in that very jolly surf? 

On coming to Galveston I had presented letters of intro- 
duction to Dr. W , to whom I was duly accredited as a 

patient. This good man of science and medicine had for- 
bidden my going into the water. " We never bathe in the surt 
during the winter months, and I am constrained to deny you 
the pleasure," was what he said when I had asked to be 
recommended to a bathing-house. One morning I had gone 
down to the surf somewhat later than usual and was seated 
out in front of the Beach Hotel enjoying a cigar, when a num- 
ber of ladies and gentlemen passed by me and entered the 
two pagoda-like buildings which used to stand well out over 
the water and were devoted to bathing purposes. Presently 
they emerged and entered the surf, and what a glorious time 
they had ! They were members of a New Yjork opera troupe 
that opened at the Galveston Opera House that night. The 
temptation was strong upon me, and going over to the hotel 
I ascertained that I could have a bathing suit and room, the 
which I forthwith procured, and from that day to the end of my 
sojourn by the gulf a daily swim was my custom, the doctor's 
.advice to the contrary notwithstanding. He never found me 
out, and as I grew stronger and better day by day, I never felt 
that I was in duty bound to tell him, and never did. 

But I was going to tell you of the fishermen. They were 
mostly Dagoes, swarthy fellows of the Austro- Italian type as 
far as I could make them out, fishing with nets and without 
skill, but with wonderful success. I have seen them load their 
carts with as fine a lot of fish as ever came out of the sea and 
in bewildering variety. To a mind more scientific and inquir- 
ing than my own here would have been a month's occupation 



58 GALVESTON BEACH. [April, 

to name and classify these wonders of the gulf: fish of all shapes 
and sizes, of all colors and hues ; fish good to eat and fish 
worthless for the table, from the beautiful ribbon fish, that the 
white gulls would carry off squirming about their bodies as 
they sailed away, to that royal fish of fishes, the red snapper. 
The fishermen that amused me most were the blacks. There 
was one strong fellow who lingers in my memory because of his 
magnificent physique. Straight as an arrow and moulded like 
an Apollo, with a well-formed head, well poised on a shapely 
neck that was let into shoulders which were a perfect type of 
manliness; as he stood there, clothed only in a cotton shirt, 
which, wet by the spray, clung to his form and only served 
to bring out the lines of his chest and trunk all the more per- 
fectly, he made a picture against the white surf that I have 
often recalled. Among my beach friends was an artist who 
was spending the winter in Galveston. I chanced to meet him 
one morning as he was starting down the beach, and so hailed 
him and asked: "What is your work to-day?' 7 "Nothing," 
he answered ; " I am in search of something new.'' " Then 
come, let me show you a subject worthy of your skill: an 
Apollo in ebony." We strolled down to where I knew my 
black friend was accustomed to fish, and there he was outlined 
in bold relief against the white surf. Down went the traps of 
the artist. Up went his umbrella. Forth came all the para- 
phernalia of his profession, and by noon was finished a splendid 
sketch of the black Apollo. 

This negro fished with a zeal and patience that Walton 
would have lauded. He never was distracted by persons pass- 
ing on the beach, whether on foot or in carriage or on horseback. 
His long line well in hand, he kept his eye fixed on the point 
beyond the surf where he knew the red snapper swam. I had 
noticed him for some weeks before I got interested in his fish- 
ing, for he was as constant at his post as I was in my walk. 
It seemed to me that he had dull fishing. I had never seen 
him take a fish. I made up my mind to watch him. I carried 
with me a field-glass, so without intruding on his privacy I 
could observe him. But it was always the same stately pose as 
he stood there with fixed eye that I observed whenever I 
turned my glass upon him. However, one day as I was pass- 
ing I observed an unusual tensity in his pose and his left hand 
was slightly extended, and his head inclined slightly forward. 
Suddenly there was a swish of the line in the surf as he drew 
back his right hand to full length. Then hand-over-hand he 



1891.] GALVESTON BEACH. 59 

began quickly and deftly to haul in the line, at the same time 
walking backward from the water and out onto the sand of the 
beach. Far out I could see the darting of a splendid fish as he 
flashed red and white beneath the water. But sooner than it takes 
me to write this he had landed a fine specimen of the red 
snapper. When he had unhooked it he threw it far back on 
the beach and began leisurely to do up his line. In the interest 
and excitement of the catch I had come close up to him. Here 
was my chance to make his acquaintance, and so I ventured to 
observe: "That is a fine, fish you have taken." "Yes, sir." 
Very laconic, I thought. " Do you take many ? " again I ven- 
tured. " I don't care to take more than one, sir." "It must 
be tiresome fishing, you seem to be obliged to wait so long for 
a strike." "Yes, sir." In the meantime he had gotten into his 
clothes, not a very extensive wardrobe, consisting merely of a 
much-battered hat and a pair of overalls in addition to the wet 
shirt he was wearing. I turned and was about to try to engage 
him again in conversation when he bowed to me, saying as he 
did, and the bowing was with much grace and dignity, " I bid 
you good morning, sir." 

I often saw him afterwards, and respected his reserve. Some- 
how he was and is to me a type of the solution of the negro 
question of which you hear so much North and so little South. 
Let him alone and give him the opportunity. In due time he 
will take the fish, let the task be ever so difficult. Be that as it 
may, I will always recall the manly beauty of my black friend of 
Galveston beach, and have been much disappointed in never 
hearing of the picture my artist friend made of him in any of 
the exhibits of the New York societies devoted to American 
works of art. He was dark of skin to utter blackness. His nose 
and mouth were well formed and straight and delicate. The 
only imperfect portion of his anatomy were his hands and feet, 
both unduly large. I wonder what part of the Congo country 
his ancestors came from? To what line of royal African chief- 
tains did he belong ? Surely he was of no ordinary stock. And 
his progeny ? Where in this new civilization of America will be 
their place ? ' Let the negro answer for himself. 

Wonderfully beautiful is Galveston beach ! Delightful were 
the days spent there in the winter of 18 -, when there came to 
me health and strength, from where there abides with me the 
memory of fair sunlight, soft breezes fraught with a thousand 
perfumes from off the waters of the wondrous Gulf of Mexico. 

HENRY H. NEVILLE. 



60 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [April, 

THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE JO RELIGION. 

.* 

II. HOW I PROVE A MIND IN NATURE. 

THE most extreme sceptic in our day will not call in question 
the reality of physical science. He is well aware that the steam- 
engine, the telegraph, electric lighting, and the artificial pro- 
duction, let us suppose, of aniline dyes, are facts outside his 
own mind, of which he is the spectator, but in whose bringing 
about he has taken no share. He may pretend to argue, but 
he cannot and does not believe, that were his mind non-existent 
these things would cease to be. They are, in the strictest sense, 
objective to him. Science is not a dream in the mind shut up 
within itself. It is experimentally true and valid, proving its 
truth by the exquisite adaptation of its methods to results which 
are rapidly changing the face of the world. It has at once 
laws, or fixed and yet flexible procedures, and powers whereby 
its designs become facts, transferred into the region where Nature, 
the reality of things, must be obeyed if it is to be subdued. 
Testing hypothesis by observation, it moves from conquest to 
conquest. Day and night are spent in watching the ways of 
that world outside us by scientific men; and all their triumphs 
have been achieved in consequence of the fidelity with which 
they have noted the processes of Nature as disclosing something 
objective, and not merely tricking them into the fancy that they 
saw, or heard, or handled, when they had no such experience. 
Herbert Spencer has well said that " If Idealism be true, science 
is a dream." In other words, we cannot deny the objective 
validity of what we perceive without passing a sponge over the 
characteristic and undoubted achievements in subduing the material 
universe to our service, which have made the nineteenth cen- 
tury so different from the past. But who, I repeat, though he 
were the most stubborn disputant, could question these facts or 
imagine he was himself their author ? 

Here are truths which in a spirit of candid investigation I 
desire to employ in the solution of the gravest of all problems 
the question of Theism. From my reader I ask no more than 
to put himself in the same frame of mind, without prejudice but 
not without a rational concern in the success of the undertaking, 
which he would deem suitable to an inquiry about the laws of 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 61 

light, the conservation of energy, or the phenomena of animal 
and vegetal existence. I shall make no appeal to sentiment, and 
none to authority. I do not pretend to start with a definition of 
what we shall find. With abstract vague terms, like the Infinite 
and the Absolute, I trust to have as little to do as possible. 
And I shall adduce no argument which does not convince myself. 
Are these conditions accepted? Let us see, then, how the scien- 
tific inquirer must proceed when the question arises within him, 
Is there another Mind besides my own in the universe ? 

I cannot discover any starting point but this; and although I 
have looked at the matter in every light during a period of 
thirty years, I am always coming back to the same centre, as if 
it were the law of investigation compelling me to obey it by its 
very nature that I should begin by ascertaining that I know a 
mind, an intelligence, which is not myself, to be in objective 
existence, and then only advance to the farther problems ot 
Natural Theology, Or I may put it in the manner following : 
Physical Science has been reduced to fundamental laws; as first, 
that Matter is indestructible and is measured by weight, and 
second, that Energy is indestructible and is measured by work. 
But a third law suggests itself in the form of a question pro- 
pounded, from the nature of the case, to all those who have 
studied matter and energy in their relations, viz. : " Is not Mind 
indestructible, and measured by adaptation ? " The answer to this 
third and final inquiry, if affirmative, will furnish the grounds 
of Rational Theism. Should it be in the negative, or turn out 
to be unattainable with our present powers of reasoning, we 
shall be driven to conclude that a science of Rational Theo- 
logy cannot exist. 

The argument, however, which affirms a Mind in Nature 
distinct from my own, is so clear and strong that I do not 
hesitate to call it mathematical or self-evident in its cogency. 
For the alternative to admitting its full force is scepticism 
with regard to any marks of design whatever outside my own 
mind. By mind in this series of papers I mean, not sense 
or instinct, but conscious intelligence, or the faculty which 
adapts means to ends, being aware that it does so. Which 
premised, I argue as follows : If certain phenomena did not 
manifest the action of an adapting mind outside me, in the 
case where I am only a spectator, they would not do so 
even in the case where I am, and know that I am, the 
agent. But they do manifest intelligence where I am the 
conscious agent. Therefore they manifest intelligence where I 



62 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [April, 

am only a spectator. In other words, a Mind objective to 
me and distinct from mine exists in the universe. 

Will the reader keep a firm hold of this piece of reason- 
ing ? I am going to prove it step by step, and then to 
draw out from the conclusion some of the marvellous truths 
which are hidden within its depths. But one thing at a 
time. The end must not anticipate the beginning.- I do not 
start like .Spinoza by defining Substance, or, like some theo- 
logians, with a disquisition on the properties of " Being in it- 
self." For me the commencement is my own thinking energiz- 
ing self at the moment when I am writing these words. 

This written page, I say, exhibits to my certain knowledge 
the conscious deliberate adaptation of means to ends. I am 
employing paper, ink, pen, and an arrangement of alphabetic 
characters to manifest the thought which is in me. Precisely 
this is what I understand by " design." To express my thought 
outwardly is the end, or the purpose, or the " final cause," of 
this particular combination of material instruments which are not 
my mind, nor is my mind identified with them, and yet they 
show it forth. Hence this page exhibits conscious intelligence 
(such as it is), and does so by means of a complex adaptation 
of things which are distinct from mind, to me and to every 
other intelligence which apprehends the English language. 

By what mental process do I know for certain that mind 
is here manifested ? Suppose I answer that I cannot tell ; that 
it exceeds my powers of analysis to find out; that nobody has 
ever explained the process to my satisfaction ? Will that in- 
validate the certitude I undoubtedly possess of the fact? If it 
did, then the ignorance under which all men, except skilled 
anatomists or physiologists, labor regarding the action of the 
muscles by which they talk or eat, would mean ignorance of the 
fact that they do talk and eat which is absurd. Hence I 
may pass over the question, how I know, and simply affirm 
that I do know the fact alleged, namely, that this written page 
exhibits mind by means of the characters inscribed on it. And 
if any one objects that a fortuitous concurrence of the parts 
would have produced the semblance of mind in like manner, I 
reply that since fortuitous here must mean " unintelligent," or 
else it would prove nothing I deny that the unintelligent could 
produce intelligence. For what stands written here is not the 
mere semblance of mind, but exhibits mind, and is intelligence. 

This shall be my first answer. But my second is that I know 
it is not by fortuitous concurrence that these characters exhibit 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 63 

mind, for I meant them to do so. Therefore the possibility of 
chance is altogether excluded. 

Whereupon I put this further question. If intellect and in- 
tention have concurred in the production of certain phenomena, is 
it possible to know for certain that they have done so under any 
circumstances, or must I always remain ignorant of it, unless it was 
my own intellect that concurred? To bring out my meaning: I 
know that I intended the above page to manifest thought. And I 
know that it does manifest thought. Now, suppose I open Shake- 
speare and begin to read "Othello.". I am absolutely certain 
that, if thought is manifested in " Othello," it is not thought 
produced by me. Have I, nevertheless, the power of affirming 
that it is thought, even though not mine ? Can any mind which 
is capable of understanding English doubt that " Othello " mani- 
fests thought ? But if it does, then " Othello " is the work of a 
thinker who intended by that combination of words to express 
his own ideas, and who has succeeded rather magnificently, I 
fancy in what he undertook. How do I know ? That is quite 
another question. But once more, I do know that here is intel- 
ligence manifested which is not mine. I am not the agent, but the 
spectator, the recipient. I read, I did not create, the meaning 
of " Othello." 

If I am to doubt, if I cannot affirm with complete certitude, 
that I perceive the mind exhibited in Shakespeare's plays, I shall, 
with as good reason, be driven to doubt whether a meaning is 
conveyed in my own pages. For, although I may be conscious 
that I remember writing them, and did intend to put a meaning 
into them, how can I tell, now, that I have succeeded accord- 
ing to my intention ? By whatever process of mental interpreta- 
tion I discern the characters to manifest mind in the one instance, 
by the same I do so in the other. I will not undertake to say, 
nor am I required to discover, what set of faculties I put in mo- 
tion to attain this end ; any more than I need be capable of de- 
scribing before a medical board of examiners what the apparatus 
was by which I walked yesterday from my house to Oxford. I 
know that I accomplished the journey, and my memory remains 
as a sufficient guarantee for the change of place involved. Thus, 
too, I interpret ".Othello" with perfect confidence that, to a cer- 
tain extent, I have seized the author's meaning. Yet I never 
saw Shakespeare, though I hope one day to see him and to learn 
more of his mighty mind and heart. All I can grasp of him now 
is contained in these printed characters. Are they only a fortui- 
tous concurrence of atoms ? How senseless and ridiculous the 



64 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [April, 

inquiry sounds ? But observe that, in repelling the suggestion 
with scorn, I am not going by the testimony of another. It is 
the direct perception of intelligence, looking at me, answering to 
my own thought, in the printed Shakespeare, which furnishes me 
with a prompt, irresistible argument, superior to any number of 
sceptical hypotheses adduced in opposition to it. 

What, then, is the conclusion ? Is it not this, that unless I 
deny the possibility of ascertaining, in any conceivable instance, 
the tokens of mind outside my own consciousness, I must affirm 
that they are ascertainable in all cases by a similar process ? 
Where the arrangement of phenomena would betoken mind if 
I myself produced them, and where I know that I did not pro- 
duce them, there mind is manifested other than my own. I call 
such Objective Mind, as implying that it is distinct from me, is 
not I, but Another. In philosophical language, this other would 
be termed a second Subject. Grant that one single other Ego 
exists, besides this which is now committing its thoughts to 
paper, and a world of spirit or intellect rises into view. As the 
Laureate sings: 

"Speak to Him, them, for He heareth, and spirit with spirit can meet; 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." 

Wonderful as it may seem, the soul of the vanished Shake- 
speare is more intimate, more familiar, to me than the breath of 
my nostrils or the physical changes in the brain which accompany 
my thought. Is there not a vivid side-light, as it were, cast 
upon death and the grave by these reflections ? Neither are they 
guesses; they state the sober truth of which we have experience 
from hour to hour, " Being dead, he yet speaketh." What can 
death be, if it does not silence even the echo of the soul's voice 
the Bath Kol, as Hebrew divines poetically name it long after 
the living spirit has passed away ? Can death possibly end all ? 
Why, it does not end a particle of matter, nor can it kill one 
throb of energy. To science, arguing by induction, matter and 
energy last for ever. Shall mind, so enduring in its feeblest rever- 
berations, be quenched when the senses fail it ? The sun which 
sinks is yet the sun that rises on a new day, and at that very 
instant. So Goethe, in his famous line : 

" Untergehend sogar, 1st immer die selbige Sonne." 

But let me not anticipate. I go now a step further in my 
demonstration of mind outside my own. Shakespeare I read 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 65 

without difficulty, and am persuaded that his words have their 
intended significance, even though it baffles me sometimes to fol- 
low the trains of subtle and wide- glancing thought in which he 
abounds. But how if I am an English boy of ten and a volume 
of Greek is put into my hands for the first time ? It will be all 
Greek to me, I humbly confess. Left to myself, perhaps I should 
not at once perceive that it was intended to convey a direct 
intellectual meaning at all. I might take it for an odd sort of 
picture-book, or be simply puzzled by it. In a few years, how- 
ever, the case may be quite altered, and now I feel as certain that 
the Greek volume has a definite sense, and was written to convey 
such a sense, as that "Othello" is not a heap of gibberish. 
What, I ask, has come to pass in the meantime ? ^Ls.chylus now 
stirs my admiration and sympathy no less than Shakespeare does. 
I follow the drift, I grasp the significance of the " Prometheus 
Bound," with quite as high a certitude that I am not projecting 
my own mind into the tragedy, as I have when studying the 
Moor of Venice. The meaning was always there, though I did 
not apprehend it at fifst. But education under a good master has 
supplied me with a key ; the mere pictorial signs, which had only 
color and shape for the child's eye, have now grown intelligible, 
thanks to the process of interpretation which we call grammar and 
syntax. By means of them, when applied in detail, I observe 
how letter is joined to letter, syllable to syllable, word to word, 
and sentence to sentence. It is a never-ceasing process of Adap- 
tation, employed in obedience to the supposition or postulate that 
the strange letters, were intended to signify something or other. 
And the reward as well as the sufficient proof of my investigation 
is that in due course I arrive at a high and tragic meaning, full 
of a grave beauty, which the mind I call ^Eschylus desired to mani- 
fest outside itself to other minds, capable of being moved and 
interested even as it was. The transference of his thought to 
me, its reproduction (doubtless in a fashion far from perfect, 
though real in its measure), is a fact which I cannot question when 
the thing is done. Were a man unacquainted with Greek to. tell 
me, however, that I could not have grasped the sense of the poet 
because the letters, being capricious formations, could have no 
meaning, and that therefore ^Eschylus himself was a myth, 
or only a shadow cast from my own brain, what could I 
think except that the speaker was not serious, or that he was 
mad ? 

The evidence of a meaning in the " Prometheus Bound " is, then, 
that I find a meaning there, ample and consistent with itself, un- 



66 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [April, 

folded through many parts to a sublime catastrophe. The adap- 
tation of my mind to the play, and of the play to my mind, is 
proof beyond cavil of my having attained to an Objective Design, 
which is manifested in the Greek characters I was once unable to 
interpret. I know for certain that ^Eschylus, the writer of 
this drama, lived and thought and had the ideas apart from inci- 
dental misunderstandings into which I may have fallen that 
I have collected from him. What else he was I may never learn ; 
but so much is self-evident, and all I discover by and by concern- 
ing him will not make it false. Adaptation is here an undeniable 
fact, proving the existence of a mind distinct from me and very 
unlike mine, not only in the range but in the quality and char- 
acter of ita ideas. When I read the "Prometheus Bound" I enter 
upon a world so new and strange to a nineteenth century Euro- 
pean as to be extremely startling. I could not be more amazed 
if I were thrown among Polynesians, than in certain respects I 
am by the contest of Zeus and the human-loving Titan which is 
depicted, with such pathos and power in these thunder rifted 
scenes. Nevertheless, I recognize everywhere in them grave 
thought, human passion, artistic design. I cannot be agnostic as 
regards ^Eschylus. Instantly, as soon as the words form a sen- 
tence in my brain, I perceive that they have a meaning. The 
mental equation resulting from the correspondence between the 
printed letters and my intelligence proves itself, without need of 
further witness. I not only " move about " in that world, but I 
" realize " it ; I am at home with the personages, I feel that they 
do not put my intellectual being to confusion. The reality of 
which they are signs and tokens is of a piece with my very na- 
ture ; and yet I created neither them nor it. ^Eschylus spreads 
out before my mind's eye like a prospect which I can appropriate 
when I choose ; and though clouds and darkness rest upon great 
tracts of it, and there is a murmur of thought deep and indistin- 
guishable like the sound of the sea on its furthermost edge, I do 
not for a moment imagine that the poet's soul was a mere chaos 
because my sight and hearing no longer make out the phenomena 
distinctly. From what I have already gleaned, I argue to the 
rest. A larger intellect than mine would see more and more 
deeply, but never would it find that excess of understanding im- 
plied lunacy, violation of the laws of thought, or a mind consti- 
tuted on a plan which was no plan but a congeries, not to be 
comprehended, of warring atoms. 

The reader will have gone along with my purpose, I trust. 
He will have been aware that I am not talking of ^Eschylus or 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 67 

Shakespeare, neither do I wish him to concern himself about 
" Othello " or the " Prometheus Bound." I want him, as an intelli- 
gent observer of facts, using his own mind impartially, to weigh 
this question well, whether, namely, if the material universe and 
his own consciousness offer him phenomena for interpretation, 
precisely as the Greek or English tragedies offer him such, and 
if, on applying the key of science here called " adaptation," he 
finds it will turn in the lock and that he may move about in an 
objective spiritual world, even as he may in the poets' realm, 
understanding much of what he sees whether he is not bound 
to conclude in the one case as in the other ? If there is thought 
manifested in " Othello," and it is not mine, there was a thinker, 
Shakespeare. But again, since there is adaptation, or correspon- 
dence, between my mind and the words of " Othello," there is 
thought in " Othello," which is objective to me. On the same 
principle, without alteration of a syllable, it is clear that if, and 
in so far as, there is adaptation in the universe, part fitting to 
part, and the details combining to form series after series of 
ends, there must be a Thinker whose name is unspeakable. 
For the grandeur of this correspondence is overwhelming. I 
say nothing yet of an Infinite Mind. Mark me, if the word in- 
finite slips in at this stage, I mean, only indefinite, that which 
goes on and on till sight can discern no more, while reason 
pronounces that the horizon is not the end of existence. But 
I do say that if adaptation can be made out, Mind is made 
out; and that the universe of matter and energy, as soon as it 
becomes legible, shows in the background the universe of 
spirit. Call the world a poem, a tragedy, a combination of 
wheels within wheels, and you imply an overruling, an in- 
dwelling mind. Do you deny that the action manifests the 
mind ? Then tell me how you can affirm that the page you 
are now reading is the product of a mind, three thousand miles 
away, which you never knew but by these characters. The 
alternative is scepticism, first, as regards my mind who am ad- 
dressing you at this moment across the Atlantic, and next as re- 
gards your own whenever you attempt to express its meaning 
outwardly. Thus, to this extent, Theism, or the affirmation of 
Objective Thought in the universe, rests on precisely the same 
foundation as the belief to which every man is irresistibly com- 
pelled, that he is not the only thinker in existence, but that there 
are others besides him. We read in the first Epistle of St. John, 
" If ye love not your brother "whom ye see, how shall ye love 
Gpd whom ye do not see ? " With even greater cogency I 
vol.. LIU. 5 



68 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [April, 

affirm that when we refuse to acknowledge adaptive Thought in 
the phenomena of Nature, we are thereby hopelessly precluded 
from recognizing it in the works of man, whether they be the 
devices of our own hands and brain, or the manifold creations of 
the artist, the poet, and the mechanician. 

And here let me warn the student not to be led astray by 
the innumerable fallacies which lurk in the abstract terms where- " 
with modern treatises of unbelief are so plentifully sprinkled. He 
will be told that the above argument is tainted with "anthropo- 
morphism," and that it concludes by "analogy," which is never 
more than a probable ground of inference. The true and suffi- 
cient answer to this kind of sophistry, for such it is, lies ever at 
hand if we will have recourse to it. Instead of losing ourselves 
in a maze of idle and obscure terminology, let us keep a steady 
eye upon the facts. Is it or is it not true, that I know with 
absolute certitude of the existence of other thinking beings 
distinct from myself and in no sense the coinage of my own 
brain ? Certainly it is true, beyond question and beyond cavil. 
If, then, my agnostic disputant maintains that I know of them 
by " analogy," it follows that analogy is in the highest degree a 
ground of certitude. For the man who should seriously believe 
that he alone existed, and . that all seeming others were a delusion 
under which he suffered, would be far more insane than the 
majority of those now shut up in our asylums. So great and 
evident is the force of that reasoning which the objector would 
lightly brush aside as " analogical." And I challenge him to this 
encounter. Let him set down any argument, inductive or de- 
ductive, by which he proves what we all admit, viz., that there 
exist thinking beings apart from our own Ego ; and I will match 
his argument with one as undeniable, of the like texture as 
regards premisses and process, of which the conclusion shall be 
that there is a Mind in Nature. If it be " anthropomorphic " 
to affirm the existence of God, it is no whit less anthropomor- 
phic to affirm the existence of men. Either the reasoning is valid 
in both cases or it avails in none, is vitiated from the beginning, 
and moves in a circle. To accuse me, therefore, of pressing 
analogy beyond its legitimate functions, or of indulging in meta- 
physical day-dreams, (which is all that is meant by " anthropo- 
morphism "), because I employ in regard to Nature the same 
process which my opponent finds necessary in regard to all other 
mental existences besides his own, is throwing dust to confuse a 
most momentous issue. 

That suggestive German thinker, Fichte, perceived long ago 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIEACE TO RELIGION. 69 

where the truth of the matter lay. Once break the charmed 
circle of the Ego, make the mind a transparent window and no 
mere painted glass, and you may gaze abroad upon the universe 
of God and Man. Fichte, however, deemed that the circle was 
for ever closed. With deadly logic he resolved God and Man, 
the world and all that belongs to it, into phantoms of a mind 
which was its own prison whence it could never escape. There, 
indeed, we behold " anthropomorphism," consistent and complete, 
but as frail in its wealth of dreamy color as any soap-bubble 
blown by a child. For one breath of clear thinking smites it to 
atoms. Did Fichte really hold what he affirmed, the existence 
of his sole and solitary Ego ? Could he affirm it to his con- 
sciousness ? Or was he simply arguing, as so many clever men 
have done before and since, in a ' vacuum ? The supreme test 
always is, What does my consciousness affirm as certainly known 
to me ? Fichte's " anthropomorphism " would not, and could 
not, abide that decisive question. He knew, and I know that he 
knew, of others distinct from himself, each of whom was just as 
much an Objective Ego as he was. Again I say, the process by 
which he knew may be inscrutable ; the result is certain. We 
can break the charmed circle of our own personality. We do see 
and encounter others who are not ourselves in disguise. The 
world is not the masquerade of a lonely being passing through 
endless forms, which he looks upon in the glass of consciousness 
without recognizing his own features. Scepticism of this fantastic 
pattern is shivered in a moment when it dashes upon the rocks 
of experience. The only marvel is that any one should have been 
at the trouble of inventing it. 

I have already implied that the so-called " argument from 
design," as explained some distance back, appears to me un- 
answerable, as it did to Agassiz, to Owen, to Paley, to ' Leib- 
nitz, to St. Thomas Aquinas, to St. Augustine, and to the dis- 
ciples of Socrates. It is the reasoning which always and every- 
where convinces plain men that Nature exhibits a most high and 
glorious art, whereof human invention is but the dimmest shadow. 
In certain schools, nevertheless, we find it, though not altogether 
cast aside, yet disparaged. Carlyle, speaking in the name of 
many, somewhat confused and turbid minds as I must think them, 
sneers it away as " mechanical," adding that its proper outcome 
is the stark atheism of a Diderot. " Canst thou by mechanism 
find out God ? " he seems to say. I would reply with great 
reverence but in nowise timidly, " Yes, by mechanism as by 
mysticism, each after its proper method." I do not deny that 



7o THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [April, 

there is a kind of reasoning from mechanism which dishonors 
God. And I say not that mechanism is the last stage as well as 
the first of the reasoning upon which I proceed. But what is 
any mechanism, great or small, from the voltaic battery to the 
system of gravitation binding suns and planets together, except 
incarnate thought thought made visible in matter, force, and 
motion? Mechanism by its very nature involves the conception 
of means and ends ; in other words, of a purpose which all the 
parts subserve. It cannot proceed " nohow and nowhither," as 
long as it remains a mechanism. But " How " and " Whither " 
imply adaptation, direction, a " final cause." It is of the essence 
of mechanism to eliminate chance ; for if the parts might all act 
at random, there would be nothing produced, and the machine 
itself would fall to pieces. On the other hand, where we see 
parts conspiring to a whole and the end resulting from their 
action, our mind is immediately carried to the thought of a 
maker who contrived, or designed and put together, the elements 
here combined in unison. Be it Paley's watch or Leibnitz's " pre- 
established harmony," the argument is as conclusive as it is clear 
and simple. I defy any one who reads with attention the 
instances, alleged by Paley in his Natural Theology, of design 
as exhibited in the anatomical structure of the human body to 
point out a flaw in the reasoning. And I mention Paley because 
it is often suggested or openly declared that the Archdeacon ot 
Carlisle was a shallow mind which has had its day. Paley's 
defects are well known to me, but they take nothing from the 
cogency of these particular arguments. There is, I affirm, no way 
of meeting them except the gambler's way the " dice-box 
theory," it has been aptly termed in which it is alleged that 
" given infinite time and infinite atoms, we must expect an in- 
finite number of combinations to take place, and these seemingly 
ordered ones among them." This doctrine, tricked out in a 
vesture of scientific terms, is now known as Darwinism. It is 
nothing less than a crusade against thought in the universe, and 
would avail equally, as I have shown, against any possible " not 
myself" which was alleged to exhibit marks of intelligence as 
against the Divine Mind. But to insist on the machinery in 
things is not Darwinism. Nor is evolution Darwinism. It is not 
only right but expedient to search out the relation between 
evolution and design. I know of few investigations more fertile 
in results, more conducive to a religious frame of mind, or more 
necessary for these times. In my next article I will endeavor 
to sketch the general subject as it appears to , me. Meanwhile 



1891.] ODE. 71 

the conclusion upon which I would invite theologians as well as 
men of science to meditate is, that where we see mechanism, in 
ourselves or in the world without, there we see mind or the 
results of mind. The mechanical system of the universe reveals 
a Prime Mover, whose Thought fashioned it and appointed the 
ends to which it is determined, as certainly as the words and 
the rhythm of Shakespeare and ^Eschylus lay open to us the 
spirit whereby they were dictated, and the persuasive genius that 
for ever in them glows and burns as with heavenly fire. That 
old Hebrew psalm, the Cceli enarrant, has set to immortal 
music a theology of Nature upon which science every day pours 
a more entrancing light " The Heavens are telling the glory of 
God ? and the firmament showeth the work of His hands. Day 
unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowl- 
edge. There .is no speech nor language where their voice is not 
heard. Their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their 
words to the end of the world." 

Will any Darwin or Haeckel silence that Credo of the open- 
eyed seeker after truth? I can never think it. 

WILLIAM BARRY. 



ODE. 

FOR THE SILVER JUBILEE OF ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS. 

I. 

WHAT are the years of Time ? 
Pale motes that flash and fade beneath the sun ; 
Phantoms of griefs matured and joys begun ; 
Or giants striding on with steps sublime, 
That echo and will echo till the last 
Great trumpet tone of earthly pomp be past. 
Weakest and strongest of all powers that press 
The changeful souls of men to curse or bless, 

As with poor, puny skill, 

They shape them to their ends for good or ill, 
Making them serve as sceptre or as rod ; 
Foreknowing them as branches of the tree 

Of dread Eternity 
That stands for ever in the courts of God ! 

What are the years of Time ? 
A little span of shade, and then the light 



72 ODE. [April,, 

A little space of day, and then the night 
A little spell of sorrow and delight : 

With dirges tolling or with joy bells' chime ! 
Swift as the winds, and aimless too as they, 
Their heedless moments fleet and fly away: 
Yet can their calm, slow- moving, noiseless feet 
Drag the great world to triumph or defeat ; 
Lure forceful wrong behind the prison bars, 
Or lead the feeble steps of right beyond the morning stars L 

II. 

And the short Life of Man, ' . 

Measured by moments' span 
How shall we count its varied force, or mate 
Its lordly might divine, its pitiful, poor state ? 
Frailer than all frail things : a flash ; a breath ; 
A sigh expiring on the lips of death ; 
A reed wind-shaken ; or a power supreme 
Greater than height or depth ; a kindling gleam 
By that great light of Love Immortal thrown 

Athwart the clouds by doubt or darkness driven, 
To shine with ray eternal as Its own. 

And with Itself to share the bliss of Heaven. 

III. 

Time, and the Life of Man ! What darkness cast 
By their grim deeds doth cloud the shuddering past ; 
When moved alone by erring human will, 
Each small ambition worked its petty ill ; 
Ruled its short hour with stern destroying might, 
And left its pathway seared with awful' blight. 
Or if some kindlier impulse touched the mind 
To gentler thought for welfare of mankind, 
'Twas but as summer winds that come and go; 

Or like the waves in motion 

Above the restless ocean, 
While silently the sombre depths sleep dark amd cold below. 

IV. 

But when the Christian came, his soul aflame 
With the great glory of his Master's name ; 
Burning with Faith, and Charity divine,. 
And fire of Hope that makes the world to shine- 



1 89 1.] ODE. 73 

With steadfast splendor; bringing unto earth 
The joy immortal of immortal birth 
Then for the first time Man, with heart elate, 
Did know the worth and honor of his state. 
Alone no more, nor selfishly allied 
To narrow schemes of policy or pride, 
To weak vainglory, to the greed of pelf, 
To the poor worship of the poorer self, 
But to the Power serene that dwells above, 

Uplifted by humility of love; 
Unawed by stern misfortune's fiercest blow, 
Serene alike in triumph and in woe, 
Made strong by sacrifice, made rich by grace, 
The help, the hope, the saviour of his race. 

What wondrous fire makes eloquent his speech 
Whose voice inspired beyond the earth doth reach ; 
What strange, sweet force doth make his weakness strong. 

Whose heaven-directed hand 
Is nerved by all the radiant, mighty throng 

That near the Father stand- 
Fair messengers of love, who linger there 
With listening hearts to hear and grace to answer prayer I 

V. 

Time and such Life ! Ah ! world that flings away 
The. Christian's glory from thy crown to-day, 
Think, ere too late, what spendthrift fools they be 
Who fling their choicest treasure in the sea ; 
Destroy the one sole grandeur that hath shown 
To Death a greatness loftier than its own ; 
Kill the rich grain that future fields might bless, 
And leave the world but empty nothingness. 

VI. 

Thou, on whose pathway to its native heaven 

The silver star of Jubilee hath risen ; 

Thou, whose ripe years in such accord have sped 

With seed of faith in virtue harvested ; 

Whose loving labor still hath been to raise 

The spirit bowed, to joy of prayer and praise ; 

Whose hands upraised in benediction win 

Sweet Mercy's stream to cleanse the stains of sin, 



74 ODE. [April, 

How in thy nature's high, benignant plan, 
Time and the hour have blessed the life of man. 

Under thy fostering touch, 
What new, fair armor hath been wove, for right 

To use against wrong's mastery, and such 
Dark shapes as do with human progress fight : 

The Midas blight that turns to sordid gold 
Our hopes and aspirations, Eden born ; 
The lesser lights, that greater light do scorn ; 

Doubt's haggard face and cold, 
That turns to seek the gloom and shuns the face of Morn. 

VII. 

Prince of the House of God ! what lot more blest 

Than thine, that, lifted on the topmost crest 

Of Faith's high mountain, the rich growth doth trace 

Of thy fair realm across the centuries' space ? 

No passing bauble hers of mortal power ; 

But for her lofty dower 
Humanity's large virtues made more great ; 
The, poor man taught to honor his estate ; 
Wealth made to hold its regal fee in trust, 
To help the weak or hold itself accurst; 
Wisdom, refined by Truth's eternal grace, 
Making the world a glad abiding place 
For all her children ; Science seeking cause 
To show the Giver greater than His laws ; 
And Charity, the all-ennobling gift 
Which nearest to the throne of Heaven its foster-child doth lift. 

VIII. 

Onward her March of Empire! .onward, and onward for ever, 

While the spirit of life doth own its heritage proud and blest ; 
While misery stumbles and gropes, and joy of the earth can never 

Grant to the heart content, or give to the tortured rest. 
For hers are the only gifts which man, the Immortal, prizeth ; 
Hers is the light that liveth though stars and suns shall 

cease, 
Till the stream whose fountain is God to its bountiful source 

upriseth 

And the strife of the finite world is merged in infinite Peace. 

MARY ELIZABETH BLAKE. 



1891.] THE STAGE FROM WHIPPLE' s CORNERS. 75 



THE STAGE FROM WHIPPLE'S CORNERS. 

MRS. SLOCUM'S ample figure completely obscured the small 
north window of the little sitting-room. She was watching for 
the stage that was to bear away their only Thanksgiving guest. 

" I'm sorry enough it an't so Ben can carry ye down, Mr. 
Willoughby ; the mare's been lame afore, but not so bad, and 
the roads being so rutty I do feel she ought to stand in." 

The gentleman thus addressed sat in the rear of the giant 
base-burner, his feet resting on the fender that, like the other 
numerous glittering nickel edges and knobs, divided attention 
with the uncanny isinglass windows peering from all sides into 
the flaming pit. 

" I beg you will not give it a thought, Mrs. Slocum," he 
said in a voice that betrayed his refinement. " I should greatly 
hesitate to come again if I felt that I must add to your 
labors." 

''Well, naow there he comes, and it makes me easy about 
your goin' off alone so, to know that Jonathan Sebell's a-drivin' 
himself, for of all the keerful, accommodatin' men he's the 
prince. Just look how he's got them back curtains strapped 
down. I reckon maybe ye can sit in there, and no gust of 
wind ever gits ahead of Jonathan. Ah ! he'll make it comfort- 
able most anywhere. Good-by. It has been a real downright 
satisfaction to have ye at our table once more. To be sure it's 
sad to think of them that's gone, but it's the doin's of the Lord, 
and we mustn't repine. 

" Here's Ben with the hard- wood block het up hot Ben," she 
called, tapping on the window, " shove up the curtain a mite, so 
as I can see who's in." 

Mr. Willoughby grasped his satchel, drew on his last glove, 
and, with a parting word of kindness, passed into the wintry air. 
Here he went through the farewell to Ben, conscious of the 
watchful eye of the driver, who beat his arms and stamped his 
feet to keep time with the lively tune of " Yankee Doodle ; ' that 
he was whistling. The adieux being over, the new passenger 
looked at the vehicle that was to carry him from Whipple's 
Corners to the railroad station, a distance of something more 
than three miles. 



76 THE STAGE FROM WHIFFLE' s CORNERS. [April,. 

It was rather disappointing. Built after the fashion of a 
" democrat wagon " and fitted with a home-made " canopy top," 
it had also submitted to the further ignominy of glazed curtains 
that, not being of the required width, yawned between the straps 
and buttons and let in draughts of air far more dangerous than a 
full exposure. 

There were two seats ; that in the rear was occupied by 
three females, swathed in shawls, and that indescribable length 
of wrapping material called in the masculine sense " a comforter," 
and in the feminine " a cloud." The front seat had the disad- 
vantage of tipping forward, and, as it was extremely narrow, 
nothing but positive pressure against the dashboard prevented 
the occupants from falling headlong upon the horses' heels. A 
sense of gallantry had induced the driver to bestow two of the 
three blankets upon the " ladies," and as he now proceeded to 
assist Mr. Willoughby into his place, he added what he could to 
the importance of the threadbare robe that he produced by a 
fierce injunction to "tuck up, tuck up; nothin' keeps the cold 
out like bein' r snug ; loose wrappin', like loose livin', don't warm a 
man's heart mucfr.'' 

Mrs. Slocum's departing guest took time to nod once more 
to his late hostess, as the shambling horses responded to their 
master's reiterated " Get up alang," and then the keen, frosty 
air reminded him that the hard-wood block, so kindly furnished 
by Ben, would be a most welcome addition to his outfit. In 
vain his feet sought it. At length, certain that he saw it depos- 
ited, in the wagon, he lifted the blanket and peered about the floor. 

" Be you lookin' for that het stick ?" asked one of the enormous 
mummies on the back seat. " Because if you want it, I'll shove 
it for'ard ; but Miss Peters here is a feeble woman, an I tho't to 
heat her up a leetle." 

What man could be so ungallant as to require the return ot 
his property after that? Certainly not Mr. Willoughby, whose 
heart was as tender as a girl's, and he tried to warm his own 
chilled members with the consciousness that the " feeble wo- 
man " was made comfortable. It did not work as well as those 
things sometimes do, for he was not used to country drives, 
and indeed for many years had been a stranger to the New 
England climate. 

Jonathan Sebell, however, thoroughly accustomed to the re- 
quirements of his steeds', tucked the reins between his knees r 
folded his arms and entered into conversation. 



1891.] THE STAGE FROM WHIPPLE'S CORNERS. 77 

" Is your name Slocum ? " 

" No ; it is Willoughby." 

" Not livin' in these parts.'' 

" No ; I am at present located in Boston." 

The victim vainly hoped by a gentlemanly reserve, and a 
free-will offering of certain prominent features in his existence, to 
forestall impertinent inquiry; but alas! 

" Preachin' ? " 

" Not now." 

A little silence, broken at the first turn in the road. 

" Ever been up this way afore ? " 

" Yes, in years gone by." He hoped to turn the inter- 
rogator's mind toward the physical changes and thus avoid per- 
sonalities. 

" Seems as if I'd seen ye ; guess you must be a relation of 
Miss Slocum ? " 

-Not any." 

" Maybe connection, then.' 7 

" Yes." 

" Through your wife ? " 

"Yes." 

"She a Slocum or a Garrett?" 

" She was a Garrett." 

"Ah! dead then. Thought it queer she wa'n't along for 
Thanksgiving, and her the relation, too." He paused long 
enough to drive out of the road to accommodate a heavy load. 
After the terrific jolting had subsided the conversation opened 
again. 

" Can't be Ann Gadsby's man ? Miss Slocum's first cousin 
on her mother's side." 

" That was my wife's name " 

" And I used to see Ann Gadsby gallopin' to school on her 
pony, just as if the house was afire," he chuckled. 

" Ann Gadsby, leetle Ann Gadsby! I wonder now what com- 
plaint took her off? " 

It was beginning to grow uncomfortable to Mr. Willoughby,, 
notwithstanding his patience, and the approach to a wayside 
post-office was a positive relief. Here they stopped, and, with 
much inconvenience to his passengers, the driver drew out a 
diminutive mail-pouch and went into the building. The wind 
swept around the stage with a vindictiveness that humbled the 
minister. He shrank within himself until the blanket almost con- 




78 THE STAGE FROM WHIPPLE'S CORNERS. [April, 

cealed him. Five minutes went by. Ten had almost passed 
when a deep bass voice, from the interior of the vehicle, gave 
utterance to the sentiment that Jonathan must be " a-toasting 
himself clean through." Presently he appeared, bearing evidence 
in his face of a thorough-going fire somewhere. 

" Tired a-waitin' ? " he asked cheerily. " Guess I was gone 
longer than usual; had to help Charity sort the mail she's partly 
froze ; fixed her fire up good, too. Cleaned out the clinkers and 
fetched a hod o' coal. Must do a neighborly turn now and 
then. Lord knows I try to," he added with self-satisfaction, 
while Mr. Willoughby hoped that his attacks of benevolence 
would hold off until they reached the station. He was absorbed 
with this idea when he became conscious that his tormentor 
had returned to the old charge. 

"Ann Gadsby ! she was a pretty cretur. I'll bet you 
thought so oncet. Seems as if I ree-call the weddin'. Naow it 
can't be you are married ag'in ? " 

The poor gentleman appealed to felt his heart sink. How 
could he present all his private life for the inspection of 
these strangers. Yet how could he avoid it ? There was no es- 
cape but the railroad station that was far in the distance. 
"Hey?" 

With great embarrassment and inward quaking the minister 
faltered out: "Well, yes." 

" Don't say so ! Who'd 'a' thought Ann Gadsby, chirk as she 
used to be, would 'a' laid in her grave and her man married ag'in 
years afore the old stage stopped runnin'." He sighed, and then, 
as if remembering his duty toward the living, he chirruped to 
the horses and turned smilingly toward his companion to say : 
"The're's them that think it ag'in Scripture for a preacher to 
marry at all, and them that says it's a rebuke to the cloth 
for him to marry twicet, and there's them that think it's 
right an' accordin' to natur'. You seem to be of the latter- 
most opinion." 

Before Mr. Willoughby could rally the bass voice announced : 
" Most of men air this way of thinkin', or leastwise of doin'." 

Was ever a drive of three miles so long ? Some thought of 
getting out to walk crossed the minister's mind, but the con- 
sciousness that the roads were rough and the way unknown 
turned the balance in favor of quietly bearing the torture. 

It was a pleasure to see a red flag fluttering at the door ot 
a farm-house, for Jonathan drew toward the gate remark- 



1891.] THE STAGE FROM WHIPPLE" s CORNERS. 79^ 

ing : " 'Nother passenger ; mostly good business after Thanks- 
givin'." 

The new arrival proved to be a small lad who, with a little 
squeezing, was comfortably and safely wedged between the two* 
men. His answers to the questions put by the driver as to the 
family affairs had scarcely died out, and Mr. Willoughby's fears 
were beginning to present themselves again, when a new subject 
of interest appeared. It was nothing less than the figure of a 
huge man in the middle of the road, gesticulating violently. The 
stage stopped. 

" Humph ! not much room for me." 

"Plenty, plenty! Always room for one more," cheerfully an- 
swered the driver, springing to the ground and offering his hand 
for the parcels the stranger held. 

How he was to bestow himsell was a question even after the 
huge man was in the wagon. Various methods were resorted to, 
and at last, after some reluctance on the part of the boy, the 
fleshy person granted him the privilege of sitting on the edge of 
despair, while Mr. Willoughby gazed in horror upon the selfish 
new-comer. Jonathan's voice recalled him. 

" Which of you men will drive team and let me run alongside ? 
I'm always willing to accommodate." 

The minister did not think of offering, feeling but too certain 
of his inability ; but the positive refusal of the big man, and the 
certainty that the small lad's mittens were poor protection against 
the biting cold, made it a duty, and as he took the stiff reins in 
his benumbed fingers he had at least the satisfaction of seeing a 
look of content gather on the boy's face. 

At any rate it was not far to the station now, and so they 
pegged on, with the happy consciousness that the horses could 
not go very fast, and the added bliss of knowing the driver to 
be within call in case of accident. 

Mr. Willoughby began to feel it a clear case of gain when 
silence reigned, but an unusual bumping brought exclamations 
of fright from the back seat and caused him to look for the 
deserter. Not a sign of him was to be seen. The bumping 
continued, and a horrible fear crept into his mind that the 
springs were broken or the wheel about to tumble off. In vain 
he searched the road for the owner of the vehicle. Matters were 
becoming serious when suddenly a dashing steed, drawing a 
most comfortable low phaeton, halted beside them, and Jonathan 
Sebell put out his shaggy head to say, in a commanding tone, 



So THE STAGE FROM WHIPPLE'S CORNERS. [April, 

** Drive up sharp now ; an't no time to lose. I'll meet you at 
the depot; drive up sharp," and on he went quite as well satis- 
fied as if his shivering passengers also were behind a nimble 
pair of young horses. 

To "drive up" was no easy -matter, even if Mr. Willoughby 
had been accustomed to the business. There was no whip, the 
right horse was lame, and the left lamentably lazy. To add to 
his misfortunes the passengers began to grumble, and the small 
lad to whine out that if he did not get to this train his grand- 
mother would never let him go again. In vain he chirruped 
and shouted " Git up alang," just as he had heard the original 
driver do ; there was something evidently lacking in the intona- 
tion, it would not work ; when to his great relief a sudden bend 
in the road revealed the dingy railroad station and the figure of 
Jonathan Sebell beckoning them on. 

The whistle of the incoming train greeted the ear of the ex- 
hausted minister just as the last mummy was released from the 
'back seat, and he heard the bass voice roar, " I never see sich 
drivin' in my life " ; while Mrs. Peters, who proved to be a 
ruddy-faced invalid, squeaked out : " I dunno' what I'd done 
without that hot block." His hands were too numb to take the 
change from his purse with which to pay for the stage ride, so 
he presented it open to the driver, who selected seventy- five 
cents, and remarked placidly as he put it in his pocket : " It 
an't a payin' business, this staging, but it's a mighty sight of 
convenience to strangers." 

S. M. H. G. 



1891.] THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. 81 



THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. 

THE traveller will have reached the city of the True Cross 
by steamer either from Europe or by the commodious Ward 
Line from New York. The port is an open roadstead, the ship 
will anchor some way out, south of the island of San Juan de 
Ulua, and will then be boarded by the health officer and port 
captain. License being granted to land by these worthies, the 
passenger, possibly ignorant of the speech of the land, will- 
have the felicity of bargaining with Mexican or negro boat- 
men (there is a considerable negro element . here) for conveyance 
of himself and his effects to the shore, and his store of silver 
pesos will be materially lightened. This is supposing calm 
weather to prevail ; during a " norther " all idea of landing must 
be dismissed. And now ensues the custom-house inspection at 
the land end of the mole. " What sort of an ordeal is this ? " 
Why, that depends. Last year we noted with compassion the 
arrival of a Methodistical Cornish mining captain, bound with 
his numerous olive-branches for Pachuca. The first thing re- 
marked in his huge chest was a pile of tracts, designed for the 
enlightenment of the benighted natives. These observed, the 
official duly rummaged the trunk with ungentle assiduity, and a 
quantity of really valuable china was reduced to potsherds. He 
then gave his attention to the chest of a lady, but, seeing that 
she was met by a clean-shaven, black-coated gentleman of ap- 
parently priestly appearance (actually her husband), and that 
within her box was a large crucifix, he passed her with a grace- 
ful bow and without further inquisition. 

The Hotel de Mexique should be patronized ; it faces the 
custom-house, benefits by the sea-breeze, and commands from 
the upper stories a cheerful view of the shipping and of the 
bustling activity of porters and carters. The landlord is a gen- 
ial and handsome Frenchman. However, the Hotel de Diligen- 
cias in the lovely tropical plaza hard by is preferred by some, 
who from the balcony can of an evening enjoy the music of 
the military band and watch the long procession of muslin- 
robed, black-eyed senoritas. Here also is the principal church, 
in no way remarkable ; some government buildings, and the in- 
evitable portales or covered walls, with shops, restaurants, and 
cafes. The zopilotes, or vultures, are honored scavengers, tame 



82 THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. [April,. 

as pigeons, and untold pains and penalties are in store for him 
who should harm one of them possibly incarceration in the 
darksome, dripping dungeons of the fort of San Juan de Uliia 
on the island of that name, already mentioned. Here it was 
that Cortes landed in 1519, on 'Holy Thursday. Next day he 
set foot on the site of the present city, which he named from 
the day. The place has for centuries been a terror to seafar- 
ing folk from the deadly vomito which used to reign here 
during the summer months, but for some years past yellow 
jack has been practically expelled by dint of improved sani- 
tation. Yet the stoutest Mexican in the interior will shudder 
at the bare notion of visiting the place ; regard you with 
horror if you contemplate the trip, bless himself deyoutly, and 
relate for your warning ghoulsome stories which he can per- 
sonally vouch for. However, Vera Cruz is a bustling and thriv- 
ing place, and cab-fares, washing-bills, and such like incidental 
charges, demonstrate that the pay of working folk here is on 
a totally different scale to that prevailing in the frugal interior. 
There is, of course, a large foreign colony resident here, and 
they ordinarily like the place, but there will be little to delay 
the casual traveller, who must leave the Mexican Railway's 
terminus for the higher country, at the unconscionable hour of 
a quarter before six in the morning. He will find the train 
built on the American model, with first, second, and third 
class cars (no Pullmans or Wagners), and a special car for the 
military guard. The conductors and most of the officials are 
Mexicans, and, as in Europe, are the servants of the public, an 
arrangement which those accustomed to it will prefer to the 
lordly airs of the railway' man prevalent in a certain republic 
which shall be nameless. Steaming through the fortifications 
of Vera Cruz into the sandy region adjacent there is little to 
interest us. We cross the Laguna de Cocos, near which, in 
1847, the garrison surrendered to General Scott. Although it is 
nearly half a century since the project of building a railway in 
Mexico assumed definite shape, yet the English line was long 
the only iron road to be found in the republic ; and the work of 
railway construction, which forms so important and essential a 
feature in the period of progress on which the land of Hum- 
boldt's predilection has now entered, owes its origin to the war- . 
rior and statesman who has so long guided the destinies of the 
nation. The writer some months ago had occasion to traverse 
the greater portion of the Mexican railway system in his task of 
preparing a series of fourteen papers on the subject for a Mexi- 



1891.] THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. 83 

can journal, and though it would be impossible within the com- 
pass of one article to enumerate all the points of interest noted 
on this journey, yet an endeavor will be made to give a brief 
sketch of a subject that may prove worthy the attention of the 
general reader. 

The principal lines of rail are four, and all these run into the 
capital of the republic. They are: The Mexican and the Inter- 
oceanic roads from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, and the 
Central and National lines from the United . States, with their 
branches. The International, though entering Mexico from Texas, 
may be practically considered a feeder to the Central. Besides 
these there are many other local lines to be treated of in their 
place. 

First in point of time and in excellence of construction, beauty 
of scenery, and general interest, is the Mexican Railway, or the 
Vera Cruz line, as it is often called in Mexico. The first con- 
tract for this line was made in 1842, and during the ensuing nine 
years no more than eleven and one-half kilometres of road were 
completed from the port of Vera Cruz inland. At the close of 
1850 this contract was annulled, as the conditions had not been 
complied with. The work effected was only worth half a million 
dollars, but the constructors had received four times that amount 
from a two per cent, duty on imports at Vera Cruz granted them 
towards building expenses. The government then took charge of 
the work, and in six years doubled the mileage at about a third of 
the previous cost. But serious work did not commence till 1857, 
when Comonfort's government granted a concession for construc- 
tion to Senor Antonio Escandon, selling him the fifteen miles 
of road, which had taken as many years to build, for three- 
quarters of a million dollars. The government thus far had lost 
a cool two million dollars, and nothing practical had been 
accomplished. 

Enough has been said to show the leisurely manner in which 
the work was done ; revolution, French invasion, wars all these 
were fruitful causes of delay, yet a little progress was fitfully 
made and a big debt accumulated. Escandon actually transferred 
his concession to the Mexican Railway Company in 1864, during 
the empire of Maximilian, and though, three years later, on the 
Constitutional government resuming its authority, the validity of 
these transactions was not acknowledged, Juarez abstained from 
inflicting the penalty of forfeiture on the company. The branch 
to Puebla was completed two years later, and on the last day 
of 1872 the road was solemnly blessed at the Buena Vista ter- 

VOL. LIII. 6 



84 THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. [April, 

minus in Mexico by the archbishop, and a thanksgiving service 
was held in the cathedral. Next day President Lerdo de Tejada, 
with the principal men of the country, started from Mexico for 
Vera Cruz, in two special trains, stopping at alt the intervening 
towns to join in the rejoicings, and returning to the capital in 
eight days. 

The main line is 263 miles in length, and the Puebla branch 
3"O miles. The cost of the work amounted 'to more than $36,- 
000,000, or over $123,000 a mile. It is certainly one of the 
most costly railroads ever built, which is attributable to extrava- 
gance, misfortunes, and extreme natural difficulties. For instance, 
as the government insisted on construction being carried on from 
each end of the line at the same time, an enormous amount of 
material had to be hauled from the coast to the capital at a pro- 
digious outlay. However, it is a solidly-built road of standard 
(4 feet 8 1/2 inches) gauge, with substantial stations and excellent 
rolling stock. The average net income .of the line has been about 
a million and a half dollars a year. The palmy days for share- 
holders were those when the Central and National roads were 
under construction, when the Mexican Railway bled its future 
rivals on the transportation of their material employed on the 
southern extremities of those lines. " The company's capital is 
over, eight million- pounds sterling, divided, roughly speaking, into 
two and one-quarter millions of ordinary stock, two and one-half 
millions eight per cent, preference, and one million of six per 
cent, second preference stock, two millions six per cent, deben- 
tures, . and one-quarter of a million of second mortgage stock. 
The state granted a concession of over half a million dollars a 
year ior twenty-five years from 1868, and though the condition 
of the public finances prevented the full payment to be made for 
some years, it has now been resumed, being raised by a charge 
of six per cent, on custom-house receipts. It is not easy to see 
whence ordinary stockholders are to derive a dividend, either now 
or in the future. Even should the second preference obtain a 
trifle, the capital of the company is too great, towns and new 
industries do not develop on the line as in the Western States of 
the American Union, and the opening of the Interoceanic to Vera 
'Cruz and of the various railways to the port of Tampico will 
introduce formidable rivals. 

At Tejeria is the junction with the tramway which the line 
runs to Jalapa, a charming place, eighty miles from Vera Cruz, 
and capital of the State. The journey takes a dozen hours and 
the road lies through wild tropical jungle. When the Inter- 



1891.] THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. 85 

oceanic completes the line connecting these two cities, it is reason- 
able to suppose that steam will triumph over mule-power and the 
present tramway be disused or modified. An hour or two from 
the coast and the lovely views of the mountains are observed, and 
the rich pastures give place to coffee and sugar estates, banana 
groves abound, the trees are seen to be loaded with orchids and 
other glorious parasites, and we cross the Atoyac River over a 
bridge three hundred and thirty feet long and thirty feet above 
the stream. Though solidly constructed, this was demolished two 
years ago by heavy floods, which swept along huge boulders and 
fallen trees with irresistible impetuosity. Traffic was interrupted 
for some weeks, but the bridge is now restored and stronger than 
before. The grade now attains the heroic proportion of four per 
cent, and powerful double- ejnder Fairlie engines are employed and 
several tunnels are passed through. In twenty miles we ascend 
twelve hundred feet 

Cordoba we shall not notice in detail, for should we attempt 
to describe this delightful little lotus-eater's island no space would 
remain for other subjects. It is embowered in a wilderness of trop- 
ical fruits and flower-gardens, and the voyager should devote a 
week to the study of its glories. This is the point of departure 
of the Ferro-carril Agricola de Cordoba, or General Pacheco's 
Railway. It is to traverse and develop a marvellous country, 
but progress made is proportional to the genius of the country 
where " it is always afternoon." We were indebted to the 
Scotch engineer in charge for a ride on his locomotive over the 
few miles of line completed. This genial official impresses on 
new-comers the necessity of abstaining from fruits and qualify- 
ing all water drank, if fever is to be fended off ; but he is not 
a very successful illustration of the triumph of his recipe. CXi- 
ward still, amid scenes of wild magnificence, through tunnels, 
over ravines, but ever upwards. The bridge over the Mettac 
Ravine is 350 feet long and nearly 100 above the stream; it is 
built on a curve of 325 feet radius and on a three per ce.it. 
grade. Then we come on Orizaba, where we fain would linger, 
and in the body, if so it might be ; but we must press on. The 
Barranca del Infiernillo the Ravine of Hell where there is a 
sheer drop of six hundred feet from the ledge along which the 
line crawls, La Joya, with the red- tiled town of Maltrata, in 
the centre of this radiant valley rightly named the Jewel, the 
remarkable contortions, twistings, and circlings of the line in its 
endeavors to scale the opposing heights all these and numerous 
other marvels of natural glory and engineering skill must be 



86 THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. [April, 

seen to be appreciated, for there is little to equal and nothing 
to surpass it that we are acquainted with. 

At Esperanza the Fairlie locomotive is detached, for we 
have now ascended about eight ^thousand feet and the remainder 
of the journey is through an elevated and comparatively unin- 
teresting country. We traverse wide valleys bounded by barren 
heights, vast herds graze on the pastures, and wide expanses are 
devoted to cultivation. From Apizaco the branch to Puebla 
commences, 29 miles in length. Apam is the centre of the 
pulque district. The country for miles around is planted with 
huge magueys (agave Americana), and special trains, laden with 
the queer-flavored fluid thence derived (apparently a mixture of 
sour cider and soda-water), stored in clumsy barrels, leave daily 
for Mexico. We run past the suburb of Guadalupe where is the 
shrine of the national patroness as it is growing dusk, and ter- 
minate our journey at the handsome stone station of Buena 
Vista, one of the most pleasing features of the capital. 

As the Interoceanic line is a formidable rival to the one just 
treated of, a rapid sketch of it will be in order. The first con- 
cession to construct a railway from Acapulco, on the Pacific, to 
Vera Cruz by way of the capital was granted more than a 
dozen years ago, and this was followed by others, which were 
consolidated in one, to Francisco Arteaga, dated 1883. Five 
years later a most capable Spaniard, Don Delfin Sanchez, a son- 
in-law of Juarez, took this concession to London and sold it to 
an English company, together with the portions of the line 
already constructed, for ;8oo,ooo, he remaining president of the 
construction company, and by far the most prominent person in 
the enterprise. A year ago the writer went, as a guest of Mr. 
Sanchez, with a party of railway officials and journalists on a 
trial trip over the eastern portion of the line as far as Perote, 
211 miles from the capital. We occupied three days % on this 
excursion, making Puebla, 130 miles from Mexico, the first day, 
visiting Perote the following day, and then returning to our 
starting point. The terminus is at San Lazaro, to the east of 
the palace, near the unsavory cloaca maxima, or open drain, 
containing all the accumulated filth of a place of 300,000 people. 
The death-rate of the city is six times that of the London suburb 
from which this is written. The drainage works now being 
actively carried out by the firm of Reed & Campbell, of Lon- 
don, may mitigate this evil. 

The Interoceanic is a narrow-gauge (three feet) line and 
reached Jalapa last summer ; before long it will be at Vera 



1891.] THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. 87 

Cruz ; directly it reached Puebla, the Mexican Raihvay lelt the 
effects of competition and had to lower its rates, to the benefit 
of the public. At one point we noticed a considerable and well- 
constructed tunnel, but these as a rule are avoided. At another 
place a deviation from the original line had been made, saving 
nine kilometres in a short distance, by the prosaic but practical 
expedient of proceeding in a straight line along the level plain 
and abandoning the graceful curves and sinuosities amidst the 
neighboring mountains in which the ambitious Mexican engineer 
originally employed had indulged. At Irolo, the point of de- 
parture by the Mexican branch line for the great mining town 
of Pachuca, we cross the Mexican and Hidalgo Railways and 
encounter an abandoned portion of track formerly built by the 
National, misled by some visions of dreamland. The utilitarian 
spirit of the dominant powers in Mexico is aptly illustrated by 
the fact that even in pious Puebla the Interoceanic station, that* 
of San Marcos, is located in the ancient church of that name. 
Some months ago, remarking to a Mexican gentleman that the 
building of the new Catholic church in the Calle de San Fran- 
cisco was clearly unnecessary when so many ancient churches 
remained unredeemed from secular uses, he rejoined that these 
were worn-out old temples, three hundred years old, and fit only 
for warehouses, and that the people wanted something new and 
up to date ; it sounds grotesque to us antiquarian English, who 
wistfully regard our mutilated Norman abbeys and who recently 
restored the chapel at Dover Castle in which the Roman garri- 
son once worshipped to (parliamentary) Christian uses. 

The south-western branch of the Interoceanic does not as yet 
extend much over one hundred miles. A daily train consisting 
ot ten freight and two passenger cars is run each way. We 
skirt Lake Texcoco and see fishermen afloat in canoes or drying 
their nets on the shore. At Ayotta the fruits of their toil are 
proffered to us by their wives, and to a Japanese traveller a 
basket of uncooked fish might prove attractive, but we decline 
the finny array. After three hours Amecameca, a town of ten 
thousand inhabitants, is reached. This is the starting point for 
the ascent of Popocatepetl. There is no real mountaineering work 
to be done ; still for some twenty-five dollars and three days' toil 
one may ascend nigh on eighteen thousand feet above the sea- 
level, trudge painfully through deep snow, and be lowered into 
the crater in a sulphur-gatherer's bucket. Here the Sacro Monte 
jostles the railway track, where is the cave formerly the abode 
of Fray Martin de Valencia, one of the " Twelve Apostles " of 



88 THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. [April, 

Mexico. He" was greatly beloved by the Indians, who are said 
to have secretly removed his body from Tlalmanalco and interred 
it here. In the shrine of the holy sepulchre is an image of the 
dead Christ said to have been placed here in 1527 by the holy 
man himself, and greatly reverenced. The image is carried to 
the parish church on Ash Wednesday and kept there till Good 
Friday, when it is restored with great ceremony to the shrine. 
Of the Holy Week pilgrimage, the Passion play, and kindred 
subjects much might be said, but we must onwards. At Ozum- 
ba breakfast, is served; but the traveller should be on the alert, 
for he is not advised of the name of the station, of the half- 
hour's halt, the meal, or of anything else. 

We now run downwards, winding and ophidianizing it to a 
surprising extent, passing corn-fields, grazing lands, and pine-clad 
heights till, after seven hours' travel, we reach the town of 
Cuantla, running into the church and convent of San Diego 
we beg pardon, the freight and passenger station. This town of 
eleven thousand inhabitants is rectilineal and dreary enough, but 
the scenery has changed as if by magic, the magic of abundant 
water. The rich, broad valley is occupied by league after league 
of bright, waving sugar-cane, and factory chimneys taper up- 
wards at intervals. At the hacienda of Santa Inez 13,000 
acres are tilled, 1,800 men and as many animals are employed. 
We then reach the bright little town of Yantepec, nestling amid 
extensive orange-groves. Coffee and bananas, corn and sugar 
are raised, and, except where vast masses of limestone protrude, 
the very mountains are clothed to their summits with a rich 
growth of nutritious herbage. The bridge, the government 
buildings, the flowering plaza, everything is spick-and-span, and 
bears evidence ot care and thrift ; but the church, dating from 
1567, is gradually lapsing into decay, having fallen on evil days. 

The Mexican Southern was attempted by various governors 
of Oaxaca (the president's native State), and General Grant at 
one time held the concession. But the actual concession was 
granted in April, 1888, to Mr. Read, eight per cent, interest on 
the amount expended being guaranteed for fifteen years by the 
government. The line is to run from Puebla to Oaxaca, and 
to be thence continued to Salina Cruz, the Pacific terminus of 
the Tehuantepec line. The company is an English one, and a 
strong one too, and the work is being pushed with energy. 
The line has the drawback of having no connection with the 
capital or gulf, but it traverses a district unsurpassed in Mexico 
for population or natural resources, and the advent of the iron 



1891.] THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. 89 

horse will be the signal for establishing new industries, reopen- 
ing abandoned mines, and breaking untilled acres. Puebla we 
have already mentioned. It has a population of 90,000, with 
twenty-six factories of cotton, cambric, glass, crockery, soap, 
etc. It is the third city of the republic, but is easily first in 
beauty, cleanliness, and the piety of its inhabitants. Tehuacan, 
with 25,000 inhabitants, is another flourishing place on the line; 
also Tecomavaca ; and Oaxaca, with 28,000 inhabitants, pos- 
sesses a mint and various factories ; it is lighted by electricity, 
has a telephone system, and is the centre of a district famous 
for its sugar, cotton, cochineal, silk, cacao, indigo, rice, coffee, 
tobacco, honey, dye-wood, timber, and fruits. We have men- 
tioned the Tehuantepec Railway ; it is to connect the Atlantic 
and Pacific, crossing the isthmus from which it is named. The 
line is some 200 miles long, and runs from 16 to 18 north 
latitude. When completed it will become the property of the 
government. The enterprise was attempted forty years ago, a 
company for the purpose being formed at New Orleans, but it 
was too soon after the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, and the 
Mexican government, seeing in it another Yankee aggression 
prevented the realization of the project. Colonel McMurdo, an 
American resident in England, finally obtained the concession ; 
he died last year, but the work is being continued. Tehuante- 
pec (population 8,000) is the only place of any importance in 
the neighborhood of the line. The highest point to be traversed 
is only seven hundred feet above the sea, and natural obstacles 
are but slight. The soil is rich, and yields abundant crops of 
tropical products in the few places where it is cultivated. The 
advantage to be derived from the line is the material shortening 
of the sea voyage between various great centres of commerce. 
For instance, from Liverpool to San Francisco is 16,552 miles 
by way of Cape Horn, 8,885 by the Panama Railway, and 
8,276 by Tehuantepec. Whilst we 1 are in Southern Mexico we 
must mention the lines running out of Merida, the capital of 
Yucatan, a place of 62,000 inhabitants. The lucrative henequen 
industry has made its planters the wealthiest in the republic, 
and the Yucatanese are indignant if called Mexicans. A line of 
thirty miles in length connects Merida with the port of Progreso. 
There is another standard-gauge line to Sotuta, whilst narrow- 
gauge tracks of fifteen, twenty-five, and sixteen miles long con- 
nect the state capital with the towns of Valladolid, Peto, and 
Calkini respectively. These lines are worked by steam-power, 
and prosper like everything else in this favored but sweltering 



90 THROUGH MEX'CO BY RATL. [April, 

district. The Hidalgo Railway is noteworthy as being an exclu- 
sively Mexican undertaking. It connects the capital by a nar- 
row-gauge track seventy- seven miles long with the great mining 
town of Pachuca. Here, and in the immediate neighborhood, is 
a population of 25,000, with a strong contingent from Corn- 
wall. It has upwards of two hundred mines, including the cele- 
brated Real del Monte. It is contemplated to extend this line 
to the port of Tuxpan on the gulf coast, much nearer to the 
capital than Vera Cruz. 

The Mexican National Railway may possess more interest 
for Americans than any of the foregoing, as by it, by way 
of St Louis, San Antonio, Texas, and Laredo, is the nearest 
route from New York to the City of Mexico. In the spring of 
1 88 1 the writer journeyed from San Antonio to Laredo and 
thence into Mexico, but it was on horseback ; railway contrac- 
tors' camps were encountered and railway gossip was in vogue. 
Two years later we made the journey by rail, regarding con- 
temptuously from the comfortable railway car the arid desert 
over which we had twice ridden some few months previously 
without a drop of water for thirty-six consecutive hours. Mr. 
Ruskin pined for some romantic nook remote from telegraph 
cable or shrieking locomotive. It is possible that with larger 
experiences of travel he might not find the iron horse so objec- 
tionable an institution after all. We can personally vouch for 
the marked benefit that the line under consideration has proved 
to the country which it serves. It would not interest the gen- 
eral reader to treat of the difficulties and delays which beset 
the construction of the line, and we have already supplied papers 
to THE CATHOLIC WORLD on Monterey, Saltillo, and San Luis 
Potosi, three state capitals on the main line. Suffice it to say 
that this road from Laredo to Mexico, which was opened for 
traffic on the first of November, 1888, is of three-feet gauge and 
838 miles long. Some lovely scenery is traversed, especially be- 
tween Monterey and Saltillo, and from Mexico to Toluca, the 
capital of the State of Mexico. The conductors as yet are 
Americans ; Pullman cars are run on all trains as well as first, 
second, and third-class cars ; there are well- served refreshment 
stations at reasonable intervals, and every effort is made to 
insure the comfort of travellers. The branch line, ninety-six 
miles in length, from Acambaro by Morelia to Lake Patycuaro 
should be visited without fail by every tourist in Mexico ; but 
if we once commenced the description of the city of palaces and 
the noble Mexican Westmoreland our whole remaining space 



1891.] THROUGH MEXICO BY RAFL. 91 

would be occupied, so we content ourselves by repeating : visit, 
if possible, the ancient Valladolid and we shall have your heart- 
iest thanks for the suggestion. Other branches are from the 
capital to El Salto, 42 miles ; from Matamoras, at the mouth ot 
the Rio Grande, to San Miguel, 75 miles (where a mixed train 
makes the journey either way three times a week with little 
profit to the company), and various smaller tracks used and 
unused, making a total of 1,232 miles. The company also owns 
the Texas-Mexican line connecting Laredo and Corpus Christi, 
but as the rails only weigh thirty pounds to the yard and are 
in poor condition, no one for pleasure would embark in the 
mixed train which occupies some fifteen hours in doing 161 
miles, through a lonely mesquit wilderness. But this portion of 
the National line's property is not in Mexico. The vice-presi- 
dent of the line and manager in Mexico is the Honorable 
Chandos Stanhope, a son of Lord Chesterfield. The original 
concession for this line was granted to Mr. James Sullivan, and 
the undertaking originated in America, but the major portion 
of the bonds are now held in England. 

The Monterey and Gulf line is an American enterprise com- 
menced in February, 1889, but when we visited it in the follow- 
ing October one hundred kilometres had been completed, and 
from the commencement the line had more than covered ex- 
penses. The project is to connect Monterey with the port of 
Tampico, opening up a new and marvellously fertile district, 
where cotton, corn, sugar> coffee, and other sub-tropical products 
thrive. We were shown some beautiful specimens of ebony, 
mahogany, mesquite, and other woods from the virgin forests 
along the line, which should prove a source of considerable 
profit. The lumber used at Monterey now is imported from 
Louisiana, and the price used to be sixty-two dollars a thousand. 
Speaking of new industries to be initiated in these parts, we 
have just seen a notice in a Mexican paper of a Virginian 
dairy-man, whom we remember commencing business in a small 
way in the neighborhood of Monterey four years ago. He now 
has a herd of 200 Jerseys, sends milk into the town, and supplies 
butter all along the National line at seventy-five cents per pound. 
He has already realized a little fortune, and we sighed for his 
appetizing butter in the capital last winter when a higher price 
was charged for some villainous oleomargarine or similar abomi- 
nation. Mr. Wolssner, the American consul at Saltillo, with his 
wife's uncle, Mr. Martinez, has for some time operated timber 
yards at Saltillo and Monterey, and these gentlemen are now 



92 THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. [April, 

establishing soap-works at the latter town. The Monterey and 
Gulf Railway Company induced an American company to erect 
extensive sugar-works at Linares, saw-mills were contemplated, 
and no doubt plenty of flourishing industries will be set on foot 
What a shame it seems .that millions of stunted and starving 
wretches are dragging out an attenuated existence, or rather en- 
during a lifelong penance, in our smoke-roofed slums, when vast 
unpeopled tracts of fertile land lie fallow beneath these genial skies ! 
One great drawback the Gulf Railway experienced in con- 
struction was that its material had to be brought to Laredo by 
4;he standard-gauge lines of the United States, then transshipped 
onto the three-foot National, and at Monterey transferred once 
again, as the Gulf line has very wisely adopted standard gauge. 
To avoid this constant vexation and expense the line has built 
a branch of one hundred and live kilometres to Venadita, on the 
Mexican International, to connect with the standard-gauge system 
of the country. This last-named line is under the control of Mr. 
Huntingdon, and is really a branch of the Southern Pacific, 
having been commenced soon after its completion from San 
Francisco to New Orleans. From Spofiford Junction, in Western 
Texas, a branch thirty- four miles in length runs to Eagle Pass. 
There the Rio Grande is crossed by an iron bridge 930 feet 
long to Piedras Negras, whence it is 384 miles to Torreon, on the 
Central, the present termination of the line. There is little of 
interest on this road, but it passes through the Sabinas coal-fields, 
alluded to by Humboldt, which are said to occupy two or three 
thousand square miles. A branch line twelve miles in length 
has been opened from Sabinas to the Hondo coal-mines, and 
hundreds of thousands of tons of this coal are shipped off, this 
being at present the only source of supply in the country, to the 
best of our knowledge. The coal sells in the capital at sixteen 
dollars a ton. There is a probability that the line will be ex- 
tended to Durango. Then the celebrated Mercado iron moun- 
tain, the greatest mass of iron in the world, will be available for 
practical purposes. As it is, the International may be regarded 
as a portion of the Central Railway, and by adopting this route 
and changing at Torrean 439 miles is saved between Mexico and 
New York, in place of making the entire journey by the Central. 
The distance by the National is still less, but some prefer 
travelling by a standard-gauge line. One of the most luxurious 
trains in the >world is the Montezuma special, running occasionally 
between Mexico and New Orleans by the International. It is 
provided with library and writing-room, dining, drawing, and 



1891.] THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. 93 

sleeping cars (there are, in fact, six private drawing-rooms decor- 
ated with different-colored draperies, artistic painting, and satin- 
wood), bath-rooms, barber's shop, and every convenience of a 
well found Atlantic mail steamer. How happy Dives could 
be if Lazarus would only leave his gate ! but obtrusive Michael 
Davitts and other journalists, and General Booths, persist in thrust- 
ing blood-curdling pictures of East London squalor and despair 
before our complacent spectacles ; so that to eat, drink, and be 
merry becomes a difficult feat. 

The Mexican Central is the most important railway in the 
republic. The enterprise is a Boston one,"dating from 1880. The 
work of construction was pushed rapidly from Mexico and 
Juarez (Paso del Norte), the company having to pay ruinous 
freight rates for shipment of material needed at the southern 
end of its line to the Mexican Railway, which took the oppor- 
tunity of bleeding its future rival and reaping a golden harvest. 
In March, 1884, the line was open for through traffic, being 
about two thousand kilometres in length and having been built 
at the rate of a mile a day. But branches to both oceans 
formed a part of the scheme ; that to Tampico was commenced 
in July, 1881, and in spite of serious natural obstacles this 
branch was completed last summer, being 380 miles long, and 
passing from Aguas Calientes, on the main line, through San 
Luis Potosi to the gulf. Through the exertions of the late 
General Corona, governor of Guadalajara, who was so cruelly 
murdered before the eyes of his American wife last year (1889), 
the branch from Irapuato, on the main line, to the second city 
of the republic was commenced in May, 1887, and its whole 
length of 155 miles was completed by the following April amidst 
wild enthusiasm (at least so the accounts of the arrival of the 
first train at Guadalajara have it; never having witnessed any 
Mexican display of whole-hearted jubilation we remain sceptical). 
Mr. Edward Jackson, formerly of the Mexican, is general 
manager at the Buena Vista terminus in Mexico. He is an 
Englishman and a Catholic, fairly good recommendations in 
Mexico. The traffic of this line shows a steady increase, and 
goods lie by the track awaiting shipment for weeks together at 
times, the carrying resources of the line being strained to the 
utmost. The following table speaks for itself: 

Years. Ores carried. 

1884.... *, 356 tons. 

1885 '. 6,133 " 

1886. 20,791 " 

1887 41,175 " 



94 THROUGH MEXICO BY RAIL. [April, 

And if later statistics were near us they would exhibit a still 
more marked development of the country tributary to the line. 

Space does not permit us to dwell on Zacatecas, Leon, Aguas 
Calientes, and a number of other thriving cities located on this 
line, nor for the same reason can we dilate on the Sonora Rail- 
way, 353 miles in length, from Benson, Arizona, on the Southern 
Pacific, to Guaymas, on the Pacific. South of this is a shaky old 
track, forty miles long, from the port of Altata to Culiacan, dig- 
nified by the name of the Sinaloa and Durango Railway. But we 
do not wish to strike a false or jarring note. As a whole the 
Mexican railway system is most efficient and creditable and the 
cry is still they come ; the air is heavy with concessions, from 
that of a line three thousand miles in length, from the Rio 
Grande to South America, downwards. But there are enough 
trunk lines now, and what is needed is an extended tramway 
system to connect country places with main lines. Mexican 
highways are so bad that grain and other bulky produce cannot 
be carried at a profit. But the Mexican tram-car system, with 
its sleek, plucky little mules pelting along at full gallop (what 
would befall them should they stumble ! ), cannot be surpassed. 
Existing lines often pay handsomely, and we anticipate that by 
advancing on the lines here indicated the erstwhile drowsy old 
land of Montezuma will be still more thoroughly awakened from 
its quondam lethargy, and will at length take its befitting place 
as one of the most prosperous countries of the world. 

CHARLES E. HODSON. 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 95 



THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER.* 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
A REDEMPTOR1ST MISSIONARY. 

" I WOULD not have become a priest had I lived in Europe, 
for I never had or could have any strong attrait for sacerdotal 
functions. But I felt that the Church in America was in need 
of all the help that could be given by her children for the work 
of the priesthood." Father Hecker said this when near his end, 
and a full knowledge of his character bore him out in it. The 
sacerdotal, the ecclesiastical, were qualities which he had as- 
sumed with full consciousness of their sanctity, yet they united 
with his other characteristics in a way to leave traces of the 
point of contact. He was certainly an edifying priest, and to 
hear his Mass was to be spiritually elevated by his joyous fervor. 
But you would never say of him " he is a thorough ecclesiastic, 
he is a typical priest." The external aids of religion he im- 
parted with a reverence which displayed his faith in his priestly 
character as a dispenser of the sacramental mysteries of God. 
But the other mysteries of God which are hidden in his provi- 
dential guidance of men, he could expound with the instinctive 
familiarity of a native gift ; the voice of God in nature, in 
reason, and in conscience, and its response in revelation he 
could elicit with a power and unction rarely met with. He has 
left the following words on record : " After my ordination the 
duties of the sacred ministry appeared to me most natural; the 
hearing of confessions and the direction of souls was as if it 
had been a thing practised from my childhood, and was a 
source of great consolation." 

The year spent in England after ordination was occupied by 
Father Hecker mainly in parochial duties at Clapham and some 
neighboring stations attended by the Redemptorists of that 
house. Father Walworth enjoyed some missionary experience 
with Fathers Pecherine and Buggenoms, but Father Hecker had 
only been at one or two small retreats one at Scott- Murray's 
estate in company with Father Ludwig and another at that of 
Weld-Blundells in Lancashire ; but in neither of these had he 
preached or given any instructions, serving only in the confes- 
sional and in hunting up obstinate sinners. He certainly did 

* Copyright, 1890, Rev. A. F. Hewit. All rights reserved. 



96 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [April, 

preach once before leaving England, perhaps only once, and 
that was at Great Marlowe, near London, in the church built 
by the Kornihold family. It was on Easter Sunday, 1850, and 
was well remembered by Father Hecker and referred to in 
after years. He thought the sermon a good one as a begin- 
ning, but it seems to have given him no encouragement, and 
we venture to think that if it profited his hearers somewhat it 
also amused them a little. He needed a teacher, and he found 
one in Father Bernard, the newly appointed provincial of the 
American province. 

In 1850 Father Bernard Joseph Hafkenscheid * was made 
Provincial of the Redemptorist houses in America. His patro- 
nymic was too formidable for ordinary use, and he was univer- 
sally known as Father Bernard. He was in the prime of life on 
taking this office, and although he had spent twenty years on 
the missions in Holland, his native country, in Belgium and 
England, he yet showed no signs of these labors ; he continued 
them for fourteen years longer, for the most of the time in the 
Netherlands, his death resulting from accident in 1865. By 
common consent he is ranked in the highest order of popular 
preachers. He had entered the community from the secular 
priesthood shortly after his ordination ; he had made a brilliant 
course of studies at Rome, which was crowned by the doctorate 
of the Roman College. He was physically a tall, powerful man, 
and of majestic bearing. His features were full of intelligence, 
his glance penetrating, his voice clear, sympathetic, and vibrat- 
ing, his gestures expressive. If half that is handed down of 
Father Bernard be true,, he was a wonderful preacher of penance 
and of hope, his high gifts of natural eloquence served by a 
perfect education and inspired by a most enthusiastic love of 
the people. 

He was a popular preacher in the best sense of the term, 
calm in demeanor and simple in language as he opened, but 
when at the point of fervor pouring forth his soul in a fiery 
torrent of oratory, whose only restraint was the inability of the 
human voice to express all that the heart contained. In style 
impassioned, he yet often chose language bordering on the 
familiar, but was not vulgar. He is an instance of the fallacy 
of the saying that the preacher must stoop to his auditory if he 
would be popular. Father Bernard was ever true to himself, 

*The reader is referred to his life by Canon Claessens (Catholic Publication Society Co.) 
It is all too brief, yet is a good summary of the career of the great Redemptorist mis- 
sionary, one of St. Alphonsus' noblest sons. 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 97 

never appeared less than an educated priest and grave religious, 
and yet he was a most popular preacher. The great truths of 
eternal life are a universal heritage, and the use of plain 
words is not getting down from good style even in the literary 
sense, and a familiar manner is a trait of affection. We have 
stopped the reader for this moment with Father Bernard because 
he was Father Hecker's teacher of mission preaching and in- 
structing, and was ever beloved by him as an appreciative 
friend and a wise and indulgent preceptor. He had made his 
first visit to America with Father de Held in 1845, but remained 
only a few months to acquire information and gain impressions 
for a report to the Rector Major. He made a second voyage 
in January, 1849, acting as superior of the American houses, as 
Vice- Provincial, and remained about eighteen months. The 
United States now forming a separate province and Father Ber- 
nard made Provincial, he demanded Fathers Hecker and Wai- 
worth as his subjects, and they were given to him. 

A letter from Father Hecker announces his departure for New 
York as fixed for some time in October, 1850; but delays oc- 
curred, and the following is an extract from one to his mother, 
dated January 17, 1851; it says that the departure is fixed for 
some day the same month : 

" Oh ! may Almighty God prosper our voyage, and may His 
sweet and blessed Mother be our guide and protector on the 
stormy sea. And may my arrival in America be for the good 
of many souls who are still wandering out of the one flock and 
away from the one shepherd ! I hope that to no one will it be of 
more consolation and benefit than to you, my dearest mother." 

The ship was named the Helvetia and sailed from Havre the 
27th of January, the captain being a genuine down-east Yankee, 
and the crew a mixed- assortment of English and American sail- 
ors. Father Bernard's party consisted of Fathers Walworth, 
Hecker, Landtsheer, Kittell, Dold, and Giesen, and the students 
Hellemans, Miiller, and Wirth, the American fathers having come 
to Havre from London by way of Dover, Calais, and Paris. 
The weather was unfavorable during nearly the entire voyage, 
the ship being driven back into the English Channel and forced 
to anchor in the Downs. They were beaten~about for two weeks 
before they got fairly upon the Atlantic, and while crossing the 
Newfoundland banks were in danger from icebergs. Nearly all 
the party were more or less sea-sick, including Father Hecker. 



98 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [April, 

This did not prevent his attempting the conversion of the boat- 
swain, who seemed the only hopeful subject in the ship's com- 
pany. There were a hundred and thirty steerage passengers, 
emigrants for the most part from Protestant countries, though a 
party of Garibaldian refugees anol a few equally wild Frenchmen 
enlivened the monotony of sea-life by some bloody fights! There 
were but two cabin passengers besides the Redemptorists, and 
the former being confined to their staterooms by nearly continual 
sea-sickness, the cabin was turned into a "floating convent," 
to borrow Father Dold's expression in a long letter descrip- 
tive of the voyage, given by Canon Claessens in his Life of 
Father Bernard. 

The wintry and stormy voyage had already tested the mission- 
aries' patience for some weeks, when Father Bernard informed the 
captain that he and his companions were going to make a novena 
to St. Joseph to arrive at New York on or before his feast, March 
the iQth. " St. Joseph will have to do his very prettiest to get 
us in," was the answer. And when the ship was still far to the 
east, being off the banks, and the weather quite unfavorable, and 
only three days left before the feast, the captain called out : " St. 
Joseph can't do it give it up, Father Bernard." But the latter 
would still persevere ; and that night the wind changed. The 
Yankee ship now flew along at the rate of fourteen miles an hour. 
When the eve of St. Joseph's Day came they were wrapped in 
a dense fog, and the captain, dreading the nearness of the coast, 
hove to. When day dawned the fog lifted, and the ship was; 
found to be off Long Branch, and a wrecked ship was seen on 
the shore; she had been driven there during the night. The 
pilot soon came aboard and they sailed through the Narrows and 
into the harbor of New York, having spent fifty-two days on the 
ocean. As they approached the city a little tug-boat was seen 
coming to meet them. It bore George and John Hecker and 
Mr. McMaster, whose cordial greetings were the first welcome 
the young Redemptorists heard on their return to the New 
World. They were soon at their home in the convent in Third 
Street, and on the sixth of April following the first mission was 
opened in St. Joseph's Church, Washington Place, New York. 

Here is Dr. Brownson's greeting, from his home in Chelsea, 
Mass., received by Father Hecker soon after his arrival : 

" My very dear friend, you cannot imagine what pleasure it 
gives me to learn of your arrival in New York. ... I want to see 
you much, very much. You have much to tell me that it is 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 99 

needful that I should know, and I beg you to come to see me. 
Tell your superiors from me that your visit to me will be more 
than an act of charity to me personally, and that it is highly 
necessary not merely as a matter of pleasure to us two that 
we should meet; and tell them that I earnestly beg to have 
you come and spend a few days with me. I am sure that they 
will permit you to do so in furtherance of the work in which I 
as well as you are engaged, and I have a special reason for 
wishing to see you now. I would willingly visit you at New 
York or anywhere in the United States, but there is no place so 
appropriate as my own house. ... I am more indebted to you 
for having become a Catholic than to any other man under 
heaven, and while you supposed I was leading you to the 
church, it was you who led me there. I owe you a debt of 

gratitude I can never repay Come, if possible, and as soon 

as possible." 

At the Third Street house the new-comers found Father 
Augustine F. Hewit, a convert from the Episcopal Church, in 
which he had tarried for a few years on his way from Calvinism 
to the true religion. He had been a secular priest for a short time 
previous to entering the order. He was directed to join the newly- 
formed missionary band, and was destined to be more to Father 
Hecker than any other man, and to succeed him as superior of 
the Paulist community. 

After more than five years' absence Father Hecker thus finds 
himself in America, the land of his apostolate, a member of a 
missionary community whose external vocation is the preaching 
of penance, and the conversion of sinful Catholics to a good 
life. A mission is a season of renewal of the religious life 
among the people of a parish. It is a course of spiritual ex- 
ercises in which the principles of religion are called forth and 
placed in more active control of men's conduct, and by means 
of which their emotional nature is stimulated to grief for sin, 
love of God, yearning for eternal happiness. The sermons and 
instructions are given twice, and sometimes oftener, each day, 
during the early mornings and in the evenings. These exercises 
are conducted in the parish church, but not by the parish 
clergy. The people see among them the members of a religious 
order, men set apart, by the interior touch of the Holy Spirit 
and the public approval of the church, for this particular work 
powerful preachers, confessors as indefatigable as they are pa- 
tient, priests full of masterful zeal, moving in disciplined accord 
VOL. LIU. 7 



ioo THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [April, 

together against vice. The call they address to the people is 
the peremptory one : " Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven 
is at hand." Their words are given forth not from the usual 
pulpit, but from a platform at the communion railing, and in 
the presence of a high black' cross set up in the sanctuary. 
They wear no surplice or stole while preaching, the only in- 
signia of their office being a crucifix on their breasts. The 
bishop usually extends to them greater powers than are com- 
monly given for reconciling sinners who have incurred eccle- 
siastical censures. The Holy See empowers them to extend the 
most abundant spiritual favors in its gift in the form of indul- 
gences, and the pastor informs the congregation several Sundays 
beforehand that he expects the entire Catholic population of 
his parish to attend the mission and receive the sacraments. 

To be absorbed in such labors as above described, was not 
the primary object of Father Hecker's vocation, but he accepted 
his place joyfully as chosen by the evident will of God. The 
missionary life was never in his eyes what the reader might 
surmise it to be a mere interlude in his career, a period of 
patient waiting. Such is far from having been, the case. The 
missions are eminent works of Catholic zeal, and there is not 
any vocation known to the active ministry which may not com- 
mute with them on equal terms. Human nature has never felt 
influences more deeply religious than those set at work by, mis- 
sions, recalling the effects of the preaching of the Apqstles them- 
selves. Remorse of conscience, loathing for sin, terror at the 
divine wrath, confidence in God, sympathy for our crucified 
Saviour, the ecstatic joy of the new-found divine friendship, utter 
contempt for the maxims of the world, iron determination to 
love God to the end these are the sentiments which, by the 
preaching of missions, are made to dominate entire parishes in a 
degree simply marvellous. Nor can it be said that these dispo- 
sitions are fleeting. Allowing for exceptions, especially in large 
cities, their permanency is often an evidence of the solidity of 
the motives which inspired them, as well as of the supernatural 
graces which gave them life. Every missionary will bear wit- 
ness, as Father Hecker often did, that he has never assisted at 
a mission in which he was not profoundly impressed by the 
tears of hardened sinners. Every parish priest, however much 
he may regret the backsliding of some, will testify to the valu- 
able results of missions among his people : the quickening of 
faith .and the revival of supernatural motives, drunkards re- 
formed, restitutions made, lust cleansed away, families united, 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. ibr 

the church thronged with worshippers, saloons deserted. Father 
Hecker never thought that all this was too dearly bought by 
the dreary toil of the confessional, the discomforts of for ever 
changing residences and living in strange places, nor even by 
the growing nerve- troubles which the fathers are often subject 
to, from brains superheated over and over again in the burn- 
ing fires of mission preaching. Father Hecker did not think 
the privileges of such a life too dearly bought even by the 
postponement of his proper apostolate, and was ever glad of his 
labors as a missionary. 

They schooled him in public speaking. In his antecedents 
there was abundant reason for diffidence, and he knew full well 
that what was good enough language for an harangue to the 
Seventh Ward Democracy would be ridiculous in a Catholic 
pulpit. Nor was he deceived into the notion of his ability to 
preach because he. could influence men in private. Conversa- 
tion is not public speaking, and the defects of grammar, or any 
other such defects, if pardoned in an earnest and honest man 
in. private interchange of views, if committed on the public 
rostrum are unpardonable and are usually fatal. Father Hecker 
found in the incessant practice of the missionary platform, and 
in the assistance of his present superior, exactly what he need- 
ed by way of preparation. Besides the mission sermon at 
night the great sermon, as it was called there is a short doc- 
trinal instruction at the same service and a moral one on the 
sacraments or commandments in the morning. These became 
his share of the mission preaching, and the school in which 
he acquired that direct, convincing, and popular manner of dis- 
course for which he was afterwards renowned as a lecturer. 

We find the following among the memoranda : 

" When I came over to America with Fathers Bernard and 
Walworth, Bernard wanted to know what I could do. Well, by 
that time I had given up all hopes of any public career. I 
couldn't preach. My memory and intellectual faculties generally 
were so influenced by my interior state that theology was out 
of the question. The lights that God had given me about the 
future state of religion in this country were still clear as ever, 
but I thought that I should have to confine myself to impart- 
ing them to particular and individual souls whom the provi- 
dence of God should throw in my way ; for I was persuaded 
that the Redemptorist community was unfitted for the future 
work I had caught a glimpse of, and I was entirely contented 



102 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [April, 

to live and die a Redemptorist, and was quite certain that 
I should. So, when Bernard asked me what I could do, I 
told him to get me some place as chaplain of a prison or 
public institution of charity, as^that was about all that I was 
capable of. But he thought differently. 

" My first instructions on the missions were almost word for 
word given me by Bernard. I didn't seem to have a single 
thought of my own." 

To preach, whether to Catholics or to non- Catholics, one 
must learn how, and Father Hecker with all his gifts knew 
that this gift seldom comes from above except by way of re- 
ward for steady labor. The opportunity of the missions, and 
of Father Bernard as a guide, was eagerly accepted in lieu of 
the prison chaplaincy. 

The missions also enabled him to know the Catholic people. 
The non-Catholics he already knew from vivid recollection of his 
own former state and from that of his early surroundings ; 
Brook Farm and Fruitlands had completed his knowledge of the 
outside world ; but the Redemptorist novitiate and studentate 
and his sojourn in England did not give him a similar knowl- 
edge of the Catholic people, priesthood, and hierarchy. To the 
average looker-on Catholicity is what Catholics are, and Catholics 
in America viewed from a standpoint of morality were then and 
still are a very mixed population. Why the fruits are worse 
than the tree is a sore perplexity even to expert controversialists, 
and Father Hecker had need to equip himself well for meeting 
that difficulty, a patent one in the rushing tide of stricken im- 
migrants then pouring into America. The missions are an un- 
equalled school for learning men. All men and women in a 
parish are made known to the missionary, for they walk or 
stumble through his very soul. 

Nor can one fail to see the use of missions as an evidence 
to the non-Catholic public itself of the supernatural power of 
Catholicity over men's lives. To practical people like Americans 
there is no oral or written evidence of the true religion so valid 
as the spectacle of its power to change bad men into good ones. 
Such a people will accept arguments from history and from 
Scripture, but those of a moral kind they demand ; they must 
see the theories at work. A mission is a microcosm of the 
church as a moral force. It shows a powerful grasp of human 
nature and an easy supremacy over it. It is an energetic, 
calm, and clean-sweeping influence for good, bold in its 
choice of the most sublime truths of supernatural religion as the 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 103 

.sole motives of repentance. And it uniformly achieves so com- 
plete a victory over the best-entrenched vices that non-Catholic 
prejudice is invariably shaken at the spectacle. And in America 
the pioneer work of the apostolate must be to remove prejudice. 
The character of the men who conduct these exercises, their 
courage, intelligence, devotedness, discipline, and ready command 
of the people; the indiscriminate humanity which rushes to hear 
them, to pray, to confess their sins, to listen with mute atten- 
tion long before day- break and in the hours of rest after work 
all regardless of social differences or of moral ones, soon be- 
come well known to the public and generally excite comment 
in the press. All this contributes to prepare non- Catholics to 
hear from the same teachers the invitation which our Lord in- 
tended in saying : " Other sheep I have which are not of this 
fold ; them also must I bring, and they shall hear my voice, 
and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." 

Furthermore, it was necessary that Father Hecker should be 
made personally known to the bishops and priests of the coun- 
try. The time was coming when he would have a public cause 
to advance, and their approval is a necessary sign of divine 
favor. Now, the missionary is closely studied by them and soon 
is intimately known, for there are too many things in common 
between priests but that they can readily test each other. 
Before the Paulist community had been organized, Father Hecker 
had been the guest of the most prominent clergymen of the 
entire United States, and of many even in the British Provinces, 
and was a well-known man throughout the Catholic community. 
Meantime the humiliations of his study-time had been quickly 
recovered from, if they had ever been a real hindrance to public 
effort, and we find no sign of protest on his part or of request 
to be let off from giving instructions beyond his answer to 
Father Bernard as above recorded. As he loved his vows as a 
Redemptorist, so he loved the work of the missions, because they 
were God's will for him ; because they are a work of the highest 
order of good for souls ; because the reputation of Catholicity is 
always raised in a community by a mission, and a good name is 
necessary for a controversial standing; because in them he 
daily learned more of men and of the means to win them ; and 
because the members of the divine order of the episcopate and 
secular priesthood must be well known by him and he well 
known to them before any extensive work could be done among 
non- Catholics ; and the missionary becomes a familiar friend 
everywhere he goes. Hence controversial sermons were some- 
times preached during the missions, lectures of the same sort 



104 T HE LlFE OF FATHER HECKER. [April, 

given after them, and during their continuance many converts 
received into the church. Father Hecker, as we have tried to 
show the reader, was a very observant nature, always learning 
lessons from life, and ready to try his 'prentice hand on what 
material offered in the way of converting Protestants at every 
opportunity public and private. 

Nevertheless, the missions could not be made the ordinary 
channel of direct influences for turning sceptics and Protestants 
to the true religion. The attempt to make them so, involving, 
as it does, a notable interspersion of controversial sermons, has 
never been tried by the Redemptorist or Paulist Fathers to 
our knowledge, and when done by others has resulted in not 
enough of controversy for making solid converts, and too little 
penitential preaching for the proper reformation of hard sinners 
among Catholics. Father Hecker fully appreciated this. He 
threw himself into the mission work just as it was with the 
utmost ardor, and learning from Father Bernard how to prepare 
the matter for the morning and evening instructions, his natural 
gifts, together with hints and suggestions from his brethren, 
supplied him with the best possible manner of giving them. 
The writer has often served on missions in parishes where 
Father Bernard's new-formed band had preached in former 
years, and the testimony is universal that as a doctrinal and 
moral instructor Father Hecker was unequalled among mis- 
sionaries. He was so frank, so clear, so lively, so impressible, 
and, in a certain way, so humorous, that he carried the people 
away with him. And he carried them all, high and low, 
learned and simple. With persons of education his homely 
words did not break the charm, nor did his simple but ex- 
tremely well chosen illustrations do so all taken, as they were, 
from common life or the lives and writings of the saints. He 
never preached the great sermons and never aspired to do it. 
He never sought to arouse terror or to be pathetic. He 
always reasoned and instructed. In truth, he was not com- 
petent to deal adequately with such subjects as Death, Judg- 
ment, and Hell that is to say, as they are preached at mis- 
sions, for the emotions have honest rights on such occasions, 
and Father Hecker acknowledged his deficiency in emotional 
oratory. But, to tell you the qualities of true sorrow, or to 
show you how to make a true confession, to picture the man- 
liness of virtue and the dignity of the Christian state, he was 
unsurpassed. And the general effect remaining after his in- 
structions was always a bright understanding of just what to do 
for a good life, 'with many happy examples to aid the memory, 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 105 

together with a strong personal affection for the holy man 
who showed religion to be a most happy as well as most 
reasonable, service of God. To his penitents in the confessional 
he was ever most kind and patient. " No school of perfection," 
he once said, " can equal the self-denial necessary to hear 
confessions well." God is now rewarding him, we trust, for 
the cheerful, often even bantering, words of encouragement he 
gave to the multitudes of poor sinners who knelt at his 
feet during the toilsome years he spent on the missions ; 
and for the enlightenment and encouragement of his big-hearted 
influence, and for his trumpet notes of hope in the early morn- 
ing instructions. After the hard pounding of the night sermons 
it is always sought to pick the sinner up out of the dust and 
to hearten him by the early instructions, as well as to guide 
him to the precise methods and means of reform and of a good 
life for the future. As to the sacrament of penance, the say- 
ing of St. Alphonsus is a maxim with us all : " Be a lion in 
the pulpit, but a lamb in the confessional.'' 

The reader must indulge us in thus dwelling so long on the 
Catholic missions, for we are inclined to say many words of 
praise of so lovely a life, in which the same men sow and reap 
a great harvest in the same week, expend their vitality in 
preaching the word and administering the sacraments and com- 
forting sinners who are wholly broken down with the truest con- 
trition. 

In 1851 the American Redemptorists had before them a mis- 
sionary field almost untouched. Public retreats had been given 
from time to time in the United States by Jesuits and others, 
but the mission opened at St. Joseph's Church, New York City, 
on Passion Sunday, 1851, was the first mission of a regular 
series carried on systematically by a body of men especially de- 
voted to the vocation. The merit of inaugurating them is chiefly 
due to Father Bernard, who had no hesitation in getting to 
work with his three American fathers ; though Father Joseph 
Miiller, rector of the Third Street convent, and Rev. Joseph 
McCarron, the rector of St. Joseph's Church, had something to 
do in arranging the details and in facilitating the work. Several 
Redemptorists from Third Street helped in the confessionals.* 

We have space for only the following extracts from the brief 
record of the missions, preserved by the fathers. They illustrate 

* Observers of coincidences will be interested to notice the arrival of the missionaries in 
America on St. Joseph's day, under the Provincial Bernard Joseph Hafkenscheid, to open 
their first mission at St. Joseph's Church, the pastor being Joseph McCarron, the mission 
having been negotiated by Joseph Miiller, the rector of the Third Street convent. Father 
Hecker had a special devotion for St. Joseph. 



io6 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER, [April, 

how earnestly Father Hecker worked. In the record of the 
second mission at Loretto, Pa., we find this : 

The instructions and Rosary were generally given by Father 
Hecker, who received from trfe people the name of " Father 
Mary." . . . During the first few days the people did not attend 
well ; but after Father Hecker had gone through the village and 
among a clique of young men who were indifferent and dis- 
affected to the clergy, and the evil geniuses of the place, and 
after some fervent exhortations had been made to the people, 
they flocked to the mission and crowded the church. 

At Johnstown, Pa. : After two or three days a man happened 
to die on the railroad, and all the men at that station, per- 
haps a hundred in number, accompanied the corpse to the 
church. Father Hecker seized the opportunity to address them 
and to give them a mission ferveroso. And the next day he 
went on horseback, accompanied by the pastor, Father Mullen 
(since Bishop of Erie), to several stations and addressed the 
men, inviting them to attend the mission. The result was suc- 
cessful. Procession after procession marched in, filling the church, 
and numbers of them stayed all day, lying on the grass about the 
church. . . . Father Hecker called out a noted politician, who 
had not been to the sacraments for many years until the mis- 
sion, to receive the scapular as an example, and the good man 
did not fail to receive a plentiful supply of holy water from 
the vigorous arm of the said father. 

The following entry in the record under date of February, 
1852, made after a mission given in St. Peter's Church, Troy, 
N. Y., will be of interest to missionaries, and to others who 
are observant of their methods : " At Youngstown, Pa., (the 
preceding December) the experiment of preaching from a plat- 
form had been successfully tried and was repeated here, as at 
other missions since (Youngstown). On the platform a large 
black cross, some ten feet or more in height, was erected, from 
the arms of which a white muslin cloth was suspended. This 
use of cross and platform has thus been regularly introduced 
into the missions." Previously it had been the custom to erect 
a large cross out of doors in front of the church as one of the 
closing ceremonies of the mission. 

Fathers Hecker, Hewit, and Walworth, led by Father Bernard, 
made a unique band of missionaries, one, we think, hardly 
equalled since they yielded their place to others. Each was a 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 107 

man of marked individuality, whose distinct personality was by 
no means obscured by the strict conformity to rule evident in 
their behavior. Fathers Hewit and Wahvorth were orators, dif- 
fering much from each other, both full of power. Father Hecker 
was a born persuader of men, and could teach as a gift of nature, 
earnest in mind and manner. His two companions saw him learn 
by hard work how so to modulate his voice and to manage it 
and his manner as to exactly suit himself to his duties as the 
instructor of the band, while they delivered finished discourses 
at the night services, many of them masterpieces of mission ora- 
tory. Their very poise .and glance on the platform stilled the 
church, and their noble rhetoric clothed appeals to the intel- 
ligence and to the heart in most attractive garb. In Father 
Hecker you saw a man who wanted to persuade you because 
he was right and knew it, and because he was deeply inter- 
ested in your welfare. He sought no display, and yet held you 
fast to him by eye and ear. He had no tricks to catch applause, 
for he had no vanity. He said what he liked, for he was totally 
devoid of diffidence or awkwardness, and his best aid was his 
invariable equipment of an earnest purpose. " But I don't be- 
lieve," said Father Walworth to the writer, "that Demosthenes 
ever worked through greater difficulties than Father Hecker in 
making himself a good public speaker." 

Father Bern'ard managed the missions for the first year, and 
dealt with the pastors as superior of the band, meanwhile 
devouring more than his share of the work in the confessional. 
The least experience shows that there can be little of the dis- 
cipline of the barracks order on the missions, and all the fathers 
must of necessity consult together, the superior leading in the 
observance of such community devotional customs as are pos- 
sible, and setting a good example in stooping to the burdens 
which all must bear. As to Father Bernard, the Americans 
could only admire and love him. In his own tongue a renown- 
ed orator, he yet never preached in English while with these 
three men unless on rare occasions, such as when one of them 
was prevented by sickness. From him they received the man- 
ner of giving missions handed down from St. Alphonsus, and 
they have transmitted the tradition to their spiritual children in 
all its integrity. 

Nearly two years passed of hard missionary campaigning under 
Father Bernard, when he was recalled to Europe, and Father Alex- 
ander Cvitcovicz took his place. His last name was seldom used, 
for the same evident reason as in his predecessor's case. Father 



io8 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [April, 

Alexander was a Magyar, past the meridian of life, long accus- 
tomed to missions in Europe, learned, devout, kindly, and of a 
zeal which seemed to aspire at utter self-annihilation in the ser- 
vice of sinners. " It was not unusual for Father Alexander," 
says Father Hewit in his memoir of Father Baker, " to sit in his 
confessional for ten days in succession for fifteen or sixteen hours 
each day. He instructed the little children who were preparing 
for the sacraments, but never preached any of the great sermons. 
In his government of the fathers who were under him he was 
gentleness, consideration, and indulgence itself. In his own life 
and example he presented a pattern of the most perfect religious 
virtue, in its most attractive form, without constraint, austerity, 
or moroseness, and yet without relaxation from the most ascetic 
principles. He was a most thoroughly accomplished and learned 
man in many branches of secular and sacred science and in the 
fine arts ; and in the German language, which was as familiar to 
him as his native language, he was among the best preachers of 
his order. . . . We went through several long and hard mission- 
ary campaigns under his direction, until at last we left him, in 
the year 1854, in the convent at New Orleans, worn out with 
labor, to exchange his arduous missionary work for the lighter 
duties of the parish." 

Father Walworth now became superior, and the missions went 
on in the same spirit and with the same success as before. In 
the record of the one given at the church of Our Lady, Star of 
the Sea, Brooklyn, we find the following entry: "Missionaries, 
Fathers Walworth, Hecker, Hewit, and George Deshon (late lieu- 
tenant Ordnance, U. S. A., a convert from the Episcopal Church. 
This was his first mission)." Father Deshon had been ordained 
not long before, and soon began to share the instructions with 
Father Hecker. This was in February, 1856, and in November 
of the same year, at St. Patrick's Mission, Washington, D. C., they 
were joined by Father Francis A. Baker, ordained in the preced- 
ing September, a distinguished convert from the Episcopal minis- 
try of the city of Baltimore. Much we would say of him, his 
eloquence and his very amiable traits of character, but all th.'s 
and more is well said by Father Hewit, in his memoir of Father 
Baker, published after the latter's death in 1865 (Catholic Publi- 
cation Society Co.) This increase of members allowed a division 
of the band for smaller- sized missions. 

In our judgment those men were a band of missionaries the 
like of whom have not served the great cause among the Eng- 
lish-speaking races these recent generations. Fathers Walworth, 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 109 

Hewit, and Deshon have survived their companions of those early 
days, and may they long remain with us, calm and beautiful and 
devout old veterans of the divine warfare of 'peace ! 

Father Hecker gave several retreats to religious communities 
of men and of women during the six or seven years we are 
considering, devoting for the purpose portions of the summer 
months usually unoccupied by missions. Copies of notes of his 
conferences, taken down by some of his hearers, are in our pos- 
session and may aid us further on in giving the reader a view 
of his spiritual doctrine. 

The following extract from the Roman statement summarizes 
what we. have been telling in this chapter, and introduces the 
reader to Father Hecker's first missionary activity as a writer: 

" My superiors sent me back to the United States, and on 
my return being asked by my immediate superior in what way 
he could best employ me, my reply was, in taking care of the 
sick, the poor, and the prisoners. The stupidity which still 
reigned over my intellectual faculties, and the helplessness of my 
will, and my sympathy with those classes led me to choose such 
a sphere of action as most suitable to my then condition. And 
although the conversion of the non-Catholics of my fellow-coun- 
trymen was ever before my mind, yet God left me in ignorance 
how this was to be accomplished. Such strong and deep im- 
pulses, and so vast in their reach, took possession of my soul on 
my return to the United States in regard to the conversion of 
the American people, that on manifesting my interior to s one of 
the most spiritually enlightened and experienced fathers of the 
congregation on the subject to obtain his direction, he bade me 
not to resist these interior movements, they came from God ; 
and that God would yet employ me in accordance with them. 
Such were his words. After a few weeks in the United States 
the work of the missions began. My principal duties on these 
were to give public instructions and hear confessions, and up to 
this time (1858) these missionary labors have occupied me almost 
exclusively. 

" The blessings of God upon our missions were most evident 
and most abundant and my share in them most consoling, as 
usually the most abandoned sinners fell to my lot. But holy and 
. important as the exercises of the missions among Catholics are, 
still this work did not correspond to my interior attrait, and 
though exhausted and frequently made ill from excessive fatigue 
in these duties, yet my ardent and constant desire to do some- 



no THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [April, 

thing for my non- Catholic countrymen led me to take up my 
pen. That took place as follows : One day alone in my cell 
the thought suddenly struck me how great were my privileges 
and my joy since my becoming, a Catholic, and how great were 
my troubles and agony of soul before this event ! Alas ! how 
many of my former friends and acquaintances, how many of the 
great body of the American people were in the same most pain- 
ful position. Cannot something be done to lead them to the 
knowledge of the truth ? Perhaps if the way that divine Provi- 
dence had led me to the church was shown to them many of 
them might in this way be led also to see the truth. This 
thought, and with it the hope of inducing young men to enter 
into religious orders, produced in a few months from my pen a 
book entitled Questions of the Soul. The main features of this 
book are the proofs that the Sacraments of the Catholic Church 
satisfy fully all the wants of the heart. 

" But the head was left to be yet converted ; this thought led me 
to write a second book, called Aspirations of Nature ; and which 
has for its aim to show that the truths of the Catholic faith an- 
swer completely to the demands of reason. My purpose in these 
two books was to explain the Catholic religion in such a manner 
as to reach and attract the minds of the non- Catholics of the 
American people. These books were regarded in my own secret 
thoughts as the test whether God had really given to me the grace 
and vocation to labor in a special' manner for the conversion of 
these people. The first book, with God's grace, has been the 
means of many and signal conversions in the United States and 
England, and in a short period passed through three editions. 
The second has been published since my arrival in Rome. . . . 

" On an occasion of a public conference (discourse) given by 
me before an audience, a great part of which was not Catholic, the 
matter and manner of which was taken from my second book, 
my fellow-missionaries were present ; and they as well as myself 
regarded this as a test whether my views and sentiments were 
adapted to reach and convince the understanding and hearts of 
this class of people, or were the mere illusions of fancy. Hith- 
erto my fellow missionaries had shown but little sympathy with 
my thoughts on these points, but at the close of the conference 
they were of one mind that my vocation was evidently to work 
in the direction of the conversion of the non-Catholics, and they 
spoke of such a work with conviction and enthusiasm." 

This last event occurred in St. Patrick's Church, Norfolk, 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. in 

Va., in April, 1856, and is thus' mentioned by Father Hewit in 
the record of the- mission : " Father Hecker closed with an ex- 
tremely eloquent and popular lecture on ' Popular Objections 
to Catholicity.' ' 

The Questions of the Soul was well named, for it under- 
takes to show how the cravings of man for divine union 
may be satisfied. It does this by discussing the problem of 
human destiny, affirming the need of God for the soul's light 
and for its virtue, proving this by arguments drawn from the 
instincts, faculties, and achievements of man. The sense of want 
in man is the universal argument for his need of more than 
human fruition, and in the moral order is the irrefragable proof 
of both his own dignity and his incapacity to make himself 
worthy of it. Father Hecker urged in this book that man is 
born to be more than equal to himself an evident proof of the 
need of a superhuman or supernatural religion. 'Eleven chap- 
ters, making one-third of the volume, are devoted to showing 
this, and include the author's own itinerarium from his first con- 
sciousness of the supreme question of the soul until its final 
answer in the Catholic Church, embracing short accounts of the 
Brook Farm and Fruitlands communities, and mention of other 
such abortive attempts at solution. Three chapters then affirm 
and briefly develop the claim of Christ to be the entire fulfil- 
ment of the soul's need for God, with the Catholic Church as 
his chosen means and instrument. These are entitled respec- 
tively, "The Model Man," "The Model Life," and "The Idea 
of the Church." Three more chapters discuss Protestantism, 
stating its commonest doctrines and citing its most competent 
witnesses in proof of its total and often admitted inadequacy to 
lead man to his destiny. Bringing the reader back to the 
Church, the fourteen last chapters fully develop her claims, deal- 
ing mostly with known facts and public institutions, and citing 
largely the testimony of non- Catholic writers. 

It is something like the inductive method to infer the ex- 
istence of a food from that of an admitted appetite, as also to 
learn the kind of food from the nature of the organs provided 
by nature for its reception and digestion. So the longings of 
man's moral nature, Father Hecker felt, when fairly under- 
stood, must lead to the knowledge of what he wants for their 
satisfaction the Infinite Good and that by a process of reason- 
ing something equivalent to the scientific. Such is the state- 
ment of his case, embracing with its argument the introductory 
chapters. The inquiry then extends to the claimants in the 



1 1 2 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [April, 

religious world, not simply as to which is biblically authentic 
or historically so, but rather as to which religion claims to 
satisfy the entire human want of God and makes the claim 
good as an actual fact. It is wonderful how this line of argu- 
ment simplifies controversy, anli no less wonderful to find how 
easily the victory is won by the Catholic claim. The reader 
will also notice how consistent all this is with Father Hecker's 
own experience from the beginning. 

The literary faults of the book are not a few ; for if .the 
argument is compact, its details seem to have been hastily 
snatched up and put together, or perhaps the occupations of 
the missions prevented revision and consultation. There is a 
large surplusage of quotations from poets, many of them 
obscure, and worthy of praise rather as didactic writers than 
as poets ; yet every word quoted bears on the point under 
discussion. To one who has labored in preparing sermons, each 
chapter looks like .the cullings of the preacher's commonplace 
book set in order for memorizing ; and very many sentences 
are rhetorically faulty. But, in spite oi all these defects, the 
book is a powerful one, and nothing is found to hurt clearness 
or strength of expression. What we have criticised are only 
bits of bark left clinging to the close-jointed but rough-hewn 
frame- work. 

The Questions of the Soul was got out by the Appletons, 
and was at the time of its publication a great success, and 
still remains so. The reason is because the author takes 
nothing for granted, propounds difficulties common to all non- 
Catholics, sceptics as well as professing Protestants, and offers 
solutions verifiable by inspection of every-day Catholicity and 
by evidences right at hand. % Catholicity is the true religion, 
because it alone unites men to God in the fulness of union, 
supernatural and integral in inner and outer life a union de- 
manded by the most resistless cravings of human nature: such 
is the thesis. There can be little doubt that prior to this 
book there was nothing like its argument current in English 
literature ; a short and extremely instructive account by 
Frederick Lucas of his conversion from Quakerism is the only 
exception known to us, and that but partially resembles it, is 
quite brief, and has long since gone out of print. 

The Aspirations of Nature deals with intellectual difficulties 
in the same manner as the Questions of the Soul does with the 
moral ones. The greatest possible emphasis is laid upon the 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 113 

two-fold truth that man's intellectual nature is infallible in its 
rightful domain, and that that domain is too narrow for its own 
activity. The validity of human reason as far as it goes, and its 
failure to go far enough for man's intellectual needs, are the 
two theses of the book. They are well and thoroughly proved ; 
and no one can deny the urgent need of discussing them : the 
dignity of human nature and the necessity of revelation. Like 
Father Hecker's first book, the Aspirations of Nature is good 
for all non-Catholics, because in proving the dignity of man's 
reason Protestants are brought face to face with their funda- 
mental error of total depravity ; enough for their case surely. 
If they take refuge in the mitigations of modern Protestant be- 
liefs, they nearly always go to the extreme of asserting the 
entire sufficiency of the human intellect, and are here met by 
the argument for the necessity of revelation. 

An extremely valuable collection of the confessions of heathen 
and infidel philosophers as to the insufficiency of reason is found 
in this book, as well as a full set of quotations from Protestant 
representative authorities on the subject of total depravity. Over 
against these the Catholic doctrine of reason and revelation is 
brought out clearly. The study of the book would be a valu- 
able preparation for the exposition of the claims of the Catholic 
Church to be the religion of humanity, natural and regenerate 
the intellectual religion. 

As might be expected from one who had such an aversion 
for Calvinism, the view of human nature taken by the author is 
what some would call optimistic, and the tone with regard to 
the religious honesty of non -Catholic Americans extremely hope- 
ful. Perhaps herein was Dr. Brownson's reason for an adverse, 
or almost adverse, criticism on the book in his Review. He had 
given the Questions of the Soul a thoroughly flattering recep- 
tion, and now says many things in praise of the Aspirations 
of Nature, praising especially the chapter on individuality. 
But yet he dreads that the book will be misunderstood ; 
he has no such lively hopes as the author ; he trusts he is not 
running along with the eccentricities of theologians rather than 
with their common teaching; fears that he takes the possible 
powers of nature and such as are rarely seen in actual life as 
the common rule ; dreads, again, that Transcendentalists will be 
encouraged by it; and more to the same effect. But Father 
Hecker, before leaving for Europe in 1857, had submitted the 
manuscript to Archbishop Kenrick and received his approval ; 
nor did Brownson's unfavorable notice ruffle the ancient friend- 
ship between them. 



ii4 THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. [April, 

The Aspirations of Nature was put through the press by 
George Ripley, at that time literary editor of the New York 
Tribune, Father Hecker having gone to Rome on the mission 
which ended in the establishment of his new community. Mr. 
McMaster had assisted him similarly with the Questions of the 
Soul. The second book sold well, as the first had done, and 
has had -several editions. It is not so hot and eager in spirit 
as the Questions of the Soul, but it presses its arguments 
earnestly enough on the reader's attention. It is free from the 
literary faults named in connection with its predecessor, reads 
smoothly, and has very many powerful passages and some elo- 
quent ones. 



THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. 

THE Catholic Truth Society of America celebrated its' first 
anniversary with great enthusiasm, March 10, in Cretin* Hall, at 
St. Paul, Minnesota. The spacious edifice was filled to its utmost 
capacity by the members and friends of the new society, and the 
stage was occupied by the officers and directors, Archbishop Ire- 
land, and a number of prominent clergymen and laymen. Hon. 
William J. Onahan, of Catholic Congress fame, and one of the 
first to join the society, was the speaker of the evening. He de- 
livered an able and eloquent address on " Rights and Duties of 
Catholics as Citizens." 

The work accomplished by the Catholic Truth Society during 
the first year of its existence may be summarized, from the cor- 
responding secretary's first annual report, as follows : 

Under Section I, viz., " the publication of short, timely 
articles in the secular press (to be paid for if necessary) on the 
fundamental doctrines of Catholicity," eight articles have appeared. 

Under Section 2, viz., " the prompt, systematic correction of 
misstatements, slanders, or libels against Catholicity," thirty-five 
articles have appeared. 

Under Section 3, viz., " the promulgation of reliable and edi- 
fying Catholic news of the day, as church dedications, opening 
of asylums and hospitals, the workings of Catholic charitable 
institutions, abstracts of sermons, and anything calculated to 
spread the knowledge of the vast amount of good being accom- 
plished by the Catholic Church," ninety-two articles have appear- 
ed. Adding to these the similar articles published by the sev- 

* Named in honor of Rt. Rev. Joseph Cretin, first Bishop of St. Paul. 



1891.] THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. . 115 

eral local conferences of the society, the total number for the year 
approximates one hundred and fifty, and if we remember that 
most of these articles have appeared in the daily papers with 
circulations ranging from fifteen thousand to forty thousand each, 
it will be evident that the number of publications has run up 
into the hundreds of thousands. Surely this is a novel and effi- 
cacious means of " disseminating Catholic truth " ! Besides this, 
upwards of seventy contributed articles concerning the society 
and its worK have appeared in the Catholic press of the country. 
Under Section 4, viz., " the circulation of books, pamphlets, 
tracts, and Catholic newspapers," the following books have been 
disposed of at publishers' prices : New Testament, Imitation of 
the Blessed Virgin, Catholic Belief, Vaughan on the Mass, Facts 
of Faith and Rational Religion, amounting in all to 1,835 v l- 
umes. The following original pamphlets, tracts, and leaflets have 
been published : Refutation of Calumnies, 8,000 ; Vail- Burgess 
Debate, 10,000; How Catholics Come to be Misunderstood, 6,000; 
Who Can Forgive Sins? 8,500; Church or Bible? 10,000; The 
Catholic Church and the American Republic, 2,000 ; Sacrificial 
Worship Essential to Religion, 2,000; Some Things Catholics 
Do Not Believe, a leaflet, 15,000; Astounding Admissions, one- 
page leaflet, 300 ; Prospectus, 23,000. Total 84,800. 

Under Section 5, viz., " occasional public lectures on topics 
of Catholic interest," eight lectures have been given. 

Under Section 6, viz., " supplying jails and reformatories 
with good and wholesome reading matter," an average of twenty- 
five Catholic papers, pamphlets, tracts, and magazines 'have been 
distributed weekly at four different institutions of this kind, and 
also at the Soldiers' Home. 

The demand for such an organization as the Catholic Truth 
Society and the universal interest felt in its work are eloquently 
attested by the following summary of membership : St. Paul, 
144; Minneapolis, 58; Minnesota cities, 92; Illinois, 19; Ken- 
tucky, 7; Missouri, 8; Colorado, 10 ; Michigan, 3; New York 
19; District of Columbia, 2; New Jersey, 8; North Dakota, 4 
South Dakota, 3 ; North Carolina, 2 ; Iowa, 8 ; California, 8 
Pennsylvania, 9 ; Massachusetts, 47 ; Delaware, I ; Maryland, I 
Maine, I ; Arizona, I ; Connecticut, 2 ; Indiana, 2 ; Louisiana 
I ; Texas, 2 ; West Virginia, I ; Alabama, I ; Nebraska, i 
Rhode Island, 3 ; Tennessee, 4 ; Kansas, 7 ; Montana, I ; Ohio, 
8; Wisconsin, 4; Canada, i. Total, 493. 

Sixty-nine of these are women, and the number also includes 
the following affiliated conferences, established in the order 
VOL. LIU. 8 



u6 THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. [April, 

named. One in Worcester, Mass., with thirty-seven members and 
Very Rev. Vicar-General Power as censor, and another in Newark, 
N. J., with fifteen members and Rt. Rev. Monsignor Doane as 
censor. Both these societies have done excellent work during 
the few months of their existence. Besides local work, the 
former has distributed upwards of two thousand of the society's 
original pamphlets, and the latter a similar number of its leaflets. 
We are also informed by the latest mails that local societies are 
in process of formation, though not yet affiliated, in St. Louis, 
Kansas City, New Orleans, New York, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. 

With this brief summary of the results of the first year's 
work of the society before me, I shall venture a few observations 
suggested by them 

There are certain aspects of the Catholic Truth Society that 
seem to be deserving of special notice. Perhaps the only really 
novel feature about it .is the one by which it proposes to utilize 
the secular and non-Catholic press in spreading a knowledge of 
Catholic truth. It is a method of " carrying the war into 
Africa." Of course no intelligent Catholic will for a moment 
underestimate the power of the Catholic press, the importance 
of the field it fills, or the value of the results it has obtained. 
But not one, on the other hand, can deny that its field of 
usefulness is circumscribed by well-defined limits, beyond which 
it has little or no influence. What does the public at large 
know about the Catholic press ? How many non-Catholics ever 
read a Catholic journal ? The exceptions are only sufficient to 
prove the rule. With many, alas ! the very name " Catholic" is 
enough to arouse suspicion and thwart the good that is intended. 
We are forced to admit, therefore, that when the mountain will 
not come to the prophet the prophet must go to the mountain. 

Another feature of the work proposed by the Catholic Truth 
Society also makes it necessary to have recourse to the columns 
of the secular rather than the Catholic press. " Misstatements, 
slanders, and libels against Catholic -truth " do not usually ap- 
pear in Catholic papers, hence that is hardly the place to cor- 
rect them. Moreover, the value of a correction often depends 
largely on the promptness with which truth is sent travelling on 
the heels of error. This promptness can never be secured in 
the columns of our Catholic weeklies. The damage is done in 
the secular dailies, and they are the ones that must repair it. 
Nor is this in reality an unreasonable demand to make of the 
secular press. Newspaper editors do not as a rule wilfully or 
knowingly slander or libel their readers. They aim to give the 



1 89 1.] THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. 117 

news impartially and correctly. Now, the statistics furnished 
even by our adversaries show conclusively that Catholicity to-day 
is numerically the representative religion of the principal cities 
and towns in the land, as, indeed, it is of the United States at 
large and the entire western hemisphere, including North and 
South America. Notwithstanding its heavy losses, Catholicism 
has steadily forged ahead till it is to-day the banner religion 
of America. It is not surprising, therefore, that there should be 
an increasing demand for reliable information concerning it. 
Again, it is admitted that much of the best newspaper work in 
the land is done by Catholics. Surely, then, American Catholics 
would be false to their country if, knowing the truths that must 
be of such vital importance to it, they do not reveal the knowl- 
edge they possess. When pagan Rome built her magnificent 
highways she supposed it was for her legions to carry her eagles 
to the ends of the earth ; but in reality it was to enable the 
apostles to carry the cross beyond the eagles. So to-day, when 
the miracles of science are annihilating time and space, men 
imagine it is only to increase their material progress, but in 
reality it is to serve God's purpose in spreading the knowledge 
of the true religion in which all were to be saved. The means 
are at hand, the opportunity offers, and the Catholic Truth 
Society has surely a magnificent mission to accomplish. 

Another feature of the society worth noticing is the method 
of its extension. A supplement to its prospectus, issued at an 
early date in its history, suggests that local " conferences " 
should be formed in cathedral cities. While this would certainly 
appear to be the most proper and orderly manner of extending 
it, there seems to be no good reason why it should not take 
root wherever it is needed, wherever there is work of this sort 
to be done, and laymen competent and willing to do it. Thus 
there might be parish conferences, college conferences, and uni- 
versity conferences. The work could be modified so as to suit 
the requirements of each particular case. For instance, in a 
college, where there would be no opportunity for jail work, that 
feature might be omitted ; or, if the students were burdened 
with a surplus of suitable literature, they might collect it and 
forward it periodically to neighboring conferences in cities or 
towns, where there was need of it, for distribution in work- 
house or jail. There is another quarter in which good Cath- 
olic literature might be still more welcome, as will appear 
from the following extract from a letter addressed to the 
writer by a soldier at Fort Lewis, Col. : 



ii8 THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. [April, 

" It has occurred to me that no better use could be 
made of your tracts and leaflets than to circulate them among 
the soldiers and settlers on the distant frontiers, many of 
whom seldom or never see a priest or receive any religious 
instructions. We have often ent us here large packages of 
tracts from Protestant sources, and these are all the religious 
(if I may so use the word) books or publications we ever see. 
Now many, perhaps fully one-half, of the soldiers in the 
regular army are Catholics or the children of Catholic par- 
ents. Very often they have been but poorly instructed in 
their religion, do not know how to defend it when assailed, 
which is often the case, and in time grow careless, indiffer- 
ent, or perhaps ashamed of it, and end by losing or deny- 
ing the faith. If you could send me a few of your publications 
I would see that they are placed where they will do the most 
good. I am a soldier myself, with pressing necessity for my 
scanty pay, and, therefore, can do but little else to help on 
the good work of your society." 

Again, other Catholic societies might join as a body and 
the special literature be sent to a single address, and then 
passed from one member to another. The American Catholic 
Historical Society of Philadelphia and the Columbian Reading 
Circle of Vincennes were the first to apply for this sort of 
membership. 

And this brings me to a question which, I am sure, never 
occurred to my own mind or the minds of any of the founders 
of the society till it was propounded by an outsider ; nor 
should I consider it worthy of notice had it not been repeated 
more than once. " Why," it has been asked, " if the Catholic 
Truth Society is so important in its character and mission, was 
it started in the distant north-western city of St. Paul, and not 
in some older and larger city ? " " It was founded in St. Paul 
because it was not founded elsewhere," was the blunt reply oi 
a Western editor. The very question reminds me of the words 
of the carping Jews : " Can anything of good come out of 
Nazareth ? '' As well ask why the' devotion to the Sacred 
Heart originated in Paray-le-Monial rather than Paris, or why 
the English Catholic Truth Society has its headquarters in 
Birmingham rather than London, or why Christ was born in 
the little hamlet of Bethlehem rather than the magnificent city 
of Jerusalem. God's ways are not man's ways. The Holy 
Spirit breatheth where he will. If, however, it be true that the 
early settlers of a community impress their characteristics upon 
their descendants for generations, may not the same law hold 
good in the spiritual order ? If there be any truth in the 



1891.] THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. rig 

opinion of theologians that each city and town has its guardian 
angel who shapes and controls its destiny, it appears to me 
that a Catholic Truth Society is just the sort of an organiza- 
tion we might expect to emanate from a city which claims as 
its patron saint the great apostle who was the foremost preacher 
of Catholic truth to the Gentiles St. Paul. If there be any 
who find fault with the Catholic Truth Society of America on 
account of the place of its nativity, I can only reply, in the 
words of Gamaliel : " If this counsel or this work be of men, 
it 'will come to naught; but if it be of God, you cannot over- 
throw it." As if truth would not be suppressed, however, the 
originators of the society stated, in the very first line of their 
very first prospectus, that " the Catholic Truth Society is one 
of the results of the Catholic Congress of Baltimore." If it 
bids fair to become the chief and most permanent result, it is 
because so many recognize it as the legitimate offspring of that 
memorable gathering. Nor can I refrain from mentioning the 
significant fact that several of the Paulist fathers, who had been 
courageously carrying on this very work in New York for years 
before the Catholic Truth Society was thought of, were among 
the first to welcome it to the field and joyfully enter its ranks. 

I trust, therefore, that I am justified by the importance of 
the subject in explaining more fully the necessity of united ef- 
fort, the practical workings of the plan adopted for carrying on 
the project, and the advantages resulting from affiliation with 
the parent society. For this purpose I shall quote freely from 
the circular letter addressed by the society to all new confer- 
ences seeking affiliation. 

The work of the Catholic Truth Society of America is two- 
fold : local and national. The local work certainly presents suf- 
ficient variety to suit the tastes, talents, and inclinations of all 
its members. It offers a magnificent field for individual efforts, 
which should be limited only by individual ability and oppor- 
tunities. 

The national work consists chiefly in the publication of a 
series of Catholic Truth Society pamphlets, tracts, leaflets, etc., 
especially designed for this purpose. It is evident that it would 
lead to great confusion and unnecessary expense, if to nothing 
worse, if a dozen different branch societies should attempt to 
publish pamphlets under this title, each according to its own 
peculiar notions. This part of the work is modelled after the 
plan of the English Catholic Truth Society, which, though it 
extends throughout the entire kingdom, has only one central 



120 THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. [April, 

publishing bureau at Birmingham. In America, therefore, as in 
England, our motto must be : " For ten who can write, ten 
thousand can subscribe and one hundred thousand can scatter 
the seed." 

Now, this national work involves almost the only item requir- 
ing any considerable pecuniary outlay. The local W3rk being 
done through the press, by lectures, and the like, involves only 
nominal expense. It was thought that if the Catholic Truth 
Society of America could be organized throughout the entire 
country, as it gave early promise of being, the annual subscrip- 
tion of one dollar would be sufficient to meet the expense of 
the national work. This is the only fund it has, or calculated 
on having, to meet it ; hence it is evident that if each new 
local Catholic Truth Society should retain all of these subscrip- 
tions, each new society, instead of strengthening, would only 
weaken the national organization, and, indeed, might frustrate 
the plan entirely. It is freely conceded, however, that each 
branch must necessarily incur some expense, and, while it has 
been thought that seventy-five per cent, of the annual dues 
would be the lowest amount with which the national work could 
be carried on, the experience of the parent society, whose ex- 
penses would naturally be the heaviest, has shown the other 
twenty- five per cent, to be sufficient for local expenses. 

Now, how must the national work be done? How must the 
expense be met ? 

It is proposed to furnish this special literature to all affili- 
ated branches of the Catholic Truth Society from the start on a 
basis, not of first cost, but of cost of reproduction from electros. 
The first cost of many of the pamphlets is nearly double the 
figure at which they are sold, and the reproduction cost is taken 
as a basis, leaving a loss to be covered by membership fees 
until, in each case, over ten thousand copies shall have been re- 
produced, when the cost will be but a trifle under the prices 
named. The slight margin there will then be will be expended 
in mailing pamphlets gratuitously to non-Catholics of reasonably 
good will. 

For example : pamphlet number five, Father Damen's Church 
or Bible f (32 pages) is furnished from the start to affiliated 
branches at one dollar and fifty cents per hundred copies (3,200 
pages); though 10,000 copies must be produced to overcome the 
cost ($64) on the first two thousand. Unless enough mem- 
bers can be secured to make it reasonably certain that ten thou- 
sand 'copies can be disposed of through their agency it would 



1891.] THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. 121 

be useless to print so many. But where, then, would the cheap 
literature be ? And unless the parent or central society receives 
the seventy-five per cent, of the annual subscriptions, for the 
present, at least, how could the first cost of production be met ? 

In other words, while the branch societies were receiving this 
special literature at cost of reproduction the parent society would 
be paying the first cost, which is so much greater that it would 
be a physical impossibility for it to do so unless some philan- 
thropic millionaire should endow the concern ; or all its members 
were not only very generous but very wealthy also ; which does 
not happen to be the case. It is the unanimous opinion of 
printers, publishers, and newspaper men who have been consulted 
that this plan is the most economical one that can possibly 
be devised. 

Now let us see what its workings would be if adopted by a 
new conference. Suppose it to have forty members. Forty dol- 
lars are collected ; thirty dollars are sent to St. Paul. Each one 
of these forty members receives a sample copy of each number 
in the series of Catholic Truth Society publications for one year. 
Suppose the series includes eight numbers ; forty members would 
therefore receive three hundred and twenty (320) copies for thirty 
($30) dollars; but the other ten dollars ($10) if invested in the 
same manner at club rates would buy six hundred and sixty-six 
(666) copies. That is, the last ten dollars would have more than 
twice the purchasing power of the first thirty dollars ; but, if some 
one had not paid the first thirty, the ten would have had no pur- 
chasing value at all, since the series could not have been pub- 
lished. If each branch could dispose of the literature at cost, it 
would get the money invested back again ; and it might be used 
over and over in the purchase and distribution of literature. 
If, however, it should be distributed gratis, it is evident somebody 
would have to pay for it. 

Of course, as the membership increases the number of publica- 
tions would increase, and each member would get more i^ return 
for his first seventy-five cents ; and, as it is also certain that 
there is a limit to the number of publications which it would 
not be wise to exceed in a single year, the seventy-five cents 
would even be found more than sufficient to meet the expense ; 
and the rate might be lowered to perhaps twenty-five per cent., 
leaving still greater purchasing power for the residue. With a 
membership of 10,000 and the united efforts of all local confer- 
ences as its chief distributing agencies throughout the country, the 
Catholic Truth* Society of America might scatter a million tracts 



122 THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY. [April, 

gratis, or nearly so ! The society has no desire to confine itself 
in the selection of worthy and proper matter for this series of 
publications to home talent; though lack of funds might compel 
it to do so in the beginning. The second year's series is to 
consist of twelve pamphlets, issued monthly, and to be contrib- 
uted by some of the most distinguished lay and ecclesiastical 
writers in the country. 

Some of the -advantages of a society thus constituted may be 
summed up as follows : 

First. Each member thus contributes his share of the expense 
in the disseminating of Catholic Truth, and the encouragement 
of wholesome Catholic reading ; which are the main objects for 
which the society was organized. 

Second. By co-operation it becomes possible to do what no 
single conference, by its own unaided effort, could possibly ac- 
complish. 

Third. A new literature, not heretofore in existence, is thus 
created ; specially designed for this purpose, and presumably the 
best, most useful, suitable, and appropriate for this work that can 
be produced. 

Fourth. Each member and conference thus obtains access to 
a limitless supply of literature at prices that cannot be duplicated 
in the United States. One dollar invested in it has a purchas- 
ing power of five or even ten dollars invested elsewhere. 

Fifth. By affiliation every one participates in the spiritual 
advantages of all the Masses and prayers offered for the work, 
and such other spiritual benefits as are sure soon to follow. 

Sixth. The union and organization so necessary to a society 
of this kind will be firmly and permanently established. 

The letter referred to concludes as follows : " Nor can we 
help thinking that a Catholic Truth Society ought to participate 
to a high degree in the unity which constitutes so conspicuous 
a feature of the truth it would disseminate and the church it 
would defend." 

I cannot conclude this article better than by quoting the 
words of Rev. Thomas O'Gorman, D.D., of the Catholic Uni- 
versity of America, one of the earliest friends of the new society: 
" If the movement spreads and every town and village gets up 
a Catholic Truth Society, then, indeed, will the Church in 
America stand forth as ' the light of the world/ as ' a city 
seated on a hill,' as 'a standard set up among nations/ inviting 
all beneath its folds." WM. F. MARKOE, 

Corresponding Secretary. 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 123 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 

THE world of politics has been the scene of a number of 
events not indeed of a very sensational character but of no little 
interest and importance. The first place must be given to the 
unlooked-for resignation of Signor Crispi. With him departs, 
for the present at all events, the last of the triad of strong 
men who, a year ago, seemed to hold an almost impregnable 
position. Bismarck and Tisza had held office for much longer 
periods than Crispi, but the latter seemed even more indispen- 
sable to the Italian kingdom than either of the former to 
Germany and Hungary. What adds to the surprise at his fall 
is the fact that, only a few weeks before, a general election had 
resulted in an overwhelming victory for him and his policy, 
and so Catholics were looking forward to the future of the 
church in Italy with fear and the worst forebodings. He, 
however, who exalts himself shall be humbled. The overbear- 
ing manners of the Italian premier exasperated his own sup- 
porters and led him to his ruin. The financial burdens in- 
volved in the maintenance of the Triple Alliance, no mitigation 
of which could be hoped for from Signor Crispi, formed the 
basis for the opposition to him ; and tlie new ministry is seek- 
ing by a diminution of these burdens to preserve its power. 
That it will succeed is very doubtful, for it is said to be made 
up of men of but third and fourth rate capacity, and hope- 
lessly at issue, besides, with each other on almost every impor- 
tant point of 'policy ; nor can there be any doubt but that 
Signor Crispi will make use of every means to regain control. 
Catholics, however, cannot but be thankful for the change ; 
certain measures proposed by Crispi against the church have, 
we believe, been abandoned, and one member of the v new 
ministry is well known as an advocate of a conciliatory policy. 



In Austria an unlooked-for dissolution of the Reichsrath has 
involved the empire in an electoral contest. Since his acces- 
sion to office the policy of Count Taaffe, the Austrian premier, 
has been to foster the nationalist sentiments of the numerous 
races of which the empire consists. Unfortunately, in Bohemia, 
besides the Czechs, there are a large number of Germans, and 



124 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [April, 

a way of reconciliation had to be found for the two opposite 
aspirations resulting from this fact. A compromise was made ; 
but the Young Czechs, with the ardor, and, perhaps, inconsider- 
ateness of youth, thought it to be disadvantageous to their race, 
and therefore they repudiated* it. This threw everything into 
confusion, and Count Taaffe is going, it is said, to make of his 
opponents hitherto, the German Liberals, allies and supporters 
by adopting their policy. This he can do without inconsistency, 
for an Austrian minister is in the same position as a minister 
of the German Empire a servant of the emperor and not of the 
Parliament, and retains office so long as the emperor wishes. 
He is not the most prominent and devoted defender of certain 
political ideas; in the fortunes, good or bad, of which he must 
share, but a more or less skilful manipulator of party combina- 
tions to accomplish what the emperor judges to be best for 
the country. And so Count Taaffe, having found the policy 
heretofore pursued impracticable, makes an appeal to those who 
have been his opponents, and should this appeal be successful 
the count will remain in power in opposition -to his former 
friends and supported by his former enemies. 

The movement in favor of the amelioration of social ills 
by legislation has reached Austria also, and it is expected 
that measures for this purpose will form one of the princi- 
pal aims of the new government. So much is this the case 
that one of Count TaafFe's colleagues, being of less pliable 
material than was suitable, has resigned, and has been suc- 
ceeded by a gentleman who has made himself somewhat con- 
spicuous for his advocacy of the necessity of state help and 
for his warnings against the dangers of individualism. 

One of the many parties which war against "one another in 
Austria is the Anti-Semitic, which has for its object legislative 
action against the Jews. Although some of the supporters of 
this party are Catholics and what are called Clericals, the Aus- 
trian episcopate in a pastoral which they have issued stigmatize 
as un-Christian the hatred preached by agitators against mem- 
bers of other religious bodies, thereby condemning the proceed- 
ings of this party. This recalls the terms in which Cardinal 
Manning spoke of the Jews in reply to an address recently pre- 
sented by them to him, and his action on behalf of the op- 
pressed Jews in Russia shows that it is not in the Catholic 
Church that this ancient nationality finds its oppressors. 
* * * 

In Spain there has been a general election, the first, we be- 



OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 125 

lieve, with universal suffrage, The Conservative ministry was in 
power, and the elections have resulted in an increase of its 
strength. The Republicans have been worsted at the polls, and 
have a smaller number of representatives in the newly-elected 
Cortes. 

Portugal has been the scene of a military revolt which was 
suppressed in a few hours. Whether it was a political movement 
or merely the disorderly action of discontented soldiers is not 
quite clear. At all events, the Republican flag was hoisted, and 
Republicans rallied to the side of the revolters ; but unless in 
process of time there should be a notable increase of courage 
within the breasts of the defenders of a republic, the kings of 
Portugal will hold their throne in peace for many years to 
come; for at the first appearance of the loyal regular troops 
the revolters, and a few civilians who had joined their ranks, 
fell upon their knees and prayed for mercy. 



Two of those unexpected events which are proverbial of 
French politics have taken place within the last few weeks. 
The first of these was the suppression of Sardou's play " Ther- 
midor." This play is a dramatic denunciation of the Reign of 
Terror under Robespierre, and the defenders of this Reign of 
Terror have proved themselves so numerous and so powerful in 
Paris that, after vainly resisting for a time, the government on 
their demand forbade the continuance of the play. The dark 
significance of the matter lies in the fact that the government 
of the Republic should be so weak and the sympathizers with 
the worst period of the Revolution so strong. 

The second event was the treatment of the Empress Frede- 
rick on her visit to Paris, a visit which seemed at first, especially 
after the favorable impression produced in France by the em- 
peror's letter on the death of Meissonier, to give promise that 
France and Germany were to enter upon more friendly relations 
to each other. It is too early yet to form an estimate of the 
consequences of conduct which to outsiders appears the extreme 
of childish folly ; but, if we may believe the reports in the 
newspapers, a complete change in the German emperor's exter- 
nal and internal policy may be the result. 

In Germany legislation is being pushed forward on behalf of 
the working classes and in practical execution of the measures 
proposed at the Labor Conference at Berlin. What is of greater 
interest to Catholics, however, is the fact that a bill has been 



i26 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [April, 

introduced into the Prussian Diet for the restoration to the 
church of the moneys, amounting to about sixteen millions ot 
marks, which were withheld by reason of fidelity to conscience 
on the part of the bishops during the Culturkampf. It is ex- 
pected, too, that in the matter "of elementary education conces- 
sions will be made by the government. 

Philosophical students of the vanity of human life and of 
the mutability of human fortune will find in Prince Bismarck's 
present position an impressive illustration of that trite old theme. 
The once, mighty ruler of the German Empire is able now to 
make his voice heard only by means of the press on which in 
former days he laid so heavy a hand and for which he had so 
great a contempt. And on account of his utterances it is said, 
and th'at on good authority, that he has incurred the emperor's 
grave displeasure, and that it was even contemplated to bring 
him to trial. It is said, too, that in his family there has been 
the greatest alarm, and that the Princess Bismarck is filled with 
fears for the security, honor, and even the life of her husband. 
He has been entreated to take refuge in England from the im- 
pending danger. . This was the state of things in the month of 
February, but before these lines are in print all may have 
changed, and the prince may possibly have been restored to 
honor and power. 



The death ot the heir to the Belgian throne formed the oc- 
casion for the manifestation of what seems to be a universally 
felt sentiment of loyalty to the reigning family. The extension 
of the suffrage is the subject of chief political interest at the 
present time. That there should be an extension seems to be 
admitted by all, for the electorate at present only numbers 130,- 
ooo persons. The question in dispute is whether the suffrage 
should be made universal, or whether it should be based, as in 
England, on occupancy. The workingmen, who have declared 
for universal manhood suffrage, have addressed an appeal to the 
Belgian bishops, entreating them to intervene with their great 
authority in behalf of this reform of the constitution. 



How much bigotry remains within the breasts of those who, 
in season and out of season, are wont to vaunt themselves as 
lovers of liberty, has been revealed to the world by the opposi- 
tion to Mr. Gladstone's Religious Disabilities Bill. No one has 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 127 

more distinguished himself in this matter than the high-priest 
of the City Temple, Dr. Joseph Parker. Although he has been 
one of the most prominent supporters of Mr. Gladstone in his 
advocacy of Home Rule, in this matter he had to renounce his 
allegiance and to enter upon an active opposition to the meas- 
ure. This he did by a letter to the Times and by calling a 
public meeting to be held in his place of worship. In the letter, 
after affirming that he heartily assents to the absolute removal 
of all disabilities for religious belief, he brings forth the old 
charge a charge which sent the martyrs under Elizabeth to the 
gallows and to the quartering-block that "Popery is a state 
policy first and a religious faith second." This he proves by a 
quotation from the bull Unam Sanctam : " The temporal author- 
ity should be subject to the spiritual power." What adds a cer- 
tain piquancy to his argument is the citation of a passage from 
Mr. Gladstone's own pamphlet Vatican Decrees, in which he said 
that " Rome requires a convert who now joins her to forfeit his 
moral and mental freedom, and to place his loyalty and civil 
duty at the mercy of another," and Dr. Parker accordingly 
proceeds to describe the bill as one " to remove the disabilities 
of men who have forfeited their moral and mental freedom to 
hold the office of lord chancellor, etc." How Mr. Gladstone 
vindicates his consistency we shall see later. 

It is only fair to state that Dr. Parker did not carry with 
him the whole of his co-religionists in his opposition to the bill, 
although we cannot give the names of any of his brother- ministers 
who took up the defence of the bill ; and 30,084 Baptists 
throughout the country signed a petition against it. We are not 
here concerned to enter upon a discussion of Dr. Parker's rea- 
sons for his opposition. We cannot help, however, pointing out 
the inopportuneness of the time which he chose for advancing the 
assertion that Popery (to use his courteous phrase) was first a state 
policy a time when the voice of the Nonconformist conscience, 
all honor to it, had hurled from power an all-powerful political 
leader. This occurrence shows that even so rude and imperfect 
an organization as that of the Nonconformists exerts an influence 
on state policy ; and we are ready to admit that the church, when 
it is right and proper for it to do so, ought also to exert an 
influence, and its influence will naturally be greater in proportion 
to its own greater perfection as a religious body. 

When the bill came before the House of Commons it was re- 
jected. The government opposed it, but, as any one who will 
read the debate will see, without casting any slur upon the loy- 



128 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [April, 

alty of Catholics. A few Conservatives, however, voted against 
the government, among them being the eldest son of Lord Salis- 
bury. Why Mr. Gladstone introduced the bill is a puzzle to 
which no one has offered a satisfactory solution ; and although 
it may seem ungracious, after this effort to remove one of the few 
remaining disabilities, to call attention to the fact, still we think 
that the truth ought to be known that Mr. Gladstone has not 
squarely retracted or pretended to retract a single accusation 
made against the church in his celebrated pamphlet. His con- 
sistency he vindicated in his speech by saying that the effect -of 
his first pamphlet, in which he had impeached certain declara- 
tions of the See of Rome as dangerous to the civil allegiance 
of those who adopted and concurred in them, was to draw forth 
from his Roman Catholic fellow-subjects assurances that they did 
give a full, entire, and undivided allegiance. These assurances 
convinced him, and he therefore inserted in his second pamphlet 
the words : " I cannot but say that the immediate purpose of my 
reply has been attained in so far that the loyalty of my fellow- 
Roman Catholic subjects in the mass remains evidently untainted 
and secure." The reader will notice that this is not so much a 
withdrawal of the accusation as the conceding that British Cath- 
olics are to be excepted from it. And so Mr. Gladstone holds 
the same position now which he held when he issued his second 
pamphlet : he believes in the loyalty and trustworthiness of Eng- 
lish Catholics, because they are either disloyal and unfaithful to 
the authorized teaching of the church and its head, or too unin- 
telligent to understand just what that teaching is. 

Let us add that one of the lessons taught by the fall of Par- 
nell is that the only entirely trustworthy security for a good 
cause is in the intelligence, honesty, and courage of its supporters 
at large, and that even so good a friend as Mr. Gladstone seems 
to be should not absorb the entire allegiance of advocates of 
Irish claims. 

Although this attempt to remove these particular disabilities 
has failed for the present, it is clear that whenever a serious effort 
is made they will no longer be maintained. Political reasons of 
the moment led the government to act in opposition to their re- 
moval ; there would have been a revolt of their Irish supporters. 
The bigotry of some of these may be estimated by the fact that 
one of the members for Belfast has called upon his constituents 
and friends there to boycott the meetings which Sir Henry James 
is going to address because he spoke and voted in favor of Mr. 
Gladstone's proposal ; and this notwithstanding the fact that Sir 






1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 129 

Henry is one of the chief and most influential supporters of 
the Unionisjt cause. 

The friends of the temperance cause in Great Britain were 
two years ago rejoicing in what seemed clear proof of the re- 
markable progress of their principles. Deficit followed deficit 
in the revenue derived from spirituous beverages, until it had 
become the custom for the chancellor of the exchequer to 
estimate the income from this source at a smaller and smaller 
amount year by year. Unfortunately, a mistake was made in 
assigning the cause for this diminishing consumption. The 
years in question were years of no little depression in com- 
mercial activity ; and when two or three years ago there 
was a revival of trade and prosperity, there followed what 
Mr. Goschen termed " a rush to alcohol," which brought him 
in, instead of a deficit, a very large surplus. This took place 
in 1889. During 1890 commercial prosperity has been fairly 
well maintained, and so, we are sorry to say, has also been the 
demand for intoxicating liquors. We take from the letter on 
the Drink Bill, published annually by Dr. Dawson Burns, a few 
interesting particulars. For 1890 the expenditure on drink in 
Great Britain was 139,495,370, as compared with 132,213,276 
in 1889, being an increase of 7,282,194. This is at the rate 
f 3 1 3 S - P er head of the population, or 18 5^. per family 
of five persons. This expenditure amounts to one-twelfth of 
the estimated income of all persons in the United Kingdom 
and one- fifth of the national debt. It was 32,000,000 more 
than the whole capital in the Post-office Savings-banks, and 
4j times the amounts 'deposited in both kinds of savings-banks. 
It was 4^ times the gross receipts from passenger traffic on 
all the railways of the United Kingdom in 1889, and 3^ times 
the gross receipts from their goods traffic, or nearly as much 
again as the receipts from both traffics combined. Comparing 
the drink expenditure with the income of all denominations 
for maintenance and extension, which is estimated at about 
18,000,000 yearly, it is found that the nation spends about 
eight times as much on drink as on religion, or that it gives to 
Bacchus i for every half-crown it gives to Christ. General 
Booth asked for 1,000,000 for the full application of his scheme, 
and is considered to be asking for an enormous sum ; but it is 
not one-seventh of the increased expenditure on liquor in 1890, 
and only one hundred and fortieth part of the. gross expenditure. 
These facts show how great is the work still to be done be- 
fore England, however free she may be, can be said to be sober. 



i2o THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [April, 

In spite of Conciliation Boards and the unsuccessful Scottish 
Railway strikes the conflict between capital and labor is still 
going on. The present battle is between the ship-owners and 
their men. Hull, Sunderland, Liverpool have been the scenes 
of skirmishes ; in Cardiff and London there have been pitched 
battles. The former place was chosen by the men because the 
various unions of the employees were thought to be better or- 
ganized than in any other part of the kingdom. The principal 
combatants were the Shipping Federation on the one side and 
the Firemen and Seamen's Union on the other, but the conflict 
as it proceeded involved others. The men seem to have taken 
the initiative, they having refused to work with non-unionists 
and having blocked a vessel manned by " free " men. It is true 
that they accuse the other side of trying to exclude all unionist 
men. The most that can be truly said, however, is that the 
Shipping Federation gives a preference to those who have the 
Federation ticket, but does not refuse this ticket to unionists. In 
fact the Cardiff fight was another of the battles of the "new 
unionism," which seeks to exclude all " free " men from work 
in a ship along with union men. The brunt of the fight fell, 
however, on the allies of the Seamen the coal tippers who 
struck partly out of sympathy and partly for grievances of their 
own. Being unskilled laborers their places were easily filled, and 
before a week was over the fight ended in the discomfiture of 
these allies. Violence, breach of contract, disunion among the 
unionists, mistake in the choice of time, led to their defeat. 
The most disappointing feature in this matter is that it shows 
that the efforts to form a Conciliation Soard which were made 
last year have proved abortive. It must not be thought, how- 
ever, that the movement in favor of such boards is at an end. 
The London Conciliation Board, of which we gave an account 
a few months ago, is said to have done a large amount of 
good work for the trades with which it is concerned, although 
no detailed account of this work has been published. Cardinal 
Manning and Mr. Sydney Buxton have been urging upon it 
to invite the representatives of both sides in the dispute at 
the London docks to a friendly conference, with a view to 
an amicable arrangement of this serious and complicated con- 
flict. According to the rules of the board it cannot take ac- 
tion unless requested to do so by one of the parties; in this 
case, however, Mr. Buxton and the cardinal think a relaxation 
of the rules might be made. 

Lord Randolph Churchill has recently publicly advocated 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 131 

the formation of State Boards of Arbitration to which the 
parties in dispute may have recourse. He has not gone so 
far as to advocate the legal obligation of such recourse, and 
to other practical politicians the establishment of merely vol- 
untary boards by the state seems inadvisable. Our own ex- 
perience with them bears out this view. The subject is, how- 
ever, taking a firm hold of the public mind in Great Britain. 
The president of the Board of Trade in the present govern- 
ment looks forward to a time in the near future when strikes 
will have become as antiquated and barbarous a . means of 
settling trade disputes, as duels are for the settling of private 
disputes. 

Meanwhile, the owners of ships have been strengthening their 
organization, so that it seems very unlikely that the men will 
have strength to cope with it. Of the 8,000,000 tons of ship- 
ping which requires organization 7,000,000 are banded together 
in a firm union, under a single committee, to resist in all parts 
of the kingdom the claims of the unionists to exclusive employ- 
ment. This is the main point in dispute, and it seems that if 
in any trade the employer has a right to the control of his em- 
ployees it should be the shipping trade, where discipline is so 
important for safety and success ; all the more reason for both 
sides to be willing to arrive at an understanding. 

On the other side the work of organization is being extended. 
The great source of weakness for the unionists is, of course, the 
supply of men ready and. anxious to work upon which employ- 
ers can fall back; the agricultural laborers, either directly or in- 
directly, are the source of this supply. Their wages are very low, 
and they are consequently always ready to better themselves by 
coming into the cities. To cut off this resource a number of 
representatives of organized city labor have been sent into the 
country, and have met with considerable, although by no means 
startling, success. 

In Parliament the labor question is attracting more attention 
than has ever been given to it before, and it appears probable 
that there may be a reversal of the long-established attitude of 
the state towards industrial questions. No fewer than five bills 
have been introduced into the two houses dealing with the 
single subject of the regulation of work -shops and factories. In 
the House of Lords, Lord Thring, a political economist of the 
old school, has been forced by the evidence brought before the 
sweating committee to admit the existence of evils which require 
legislative action for their remedy, and has brought in a measure. 

VOL. LIII. 9 



132 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [April, 

for that purpose. Lord Dtmraven, to whom the appointment of 
that committee was due, and who acted as its chairman, pro- 
poses a bill more far-reaching in its operation than Lord 
Thring's. In the House of Commons Sir Henry James has 
brought in a bill which has been approved by a large number 
of factory workmen ; Mr. Sydney Buxton is in charge of a 
fourth measure, while the government has its own bill, which 
will be brought forward by the Catholic member of the cabinet, 
Mr. Henry Matthews. There is no doubt but that the latter 
bill will be passed, the proposals of the other bills being incor- 
porated so far as they commend themselyes to the wisdom of 
Parliament. And the wisdom' of Parliament, being to a very 
large extent a matter of political expediency, will pay, it is clear, 
due attention 'to the just claims of workingmen ; for a class 
which out of the six or seven millions of electors numbers be- 
tween four and five millions is not to be despised. 

Another question which will be brought before Parliament is 
the regulation by legislation of the hours of labor. This pro- 
posal involves many difficult questions, and meets with opposi- 
tion from all sides, from workingmen, and from Radical and 
Gladstonian members of Parliament. In the case of miners, 
however, it seems highly probable that the Eight Hours' Bill, 
supported by a vast majority of the men, will pass into law. 

The most important event, however, which we have to 
chronicle is the fact that the government have decided to ap- 
point a royal commission for the purpose of making an ex- 
haustive inquiry into the relations between employers and em- 
ployed. This may result in postponing legislation for a time, 
but will insure the collecting of full and reliable information on 
the points at issue and will lead to the passing of well-considered 
measures, beneficial to the best interests of every class. A 
royal commission does not consist exclusively of members of 
Parliament, but of the best-informed men to be found in the 
kingdom on the particular question, and as the evidence is 
published, these commissions become, irrespective of the con- 
clusions of the commissioners, of extreme value to students. 



The movement among French Catholics inaugurated by Car- 
dinal Lavigerie seems to be gaining in power and influence. It 
is not, however, without opponents. Bishop Freppel has made 
a visit to Rome to represent, it is said, to the Holy Father the 
objections entertained by many good Catholics, among whom 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 133 

we must reckon that distinguished servant of the church in 
France, the Comte de Mun. It is thought that but little success 
has attended the efforts of the bishop. All this, however, is 
very much a matter of conjecture. What is certain is that the 
Royalists have had a meeting at Nimes, at which one of the 
leaders of this party, M. d'Haussonville, delivered an address in 
opposition to the policy of the cardinal. He said that a few 
deputies who had formerly been among the staunchest champions 
of royalty were now inclined to support the new policy. These 
deputies, he said, were affected by what is called in literature 
the feeling of despair. While recognizing the fact that Catholics 
were at liberty to take any political side which recommended 
itself to their minds even in countries where the form of govern- 
ment or the dynasty was in dispute, he maintained that the 
Republicans in France of every shade had found in the words 
Le Clericalisme, voila I'ennemi, the cry which never failed to 
rally their confused ranks. He therefore came to the conclu- 
sion that it was impossible for any degrading capitulation or 
demoralizing truce to be made with them, and that all Royalists 
should adopt the device of their exiled prince-historian, J'atten- 
drai, and never lay down their arms before the day after vic- 
tory of the royalist cause. 

To this speech a reply has been made by a Conservative 
deputy, M. Piou, who has lately returned from a visit to the 
Pope. In this reply M. Piou endeavors to define precisely the 
position, objects, and aims of those practical politicians who 
have adopted Cardinal Lavigerie's ideas. It is their intention to 
form a Conservative party, which, apart from all dynastic pre- 
occupation, shall take its stand on constitutional ground to 
defend the great interests of the country ; and he proceeds to 
express his conviction that any party which should enter into 
conflict with the very form of government would be doomed 
to impotence. He then proceeds : " We all appeal to the 
national will. We all proclaim that the country has control 
over its destinies. Do we not mean to recognize its supreme 
power only if it employs it according to our desires ? . . . 
When the country has spoken, the right is with it." The last 
sentence is quoted from a speech of M. Thiers made in 1864. 
To the objection that the Republicans will not be conciliated, 
but will continue to act against the church, he answers that 
his appeal is not to them but to the universal suffrage possessed 
by the French, people. "We have neither concessions to expect 
nor conditions to dictate. We have to fight and to merit 



134 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [April, 

victory by our courage and wisdom." And in opposition to the 
passive attitude advocated by the Comte d'Haussonville M. 
Piou calls upon his former allies among Royalists to fight for 
faith and country on a basis which now, after so many elec- 
tions, may be looked upon as' acceptable to all Frenchmen. 
This, then, is the new movement a movement which, accept- 
ing as final the decision of the people of France in favor of 
a Republican form of government, proposes to work against 
the irreligious- measures taken by the defenders of that form up 
to the present time and contemplated in the future. It will 
meet with opposition from many quarters, but there is reason 
to believe that it will finally succeed. 



Notwithstanding the bitter and unfair opposition of Professor 
Huxley, the lofty contempt of the Times, the withdrawal of sup- 
port by those Evangelicals who are led by Mr. Webb-Peploe, 
and the abuse of all kinds with which he has been assailed, 
General Booth within three months of the publication of his book 
has received the sum of .100,000 for which he appealed. In 
fact, on the thirtieth of January last the subscriptions amounted 
to 102,000, and they have not ceased to pour in since that 
date. A practical beginning has accordingly been made of the 
"Way Out." On the 23d of January the " Ark " was opened. 
This is to be a poor man's Metropole, where for fourpence he 
can have a bed in a four-bedded room, and for sixpence a 
little room to himself, with the conveniences for washing his 
clothes and a hot bath for himself. On the 3Oth of January 
the "Prison Bridge" was opened. This is a place which will 
accommodate fifty men, and by means of it those who have 
been in prison can pass from vice and disgrace to a new life 
of honesty and virtue. The " Red Maria " waits at the prison 
gates for discharged prisoners and brings them to the Bridge. 
Here work will be given in one or other of the factories 
of the Army and the former prisoners will be on the same foot- 
ing as the other workers. On the 3ist of January another Food 
and Shelter Depot was opened, and in Bradford and Leeds build- 
ings are being prepared for the same purpose. A secretary for 
emigration has been appointed to furnish information for intend- 
ing emigrants, secure information as to the reliability of situa- 
tions offered them, and to be of general service to them. Nego- 
tiations, too, are in progress for securing land for the farm 
colony. We rejoice that the work is thus fairly started. 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. '135 

The principle of the uncontrolled management of the plan 
the general has rigidly maintained, even at the cost of much 
support. A trust-deed has, however, been executed by means 
of which all moneys subscribed for the social part of the Army's 
work will be secured to it alone, and to prevent these funds 
from being used for the general purposes of the Salvation 
Army. This deed will enable any subscriber to initiate pro- 
ceedings against the general for any breach of the provisions 
of the deed. The intervention of the attorney- general will, how- 
ever, be necessary in such a case. Means of providing against 
a too rigid and inelastic set of rules are provided by the deed 
itself. Pbr should the general at any time think that the scheme 
may be advantageously extended, altered, or modified in some 
manner not wholly inconsistent with the main object thereof, he 
shall be at liberty to do so under the written consent of two- 
thirds of a committee. This committee is to consist of eighteen 
persons, of whom the general has the right to nominate six, 
and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the president of the Wes- 
leyan Conference, the chairman of the Congregational Union, the 
chairman of the Baptist Union, the Attorney-General, and the 
chairman of the London County Council would each have the 
right to nominate two persons. In this way it is hoped to 
secure at once faithful adherence to the plan as proposed and 
the power of adaptation to new needs and wants. 

All this we commend tc the serious consideration of Cath- 
olics whose zeal, wealth, or state of life calls them to be fish- 
ermen of the "submerged." 



136 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April, 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 

MR. ANDREW LANG'S new volume* is mainly made up of 
essays reprinted from various periodicals, American and English. 
Of the five written expressly for it, that on " Homer and the 
Study of Greek," and those which treat respectively of Mr. R. 
L. Stevenson and Mr. Rudyard Kippling, are among the best in 
a good collection ; probably that on Homer is the very best. At 
the same time, one would be glad to spare from it Mr. Lang's 
parodies on certain actual and certain possible translators. They 
impart an air of tomfoolery to what is in other respects a digni- 
fied and persuasive plea for the retention of Greek in schools, 
whence the modern spirit is striving to thrust it out. Begin with 
Homer, is Mr. Lang's contention ; make boys, like Ascham and 
Rabelais, "jump into Greek and splash about until they learn to 
swim," instead of wearying them with "grammars invacuo" and 
there will be less complaint against it as a useless wearying of 
school-boy flesh. What pleasure will be lost to coming genera- 
tions of English if Homer is to appeal to them only through the 
disguises imposed upon him by Pope and Fenton, Broome, 
Chapman, or William Morris ! True ; and yet how much pleas- 
ure has been and will be given to lovers of poetry by a certain 
sonnet in which an English poet who had no Greek made mem- 
orable his first acquaintance with Chapman's version. Better than 
nothing, Mr. Lang would answer, and yet the translators, " from 
Chapman to Avia, or Mr. William Morris, are all eminently con- 
scientious, and erroneous, and futile. Chapman makes Homer a 
fanciful, euphuistic, obscure, and garrulous Elizabethan, but Chap- 
man has fire. . . . Homer is untranslatable. None of us can 
bend the bow of Eurytus, and make the bowstring ' ring sweetly 
at the touch like the swallow's song.' The adventure is never 
to be achieved ; and if Greek is to be dismissed from education, 
not the least of the sorrows that will ensue is English ignorance 
of Homer." 

But if this is the best among these essays, the one which 
follows it, on "The Last Fashionable Novel," is by odds the 
worst, and, to our notion, fails to put in any valid claim to ex- 
istence. With this exception, and possibly another in the case 
of the paper on Thomas Haynes Bayly, who was a very minor 

* Essays in Little. By Andrew Lang. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 137 

poet indeed, though twenty-five years ago every maid who owned 
a piano was thrumming and humming his " Gaily the Trouba- 
dour " and "The Mistletoe hung in the Castle Hall." Mr. Lang's 
volume is sure to afford entertainment to readers whose taste 
inclines them to literary and critical chit-chat. There are many 
readers and lovers of good books to whom gossip of this sort 
makes no appeal. They like to read of deeds, and things, and 
of men who made no books but were, in a manner, the quarry 
from which books are 'dug out by other men. But perhaps these 
readers are, after all, in a minority; at all events the critical 
essayists get in all times a fair share of attention. And Mr. Lang 
deserves it as well as any of them. Though he is neither a 
phrase-maker and hunter after rare epithets like Mr. Henley, nor 
an unerring artist in words like his other compatriot, Mr. Ste- 
venson, his judgment is sounder, less personal, and more to be 
relied on than that of either. His style, too, is flexible and ex- 
pressive. Mr. Henley is too fond of extremes he likes weights 
better than balances. If he heaps a full measure of praise on 
one scale the Dickens scale, say the Thackeray on the other 
side flies up and kicks the beam ; he has been robbed of every 
claim to love and admiration save that extorted from a deter- 
mined stylist by the contemplation of a perfect style. Mr. Ste- 
verison, too, althougli he exerts a gentle compulsion on his reader 
and will be followed to the end of whatever journey they under- 
take in company, though it lead to the condemnation and execu- 
tion of one of the reader's long- cherished friends, gets judged in 
turn and placed among the artists rather than the critics. It is 
a good place, and no doubt any of us would prefer it were the 
choice granted. Only, if the artists would stick to their brushes 
and let other and less kindly tools alone, it might be better. Mr. 
Lang is more generous and more just, and his essays on Dumas, 
on Thackeray and Dickens, on Stevenson himself, and on Kip- 
ling, that " young Lochinvar of fiction," as some one has hap- 
pily called him, are both agreeable in manner and discriminating 
and sound in matter. 

The Cassells begin a new series of fiction which they call 
the " Unknown Library " with a novelette* having a Russian 
Nihilist for its heroine. It is a very clever piece of work. The 
scene is laid in. an English country house to which comes 
Mademoiselle Ixe as governess to three or four young children, 
one of them a peevish invalid, who have been the terror and 
discomfiture of several predecessors in her line. There is no 

* Mademoiselle Ixe. By Lanoe Falconer. New York: Cassell Publishing Co. 



138 TALK ABOUT Nh w BOOKS. [April, 

serious study of character undertaken in the tale, but there is 
hardly one of the personages who appear on its narrow stage 
who is not at once definitely brushed in with a secure stroke 
and plenty of verisimilitude to common English types. Made- 
moiselle Ixe is herself wrappe'd in a profound mystery which 
hangs about her until the author voluntarily lifts it, and 
which gives a possible clue to the lines likely to be followed by 
the subsequent tales of this " Unknown " series. Mademoiselle 
Ixe embodies well that passion of the Nihilist, comprehensible at 
all events even though mistaken, which governmental Russia 
seems bent on doing all in its power to foster. The self-devo 
tion of a soul which has no religion save love of country and 
humanity, and which sees both of these helpless and hideously 
outraged in the name of law, is combined in her with thorough 
womanliness, extreme tact, far seeing persistence, and complete 
intellectual acceptance of her role as the illegal avenger of legal- 
ized crime. And Russia as it stands, with its foul places laid 
bare by the hands of its own subjects, is so great an offence 
against civilization, religion, and even nature, that what under 
more ordinary circumstances would be universally classed as 
private vengeance, has a tendency to assume other proportions 
and to put forth an almost unchallenged claim to be ranked 
with that of Judith and of Jael. From the Christian standpoint 
there is room for condemnation, but, human nature being what 
it is, there is not much room even there for surprise when those 
who sin without the law of equity and humanity are punished 
without it. 

The first story by Dorothea Gerard which fell under the 
present writer's notice was such a vigorous piece of work that 
her name upon the title-page of a new novel seemed for some 
time thereafter the herald of solid entertainment within. But, 
neither when writing alone, nor in collaboration with E. Ger- 
ard, has she succeeded in striking again the bold, sure note 
which gave character to Orthodox, her study of Jewish customs 
and prejudices in Poland. But her material in that case was 
fresher than any likely to come in the way of English novelists 
working in the oft- sown field of British life and manners. 

The scene of the new novel,* of which she is " joint author," 
is laid partly in a Scotch country house and partly in Venice. 
The young girl whose abnormal sensitiveness gives the book its 
rather promising title, is the daughter of a widowed Scotch 
laird with peculiarities which make him anything but a com- 

*A Sensitive Plant. By E. and D. Gerard. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 139 

fortable parent to have in the house. Still, he is a man of 
honor and uprightness, and the little Janet might easily be 
worse off than she is under his care and that of Aunt Penny, 
his maiden sister.' The plot is not of absorbing interest and the 
story is far too much drawn out and padded. Its interest, never 
more than mild even when Olympe and her scheming mother 
come on the stage at Venice, with their very old tricks of flir- 
tation and match-making, turns wholly upon Janet's inability, 
imposed upon her by her shrinking temperament, to manifest 
the love she feels for Captain Chichester, the friend of her 
scapegrace brother Robert. The latter has committed a murder 
or, better, has unintentionally killed a young man in sudden 
drunken rage and circumstances combine to make Janet believe 
that the crime, whose particulars she does not know, was com- 
mitted by the captain. This belief, however, by no means les- 
sens her love for him ; and as the murder has no structural use 
in the story, it seems to have been introduced chiefly to bring 
out this accentuation of Janet's character and passion. There is 
some amusing by-play in the scenes where the gourmet D'Obson, 
wrongly believing Janet to have been the concocter of a marvel- 
lous lobster souffle, wooes her assiduously, bombarding the fortress 
of her maiden innocence with cookery books and essays on 
" The Position of the Oyster in General History," while carefully 
guarding her from any knowledge of truffles. " I would as soon 
put a novel of Ouida's or Paul de Kock's into your hands as a 
treatise upon truffles God forbid ! " he says to her with fervor. 
The announcement of a new book * by Olive Schreiner was 
something like an event for those in whose memories her singu- 
lar first venture, The Story of an African Farm, was still vivid. 
The present volume, so exactly like its predecessor in style that 
no one familiar with that could well have mistaken its author- 
ship, even had it been anonymous, will not much enhance her 
reputation. It seems to have diminished it in the eyes of the 
critic of the Anti- Jacobin, who, however, curiously misunder- 
stands her drift in the dream called " Across my Bed." 
He says it is a "temperance tract" and blasphemous 
into the bargain. But the " wine " in which the people 
of her dream dabble and drink their fill is plainly enough 
the blood of the poor and wretched, out of whom the 
materials of life and joy have been crushed in order to 
give their oppressors a double share. And as to blasphemy, 
there seems no intention of the sort, although the great 

* Dreams. By OHve Schreiner. Boston ; Roberts Brothers. 



140 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April, 

name of God is handled more colloquially and freely than 
necessity required or reverence and good taste would sanction. 
The longest of these " Dreams " is reprinted from the " African 
Farm," where, had it been left, one might 'have praised this 
book more freely. On the who!e, Miss Schreiner remains for 
the present an unknown quantity ; a power, certainly, but one 
whose value and precise direction are indeterminate. She feels 
her sex or, better, the wrongs endured by her sex very keen- 
ly; and that seems to us a good thing. As she puts it in the 
most suggestive of these sketches, the one called " Three 
Dreams in a Desert," man cannot help his long-prostrate sister 
to her feet. " She must help herself. Let her struggle till she is 
strong." 

The volumes of the Saint- Amand series, which are nominally 
concerned with Josephine and Marie Louise, not only maintain 
but increase their interest as they go on. The latest* of them, 
continuing the story of the Napoleonic decadence, brings it 
down to the emperor's arrival at Elba, May 4, 1814, and the 
final departure of Marie Louise from France, which took place 
just two days earlier. The imperial pair, who ought never to 
have met at all and who were never to meet again, had met for 
the last time late in January of that year. There is, therefore, 
in this volume none of those bits of domestic life and fatherly 
joy which until now have cast a flickering and illusive glow 
over a picture whose tints began to fade at the very moment 
when they seemed to have been made imperishable by the 
Austrian marriage. When Napoleon returned to Fontainebleau 
'on the last of March, 1814, a defeated man, but not acknowl- 
edging defeat ; on the eve of abdication, but full of futile 
plans for recovering power ; a would-be suicide to whom even 
poison was to refuse the refuge against humiliation, neither wife 
nor son were there to greet him. But it was his own fault that 
they were not ; Marie Louise was still faithful to him and to 
her conception of her duty, and she would have been ready to 
welcome him in defeat and accompany him into exile. As for 
him, he had already begun to acknowledge that his marriage 
had been a fatal blunder. Saint-Amand, who writes as a 
novelist and a Christian as well as a lively and accurate 
historian, stops his narrative to conjecture the probable reflec- 
tions of the emperor when he re-entered this abode of his 
former glory : 

* Marie Louise and the Invasion of 1814. By Imbert de Saint-Amand. Translated by 
T. S. Perry. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 1891. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. I4 i 

" He might have said to himself : ' Here I inflicted pain 
on my tender and devoted Josephine * here I dealt harshly 
with the pope, that venerable man, who came to Paris from 
Rome for my coronation. I am punished for my sins. I 
recognize the hand of God in my .chastisement Had I not 
repudiated Josephine, she would now be by my side. I did 
wrong to imprison the pope. He, not I, is free ; and who 
knows if I may not soon be a prisoner ? ' ' 

Saint- Amand says well that it would need a Shakspere to 
describe the mental agonies which attended this great downfall. 
Nothing is lacking to its horrors save the touch of meanness in 
the vanquished man, and the loss of self-respect involved in 
fretting uselessly at small ignominies. No such great ascent has 
been followed by an overthrow so imposing, so dignified, and 
so pathetic. Rising and falling, sinning, repenting, and expiat- 
ing, he arrests attention and conquers sympathy and admiration 
less as a man than as the incarnation of some great natural 
force. One regards him with a feeling akin to that awakened 
by the majestic harmonies of a Beethoven sonata or the great 
Paul Veronese in the Salon Carre of the Louvre, the Marriage 
at Cana with a sense, that is, of the immense reserves of force 
imprisoned at times in men to all seeming like ourselves. 
There is no escaping him, no belittling of him, possible on the 
pages of history. His sins were many, and each of them 
came back to whip him with a scourge knotted by his own 
hands. Such disgrace as the defection and unworthiness of 
Marie Louise could fasten on him he had inflicted on the 
Count Walewska; the Duke of Reichstadt avenged the Duke 
of Enghien ; the captive pope at Fontainebleau, restored with 
honors to his own- place, was set over against the new Pro- 
metheus on the black rock of Saint Helena, gnawed by re- 
morse and released only by penance and a lonely death. As' 
Saint- Amand says : 

" To have died before the expiation of Saint Helena would 
have been for Napoleon the renunciation " the word is ill- 
chosen " of the noblest crown, that of martyrdom. The great 
man needed the purification of long sufferings. For his soul, 
so long the slave of passions, to become free, his body had 
to' be captive. If we look at things from the Christian's 
standpoint, thinking of eternity, it was his jailers who were to 
be his liberators. At Fontainebleau he had not been defeated 
enough. He had not drunk the bitter chalice to the dregs. 
He needed one more final defeat that of Waterloo. He 
needed meditation and remorse on the wave-beaten rocks. 



142 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April, 

He needed the dialogue between his stormy thought and 
the murmur of the ocean. There it was that he at last was 
to attain real greatness, where he was to deserve a glance 
from the God of pity; there that, after enduring nobly one 
of the most pathetic and grand expiations known to history, 
he was to utter those ever-memorable words : ' Not every one 
who wishes can be an atheist.' " 



The purposes of the reading circles and clubs which abound 
on all sides, and which we take to include the task of giv- 
ing young readers some acquaintance with writers and books 
whose fame has survived through centuries, but which, unaided, 
make no imperative appeal to modern taste, should be furthered 
by the colorless but sufficiently copious and accurate sketch* of 
Petrarch's life just brought out by Roberts Brothers. No analysis 
of his work is made in it, and no specimens presented in trans- 
lation. But a fair general idea of the circumstances of his life 
and the complexion of his times may be gathered from it. 
Laura's lover, however, though he attracted the admiration, es- 
teem, and friendship of most of his contemporaries, will prob- 
ably not strike the reader of Miss Ward's biography as a 
very sympathetic figure. Some close co-ordinate or subsequent 
study of the sonnets and the prose " Dialogues on Contempt 
of the World," in which St. Augustine is the poet's interlocutor, 
will be necessary for whoever desires to think of Petrarch as 
anything more than a persistent lay figure in literature. He was 
more than that, but the author of this sketch has not succeeded 
in vivifying him in her representation. 

Atman\ is one ot those seemingly spiritual but actually 
material novels dealing with the mysterious and the occult 
which are one of the prevalent fashions of the day. It is bet- 
ter written than some ot them, and shows (if it shows any- 
thing more than a ready pen and a sense of mercantile values 
in fiction), how ineradicable is the tendency of men who have 
either lost, or outraged, or never possessed Christian faith to 
dabble in natural magic. As the witches of whom Gorres has 
so many strange tales to tell rubbed themselves with powerful 
unguents and swallowed hideous compounds in order to escape 
from their flesh and attend the " Sabbath," so the modern in- 
quirer into the mysterious ties which knit soul and body to- 

* Petrarch : A Sketch of his Life and Work. By May Alden Ward. Boston : Roberts 
Brothers, 1891. 

t Atman : The Documents in a Strange Case. By Francis Howard Williams. New 

York: Cassell Publishing Company. 1891. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 143 

gether seeks for a drug, a process of some sort or other, which 
shall be efficacious to unbind them. So Bulwer did, and so 
did Stevenson in that clever tale of Jekyll and Hyde, whose 
moral and whose manner lifted it out of the rut where by 
virtue of its conception it belonged. Mr. Williams's device of a 
chemical combination capable of holding a soul in solution, and 
preserving it indefinitely in a " small crystal vial, wedge-shaped, 
and fitted with a ground-glass stopper," whence it can be trans- 
ferred to a soulless body at the operator's will, is nonsensical 
rather than grotesque. And the grotesque marks the limit to 
which adventurers in the occult may go unlaughed at. As for 
the transfusion process, it labors under the difficulty foreseen 
by Mrs. Glasse when writing her recipe for jugged hare/ First 
catch your living but soulless human body. That done, there is 
no saying what else might not happen. 

Mr. Stevenson, as we said just now, and not with sufficient 
accuracy, lifted his story out of the materialistic rut by virtue 
of its moral. But, in truth, he was dealing with a more real 
problem it was the two selves, the man of sin and the man of 
God, the old man and the new of whom St. Paul writes, that 
he had in view ; the problem which, as he says himself some- 
where in the story, lies at the root of religion. The materialis- 
tic vein showed itself in the notion of the chemical salt and the 
physical presentation of either of the two selves. But that was 
an allegory, and not a would-be juggler's trick. The idea is 
doubtless as old as Cain or Adam, and is found in the serious 
literature of all lands which have one. 

In the readable translations from five of Plato's dialogues * 
just brought out by the Scribners, occurs one of the most nota- 
ble expressions of this truth of natural religion. This admirable 
little volume contains portions of the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, 
Euthydemus, and Theaetetes. Our quotation is from the last, 
which is also in all respects the most interesting of them all. 
Socrates has been saying that it is 

" not possible to destroy evil, for the opposite of good must 
needs always exist ; nor is its abiding-place to be imagined 
among the gods, for it hovers of necessity about mortal nature 
here below. Therefore it behooves us to make good our escape 
hence to yonder place as fast as may be. And the way of 
escape is this to grow as like unto God as possible ; and to 
grow like him is to become just and holy and wise withal." 






* Talks -,u tk A the nan Youths. Five selected Dialogues translated from Plato. New 
York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 



144 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April, 

Then he goes on to say how difficult it is to persuade men 
that virtue is to be sought and vice shunned for this reason and 
not in order to make a good appearance in the eyes of other 
men. God is never unjust, he says, and nothing is more like 
Him than the man who has made himself most just. The 
knowledge of this truth is wisdom and -true virtue ; " all else 
that looks like cleverness or wisdom is in matters of politics 
mere coarseness, and in the arts vulgarity." Some men glory in 
this cleverness, because they know not the reward of unrighteous- 
ness, which is that they shall become that which they have 
voluntarily resembled. Not stripes and death is their penalty, 
for these are frequently incurred by the just, but rather some- 
thing impossible to escape from. Then Theodorus asks what 
the sage means, and he replies : 

"Two living types, my friend, are set before them the one 
divine and of perfect blessedness, the other with naught of the 
divine, and of utter misery. But this they do not perceive, 
and their excessive folly and stupidity makes them unconscious 
that on account of their evil deeds they are growing like the 
one and unlike the other. And the penalty they pay is that 
the life led by them is in the likeness of that which they re- 
semble. Jf we tell them that unless they get -rid of their boasted 
cleverness, they will not, even when dead, be received into that 
place which is free from evil, but must ever continue here upon 
earth in that way of life which is like unto themselves evil 
consorting with evil they will listen to us, but only as clever 
knaves might listen to a- set of fools." 

" Indeed they will, Socrates." 

" I am quite aware of it, my friend. There is, however, this 
about them, that if they are confronted with one person alone, 
and made to give their reasons for what they censure that is, 
if they are willing to stand their ground and not run away 
like cowards they end, my good sir, by being strangely dis- 
satisfied with their own reasons." 

The world moves but changes not, says the modern reader 
coming on these words of ancient wisdom. 



I. HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED 

STATES.* 

One might think that after the death of Archbishop Carroll 
the history of the American Church would be a matter of routine, 

* History of the Catholic Church in the United. States, from the division of the Diocese 
of Baltimore, 1808, and death of Archoishop Carroll, 1815, to the Fifth Provincial Counci 
of Baltimore, 1843. By John Gilmary Shea. New York : John G. Shea. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOCKS. 145 

a chronicle of appointments and of the formation of new dioceses, 
the establishment of religious communities, seminaries, colleges, 
and asylums, and the collection of the statistics of the gradual 
increase of the Catholic people. But although the present volume 
gives all this, and does it well, it does very much more. We 
cannot say that Dr. Shea leads us through such interesting scenes 
as he has done in the two previous volumes of his great work, 
which treat of the pioneer age of our Church ; yet he narrates 
the events of what was a critical period among us, and sketches the 
characters of the men who led the clergy and people safely 
through it. They were not great men in the ordinary meaning 
of the term, although Bishop England was a great orator and a 
useful writer, and Bishops Brute and Flaget were saintly prelates. 
But these, with Archbishops Neale, Marechal, Whitfield, and Ec- 
cleston, Bishops Cheverus, the two Fenwicks, Du Bois, Du Bourg, 
and Rosati, had some extremely difficult problems to solve with 
very inadequate means to do it. They labored with zeal and 
suffered with much fortitude to supply the people with clergy 
from God knows where. They struggled against a rebellious 
element among the people, who were bent on Protestantizing the 
parish corporations by means of the State authority ; these pre- 
lates hewed down the bulkiest portion of this obstacle to the union 
of priest and people, preparing for its final removal under Bishops 
Hughes and Kenrick. They introduced into the country many 
of the charitable and educational religious societies since grown 
so great, or they fostered their infancy into active life. They did 
something lor Catholic literature when to succeed in doing any- 
thing was to work wonders. They managed after enormous 
trouble to expel from the papal ante- chambers the advisory lobby 
of a foreign episcopate, which sought with almost fatal results to 
rule the American Church as an annex of a church itself the 
gasping victim of cruel persecution. They secured a modus 1 
vivendi among the bishops by means of the first four provincial 
councils, clearing up, after infinite difficulty, the way to Rome 
and back for official business. And they chose out and put into 
office the men under whose powerful influence Catholicity became 
a great religious force in America, Kenrick, Purcell, and Hughes, the 
first years of whose era is lapped by the record given in this volume. 
All this the reader will find told by Dr. Shea in this volume 
with unquestionable honesty ; and be will also find many curious 
bits of history of personal, local, and general interest, interspersed 
with the details of dates and places which are essential to the end 
sought for in such a work. 



146 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April, 

The author has one more volume to prepare and then his 
work is done. And may God grant him the time to do it, and 
freshen his heart with renewed courage, and reward his industry 
with adequate temporal compensation, as he is sure to do with the 
consoling reflection of a lifetime' devoted to works of the highest 
usefulness to both church and state ! 



2. THE ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH PRAYER-BOOK.* 

In the first meeting of Convocation held in the reign of Ed- 
ward VI. a petition of the Lower House to the Upper speaks of 
certain books which had been prepared by the order of Henry 
VIII. by a committee of prelates and learned men, such books 
being the " uniform order " for divine service which the commit- 
tee had been appointed to devise. To these books former histo- 
rians of the Book of Common Prayer did not have access. It 
was unknown what had become of them ; some have even ques- 
tioned their existence. The identification of the lost work or 
works with a certain MS. in the Royal Library has enabled Mr. 
Gasquet and Mr. Bishop to re- write the history of the origin ot 
the Anglican Prayer-Book from a new standpoint, with fuller and 
more exact knowledge, and less of inference and conjecture. 

The aim of the authors has been to bring out facts, not to 
enter upon a polemic against the Reformers or their work. This 
is what men of all parties want and most prize : for if the facts 
can be ascertained, it is easy for each one to draw his own conclu- 
sions ; and Catholics have of all parties least to dread and most 
to hope from a full disclosure. 

As an illustration of this we may cite the following as showing 
the position occupied by bishops who had renounced the pope: 
Canon Dixon in his History of the English Church gives this 
account of the proceedings which took place after Henry's 
death : " Even before the prince [Edward VI.] was crowned it 
came into the mind of Cranmer, so great was his loyalty, that it 
was desirable for himself and the other bishops to renew the 
commissions as functionaries of the new king. He therefore 
issued or caused to be issued without delay those curious instru- 
ments, etc." This is bad enough, but not so bad as the reality. 
Canon Dixon's account leaves to Cranmer the initiative. The 
truth is that the new supreme 'head of the church to which the 

* Edward VI. and the Book of Common Prayer. An Examination into its Origin and Early 
History, with an Appendix of unpublished Documents. By Francis Aidan Gasquet, O.S.B., and 
Edmund Bishop. London : John Hodges ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 






1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 147 

bishops had submitted exacted it, and that it was not merely 
desired, as Canon Dixon says, but required of them. The Har- 
leian MS., 2308 f. 25 d. (cited .by Mr. Gasquet), gives the following 
resolution of the council : " Item, whereas all the bishops of the 
realm had authority of spiritual jurisdiction by force of instru- 
ments under the seal appointed ad res ecclesiasticas which was 
determined by the decease of our late Sovereign Lord King 
Henry VIII., . . . and forasmuch as for the better order of 
the affairs of the realm it is thought convenient the same au- 
thority be renewed unto them : it was therefore ordained that 
they should cause new instruments to be drawn in form of the 
others they had before, . . . and thereupon every of the said 
bishops to exercise their jurisdiction in such manner as they did 
before by virtue of their former grants " It was in compliance 
with this order of his superiors, therefore, that Cranmer took out 
his new commission, and this he did the very next day, thus himself 
recognizing the claim which the state so peremptorily and unmis- 
takably made that he and the rest of the bishops should be the 
mere delegates of the king. And much as the Church of Eng- 
land has changed in other respects, in this it remains the same. 
A reader of the London Gazette for the I2th December last 
will find the following order in council: " Whitehall, Dec. 12. 
The Queen has been pleased to order a Conge d' Elire to pass 
the great Seal, empowering the Dean and Chapter of the Cathe- 
dral Church of Worcester to elect a Bishop of that See, . . . de- 
clared vacant by Her Majesty's Order in Council ; and Her Maj- 
esty has ben pleased to recommend to the said Dean and 
Chapter [here follows the name of Lord Salisbury's nominee], to 
be by them elected Bishop of the said See of Worcester." 

The language of this order is a little more courteous, per- 
haps, than that of the earlier order, but it may be thought by 
some that it only adds insult to injury to be recommended to 
elect a person already elected, and to be bound to elect under 
pains and penalties, for such, as every one knows, is the real 
state of things. 

Father Gasquet has already by his former work on th.e Eng- 
lish monasteries of the reign of Henry VIII. established his 
reputation as a student of the sources of history, as a reliable 
authority, and as an enlarger of the field of knowledge ; and 
every reader of the former work will know the character of the 
present. No student of the English Prayer-Book, or, indeed, of 
the history of the period of the English reformation, can feel sure 
that he is master of this subject unless he has read this book. 

VOL. LIU. 10 



148 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [April, 

We regret that the space at our disposal precludes a more de- 
tailed notice of it, but every one should read it for himself. 



3. COLUMBUS.* 

In the charming Dialogues on Art in Literature of Francisco 
Cardoso, Don Fabio the Dreamer says : " He whose biography 
shall be faithful, shall have his vices painted by his friends, his 
virtues delineated by his enemies ; Indifference shall describe his 
works, and Veracity shall compound the whole." On this Don 
Arturo the Objector remarks : " This Veracity is a very dull fel- 
low, and withal most uninteresting." And the Dreamer re- 
plies : " Objector, thou art vain and immoral ! Veracity is more 
precious and beautiful than fine gold and diamonds " "And 
rarer withal,' ; interjects Don Arturo. 

Nowhere rarer than in history and biography. So rare that 
were Tarducci's life of Columbus what it is not, a dull, dry 
work, the .simplicity and brilliant truthfulness of his narrative 
would make it delightful reading, and the epithet brilliant is 
used advisedly, for of the many fine qualities this life of Colum- 
bus possesses, none is characterized more firmly, none shines so 
brightly, as its "utter truthfulness. A hundred times whilst read- 
ing the work one finds himself saying, " How true this is, 
how like Columbus." And this last expression explains another 
and not small characteristic of the work. You are made thor- 
oughly acquainted with the man Columbus. You think and 
talk with Columbus, not about him. You view things through 
his eyes, not the eyes of the author. You comprehend the 
motives of the hero and discoverer, because you are made to 
comprehend the man. You are made to perceive blemishes in 
him; they cause you keen sorrow, but you do not cease to love 
the man who has now become your friend and companion. You 
see his weaknesses, and that he is never ignoble. You are 
made to know in him a saintly hero of stupendous mind and 
mighty soul, and never for a moment do you forget that he is 
a man with strong passions, and with weaknesses like to yourself. 
We know of few biographies that so perfectly reveal the nature 
of the subject treated as this, by Tarducci. 

The simplicity with which the tale tells itself is extraordinary. 
There is no striving for an effect that is always reached. For 
example: Columbus has proceeded to Barcelona after his first 

* The Life of Christopher Columbus. By Francisco Tarducci, after the latest Documents. 
Translated from the Italian by Henry F. Brownson. Detroit: H. F. Brownson, Publisher. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 149 

voyage, to meet Ferdinand and Isabella ; he has related his pas- 
sage across the seas, and his wondrous discovery, and has re- 
joiced at the thought of the spreading of the Gospel to the 
natives of these newly-discovered lands. " The words of Colum- 
bus so moved the sovereigns that as soon as his fervent dis- 
course was ended, they both fell on their knees and raised their 
joined hands to Heaven, weeping with joy and gratitude to 
God. And all the ministers, high officers of the court, and 
grandees of the kingdom, that were present, followed their ex- 
ample ; a lively feeling of religious thankfulness drew every 
thought to God, and in the general commotion, instead of pro- 
fane applause and huzzas, the choir of the royal chapel intoned 
the Te Deum. Las Casas, describing the solemn enthusiasm of 
that thanksgiving, says : "It seemed as though each one enjoyed 
at that instant a foretaste of the delights of paradise." 

Space admits of but one other quotation. Columbus has ta- 
ken possession of San Salvador : " When the ceremony of taking 
possession was over Columbus caused two large pieces of wood to 
be cut, and, making a rude cross, raised it on the same spot where 
the royal banner had been placed, ' to leave a sign that possession 
had been taken of that land in the name of Christ.' He did the 
same ever after in every land he discovered, whether large or 
small, leaving everywhere the sign of redemption, as in a place 
that had come under the dominion of the Christian religion." . . . 
" The Spaniards remained on shore all day, refreshing themselves 
after the voyage among the delicious groves of the island, and 
only returned to the vessels late in the evening, full of wonder at 
what they had seen." 

At any time would Tarducci's life of Columbus have found a 
hearty welcome and been pronounced an event in the world of 
letters. Verging as we are on the fourth centenary of the discov- 
ery that changed a world, the Englishing of this great work has 
a singular appropriateness. It would, indeed, be pleasant to give 
unqualified praise to the translator, as it has been given to the 
author. The veracity Don Arturo likes not obliges us to admit 
that, while there is no question but that the translation is accu- 
rate, the translator has not always avoided the ambiguities of 
our language, neither are his sentences always smooth and 
flowing. 

That this work will attract wide-spread attention there can 
be no doubt ; let us hope that it will attract all the attention 
Catholic readers should give to it. Fortunately for the translator, 
the work he has given the English-speaking public is of such a 



150 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [April, 

character as not to depend on any one portion of the public for 
its circulation. It will be bought and read and reviewed by Pro- 
testant readers and publishers. When this has been done and the 
excellence of the work approved of by our dissenting brethren, 
then our Catholic laity, who will have failed to buy it at once, 
will bethink themselves that they have room on their book- shelves 
for a copy. It is the life of one of the noblest characters that 
ever lived, the greatest of all discoverers, Christopher Columbus, 
whose least glory is not his saintliness of heart and mind, his de- 
votion to Holy Church. 

It is a pleasure to note the excellence of the engravings con- 
tained in these volumes, and the extremely low price at which 
the work is sold. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

ALL COMMUNICATIONS RELATING TO READING CIRCLES, LISTS OF BOOKS, 
ETC., SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION, NO. 
415 WEST FIFTY-NINTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. 

' COPIES of our book-lists and leaflets have been sent gratis 
to all the institutions devoted to higher education which are men- 
tioned in the Catholic Directory of the United States as select 
schools, colleges, and academies. We had hopes that our com- 
munications would get some recognition at least from the teach- 
ers of literature, whose zeal for the diffusion of good books by 
Catholic authors might reasonably be expected to become mani- 
fest by a kindly word in favor of the useful work undertaken by 
the Columbian Reading Union. In many places we have failed 
to elicit any response, which leads to the undesirable conclusion 
that. there are institutions claiming to give a finished education 
without inculcating the necessity of an elementary knowledge of 

Catholic literature. 

* * * 

The religious communities have given us many assurances of 
their interest in our movement, and cheerfully volunteered to pray for 
its success. We are directly indebted to their exertions for many 
new members. While thanking them one and all for past favors, 
we especially request a continuance of their good prayers to 
assist in overcoming the culpable indifference among Catholics 
which is the greatest obstacle to the missionary work yet to be 
done through the agency of Catholic literature. It is a conso- 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 151 

lation to know that within the sacred enclosure of the cloister 
there are holy nuns praying to St. Teresa for blessings upon 
the Columbian Reading Union and its members. A reverend 
mother in the Sunny South writes that our " work cannot but 
procure glory for God and save souls." From another religious 
living in the frozen North we received this cheering message : 
" I wish I could tell you what a comfort it is to know you are 
engaged in the work most needed now. I am too full of your 
laudable enterprise, which is and was my own pet scheme, to 
trust myself to say my say in a sufficiently coherent way to stand 
the test of cold print. If I were within reach of your Reading 
Circle, I do believe I would carry my presumption so far as to 
claim the privilege of speaking to the members at every meeting. 
I can only pray that our beloved Fathe.r Hecker's ideas may 
continue to be realized by his loyal sons. He must look down 
on you all with more than paternal love." 

* # * 

We are always pleased to get letters from young men, know- 
ing as we do that in many places they have little opportunity to 
get at the works of Catholic authors. They read what comes 
easily within their reach, especially, and sometimes exclusively, 
newspapers. In the United States there are thousands of young 
men like the one who writes this letter : 

" I have been recommended by a Christian Brother to write 
to the Columbian Reading Union for- a list of books, with any 
information you could conveniently give. Will say that I 
am a Kerry boy, twenty-one years old, and five years in 
this country ; and while I passed second stage of sixth class 
in the National schools to home, yet I read but few books 
there. In this country, however, I have learned, to some 
extent, to appreciate the value of books ; but my time for 
study is limited, as, being a bookkeeper, I work the greater 
part of my evenings. I would feel grateful for any informa- 
tion you might give, though, I suppose, it is difficult to wisely 
recommend books to one whose tastes you are not familiar 
with. To assist you, if possible, I will state what reading 
I enjoy. I love to read Dickens, not so much for his stories 
as for his sarcasm and the portrayal of those odd characters of 
his. I have greatly enjoyed Ben Hur, Fabiola, Vicar of Wake- 
field, and a few of Bulwer's works. I have the complete works 
of Bulwer. Which, if any, of them would you recommend me 
to read ? While I do not exactly know what I want, my 
preference is for historical novels, something not too deep 
or heavy. D. H. S. 

" St. Paul, Minn." 



152 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [April, 

If our young friend from Kerry has access to a public 
library he will find in the Encyclopedia Britannica an impar- 
tial criticism of Bulwer's numerous writings in prose and verse. 
Many of his novels are pervaded with a low tone of morality, 
though his avowed purpose was to show " the affliction of the 
good and the triumph of the unprincipled." We would highly 
recommend to the writer of the above letter and to all 
Catholic young men a studious perusal of the work entitled 
Rational Religion, by Rev. John Conway, editor of the North- 
western Chronicle. It is a modern book for the modern need, 
the book for a busy man who is obliged to mingle with free- 
thinkers and other non-Catholics. 



The secretary of the Catholic Young Men's National Union 
has kindly sent us the proceedings of the sixteenth convention, 
held at Washington, D. C., October 7 and 8, 1890. We know 
of no other publication which contains so much valuable infor- 
mation for young men striving for self-improvement. In a pam- 
phlet of over a hundred pages there are many notable addresses 
by eminent representatives of the clergy and laity. Among the 
many excellent papers and speeches we read with intense pleas- 
ure the eloquent speech of Hon. T. C. O'Sullivan, of New York, 
which won for him the greatest oratorical triumph of the con- 
vention. The masterly essay on Catholic literature by Mr. Conde 
B. Fallen, of St. Louis, fills twenty pages. It should be taken 
up in sections at the literary meetings of the Catholic young 
men's societies and thoroughly discussed. It will bear the closest 
inspection of critical students qualified to appreciate extensive 
learning, felicity of diction, and philosophical accuracy. 

Some of our ablest writers are still Catholic young men. 
What are we doing to encourage them in their efforts to pro- 
duce literature ? Are we anxious to find out their works ? How 
do we welcome books written by them ? How often have we 
shown our appreciation of Catholic authors by purchasing their 
books in preference to others ? 

M. C. M. 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 153 



WITH THE PUBLISHER. 



WITH this issue THE CATHOLIC WORLD opens its fifty- 
third volume, and celebrates its twenty-sixth birthday. And the 
testimony is almost universal that it is " getting on " in every 
good quality as well as it is in years. Certainly the past 
year has been, in every respect, a bright one. Not only has the 
magazine become better and stronger from both the editorial 
and the financial standpoint, but there are many signs which augur 
even greater success during the year that is to come. As the 
public which THE CATHOLIC WORLD addresses is steadily grow- 
ing, so the management is determined that in all its features the 
magazine shall keep pace with this growth. This pledge has been 
given to our readers repeatedly, and the history of the magazine 
during the past year is abundant evidence of the fidelity with 
which it has been kept. 



.*. 



The high standard of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, so successfully 
maintained during a quarter of a century, will be maintained and, 
as far as possible, surpassed in 1-891. Plans for its improvement 
are always under discussion, and are matured and realized as soon 
as practicable. Some of these plans point to fundamental im- 
provements, and we trust it will not be long before we shall be 
able not only to announce but to realize the improvements contem- 
plated. The features of special interest in the fifty-third volume 
will be those that have been so popular in the past : the " Life of 
Father Hecker," which the Boston Herald declares to be " one of the , 
best written stories of religious growth and change which has 
recently been published " ; the " Talk about New Books," which 
many of our contemporaries say " is alone worth the price of the 
magazine " ; the discussion of subjects of present interest in a spirit 
which is said to be "always broad, vigorous, and in the best sense 
progressive" ; the Columbian Reading Union, which has done so 
much good in behalf of a more earnest study and appreciation 
of our Catholic writers. " The Old World as seen from the New " 
will be a new feature in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for 1891, 
and will treat all subjects of interest to American readers, espe- 
cially subjects kindred to the social questions of the day, in con- 
densed' and pithy style, and in a just, candid, and thoroughly 



154 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [April, 

Catholic spirit. As already announced, a number of articles on 
subjects suggested by the coming Columbian centenary are in 
progress and will be published during the year. The department 
" With the Publisher " (unavoidably " crowded out " last month) 
has had from the beginning a.strong hold on the interest of our 
readers, as the Publisher himself has reason to know. Many rely 
upon its lists of new books for the month, and special means 
have been and will be employed to make this feature as accurate 
and reliable as is possible. This number appears, as has been 
already announced, in a bright, new cover of heavy paper and with 
some changes in the type, to relieve it of some of the heavy 
appearance urged against the former cover. Altogether we hope 
to make the new volume a memorable one. 



*** 



And to do this thoroughly we again must call for assistance from 
our readers. We would like each one to feel that he or she must 
do something towards such a result. THE CATHOLIC WORLD was 
founded in a missionary spirit ; its readers should partake of the 
same spirit. There are few who cannot influence at least one per- 
son, there are many who can do more. Very probably, a new sub- 
scriber is not always secured, but your words will bear fruit some 
day or other, and you do much in making the magazine known. 
There are many Catholics, and intelligent Catholics too, who do 
not know of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, or who do not know why 
they should read it ; a word or two from you will make them sub- 
scribers. Make it a point, dear reader, to inquire among your 
immediate acquaintances and see how many of them know of the 
existence of the magazine, or of what subjects it treats, or why they 
are not subscribers. The Publisher is certain that you will be sur- 
prised with the majority of the replies, and that ignorance rather 
than economy, ignorance of its existence or its aims and character, 
will be the most frequent reply. 

* * 

Let the Publisher take the following extracts from letters re- 
ceived during the past month as an " object lesson " to show 
what THE CATHOLIC WORLD is worth to its readers. These ex- 
tracts are often little more than a single sentence sent with a 
renewal of a subscription. 

"I read it carefully and always with great satisfaction and 
profit." 

" Times are hard and ready money is always scarce here, but 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD has long been a necessity in my house- 
hold." 



1 39 1.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 155 

" I don't agree with it always, but then it is always a good 
stimulant for thought." 

" I am a busy man and can't read much, but your ' Talk 
about New Books ' keeps me better acquainted with current 
literature than many of my acquaintances who have much more 
leisure than I." 

" I have taken the magazine for twenty-two years, and simply 
couldn't do without it." 

" A great monthly and growing better with every volume. 
Why can't you illustrate it ? " 

" We have a complete set in our library, and have the num- 
bers bound as each volume is completed. The well-thumbed 
pages testify to the value our students place upon it." 

" I made my acquaintance with THE CATHOLIC WORLD for 
the first time when I was a seminarian and the friendship has lasted 
ever since." 

" Your last number was unusually interesting and that certainly 
means much.' 7 

" I read it regularly when still a Protestant, and only God 
knows how much I owe to it as a means of receiving the grace of 
Faith, now crowned with the priesthood." 

* 
# * 

The Publisher trusts that these remarks will stimulate others 
of his readers to add their testimony to the benefit they receive 
from the magazine, and that they will give their friends and ac- 
quaintances the benefit of such testimony. Do something for 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD for the coming year : if you have done 
something already, let the memory of it serve to stimulate you to 
do more ; if you have done nothing thus far, let the thought be 
a rebuke to your inactivity. You are doing more than securing 
subscribers for THE CATHOLIC WORLD (though you can do that 
more readily and with less trouble than a regular subscription 
agent) ; you are serving the cause of Catholic literature, and it 
needs such service in this country and at the present time. 



*** 



The Publisher wishes that every earnest reader of the maga- 
zine wculd take these words to heart, and would act upon them, 
and act upon them at once, and as. a part of his duty. Don't 
be afraid of the trouble or inconvenience ; it is little compared 
with the results. Let every reader adopt for the coming year a 
good motto the Publisher saw recently : " All those who pass 
through the door of success will find it labeled ' Push.' ' 



156 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [April, 

The Publisher wishes to call attention to the following note 
from the Editor: " Articles sent to the Editor for consideration 
must be accompanied by a stajnped and addressed envelope, as 
well as by postage sufficient to return the manuscript, if not 
found available. Otherwise the Editor will not feel bound to 
acknowledge receipt." 

The Catholic Publication Society Co. has in preparation : 

The Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More. By Rev. 
T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R. 

The Life of the Blessed Angelina Marsciano, Foundress 
of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis of Assisi. 
By Mrs. Montgomery. 

Also a new and uniform edition of Mrs. Hope's works. 

Nature's Wonder Workers is the title of some " Short Life His- 
tories in the Insect World," by Kate R. Lovell, which the Cassell 
Publishing Company have ready. In this book the author's aim 
is to interest the reader in what are called the "useless insects." 
The information has been carefully collected from the best and 
latest authorities on entomology, and may be relied upon as far 
as it goes. She has made an admirable book to put into the 
hands of the young, to teach them that the most despised crea- 
tures that cross their path have their use in the world and should 
not be wantonly destroyed. 

Francis Turner Palgrave's well-known anthology, The Golden 
Treasury of Songs and Lyrics, probably the most popular collec- 
tion of its kind in English, has just made its appearance in a 
new edition in larger type. More than fifty new pieces have 
been added to this edition, chiefly from collections of Elizabethan 
songs, and the notes have been carefully revised throughout. 
The book is published by the Clarendon Press, and Macmillan & 
Co. are the agents in this country. 

Benziger Brothers have just issued : 

Letters of St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. Part I. Gen- 
eral Correspondence. (This is vol. 18 of the Centenary 
Edition of St. Alphonsus' works.) I2mo, cloth, net, 
$1.25. 

Manual of Indulgenced Prayers. Arranged and Disposed 
for Daily Use by Rev. Bonaventure Hammer, O.S.F. 
32mo. Prices from 40 cents to $1.40. 

Percy Wynn ; or y Making a Boy of Him. By Francis J. 
Finn, S.J. (Neenah). A story of college life. I2mo, 
' cloth, $i. 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 157 

Readings and Recitations for Juniors. By Miss Eleanor 
O'Grady, author of "Aids to Elocution," etc. i6mo, 
cloth, net, 50 cents. 

They have in preparation : 

A Martyr of Our Own Times. Life of Rev. Just de 
Bretenieres, Missionary Apostolic, martyred in Corea 
in 1866. From the French of Right Rev. Mgr. 
D'Hulst. Edited by Very Rev. J. R. Slattery, Rector 
of St. Joseph's Seminary, Baltimore, Md. I2mo, cloth, 
net, 75 cents. 

Saints of the Society of Jesus. By Rev. D. A. Merrick, 
S.J. i6mo, cloth, net, 25 cents; paper, net, 10 cents. 

Harper Bros, have published : 

Our Italy. By Charles Dudley Warner. A description 
of the climate, scenery, and resources of Southern Cali- 
fornia. 

Campmates : A Story of the Plains. By Kirke Monroe. 

Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare's Tragedies. Edited, with 
notes, by Dr. Wm. J. Rolfe, and intended both as a 
"supplementary reading- book for children and as an 
introduction to the study of Shakespeare." 

Sir Robert Peel. By Justin McCarthy, M.P. 

Reminiscences of President Lincoln. By L. E. Chittenden. 

Mr. C. S. Parker has edited, and Mr. John Murray of Lon- 
don will issue this month, a volume of Sir Robert Peel's Letters, 
covering the period when he was the Chief Secretary for Ireland. 

A new edition of Stewart Rose's St. Ignatius and the Early 
Jesuits is announced by Burns & Gates. It will contain about 
one hundred illustrations. 

In their "English Men of Action" series Macmillan & Co. 
have just issued Warwick, the Kingmaker, by C. W. Oman, M.A. 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. have published the sixth volume ot 
James Russell Lowell's collected writings, embracing his literary 
and political addresses during the period of his life abroad as 
minister to England. 

A work of much interest is soon to be issued by the Put- 
nams, The Life and Writings of George Mason of Virginia. 
By Miss Kate Mason Rowland, his great-granddaughter. He 
was a conspicuous figure in the " constitutional era " of this 
country. He opposed presidency as well as monarchy, advo- 
cated such ministerial government as now prevails in England, 
and was one of the three members of the Constitutional Con- 
vention of 1787 who refused to sign the Constitution. 



158 BOOKS RECEIVED. [April, 1891. 



BOOKS' RECEIVED. 

LIFE OF JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. By James Jeffrey Roche. His complete 

Poems and Speeches. Introduction by Cardinal Gibbons. New York : 

Cassell Publishing Co. 
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. By W. Cabell Bruce. Baltimore : John Murphy & 

Co. 
FRANCISCAN TERTIARY ALMANAC for 1891. Containing Useful Historical 

Notes. Compiled by the Franciscan (Capuchin) Fathers. Pantosoph, 

Holywell, North Wales. 
CHRISTIAN ART IN OUR OWN AGE. By Eliza Allen Starr. Notre Dame, 

Ind. : Office of the Ave Maria. 
SELECTED SERMONS. By the Rev. Christopher Hughes. Introduction by the 

Rev. Walter Elliott, C.S.P. New York and Cincinnati: Fr. Pustet & 

Co. 
SEVEN SUNDAYS IN HONOR OF ST. JOSEPH. From the Spanish. New York, 

Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros. 

IN DARKEST LONDON. By John Law. London : William Reeves. 
THE KEYS OF ST. PETER. By J. P. Val D'Ereamo, D.D. Dublin: Browne 

& Nolan. 

AT OBER-AMMERGAU. By P. J. O'Reilly. London : Catholic Truth So- 
ciety. 
HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. By the Rev. J. A. Birkhaeuser. Second edition. 

Revised and enlarged New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 
THE SOUL OF MAN. By Dr. Paul Carus. Chicago : Open Court Publishing 

Co. 
LADY MERTON. ByJ. C. Heywood. London: Burns & Oates ; New York: 

Catholic Publication Society Co. 

NOVENA IN HONOR OF ST. JOSEPH. New York: P. O'Shea. 
COUNSELS OF ST. ANGELA. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benziger 

Brothers. 

POEMS, SKETCHES OF MOSES TRADDLES. Cincinnati : Keating & Co. 
Nos MAITRES. Par 1'Abbe F. Brettes. Paris : Gaume et Cie. New York : 

Benziger Bros. 
STARS IN ST. DOMINIC'S CROWN. By Thomas Austin Dyson, Priest of the 

same order. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 
THE NEW REFORMATION. By Prognostic. Published ~by the Author, New 

York P. O. 
VIEWS OF JESUS. By Joseph Henry Crookes. Boston : American Unitarian 

Association. 



PAMPHLETS RECEIVED. 

OUR LADY OF MERCY. A Sermon by the Very Rev. Daniel I. McDermott, 

Rector of St. Mary's Church, Philadelphia. 
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC.' A lecture by Wm. 

F. Markoe, Esq. St. Paul: The Catholic Truth Society of America. 

MATERIA EXAMINIS PRO BACCALAUREATU IN S. THEOLOGIA. Apud Uni- 

versitatem Catholicam Americae. 

KALENDARIUM FACULTATIS THEOLOGIC^E. Universitatis Catholics Amer- 
icae. Pro Anno Scholastico, 1890-91. 

NINETEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OFTHE LE COUTEULX ST. MARY'S INSTITU- 
TION FOR THE IMPROVED INSTRUCTION OF DEAF MUTES. Albany : 
James B. Lyon. 

EIGHTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CATHOLIC BENEVOLENT UNION OF NEW 
JERSEY. Newark: L. J. Hardham. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. LIII. MAY, 1891. No. 314. 



THE CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAF- 
FIC BEFORE THE NEW YORK LEGISLATURE. 

ON reliable authority the charge has been made frequently 
that the agents of the liquor-traffic are sapping the foundations 
of representative government by their incessant attempts to 
usurp the power of making and unmaking laws to advance their 
own selfish interests. They ask for nothing less than a vicious 
system of class, legislation. The ominous warnings of enlightened 
citizens and distinguished clergymen from all parts of the 
United States have failed in many sections of the country to 
arouse the public mind to a vivid sense of the impending dan- 
gers, held in check only by the legal safeguards of sobriety. 
While ministers of various denominations were preaching vigor-, 
ously in their pulpits on the ideal splendor of Prohibition, and 
elucidating futile distinctions as to Bible wines, crafty liquor-deal- 
ers and avaricious brewers have multiplied saloons, secured the 
appointment of their own dupes on excise boards, and with / 
threats and bribes have induced the police, together with judges 
on -the bench, to conspire with them against the enforcement of 
laws imposing reasonable restraints on the hateful vice of intem- 
perance. Unblushingly they claim the exclusive right to name 
candidates for office, and glory in their shame when they collect 
and disburse large sums of money in every election for the de- 
feat of able men pledged to the maintenance of law and order. 
Renegade lawyers, self-seeking aspirants for judicial honors, and 
especially ex-judges of profligate life, are now employed to de- 
grade their noble profession in the service of the beer barons, 
who are by all odds the most dangerous monopolists now exist- 
ing on American soil. 

Copyright. REV. A. F. HEWIT. 1891. 



160 CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [May, 

A rude awakening has taken place within the past few 
months in the minds of many observant citizens of New York. 
Evidence of a startling character was furnished, showing that the 
liquor-trade, wholesale and retail, had combined to purchase for 
certain bills of their own manufacture the right of way through 
both houses of the Legislature and a cordial welcome in the gov- 
ernor's mansion. Following quickly after this disclosure of an 
insolent and aggressive attempt to control the representatives of 
the people came the astounding news that the notorious all-night 
dance-hall bill, introduced by Mr. Stadler, had been read with 
approval twice by the senators of New York State, and by 
unanimous consent was ordered to a third reading. Two votes 
more would have made it a law in the Assembly. It was pro- 
posed that this license for dance-halls to sell liquors at all hours 
of the night be granted only to respectable parties. The excise 
committee of the Assembly refused to accept any amendments. 
Unseemly haste was shown to advance the bill, and to allow no 
opportunity for the discussion of objections. Law-abiding citi- 
zens were at a loss to discover the hidden- power which impelled 
their representatives at Albany to vote for a bill that allowed 
dance-halls, dives, and other similar places full power to turn 
night into day by selling liquor without cessation. Among Cath- 
olics it is well known that some years ago the late John Kelly 
had to exert all the power at his command to banish from New 
York the disreputable concert-saloons, known as dives, which 
were kept open the whole night as haunts for the worst charac- 
ters, to shelter vice and immorality. 

According to the testimony of competent lawyers, the Stad- 
ler bill was well calculated to promote public disturbance of 
the peace, especially after midnight; and to foster intemper- 
ance and vice by giving legal sanction for all-night bars to the 
worst class of dance-halls. New incentives to excessive drinking 
during the hours devoted to rest would inevitably result from 
such a law. After discussing fully these dangers, several priests 
of New York City resolved to make a joint protest. Then it 
was suggested that many others would gladly take part in the 
movement, and accordingly a petition was prepared which met 
with general approval. 

On Saturday, February 21, the circulation of the petition 
was begun, and when it. was sent to the Speaker of the Assem- 
bly on Tuesday, February 24, a large number of signatures 
were appended. Many more names would have been added had 
there been time, but it was decided that prompt action was 



1891.] CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 161 



needed. Duplicate copies of the petition were forwarded to 
Mayor Grant and General Husted. Some of the clergymen sent 
a protest direct to their local representatives in the Legislature. 
In Brooklyn and other places the priests in various ways took 
action in this important matter to show that they are deter- 
mined to do their duty as citizens and as pastors in defending 
the moral and material welfare of the community endangered 
by new measures introduced at Albany which would remove 
entirely the existing legal restraints justly imposed upon the liquor- 
traffic. 

It will be noticed that the petition, which is here given, was 
framed to secure prompt and decided action, not to provoke 
discussion on open questions. As now existing the excise 
laws contain at least some salutary restrictions which can be 
enforced : 

To the Honorable the Legislature of the State of New York : 

We, the undersigned Catholic Clergymen of the City of New 
York, are entirely opposed to the Stadler bill or any other 
measure legalizing the sale of liquor after midnight. 

We consider every such measure as highly detrimental to 
the moral and material welfare of the community. 

We therefore petition your honorable body to reject any bill 
permitting the relaxation of existing laws. 



(Signed:} 

Very Rev. Mgr. J. M. Farley, 

Rev. John Edwards, 

Daniel T. Cronin, 
Francis X. Kelly, 
W. J. Hogan, 
John J. Kean, 
Thomas F. Lynch, 
John J. Carr, 
Peter McNamee, 
Peter Spellman, 
William F. Dougherty, 
Michael C. O'Farrell, 
Francis P. Moore, 
Thomas F. Cusack, 
Matthew Bohn, 
Francis Delargy, 
John Hickey, 
Caspar G. Ritter, 
James J. Flood, . 
Patrick Kelly, 
Eel ward J. Holden, 
John F. Woods, 
James W. Power. 
John McQuirk, D.D., 
P. F. McSweeny, D.D., 
Daniel P. Ward, 

VOL. LIII. II 



Rev. P. J. Martin, 

J. H. Slinger, O.P., 
J. P. Turner, O.P., 
J. A. Leonard, O. P., 
M. A. Sheehan, O.P., 
P. V. Keogh, O.P., 
T. S. McGovern, O.P., 
George Deshon, 
Walter Elliott, 
Alfred Young, 
Edward B. Brady, 
Thomas V. Robinson, 
Clarence E. Woodman, 
John J. Hughes, 
" Charles J. Powers, 
a Martin J. Casserly, 
Very Rev. Joseph F. Mooney, 
Rev. Bernard J. Duffy, 
Edward H. Cronin, 
J. D. Roach, 
John J. O'Donnell, 
P. B. Frey, 
A. Duckgeischel, 
P. B. Grebbels, 
Francis May, 
Albert Locher, 



1 62 CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [May, 



Rev. 
tt 

C( 

It 



M. Reid, 

Charles H. Colton, 

Benjamin J. O'Callaghan, 

John P. Chidwick, 

John J. McCabe, 

EdwardP . Southwell, O.C.C/, 

Michael B. Daly, O.C.C., 

J. E. Whitley, O.C.C., 

Thomas I. Feehan, O.C.C., 

W. J. Kelly, O.C.C., 

Michael J. A. Welsh, O.C.C., 

Albert J..Bader, O.C.C., 

James A. Dooley, O.C.C., 

Henry A. Brann, D.D., 

Joseph F. Sheahan, 

Henry T. Newey, 

M. Callaghan, 

M. Cahill, 

J. Brosnan, 

F. M. Fagan, 

W. J. Guinon, D.D., 

H. J. Kelly, 

N. J. Hughes, 

William Everett, 

Michael J. Phelan, 

Michael J. McEvoy, 

Christopher B. O'Reilly, 

Thomas W. Wallace, 

John Talbot Smith, 

Thomas W. Grennan, 

J. M. Galligan, 

E. V. Higgins, 



Rev. 



Very 

( 1 

Rev. 



L. Beck, 

P. J. Waldmann, 
M. A. Nolan, 
John J. Keogan, 
W. D. Hughes, 
Michael Otis, 
Gilbert Simmons, 
Alexander P. Doyle, 
Thomas McMillan, 
Arthur M. Clark, 
Walter E. Hopper, 
Thorrias Burke, 
P. G. Tandy, 
James T. McEntyre, 
Peter J. Prendergast, D.D., 
Matthew J. Dougherty, 
Win. A. O'Neill, 
M. J. Mulhern, 
John J. Morris, 
John E. Burke, 
Thomas O'Keefe, 
Rev. W. L. Penny, 
" E. McKenna, 
John T. Power, 
James Nilan, 
Joseph P. Egan, 
C. G. O'Keeffe, 
P. E. McCorry, 
James F. Mee, 
J. P. McClancy, 
P. J. O'Meara, 
Cornelius V. Mahony, D.D. 



Necessarily there were many expressions of opinion given 
while the petition was in circulation. From the selections which 
follow it is obvious there is a general conviction that the time 
has come for a fearless utterance in church and in the market- 
place of Catholic teaching on intemperance and its sources. 

The Rev. Father Phelan, in addition to sending a protest to 
Albany, published in a local paper this scorching letter: 

" I have just signed a protest to the Stadler bill brought me 
by a clerical friend, and am not quite satisfied that I have done 
all my duty, but wish here to voice my protest publicly against 
any attempt on the part of our representative to vote in its fa- 
vor. We have, as it is, an overflow of rum. Will the people of 
this city remain passive while the brewery syndicates are endeav- 
oring to establish their pumps at every corner? Is there any 
want of it at present, or do we want more? There is a rider in 
this Stadler bill which will give to every hoodlum association 
with a concertina the right to sell beer all the night through. 

"I asked a well-known gentleman in this city what he thought 
of Liverpool, and his reply was that there was an overflow of 
rum in it. 

" Do we want such scenes enacted here as there men, women, 



1891.] CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 163 

and girls in all stages of inebriety, with pails and bottles in their 
hands, awaiting in hundreds the opening of the groggeries ? Will 
the practical Catholic or the law-abiding citizen promote such a 
state of things ? I am sure from my own experience that our 
Catholic congregations are in sympathy with their priests, and 
that if called together would voice their protest in no uncertain 
sound. I call, then, upon our representative to save us from this 
awful danger by at least not giving his vote to a bill that will 
be in the interest of brothels and dives of every sort. 

" I call upon every father and mother living within the lim- 
its of this parish to see to it that his boy and girl be kept from 
such a danger, and to tell their representative that he cannot 
promote such evils with impunity. I am sure that I may call 
upon many a liquor-seller who loves decency and order to re- 
spond, and he will do so because of the burning shame that wilf 
mark us through the infamy that is sure to follow. 

" Let us all strive to be on the side of law and order. We 
are not observing the excise laws as they stand; still, it is better 
to make a show of observance rather than have our city made 
by law one open dance-hall all the night long. I believe I ex- 
press the feeling of fully six thousand people of my parish when 
I say that we do not want any such bill passed." 

Rev. Father Power was asked his opinion of the Stadler bill, 
and shown a copy of Father Phelan's letter. 

"I endorse," said he, "Father Phelan's letter. The passage 
of the bill means the sale of drink all night. It means that the 
power for evil of the dives is to be increased. The bill is dis- 
graceful, and it has been my intention to write to our Assem- 
blyman." 

"The saloons are ruining the people," said Rev. Father Car- 
mody, "and, unless something is done, I do not know what will 
become of us. The present generation is bad enough, but the y 
next will be far worse. The State seems to care nothing for the 
well-being of the citizens. In one block near here there are 
seven saloons, all of the worst class, dealing out ruin to the poor 
people in whose midst they are situated. There would probably 
be one opposite the church were it not for my strenuous resis- 
tance. Clergymen may labor until they are gray-headed without 
being able to counteract the mischief which is done by the sa- 
loons. After remaining open all day and half the night the sa- 
loon-keepers should be satisfied. I am entirely opposed to any 
measure like the Stadler bill." 

"The saloon "is not a bedroom," said Rev. Father Kennedy, 
" and when midnight comes it is time for it to be closed. I 
am, therefore, wholly opposed to any measure that would extend 
the time when saloons might be open, or that would make 
night a period of noise and riot instead of sleep and quiet. 



CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [May, 

If it is desirable to allow the sale of wine at balls after one 
o'clock, there should be special licenses granted without resort- 
ing to a device that will allow every saloon in the city to re- 
main open all night instead of., those only whom it is proposed 
to affect. Allowing them to remain open after twelve o'clock, 
when every one should be home, is only multiplying the evil." 

. At the Church ' of St. Paul the Apostle Rev. Father Elliott 
addressed the congregation, drawing their attention to the neces- 
sity of parents and guardians, as well as clergymen, doing every- 
thing in their power to lessen instead of increasing the facilities 
for the desecration .of the Lord's Day. The saloons are now the 
means of doing untold harm among the families of the commu- 
nity, and every thoughtful Christian and patriotic citizen must 
feel it a matter of conscience to resist any attempt to relax the 
laws. He besought every one to use in his individual sphere all 
his influence for the protection of the community from still fur- 
ther havoc. The address was very impressive, and the feeling 
among the Paulist Fathers and their parishioners is strong and 
decided on this matter. 

During his long residence at Albany the Rev. C. A. Wal- 
worth has had unusual opportunities to study the legal side of 
the temperance question. For many years he has rendered 
heroic service for law and order. In the pulpit and before nu- 
merous excise committees of the Legislature his voice has been 
heard defending the rights of virtue and morality. After the 
Speaker of the Assembly refused a hearing to the petition of the 
priests, Father Walworth delivered a powerful discourse to his 
people, in which he said : 

" We know, brethren, what the liquor-league wants and de- 
mands. What do we want ? Shall we be quiet and say noth- 
ing ? Our Legislature opens its ears readily to the demands of 
the liquor- trade, and so confidentially that bills are almost passed 
before we hear of them. But when hundreds of Catholic clergy- 
men speak to them in remonstrance they are spurned as unworthy 
of notice. Then wonderful rules develop from the blue book. 
It is good to be quiet and docile when our rulers are making 
laws for us ; but is it disorderly to exercise the right of petition ? 
Is it wrong to feel hurt when the courtesy which is given to 
others is refused to us ? Are our interests less dear than those 
of the liquor-trade?" 

Under strong pressure of public opinion the Excise Commit- 
tee of the Assembly reluctantly gave an hour for a hearing to 
the opponents of the Schaff bill, one of whom urged that the 



1891.] CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 165 

bill be sent to the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrec- 
tion. On this occasion Father Walworth forcibly insisted that 
God has a valid claim to be represented among law-makers. He 
said : 

" I know of no place, whether it be in the church or the As- 
sembly hall, where the voice of God has not a right to be heard. 
The people have spoken against this measure, and they have 
spoken against the unrestricted sale of liquors. They are not in 
the mist regarding these things. For many long years have 
their voices been heard against just such measures as this. I 
have heard a great deal about the doings of the Germans, who 
meet and drink their beer, and that it does not affect them. 
That is false. I have been among them at those times, and I 
declare that it is not so. When men stagger and talk foolishly 
they are drunk. Years ago, when the question came up as to 
whether or not ale and beer were intoxicating, it was referred 
to the Court of Errors, which declared that they were intoxicating. 

" What is the voice that is now asking for this added author- 
ity ? Is it the voice of the people of the State of New York, 
who are the true constituents of the members of the Senate and 
the Assembly ? No; it is the fearful power of the 40,000 liquor- 
dealers, who now hold the whip over the political parties of the 
country, and tell them to do just as they ask. The Excise As- 
sociation, which I represent, does not want this bill amended 
does not want the bill at all. It is a vicious and mischief-mak- 
ing measure." 

It has been said that there is nothing more sacred in the 
eyes of Americans than the right of petition. It is a right 
guaranteed by the United States Constitution, and by the 
Constitution of the State of New York. It is one of the in- 
alienable rights, and cannot be nullified by sending a petition 
unread to a committee. A petition for the moral welfare ot 
the community is an expression of public opinion, and should 
be read to the Legislature for its information. Blue books 
must be made subordinate to the Constitution, and so inter- 
preted. The Continental Qpngress in 1774 declared that the 
foundation of all free governments is the right in the people to 
participate in their legislative council ; and that this right was 
ignored when the English king treated with contempt dutiful 
and reasonable petitions. 

Thomas Jefferson was convinced that deliberative bodies 
have always permitted the reading of petitions. His own per- 
sonal opinion is stated in these words : " I am for the free- 
dom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitu- 
tion to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or 



1 66 CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [May, 

criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct 
of their agents." In his Manual for Parliamentary Practice 
Jefferson says: "Before any petition shall be received and 
read, whether introduced by Jrhe President or a member, a 
brief statement of the contents shall verbally be made by the 
introducer." 

It is very significant that the objections to the reading of 
the priests' petition in the New York Legislature seemed to 
emanate chiefly from members whose names are associated with 
the introduction of the worst excise bills ever prepared by the 
liquor-dealers in this country. The account of the attempt to 
cast aside contemptuously a deliberate judgment representing 
thousands of sober and intelligent citizens is well worth repro- 
duction here from the privileged statement made to the Legisla- 
ture by the Hon. Hamilton Fish, Jr., whose persistent action in 
this matter* deserves honorable mention : 

" Inasmuch as the Speaker of the House, in his remarks yes- 
terday in justification of his course with reference to the petition 
of the Catholic clergy against the liquor-bills, saw fit to allude 
to my action in the matter, I ask the indulgence of the House 
in replying thereto. That the rules provide that petitions may 
be presented to the clerk cannot be controverted. The only 
way in which any petition, no matter from what source (other 
than State offices), can be read or brought to the attention of 
the House is by unanimous consent to its reading being granted 
by the House. 

" Being familiar with the rules of the House, when the pe- 
tition was handed down on Feb. 25 to the clerk by the Speak- 
er I demanded the reading of the petition. The Speaker refused 
to even entertain the motion ; and referred it to the Committee 
on Excise, where it has since lain buried, no opportunity being 
afforded for it to see the light of day or to permit the 
members of the House to become familiar with its contents. 
The following day, as the journal of the House containing the 
record of proceedings of the previous day, prepared by the clerk 
under the direction of the Speaker, made no mention of the 
motion made by me to have the petition read, I moved to cor- 
rect the journal by inserting the fact that I had made such 
motion. The Speaker refused to entertain that motion. Upon 
several occasions since I have asked unanimous consent to pre- 
sent the petition from the same source and to have it read, and 
I have been refused permission by members of the majority 
party of this House, on one occasion by the Democratic leader. 

" The Speaker in his remarks stated that he had no ob- 
jection to the rules being so amended as to provide an order of 
business for the introduction of petitions. Allow me to call his 



1891.] CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 167 

attention to the fact that last week, when I gave notice of a mo- 
tion to change the rules so as to permit the introduction and 
reading of petitions from religious bodies I was refused the 
opportunity by an objection made by a Democratic member. 
Every one familiar with the proceedings of this Assembly of the 
State of New York knows that the rules are waived almost 
daily and unanimous consent thereto is obtained. The rules of 
the House provide that bills may be deposited at any time dur- 
ing the session in a box to be known as the * bill box,' and 
yet frequently bills are introduced by members arising in their 
seats. A conspicuous violation of the rules, and with the 
acquiescence of the Speaker, was the passage of the Rapid- 
Transit bill. It certainly would not have required as much ex- 
ertion upon the part of the Speaker to have secured permission 
from his side of the House for every objection to its reading 
came from that quarter to the reading of the petition in question. 

"The reference of the Speaker in his statement of yesterday 
to the communication of the grand jury of the county of New 
York, and his justification for holding it to be privileged un- 
der the rules, cannot turn the attention of this House and the 
people of the State from the fact that the right of people rep- 
resenting a large body of reputable citizens to present to the 
open Assembly a petition against what they considered a dan- 
gerous bill has been denied them. Neither is his ruling that 
grand juries are State officers tenable. No one would be so 
bold as to hold that a justice of the peace, although a part of 
the judicial system of the State, was a State officer, much less 
can it be held as "to a grand jury. 

" There has never been a moment from the time that the 
petition was presented to the present that there was any objec- 
tion to its being read made by any member of the minority 
party, and that the House has not been made familiar with the 
contents of such petition can be charged only to the majority of 
this House. 

" And, in closing, permit me to say that during the eight years / 
that I have been a member of the Legislature I do not recall 
another instance where a petition upon any moral question com- 
ing from a reputable source has been denied a reading when 
demanded." 

From present indications it will be 'many years before Speaker 
Sheehan is allowed to forget his unfair discrimination against the 
reputable petition sent by priests well qualified to give advice 
concerning the moral welfare of the community. For a very 
short time his decision caused great rejoicing among the liquor- 
dealers and their legal (?) advisers. The Catholic people, how- 
ever, do not allow such an insult to pass unrebuked. Without 
delay a number of prominent laymen took up the matter, and an 



1 68 CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [May, 

effective plan was put into operation, which transferred the dis- 
cussion of the clergymen's petition and the reasons for it from 
the Legislature to the domestic circle. It was decided to issue a 
circular embodying the suppressed petition, the teaching of the 
Catholic prelates of the United States on saloons, and a protest 
against the newly introduced Schaff Excise Bill, appropriately 
called "the liquor-dealer's dream.' 7 By the plan devised for the 
distribution of this circular it was read in one day by over half 
a million people. The signers of this second petition explained 
their attitude in these words : 

"We have adopted this plan of publishing a circular to mani- 
fest our hearty concurrence in the good work done by the cler- 
gy, and to secure for our fellow- Catholics a correct statement of 
the facts. As citizens, recognizing the right of appeal to the 
Legislature to prevent unjust laws, we also desire to enter our 
indignant protest against the members of the Assembly who voted 
to sustain the Speaker in refusing a hearing to the petition 
signed by so many of our distinguished priests. We now present 
it again to the Legislature, and at the same time enter a public 
protest against the Schaff Excise Bill." 

A very important part of the work of the laity in giving prac- 
tical effect to the circular was cheerfully undertaken by the Holy 
Name Society, which has several thousand members enrolled in 
New York City. The arrogance of the liquor-tr,ade, and its bold 
defiance of the moral restraints necessary to check the growth of 
vice, received a severe rebuke in the resolutions passed by the 
members of this society, which has for its special object the pre- 
vention of vicious and profane language. As delegates in con- 
vention, and as individual members of the Holy Name Society, 
they decided that the sins of the tongue are directly traceable to 
intemperance and the saloons. They likewise declared their con- 
fidence in the Catholic clergy as the highest representatives of 
law and order, entitled to a hearing in the Legislature. St. 
John the Evangelist's Temperance Society, St. Paul's Guild, and 
many other similar organizations held special meetings, and de- 
vised practical measures to urge upon public officials their re- 
sponsibility for the spread of intemperance. At these meetings 
the so-called Catholic saloon-keepers, conspicuous in nearly every 
parish for violating divine and human laws, were reprobated as 
unworthy members of the church, which has always and every- 
where been opposed to the degrading sin of drunkenness. 

Some may wish to inquire what practical results have fol- 
lowed from this movement begun by the Catholic clergy, and 



1891.] CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. 169 

vigorously endorsed by the laity. The spontaneous action of 
the clergy has shown to all citizens, more particularly to non- 
Catholics, that the priests are in hearty accord with the 'decisions 
of the archbishops and bishops concerning the dangers to religion 
and country which flow from the liquor- traffic as it now exists. 
No theological opinion of former centuries, based on a limited 
knowledge of European society, can claim an authority equal to 
the positive judgment given by the prelates of the United States,, 
at Baltimore, in the year 1884, contained in this passage: 

" It is hardly possible for us to restrain our impatience 
when we see Catholic emigrants crowding in such numbers 
into towns. There they toil for their daily bread at the most 
laborious occupations ; in those populous cities they remain, 
with scarcely any hope of securing more than the barest nec- 
essaries of life. There they live in filth and squalor, amidst 
liquor-sellers and saloon-keepers, and the most depraved of man- 
kind. It is in such cities that the pitfalls of vice are most nu- 
merous ; it is there that it is the most difficult to instruct chil- 
dren in Christian doctrine and train them up in sound morality. 

" There can be no manner of doubt that the abuse of intoxi- 
cating drinks is to be reckoned among the most deplorable evils 
of this country. This excess is an unceasing stimulant to vice 
and a fruitful source of misery ; vast numbers of men and entire 
families are plunged into hopeless ruin, and multitudes of souls 
are by it dragged headlong into eternal perdition. Now, because 
the ravages of this vice extend not a little among Catholics, non- 
Catholics are much scandalized and a great obstacle is set up 
against the spread of the true religion. Hence it behooves all 
Christians to be filled with zeal against this vice, and for the love 
of God and of country to endeavor to root out this pestilential evil. 

" Finally, we warn Catholics engaged in the sale of intoxicat- 
ing drinks to consider seriously by how many and how great dan- 
gers, by how many and how great occasions of sin, their business 
though in itself not unlawful is surrounded. Let them, if they 
can, choose a more becoming way of making a living. Let 
them, at any rate, strive with all their might to remove occasions 
of sin as well from themselves as from others. They must not 
sell drink to minors that is to say, ^to those who have not come 
of age ; nor to those who they foresee will abuse it. They must 
keep their saloons closed on Sunday, and never allow blasphemy, 
cursing, or obscene language. Saloon-keepers should know that, 
if through their culpable neglect or co-operation religion is brought 
into contempt, or men brought to ruin, there is an Avenger in 
heaven who will surely exact from them the severest penalties. 

" There is one way of profaning the Lord's Day which is so 
prolific of evil results that we consider it our duty to utter 
against it a special condemnation. This is the practice of 



170 CATHOLIC CLERGY AND THE LIQUOR-TRAFFIC. [May, 

selling beer or other liquors on Sunday or of frequenting 
places where they are sold. This practice tends more than any 
other to turn the Day of the Lord into a day of dissipation to 
use it as an occasion for breeding intemperance. While we hope 
that Sunday laws c^i this point will not be relaxed, but even 
more rigidly enforced, we implore all Catholics, for the love of 
God and of country, never to take part in such Sunday traffic, 
nor to patronize or countenance it. And we not only direct the 
attention of all pastors to the repression of this abuse, but we 
also call upon them to induce all of their flocks that may be en- 
gaged in the sale of liquors to abandon as soon as they can the 
-dangerous traffic, and to -embrace a more becoming way of mak- 
ing a living. 

" And here it behooves us to remind our workingmen, the 
bone and sinew of the people, and the specially beloved children 
of the church, that if they wish to observe Sunday as they 
ought they must keep away from drinking places on Saturday 
night Carry your wages home to your families, where they 
rightfully belong. Turn a deaf car, therefore, to every tempta- 
tion, and then Sunday will be a bright day for all the family. 
How much better this than to make it a day of sin for your- 
selves, and of gloom and wretchedness for your homes, by a Sat- 
urday night's folly or debauch. No wonder that the prelates of 
the Second Plenary Council declared that ' the most shocking 
scandals which we have to deplore spring from intemperance.' 
No wonder that they gave a special approval to the zeal of those 
who, the better to avoid excess, or in order to give bright ex- 
ample, pledge themselves to total abstinence. Like them, we 
invoke a blessing on the cause of temperance and on all who 
are laboring for its advancement in a true Christian spirit. 

" A Christian should carefully avoid not only what is posi- 
tively evil, but what has even the appearance of evil, and more 
especially whatever commonly leads to it. Therefore, Catholics 
should generously renounce all . recreations and all kinds of busi- 
ness which may interfere with keeping holy the Lord's Day, or 
which are calculated to lead to the violation of the laws of God 
or of the state. The worst, without doubt, is the carrying on of 
business in bar-rooms and saloons on Sunday, a traffic by 
means of which so many and such grievous injuries are done to 
religion and society. Let pastors earnestly labor to root out 
this evil ; let them admonish and entreat ; let them even resort 
to threatenings and penalties when it becomes necessary. They 
should do all that belongs to their office to efface this stain, now 
nearly the only blot remaining among us, obscuring the splen- 
dor of the day of the Lord." 

The supreme pastors of the Catholic Church, after mature 
consideration, gave a final decision on the question of saloons in 
their proximate relations to the vice of intemperance. Whatever 






1891.] CHANGE. 171 

concessions may be extorted from civil tribunals by the liquor- 
trade, it cannot claim to be a privileged business among Cath- 
olics. Let the responsibility of relaxing the laws which make for 
virtue and sobriety be placed where it belongs. Catholics worthy 
of the name will take no part in giving the sanction of law to 
the iniquitous demands for increasing the occasions of sin. 

Church work in large cities is much impeded by the many 
temptations which surround the homes of the people. Among 
zealous members of the St. Vincent de Paul Conferences and 
other benevolent organizations the conviction is fast gaining 
strength that intemperance is not lessened by liberal gifts to 
those who squander their earnings in drink. Practical experience 
of life in tenement-houses has taught them, as it has taught 
many pastors, that obdurate evil-doers find refuge in the saloons 
and yield to no influence save the strong arm of the law. Hence 
the relaxation of legal restraints is an evil to be feared by the 
benefactors of the poor as well as by good citizens. From the 
ranks of the active workers in the cause of charity came many 
expressions of approval for the fearless denunciation of the Stadler 
and Schaff excise bills, both of which are now reported dead. 
Through the exertions of these enlightened laymen, prompted by 
love of the poor and by patriotism, a number of the Germans ot 
New York , earnestly lent their aid to this movement in defence 
of sobriety. Public opinion, as reflected in the columns of the 
press and in letters received from trustworthy sources, abund- 
antly proves that Catholics have achieved a great moral victory 
at a time when the enemies of law and order were most sanguine 
of success. THOMAS MCMILLAN. 

Church of St. Paul the Apostle, New York City. 






CHANGE. 

To-NIGHT the sea intones a sullen dirge, 

Wringing white hands of foam o'er wasted ships ; 

Another moon, in sportive mood, its surge 
Will laugh and sing like any lover's lips. 

To-night, o'er wrecks of ruined hopes, thy voice 
Takes on a mourner's tone, O sobbing heart ! 

To-morrow thou 'It forget it and rejoice. 

Through storm and calm most like the sea thou art, 
Of fickle mood ! 

Philadelphia. PATRICK J. COLEMAN. 



EDUCATED ABOVE THEIR STATION?" [May, 



" EDUCATED ABOVE THEIR STATION?" 

IT seems strangely incongruous in this day of almost phe- 
nomenal intellectual activity to hear the complaint raised every 
now and then that our efforts to extend educational advantages 
to their farthest limit is doing harm, not to single individuals 
merely, but to a whole class and that one of the largest. Yet 
the fact is we do hear it charged, both in private discourse and 
in public print, that our Catholic schools are educating the 
daughters of poor parents above the station intended for them, 
thereby leading them into discontent and unhappiness, and unfit- 
ting them to become the wives of poor, uneducated Catholic 
men. The inference is not boldly stated, but the one we are evi- 
dently expected to draw is that, therefore, we are not doing a 
good thing for these girls. Such an idea is antiquated and un- 
progressive enough to be startling. Its enunciation at once fills 
the bolder advocates of unrestricted education with indignation, 
while the more timid ones simply tremble as they foresee new 
versions of old slanders against the church, bolstered up, for 
proof, by quotations of such expressions from the mouths of 
Catholic men and women. Yet those who suggest that less or 
perhaps no education would be a better thing for the daughters 
of the illiterate poor, deserve to be enlightened rather than con- 
demned. In a blind way they have stumbled upon a really 
great evil, for which they have assigned a wrong cause. For, 
after all, facts in abundance can certainly be quoted by the pas- 
tor of every parish of any considerable size which might seem 
at first glance to justify such a very discouraging conclusion as 
the one given above. Indeed, not only pastors but almost every 
Catholic who reads this paper will readily call to mind at least 
one case in point: some young girl who has been given an edu- 
cation at the cost of -much self-denial on the part of her poor 
and illiterate but ambitious parents, and whose peevish discontent 
in her home surroundings has seemed to grow in direct propor- 
tion to her advancement in science, literature, and art ; who de- 
spises the occupations and aims of her parents, yet strives in 
vain to find better ones for herself, and who discovers at last 
that her chances for usefulness and happiness are lessened, or 
even destroyed, seemingly by the sole fact of her education. 
The picture is pitiable enough, and unfortunately represents a 



3891.] " ED UCA TED ABO VE THEIR STA TION f" 1/3 

state of things so common as to fill every thoughtful mind with 
anxiety. No wonder, then, that even among the learned and 
wise some have been tempted to deprecate any educational move- 
ment which seems to threaten an increase of so serious a diffi- 
culty. Let us be glad that even in a blundering way our atten- 
tion has been called to the matter, though happily certain that 
the conclusion we are asked to base upon the facts adduced is 
not a true one. 

Both our objectors and the teachers whom they would call to 
account have failed to grasp the true meaning of the word edu- 
cation ; for, in spite of much talking and writing to the contrary, 
the idea is still wide-spread that education consists merely in 
forcing into growing minds a greater or less conglomeration of 
facts, and, in the case of girls, in giving additionally an outward 
veneering of " elegant and useful accomplishments." This mis- 
conception of the thing for which the term education stands 
Is the explanation of the very deplorable fact that many of our 
girl graduates seem, from their discontented and unfruitful lives, 
to have no reason for being, and is at the same time the excuse 
for those who ask, " Would it not have been as well for them if 
these girls had not been educated ?" Certainly, if that which 
they have acquired is education, it would be better if they had 
not been educated. But they are not educated. Some attain- 
ments they have, such as undigested facts in science ; second, 
third, or fourth -hand opinions concerning the masters of English 
literature ; more or less skill in putting in points and commas, 
and in sewing embroidery silks into velvet, and, crowning all, a 
great many rules in etiquette. But this may not be education. 
It is often mental, and sometimes even moral, chaos, but it is not 
necessarily education ; for education, as every work on pedagogy 
tells us, is a development of the enfolded powers, and has for its 
highest and final aim the production of a strong and noble char- 
acter in its subject. Failing in this, it has failed in everything. 
And that school which sends out a girl graduate filled with a 
knowledge no matter how extensive, yet unimbued with a strong 
sense of the duty of cheerfulness and contentment ; full of aroused 
activities, yet helpless to make or find for them a legitimate out- 
let, has not educated her, and deserves to bear the blame of her 
failure and of her unhappiness. If the number of such girls is 
notably large, our conclusion should be, not that education is bad 
for them, but that the methods pursued in the schools from which 
they come demand improvement. The thing such institutions offer 
as education is a counterfeit article, capable of doing active harm. 



174 " EDUCATED ABOVE THEIR STATION ?' [May, 

But those people who talk about educating a poor girl above 
her station have not only, along with many others, misapplied 
the term education. They labor under still another misapprehen- ' 
sion when they speak of a popr girl's " station." What decides 
any girl's station in this democratic land and age of ours ? Is 
there a nineteenth-century American who acknowledges any law 
that says the daughter of a hod-carrier must, for the sake of 
the eternal fitness of things, become the wife of a hod-carrier 
and the mother and grandmother of hod-carriers? Would the 
social edifice be in any danger if at this moment all the daugh- 
ters of hod-carriers in America were resolved to become the 
wives of bricklayers and the mothers of architects ? It is rapidly 
coming to pass under this supremely blessed American flag of 
ours that a girl's station is determined by the same laws as those 
which determine her brother's. Her station is upon that plane 
which she can reach and hold by her own abilities, and, conse- 
quently, it is hardly correct to say that a girl has any station at 
the age when she leaves school. Her father's station is not ne- 
cessarily hers, and she has yet to attain the one which, by right 
of ability and force of circumstances, will properly belong to her. 
Now, if a girl's station .depends upon her own abilities, native 
and acquired, and if true education means simply the full devel- 
opment of all her powers, how can there possibly be such a 
thing as educating a girl above her station ? Her teachers will 
do well if they educate her up to her station. They can never 
hope to do more, and, unfortunately, as our schools go, they 
seldom do that much. But while our schools cannot, from the 
nature of things, commit the impossibility of educating a girl (be 
she poor or otherwise) above her station, some of them do unwit- 
tingly compass as full a measure of mischief as lies in their 
power. They do in perfect good faith decoy many a daughter 
of poor parents out of the station of her childhood without show- 
ing her the way to any other ; or, if we permit ourselves the 
use of the word education in the false sense so often assigned it, 
we may say that these girls are educated below the station of 
their parents ; for only too often a girl of this class seems after 
an extended school career incapable of even perceiving, much 
less of performing, the duties peculiar to her difficult situation. 
She gets an u education " which gives her taste enough to dis- 
cern the defects of her home surroundings, but not knowledge 
sufficient to remedy them ; which awakens desires for better 
things, but confers no skill to accomplish their fulfilment. No 
.wonder that now and then some one feels impelled to question 






1891.] " EDUCATED ABOVE THEIR STATION?' 175 

the wisdom of that " educating " process which is the undenia- 
ble cause of such results. 

Those who undertake to train the daughters of poor and illit- 
erate parents assume a task as great as it is delicate. For, if she 
be truly educated, such a girl must be to that rude, humble, and 
probably unwisely-administered household a bringer of light and 
a prophet of better things, both material and spiritual. Her sci- 
entific insight into the wonders of the economy of nature must 
show her ways of making the meagre income of the poor home 
compass more of the comforts of life ; her taste in literature 
must be the means of banishing pernicious reading from the do- 
mestic circle, and of introducing in its place that of a more 
wholesome character; her knowledge of artistic principles must 
help her to beautify the home, simply and humbly, yet truly ; and 
above all must her ethical and religious training, by teaching her 
gentleness, cheerfulness, and lovingness, and, above all, resigna- 
tion to the Divine Will, do more than all else to mitigate the 
rudeness of the uncultured family life ; while, outside, a trained 
judgment and a power of alert observation must help her to find 
her own proper place, either in the ways already trodden by so 
many lagging, careless feet, or, better still, in some one of those 
numerous untrodden ways of which women are daily catching 
surer glimpses. 

True, in spite of all this wise training, which is to make her 
a woman of cheerful action, of strong character, and firm reli- 
gious convictions, our poor girl will still feel, as she feels now, 
an uncontrollable discontent, but it will be a fruitful, not a para- 
lyzing discontent that sort of discontent which is peculiarly an 
American virtue, and which has inspired noble souls since the 
beginning to strive cheerfully and hopefully for better things. 

But before we can offer such education as this to those who 
need it we must have in our schools wide-awake women who hold 
a constant finger on the pulse of American life, who study daily, 
with scientific impartiality and accuracy, the needs of American 
women, and who are able to discover such matter for teaching 
and such methods of teaching it as will fit Catholic American 
girls to meet the requirements of their day. 

Some of our schools are at present too closely bound to 
foreign and antiquated traditions. Methods and aims which were 
adequate to fit a daughter of the French nobility one or two 
hundred years ago to shine in a salon are still thought in some 
places sufficiently well suited to train an American girl of to-day 
to discharge her obligations as a wage-earning woman of the 



176 "EDUCATED ABOVE THEIR STATION?" [May, 

people. The practice of such schools is in direct opposition to 
the custom of the church since the very beginning. The church 
has in every age most truly and delicately gauged the needs of 
the time, and wisely and surely devised means for supplying them. 
For this reason the Catholic schools of the past were great and 
glorious successes. They kept up with the march of progress, or 
rather they led the van. They carried on the world's work. 
They accomplished the mission they set themselves to do. But 
the needs of those bygone times are not our needs. We have a 
different work to do. Why, then, cling to the antiquated instru- 
ments which, though they wrought very well in the past, have 
since been superseded by lighter and better ones ? 

It is time that all of our educators were awake to these facts, as 
very many of them already are. It is time that they were seeking a 
remedy. Let not any Catholic stultify himself by such an absurd 
generalization as that education, in the true sense of the word, 
can be bad for any human being. Heaven never gave us our 
God-like powers to die in the bud. But let us frankly acknowl- 
edge the true state of the case, and let us all strive that the 
education our schools at present offer the daughters of our illit- 
erate poor shall be suited to their needs, so that it may be truly 
called education, and not become a disturbing element in their 
lives rather than a promoter of either material or spiritual hap- 
piness. Being thus squarely face-to-face with the difficulty, let 
us put our heads together in friendly counsel and try to discover 
ways and means for its vanquishment. That discovery will not 
be made at once, nor will it be the achievement of any single 
mind. It will come only after much thought, much experiment, 
much prayer ; but it will undoubtedly come at last. That it has 
not done so before in the case of some is to be regretted. We 
must not stubbornly shut our eyes to the truth and refuse to be- 
lieve the plain facts before us. \ The blunderers who have talked 
about educating poor girls above their station have undoubtedly 
been a very great mortification to those of us who take so much 
pride in calling ourselves progressive ; but, nevertheless, like 
many other blunt people, they have done us good if, in trying 
to answer them, we have been led to seek the truth of the 
matter. 

Let us, then, study to give our poor girls, and all our other 
girls as well, not less education but infinitely more ; but let us 
endeavor to give them the true thing and not a base and useless 
substitute. 

B. N. TAYLOR. 



1891.] S T - LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. 177 



ST. LANDRY'S DELINQUENCY. 

DRENCHED in the carmine and gold of the after-dawn was 
the lake, the garden, the gallery, and Miriam dancing thereon. 
Her thin, rose-colored robe fluttered as she danced, her yellow 
hair shone, her dark eyes beamed innocently glad, and her lips 
sang the song of " White Lilies/' the air of which her brother 
strummed on a banjo as he half-reclined in a hammock. Sud- 
denly Miriam brought herself to a standstill and cried, clasp- 
ing her hands : " Clyffe ! I'm that happy I don't know what 
to do ! " 

He looked up at her and smiled, and his fingers, wandering 
among the banjo's strings, fell to picking the air of " Ben 
Bolt." 

"Don't, Clyffe," Miriam implored. 

"Don't what?" 

" Don't play that ! I won't listen to a thing to-day that 
is dreary or sad," she declared as she seated herself beside her 
brother and slipped her arm through his. " I never thought 
he'd care a bit for me," she continued dreamily. 

" Neither did I ; that is, I never thought about your marry- 
ing at all," said Clyffe, laying aside the banjo and taking her 
hand in his. " How did it come about, anyhow ? I know it was 
not at the dinner-table, and it could not have been in the salon; 
you danced the entire evening. See here, Miriam ! your being 
seventeen yesterday and getting an offer of marriage are not 
reasons for pinching my arm black-and-blue ! " 

" O Clyffe ! I thought it was your coat-sleeve," Miriam ex- 
claimed. " I'm nervous ; I want to shout, or something ; I was 
pinching to keep the inclination down." She paused, withdrew 
her arm from his, and said, looking thoughtfully out on the lake : 
" It was after dinner ; he and I walked down to the lake and we 
sat under the palm. Clyffe ! I never saw anything so beautiful as 
Lake Pontchartrain last evening ! " * 

" Unless it be Lake Pontchartrain this morning ? " 

" Unless it be this morning ? Yes, it is very beautiful this 
morning," she agreed, heaving a little sigh of content. 

" What did he say ? I'd like to know ; for .my time will come 
some day," persisted Clyffe. 

* Evening : in Louisiana any time between noon and midnight. 
VOL. Lin. 12 



178 ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. [May, 

The quick glance she gave him was penetrating. He was not 
laughing. On the contrary he looked very earnest and serious. 
Then she said, and a flush that was not born of the sun but of 
her heart stole to her face : f " You know, Clyffe, I cared for 
him from the first." 

" But what did you all say ? " urged Clyffe, seeing that she 
paused and showed no sign of pursuing her discourse. 

" I did not say much, Clyffe," she returned earnestly. " I 
could but listen; he knows so much. He has read Homer in 
the original. Clyffe ! I want to learn Greek ; won't you help 
me?" 

" What does a girl care for Greek ? " ejaculated Clyffe with 
an air of superiority. 

" Queen Mary did, and, and lots of women ! Madame Char- 
leur knows Greek ; and I want " she insisted. 

'"Well, yes; but he did not propose to you in a Greek 
hexameter, did he ? " 

Again she looked up at him quickly. He was not laughing, 
but she was half in doubt of him. "You're not laughing at me, 
on your honor, Clyffe ? " she asked. 

"Well!" he evaded "well, I won't on my honor, I won't 
Now, what did Captain St. Landry say ? " 

She again heaved a little sigh of content and answered: "As 
I told you, we were speaking of poetry, and he asked me what 
was my favorite poem. I said I liked 'The May Queen' better 
than anything else ; but, I said, I was sure that the ' Iliad ' was 
very pretty." 

The corners of Clyfte's mouth twitched, but she did not per- 
ceive the twitching. 

"And,", she pursued, "he asked me if I did not think the 
May Queen had been very cruel to Robin ; and I told him I did, 
and that I felt a great deal more for Robin than I did for her, 
for she died and went to heaven, but Robin had to live on and 
suffer." (Her voice had now sunk to a whisper.) " Then he took 
my hand in his, and he said : ' Little one, I am an old Robin'; 
and he did not say any more, for now I began to cry; for I 
knew he loved me. Then he put his one poor arm about me, 
Clyffe, and I was very happy." She had now hidden her face on 
her brother's shoulder. 

" We were very happy before St. Landry came along," he 
said morosely. " See here, sister, if you are going to cry every 
time you think of him, I'm not going to believe much in your 
happiness." 



1891.] S T - LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. 179 

Miriam sprang to her feet and cried, with a joyous laugh : 
" Clyffe, you're jealous! You'll see as much of me as ever." 

" Shall I?" he inquired with sarcastic effusion. " But," he 
continued gravely, " this is going to be a nuisance ; he'll want 
to come here every week or so and, by the way, when is he 
coming for my permission ? " 

" He said he would ride over to see you this evening," she 
returned. 

Clyffe groaned, and asked, " Have you told grandma yet ? " 

She nodded her head and said, " She is very glad. You are 
going out?" she asked, for he had moved as if to pass to the 
garden. 

" I have to go down to the overseer's. Oh ! I'll not miss the 
captain ; I'll be back in time," he laughed, 

" You know it is not that, Clyffe," she said shamefacedly. 
" Before you go won't you pick out a good book in Greek for 
me to begin with ? " 

Clyffe's wonderment showed strongly in his rounded eyes. 
"Miriam," he exclaimed, " is your head turned? Why, you 
don't know as much as the alphabet." Then he was going on 
to dissuade her from the pursuit of a knowledge of Greek, but, 
seeing her serious, eager look, he said instead : " I can't begin 
now, but I'll teach you the alphabet; I'll begin after breakfast.'' 

Miriam smiled her thanks, and having said she was going to 
see if grandma was ready for her coffee, went into the house 
humming the air of " White Lilies," and Clyffe strode away in the 
direction of the white pavilion where dwelt the overseer. 

PARENTHETICAL. 

How it was that Palmetto Plantation had in so great part 
been preserved to Clyffe Tone, this story has nothing to do. 
Suffice it to say, that he had inherited it directly from his grand- 
father ; that, barring the years spent at a university in Alabama, 
he had lived his life on it happily in the company of his sister. 
When he was a small child Death had been a frequent visitor 
at Palmetto, taking first his father, then his mother, and finally 
the grandfather. After this last event the children had been 
cared for solely by their grandmother. A love for English lit- 
erature and a passion for hunting,- together with a succession of 
visitors from the 'neighboring plantations and from New Orleans, 
kept the youth free of ennui. At the time Miriam and Clyffe 
held the conversation just related, the 26th of March, 1885, the 



i8o Sr. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. [May, 

house was full of visitors who had remained over-night after 
Miriam's name-day fete, and who would appear at breakfast. 
With them, however, this story does not concern itself. 

Adjoining Palmetto, but five miles distant from the dwel- 
ling, was the plantation of Captain Theophile St. Landry, styled 
Idesia, a much smaller property than that of Clyffe Tone. The 
owner had in his very youthful days fought through a great 
war, in which he had not only lost his right arm but his entire 
estate. With genuine and heroic perseverance he set to work . 
a herculean task in those days to regain a portion of his estate 
that he might have a home for his mother, the only one left to 
him of his family. His task was but accomplished when the 
mother died. St. Landry, after this, gave himself up to the 
study of the Greek and Latin authors for whom, like his great 
compatriot Viel, he had an abounding devotion. His love for 
Miriam Tone had been of sudden growth, and budding as it did 
when he was past middle-age, it had fastened its roots deep and 
strong. 



" I never t'ought you goin' git married, Marse T'eophile," 
giggled old Tesis (Theseus), St. Landry's body-servant, as he 
helped to array his master for the expected visit to Palmetto. 
St. Landry making no remark, he went on : " Anyways, t'ought 
it might be Miss Colonel Sams ; she ain' quite so gaily like as 
Misse Miriam. Them Sams ain' no trash neither " 

" You rascal!" shouted St. Landry, wheeling about. "Do 
you mean to imply that the family I am going to marry into 
are not worthy of the highest respect ? " 

Tesis rested the hand that held a whisk on his hip, and with 
the other meditatively scratched his white wool. " Lawd give 
you sense, Marse T'eophile," he said slowly, peering at St. Lan- 
dry. " I ain' replyin' ter no one. I ain' sayin' nothin' 'bout 
them Tones ! I knowed 'em way back afore you's born. They's 
'sponserble people all erlong. I ain' got nothin' 'gin 'em. I 
was jes' a thinkin' how crickety things er turnin' out. They's 
you an' Miss Colonel Sams, ain' nothin' comin' out er that ; and 
they's Misse Miriam an' young Marse Rapides, mighty likely 
couple they is, and they ain' nothin' come out of that nei- 
ther " 

" See here, Tesis," interrupted St. Landry grimly, " you are 
doing too much thinking and a great deal too much talking. 
Help me on with my coat, and then go see if my horse has been 
brought around." 



1891.] ' ST. LANDRY'S DELINQUENCY. 181 

Tesis did in silence all that he had been bid to do, and it 
was not till his master had ridden off to Palmetto that he ut- 
tered in an apostrophe to the surrounding landscape his protest 
against his ill-treatment. " I ain' ussen ter be talk ter that ar 
way," he said, with an outward wave of his hand. " He's own 
father dassen' do it. Seems no one ain' got no manners these 
days, an' fust thing you know old miss up en hebben she ha'nt 
you, axin' you : ' Tesis, what for you lettin' you Marse T'eophile 
forgit hisself for ? ' An' what Tesis tell her ? 'Fore the Lawd, I 
ain' teachin' him nothin' 'as ain' misbecomin' to er genterman. 
Tears this here gittin' married jes make him wufless t'rowin' 
erway t'ree kervats, a cussin' he's own haar, raxelin' me. Ain' 
no use talkin', Tesis, you's gittin' too old for this woiT when 
you ain' no use for er fam'ly ; an' you bes' haive the buryin' 
over afore the time er the weddin'." 

Clyffe Tone made the interview between himself and the 
captain a short one. According to an honorable custom, it was 
necessary that St. Landry should inform him, the only male 
representative of the family, of his aspirations to the hand of 
Miriam. But Clyffe thought the information should be given and 
received in few words. He was very glad when the meeting was 
over, for, if the truth be told, he found the captain a difficult 
person to converse with. Their tastes were at variance ; the one 
was devoted to a Homeric, the other to an English literature, 
and the captain was precluded from the use of a fowling-piece. 
It was mysterious to Clyffe that any woman could be found to 
love this grizzled, one-armed Antinous, and that of all women 
Miriam, his sister, should be the one. 

" And now I have but to make my excuses for my grand- 
mother," was his way of ending the interview. " She has had to 
keep her room to-day ; you know an affair like that of yester- 
day is rather upsetting to a woman verging on to ninety years." 

The captain hoped that Madame Tone would suffer no per- . 
inanent ill from the little dissipation of the fete ; and Miriam, 
was she quite well ? 

" She is never otherwise," laughed Clyffe. " She is down 
under the palm by the lake. Of course you'll take dinner with 
us, captain ; it's very near our dinner hour. Perhaps you'd like 
to bring her to dinner ? Miriam gets down there and for- 
gets " 

He paused, overcome by the boldness ot his proposition. 
The captain might be very much in love, but the captain was a 



182 ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. [May, 

very magnificent person, and might not like being sent on er- 
rands ; even on such a one. He was straightway reassured, how- 
ever, .by a hearty grasp of the hand and a ringing " Thank 
you, Clyffe ; I should like to^ery much," as the captain turned 
to seek Miriam, leaving Clyffe to wonder at this display of 
heartiness on the part of one whom he had always considered a 
remarkable specimen of frigidity. 

Miriam had gone down to the shade of the palm, carrying 
with her a little bundle of papers containing some simple direc- 
tions for the pronunciation of the Greek alphabet written out for 
her by Clyffe. She had persuaded her brother to keep with her 
the secret of her pursuit of knowledge. " I shall surprise him 
some day," she had said, the fires of love and ambition glowing 
in her cheeks. She was busily conning the manuscript and 
thinking, almost with tears, that she was very stupid, when the 
captain's " Good evening," hesitatingly given, caused her to start 
to her feet, and, with a guilty look, to conceal the troublesome 
alphabet in her pocket. Mingled with her confusion was such a 
delight at seeing him that she was speechless, and could but 
extend her hand in welcome. 

" I have just come from your brother," he said with some 
stiffness. " I hope I have not disturbed you." 

She cast on him a shy look of surprise. So overwhelmingly 
glad was she to see him, so inferior did she feel herself to be to 
him, that not for a moment did she doubt but that he must be 
sure of her joy. Therefore she said' nothing to remove the im- 
pression her confusion had made. 

" Your brother says he is pleased he is to be my brother," 
St. Landry said, after a moment's pause. 

" Of course he is," returned Miriam, so prettily and with so 
much earnestness that it set his heart to throbbing. But the kiss 
he gave her cheek was giyen reverently, not to flutter or alarm 
her; for he knew that the .perfume of the rose lasts long, even 
when it is faded ; but that this preservation be secured, the petals 
must not be bruised or broken. 

They seated themselves on the rude bench under the palm, 
and hand in hand gazed out on the lake, stealing glances at 
one another, but saying little. They were speaking of a trip he 
proposed to take with her to a Northern lake, when suddenly he 
asked : " Miriam, why do you always call me captain ? Don't 
you know my name ? " 

" Oh ! yes," she replied ; she knew it very well. 



1891.] Sr> LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. 183 

" Let me hear you say it," he insisted. " Slowly and dis- 
tinctly." 

" Theophile." 

This was sweeter to his ears than the tune of " White Lilies," 
and yet he liked to hear that sung by her. 

" And I know, at least I think I know, what it means," she 
said, somewhat abashed at her venturing to claim the possession 
of even so little knowledge. 

"What does it mean, cherie f '" he asked, pressing her hand 
to his cheek. 

" A lover of God and man," she answered solemnly. " I 
found it from the roots in the dictionary." 

" You went to so much trouble, mignon ! Your fingers are 
too dainty to delve among dry roots," he said caressingly. 

There was something almost wild in the imploring look she 
gave him. " Don't laugh at me," she cried. " I know so little, 
and it was all for you " 

" Clang ! clang ! clang ! " the dinner-bell ringing from its tur- 
ret by the house. 

" We are late," said Miriam guiltily. 

" And I was sent to fetch you," said St. Landry, not less so. 

Early in April it was arranged that the wedding of Miriam and 
St. Landry was to take place in the latter part of July. St. Landry 
would have had it earlier, but Miriam objected. She objected 
that she might have time to fit herself to be the companion of 
the man who had asked her to be his wife; not, however, giving 
this as her reason. 

St. Landry fretted under the postponement. Idesia was full 
of gloomy remembrance for him ; his taste for books had palled 
on him, and he wanted Miriam's face in the house to drive away 
the gloom, and he would rather hearken to her airiest nothings 
than to the sublirnest utterances of Homer. Unconscious of this, 
Miriam worked and tired her brain with unflagging zeal. Daily 
at Mass she stormed Heaven with petitions for her lover and im- 
plorings that she might become a learned woman. And by the 
end of May, considering what she had already accomplished, it 
might be believed that the last would be attained. Clyffe as- 
sisted her prodigiously, inwardly protesting, but always submis- 
sive to her femininity. In time the unaccustomed labor told on 
her. She grew pale and lost much of her plumpness. St. Lan- 
dry believed himself to be the cause of her altering appearance, 
as indeed he was, but not in the way he supposed. The hour 



184 ST. LANDRY* s DELINQUENCY. [May, 

of his daily visit to her they spent under the palm by the lake ; 
and, not knowing that she passed her days in the house and that 
this, her one meal of fresh air, was what kept health in her, he 
took it into his head that thp lake air was miasmatic. After 
this he insisted that they remain within in the salon, where the 
air was always heavy with the odor of flowers the grandmother 
loved. Miriam did not object ; it was all the same to her wher- 
ever she was, if he were present. 

It was in May that, the overseer falling ill, Glyffe was ob- 
liged to give up his tutorship. " I don't know what I shall 
do," Miriam said to him after a week's despairing plodding 
alone ; "I do not seem to get along without you, Clyffe." 

" Well, what's the use of it, anyhow ? " said Clyffe, some- 
what sadly, as he looked into Miriam's pale, eager face. " St. 
Landry won't care for all this study of yours." 

"Oh! don't say that, Clyffe," she implored. 

" Of course he'll appreciate it when he comes to know,'^ 
Clyffe hastened to explain, not heeding much what he said,, 
only speaking to soothe her. " But, sister, you're too good 
for him as it is ; why not give it all up ? You're as white 
as a sheet ; next thing you know, you'll be down in bed." 

She shook her head in dissent, and asked : " Do you think 
Cousin Rapides would be hurt if you were to offer him money 
for teaching me ? It would help him, for you know his acad- 
emy brings him very little. Do you think you'll succeed in get- 
ting back any of his property for him ? " she added. 

" I'm sure I will. You know the present legislature has de- 
clared off such sales as those by which Rapides' plantation was 
appropriated. I'm working hard for him," answered -Clyffe. 

"And about the lessons? Do you think he'd mind taking 
money from you ? " 

" Put in the right way, I don't suppose he would. But you 
don't mean to go to the academy ! " Clyffe exclaimed. 

" No, no ! He could come here in the evening, after school 
hours " 

" That's the time St. Landry always comes," interrupted 
Clyffe. 

" I have thought of that," she continued, waving aside his 
objection. " I shall ask Captain St. Landry " (she never called 
him Theophile to Clyffe) "to come in the morning." 

And so it was that Cyrille Rapides was engaged to teach 
his cousin afternoons, and St. Landry was asked to make 
his visits in the morning. "You will give me my way in this,. 



1891.] ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. 185 

Theophile," begged Miriam. " I'll tell you some day why I 
ask it." 

" I would grant you your will in everything," he answered 
with a gallantry she thought superb. 

But in his heart St. Landry did not like this change in hours. 
A morning visit must necessarily be shorter than one paid in the 
afternoon ; and, attributing the change to matters connected with 
Miriam's trousseau, he inwardly protested with vehemence against 
woman's passion for dress. 

One June afternoon business about the fencing of a field took 
St. Landry to Palmetto. Now the approach to Palmetto is on 
rising ground, giving one a fine view of the lake, the palmetto 
grove from which the place gets its name, and in particular of the 
spot where stands the great palm. St. Landry reined up his 
horse to take in the scene, and his eye fell on the bench beneath 
the palm where were sitting Miriam and her cousin, their heads 
bent over a book which Miriam held. He suddenly remember- 
ed what Tesis had said of Miriam and her cousin, but, as 
quickly as it came, he threw the remembrance off, and hoped 
magnanimously that Rapides was going to get his dinner at Pal- 
metto, for the poor devil had not a too luxurious board of his 
own, he thought. 

Had it not been for Tesis, St. Landry would have forgotten 
this incident. Tesis had become Miriam's enemy. Since his 
master's engagement to her Tesis had discovered a great change 
in his master. He no longer took an interest in that good ser- 
vant's tales of the past. He had even, on one occasion after a 
return from Palmetto, told Tesis he did not wish to be both- 
ered about things that were dead and gone ; the present fully 
occupied his mind. Tesis was now convinced that his master was 
crazy. " All on ercount of a young misse as ain' no more sense 
'n er hummin'-bu'd ! " he grumbled to himself. " He better er 
married Miss Colonel Sams ; she jest he's age. She never lettin' 
'im forget -who he's father is. That young misse ain' keerin' for 
'im, nohow. I jest knows that for a fac'." 

This last-uttered opinion was confirmed in him when, in one 
of his frequent conversations with his chosen friend, Augustine, 
the butler at Palmetto, he learned that Miriam's afternoons were 
spent in the company of Rapides. " That's a fac', suh. Jest as 
sure as you name's Tesis St. Landry, suh," Augustine insisted 
when Tesis insinuated that he was stretching the truth. 

It was not till Tesis had assured himself by personal obser- 
vation of the truth of this statement, and then only after much 



1 86 ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. L Mav 

communing with himself, that he took it on himself to ask St. 
Landry : " How come, Marse T'eophile, you never go visit Misse 
Miriam no more evenin's ? " 

St. Landry was so accustomed to answering whatever ques- 
tions Tesis put him that he replied before considering : " Be- 
cause she is engaged at that time." 

Blinking his eyes, Tesis drew nearer and questioned : " Does 
you know, Marse T'eophile, how she is engage' ? Misse Miriam 
and Marse Rapides mons'ous gaily couple, they is." 

St. Landry stared at him, then blazed out: "Confound your 
impudence ! What business is it of yours ? " 

Tesis shook with indignation. Here he was, his master's inter- 
ests alone at heart, and that master addressing him as if he were 
one of the boys in the field. Drawing himself up, he made a 
low bow, and said with overpowering politeness : " Marse T'eo- 
phile, I axes your pardon, but I'se jest 'bleeged t' tell you, you 
is gittin' mons'ous dismannerly." 

The color rose to St. Landry's face, and, with a half-laugh, 
he held out his hand and said : " There, Tesis, that's all right ; 
but for heaven's sake don't ask any more questions." 

Tesis shook his master's hand gravely, and walked out of the 
room a man conscious of having done his duty. But he had 
left a thorn to rankle in his master's side. 

The next day St. Landry did not pay his usual morning 
visit to Palmetto, thereby causing Miriam to feel uneasy and un- 
happy. Ashamed of himself for doing so, he did ride over in 
the afternoon, and from the rising ground before the house he 
saw under the palm what he had seen before Miriam and 
Rapides seated together. 

The servant who came forward to take his horse told him 
that Clyffe, for whom he had asked, had gone to the village. 
" Misse Miriam," he added gratuitously, " she down yonder at 
the lake: she down there every evenin', she an' Marse Rapides." 

" I'll not get down, then," said St. Landry, and turned his 
horse and cantered on the road home. 

He felt depressed and anxious, and it must be granted that, 
from his point of view, he had much to alarm him. As low in 
degree as Miriam held herself in her own way, so in his way 
he held himself. He thought of himself as a man past forty 
who had lost an arm. That he was strikingly handsome did not 
occur to him. It is doubtful, even, if he knew it. Tesis on va- 
rious occasions had let fall much about Miriam in connection 
with Rapides, and St. Landry knew that the time she had given 



1891.] ST\ LANDRY'S DELINQUENCY. 187 

to him she now reserved for the man he had been led to be- 
lieve had been her lover. What he could not reconcile to the 
thought that she regretted Rapides was her evident pleasure at 
being in his (St. Landry's) company. But of late had this 
pleasure been so evident ? Had she not appeared to be wearied 
and listless ? Had he but known the cause of her weariness and 
listlessness ! And, last of all, he remembered that the very place 
he had wished her to abstain from was the place she chose to 
meet Rapides, whom he now believed to be her lover. 

St. Landry went on the following morning to Palmetto an 
hour earlier than was his custom. The result of his meditations 
was that he had best come to an understanding with Miriam ; 
that anything was better than the state of doubt he was in. 
Early as he was, he found Miriam waiting for him on the gal- 
lery. The smile of welcome she gave him served to bring out 
in greater relief the general wanness of her appearance, the 
feverish light in her eyes. A phenomenally bright brain, urged 
to it by a loving heart, and pushed on by a merciless teacher 
who rejoiced in the development of a prodigy, had accomplish- 
ed much, but at the expense of Miriam's health. The night 
before she had broken down whilst attempting a difficult trans- 
lation, and this morning her head ached and her body felt out 
of joint. 

" What was the matter yesterday ? " .she exclaimed. " Why 
did you not wait ? I was coming 'up to the house when you 
rode away ? " 

Instead of answering her he said gravely: "I asked you not 
to go to the lake in the evening^ You are ill and feverish ! " he 
broke off to exclaim. 

" Only a little headache ; it will pass," she said carelessly, 
going on to ask in deprecation, " You are not displeased with 
me, are you ? I needed the fresh air." 

" You know best ; and understand, Miriam, although I might 
be displeased with something you did, I could never be dis- 
pleased with you. Awkwardly put, this, mignon ; but it is 
meant to be a pretty speech," he returned with a smile, as he 
moved to enter the hall. 

" Don't go inside, Theophile," she entreated, laying her hand 
lightly, on his arm to detain him ; " it is so much pleasanter 
here on the gallery." 

" As you please," he said, and, having placed a chair for her, 
seated himself at a little distance. 

She had been endeavoring to read when he came, and still 



i88 ST. LANDRY'S DELINQUENCY. [May, 

held her book, the leaves of which she fluttered absently as she 
looked towards him, waiting for him to speak. She was a little 
afraid, for, in spite of his " pretty speech," she believed him to 
be displeased. 

" What is that finely bound novel?" he asked with a smile; 
"St. Elmo?" 

She reddened and wished she had put the book away before 
he came. " No," she answered hesitatingly, "it is a Greek trag- 
edy." 

" May I look at it ? " he asked, charmed for the moment at 
the idea of Miriam reading a Greek tragedy. 

She handed him the book, and he read the title aloud : " ' The 
Suppliants' of ALschylus : a translation" Oh!" he ejaculated 
coldly, "one of your cousin's books." 

" No, it is Clyffe's, though it was Cyrille who recommended 
^Eschylus to me," she replied truthfully, but wishing ardently 
that he would not question her further. She was not yet ready 
to surprise him. 

He opened the parchment-covered volume where a book- 
mark had been placed. " So you are reading The Suppliants ? " 

She nodded her head in assent, and his eyes fell on the pas- 
sage pointed out by the marker : 

" Look on the woman's cause ! " 

he read aloud ; then stopped, for a moment lost in thought. 
Drawing in his breath, he continued : 

" Recall the ancient tale, 
Of one whom thou didst love in time of old." 

He closed the book hastily and returned it to her. 

For a little while he sat thoughtful, patting the floor softly 
with his foot. Then he turned .to her abruptly, and questioned : 
"You and your cousin have always been very intimate?" 

" He has been the same to me as a brother," she answered 
warmly. " He was the first one to row me on the lake " Miriam 
was now shivering. The fever had changed to a chill. "It ivould 
be better for me to be inside," she interrupted herself to say, and 
rising from her chair, preceded St. Landry to the great salon,. 
where huge pots of plants were ranged against the marble, pilas- 
ters, and smirking shepherds and shepherdesses held branches of 
scarlet and of white waxen candles. 

She took up a shawl that lay across the back of a chair and, 
throwing it about her, seated herself and said : " Ah, that is more 



1891.] Sr. LANDRY'S DELINQUENCY. 189 

comfortable ! And you would rather be in here, wouldn't you, 
Theophile ? " 

St. Landry was leaning against a console-table looking absent- 
ly before him when she spoke. He now advanced to where she 
sat, and, resting his arm on the high back of her chair, he 
looked down on her, and asked slowly. "Your cousin visits you 
every evening at the hour you used to permit me to come, does 
he not?" 

She turned half around in her chair the better to look up at 
him and, meeting much of coldness in his glance, could only 
falter, " Yes." 

" God bless you, mignon, for telling me the truth ! " he said 
simply, and bearing hard on the chair. " Now," he went on, 
"tell me another truth. You wished that I should not know of 
his visits?" 

His seriousness, a seriousness that was akin to severity, fright- 
ened her. " No," she said, speaking rapidly ; " I did not mind 
if you knew Cyrille came ; I only wished to keep it a secret why 
he came." 

"You are indeed truthful," he returned with bitterness. 

" You are angry with me ! " she exclaimed, starting up in her 
chair. f . 

" Angry with you ? No ! " he replied. u Do you not know 
the creed we are taught : a woman cannot err ? I have always 
found it easy of belief, and I do not know that you have made 
it less so ; you will not lie, nor give evasive answers you are 
honorable." 

" Theophile, Theophile ! what is it ? " she cried. " Do you 
want to know why Cyrille has been coming here? I'll tell 
you " 

" Spare yourself," he interrupted. " I know, and I would 
rather not hear more from you about it. I am but flesh and 
blood, you see, and further candor might make me forget 
myself." 

She felt like one who looks down from a great height. He 
knew of her efforts to make herself his equal, and they displeas- 
ed him. " If I had known you would not like it I would have 
acted differently," she said sadly. 

For a second of time he felt his love giving way. She was 
absurd worse than childish. Did she suppose he would be 
pleased with what she had done ? u Miriam," he said, " before 
bidding you good-by, let me say, you should have been frankly 
open with me before this. And, cherie, I do with all my heart 



190 ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. [May, 

hope you will be happy. Good-by ! " And he took her hand 
and kissed it, and turned and left the room. 

She made no attempt to call him back; but, her head ach- 
ing, her whole body ill, sat endeavoring to understand how 
dreadfully she must have erred to be so wounded. 

As he rode away from Palmetto to Idesia, St. Landry went 
over the events of the last few months dating from the hour 
when, under the palm, Miriam had promised to be his wife. A. 
confused mind begot a worse confusion, and he could only see that 
without cause he had been recklessly and cruelly trifled with. 
He was a man of deep religious feeling, and he combated the 
red thoughts that assailed him. But in the end the tumult of 
wrath against Rapides that surged in his brain and wrought in 
his heart warned him that he was dangerous. He felt that the 
man should not live ; and yet why should he blame Rapides ? 
Was not Rapides' claim to Miriam a prior one to his ? 

The shrill whistle of the Allen, the little steamer that plied 
between the lake towns and New Orleans, resolved him. Look- 
ing out through the vista of magnolias, he saw her gilt figure- 
head glittering in the amber light of the afternoon sun as she 
made for Rosaries, the village near by. . She would remain at 
the village till sundown, long enough for Tesis to pack his valise 
and for him to see his overseer. Flight from the vicinity of Pal - 
metto was his only safety. How many defeats had he not suf- 
fered in his life, and would God .mercifully grant him to preserve 
his honor in this last defeat as he had in all the others ? 

When St. Landry went aboard the Allen he was told that 
there was no vacant state-room. "A young man from here- 
abouts," informed the clerk, " has taken the last we had. There 
are two berths in it; you can have the other if you wish." St. 
Landry hesitated before deciding to take the empty berth. " I 
don't know that I'll need it," he said. " But you'll be on the 
safe side if you take it," advised the clerk. He took the advice, 
entered his name, and then went to sit at the far end of the 
deck, away from the gay crowd of passengers, most of whom were 
out on a pleasure-trip. 

No case of insomnia, however obstinate, can withstand the 
night air blown gently over Lake Pontchartrain, soft and heavily 
freighted as it is with the odors of ten thousand, thousand flow- 
ers the rose, the jessamine, the magnolia, the spicy myrtle, and 
the oozing gum of the incense-pine. One by one, in pairs and 



1891.] Sr. LAN DRY' 's DELINQUENCY. 191 

in little bands, the passengers went down to their berths ; and 
then St. Landry, left alone and somnolent, went to the state- 
room he was now glad was partly his. He opened the door 
of the room softly, not to disturb the man within, and, 
having turned up the light, he let his eyes fall carelessly on the 
occupied berth, the curtains of which were undrawn. 

He half fell onto a camp-stool standing by, jarring the cabin, 
and the sleeper sighed in his sleep and nestled his curly head 
more comfortably in the hollow of his arm. 

Was the devil given power over him ? Was there truth in 
that gloomy dying creed that from all eternity most men are 
foreordained to damnation, and was he one of the hell-created, 
and had he been brought here to work out his doom ? How 
easy it would be ! and the fingers of his hand twitched nervously. 
The window open by the sleeping man's side one blow on the 
head, and the body thrust into the purple water to be drawn 
under the steamer's wheel ! 

How low had he descended that so cowardly a thought 
could be born in him ! No ! let the man awake and defend 
himself. Let him have such advantage as two arms could give 
him over the one that was mighty with hate and frustrated 
love. 

" Rapides ! Cyrille Rapides, wake up ! " he thundered, rising to 
his feet, his voice not loud but penetrating. 

The sleeper yawned, stretched himself, and swung into a sit- 
ting posture on the side of the berth. " It is not day yet," he 
began ; then, seeing who stood before him and not noting the 
scowl that sought to scorch him, he stretched out his hand and 
cried, "Why, St. Landry, man! what brings you here?" 

St. Landry flung back the outstretched hand and said and 
once as he spoke he unconsciously grit his teeth " I did not 
come here to find you, but now that I have found you, you 
must kill me or I shall kill you." 

Rapides, though the younger man, had the cooler head. He 
was now on his feet, and the tone he took in answering the 
man possessed was low and even. " I see you wish to quarrel," 
he said ; "I shall not second you till I know the reason why I 
should either kill or be killed. What ails you, St. Landry ? " 

" You are a coward and you lie ! " retorted St. Landry. " I 
was at Palmetto before taking the boat ; she has told me every- 
thing Not yet ; let me finish! No woman's name is to be 
brought into this business ; we have quarrel enough in that I 
have called you a liar and a coward. Men hav died for less 



192 ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. [May, 

than that, and I, who have hated the duel, now tell you I think 
it a righteous institution." 

Still cool and collected, Rapides returned : " I shall fight no 
duel with you, and least of all without a cause. As for your in- 
sult, your better self shall teach you to ask my pardon for it. 
Now, for God's sake, for the sake of Miriam Tone, be cool, St. 
Landry. What do you mean by no woman's name being 
brought into this ? " 

Rapides' coolness stunned him. "You," he stammered, "who 
have stolen her from me " 

" Stop ! " interrupted Rapides under his breath ; he was hot 
enough now. " You dolt ! are you jealous of me ? " 

" She did not lie," cried St. Landry in scorn. " And," he 
continued, "since she has told me you are her lover, I do not 
see what you expect to gain by a lie." 

" Were you to tell me on your oath that she said that, I 
would not believe you. That you are a disgrace to the uni- 
form you wore, a scoundrel who, having tired of your engage- 
ment, are seeking an escape, no matter how, I can well be- 
lieve " 

" That's enough ! " broke in St. Landry. He was now at 
white heat, but it was with much courtesy he asked : " Before 
our little encounter, will you answer two questions ? " 

"I will if I see fit." 

" Is it not true," interrogated St. Landry, his tone suave, 
"" that for weeks past your evenings have been spent at Pal- 
metto ?" 

As it were in a flash, the state of the case was revealed to 
Rapides. " St. Landry," he exclaimed, " I see it all ; let me 
make it as clear to you!" And, as concisely as it could be 
told, he related the story of Miriam's lessons and why they had 
been pursued. As this was told a thousand and one incidents, 
unheeded at the time they happened, were remembered by St. 
Landry, and confirmed to him the truth of Rapides' narration. 
"You are convinced, are you not?" asked Rapides when he 
had ended. 

" I am," was all St. Landry could find to say, in his con- 
fusion. 

The two men were now seated St. Landry on the camp- 
stool, Rapides on the berth. 

"What did you mean by saying that my cousin I cannot 
repeat it, you remember your accusation ? " questioned the 
latter. 



Sr. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. 193 

" Rapides," returned St. Landry, " I have played the part of 
a second-rate Othello, and Tesis, my body-servant, has been my 
lago." Then he told how he had misjudged and misconceived, 
and he did not spare himself. 

" Miriam has been made very unhappy," said Rapides, when 
the other paused. " You had better return to Palmetto as 
quickly as you can and right the wrong you have done. If you 
take the train at New Orleans to-morrow morning, you can be 
with her by five to-morrow evening. Now you had better turn 
in and. see if you cannot get some sleep. By the way," he 
added cheerfully, " congratulate me : through Clyffe Tone's ex- 
ertions, more than . mine, I am getting back a big slice of Ra- 
pides plantation. It is business connected with this that takes 
me to New Orleans." 

" Congratulate you ! With all my heart, and thank God I 
met you !" returned St. Landry reverently. " Before we turn in, 
however, let me fulfil your prophecy by begging your pardon " 

" That's all right,' ; interrupted Rapides ; adding, " I wish you 
a good night's rest." 

Miriam had a bad night of it. She was feverish, and Clyffe 
feared that she was going to be very ill. The doctor when 
called in said otherwise. " She has been poring over her books 
too much and too long. Give her plenty of fresh air, and she 
will be all right in a week," was his dictum. 

She told Clyffe nothing of what had taken place in the 
salon. She had no doubt but that St. Landry's farewell was 
final, and in justice to him she endeavored to feel that he had 
cause to be wroth with 'her. She would put him out of her 
heart after awhile ; then she would tell Clyffe, not before. One 
thing was sure : she was not given to sentimentality, and she 
would not pine. 

Late in the afternoon they wheeled the lounge on which she 
reclined, wrapped in a muslin robe, on to the gallery looking 
out on the lake. "Do you remember the morning I played on 
the banjo, and you danced and sang ?" asked Clyffe, who was 
seated by her side. " You have given up all that. I wish, 
Miriam, you'd put aside your books. I'm sure St. Landry cares 
more for you than for anything you can gain from them. Come, 
what do you say ?" 

" I suppose," she answered dreamily: then rousing herself, 
" I'm so glad you succeeded about Cyrille's property ! Do you 
know that there is a strophe in The Suppliants I learned by 

VOL. LIII. 13 



194 S T - LANDRY* s DELINQUENCY. [May r 

heart, because it reminded me of what you have done for him ? 

Listen !" 

" Friend to the stranger wholly faithful found; 

Desert not thou the poor. 
Driven from their homes by godless violence," 

she quoted, and then was silent, thinking of St. Landry's evident 
impatience yesterday with this very volume of ^Eschuylus. Her 
eyes were closed, and she was silent for so long that Clyffe 
thought she slept, and stole away about some concerns of the 
plantation. 

The beat of a horse's hoofs on the ascending drive to the 
house caused her to open her eyes, and she saw through a rift 
in the cassias and myrtle that lined the road that it was St. 
Landry who was approaching. Her first impulse was to run to 
meet him. Feminine reticence told her to remain, and feminine 
propriety threw a silken shawl about her, and smoothed her yel- 
low hair, and put her in a sitting posture on the lounge. 

He flung the horse's reins to a servant who had been loung- 
ing in the shade of a myrtle, ran up the gallery steps, and 
walked rapidly to where she sat. 

"Miriam," he exclaimed, "I have come to cry peccavi, to 
entreat your pardon, for I have sinned against you greatly." 

She waved her hand to a chair which he did not take, and 
said, as if this were but a continuation of the scene of yester- 
day : " I do not understand. I have tried to make it out why 
you should be so angry. I learned that you might not find me 
altogether unlearned. It is true, though, I got to love study for 
itself, and Clyffe and Cyrille were very patient with me." 

He hated himself for the jealous twinge this praise of her 
teachers gave him. He had not been patient. " Miriam," he 
said, " I knew nothing yesterday of the lessons given you by 
Rapides." 

'Then what was it?" she asked, with a surprised look. 

A strained look on his face, he told how he had wronged 
her. " May I hope for forgiveness ?" he pleaded, his tale con- 
cluded, even to the telling of his meeting Rapides on the 
Allen. 

As she listened without interruption to his confession her face 
had at first expressed wonder, but as he progressed it gradually 
assumed an expression that told of nothing but that she patient- 
ly waited for his narration to come to a close. And now, in re- 
sponse to his question, she said : " Of course I forgive you, though 
I cannot understand how you could think me so contemptible." 



1891.] ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. 195 

" And you will forget it all ? " he entreated. 

" It is very soon to ask me to forget it all," she replied, draw- 
ing her shawl about her. 

" Miriam ! cherie ! " he implored ; " there is no true forgiveness 
without a forgetting. Are not things to be with us as they were 
before ? " 

" If you mean " she returned coldly, " am I not to be your 
wife " She stopped abruptly, continuing in a suppressed voice : 
" Yesterday, when you came to me, I was a girl ? I have grown 
old since then. You shall never make me suffer so again. No ; 
I cannot be your wife." 

He caught his breath and 1'eaned for support against the pi- 
laster of a doorway. 

" Miriam," he cried, his voice broken, " you do not mean to 
break my heart ? " 

" You must not think I do not spare you because, yesterday, 
you had no thought of sparing me " 

" I gave you up because I thought you would be happier 
without me. Yesterday I did not spare myself," he interrupted, 
driven to defend himself. 

She thought for a moment over what he had said, and then 
went on: "You are right. You intended to spare me, and you 
were pitiless to yourself. But I cannot expose myself to a repe- 
tition of such mercy." 

" Do you think that could happen again ? " he exclaimed bit- 
terly. 

She felt a return of the swimming in her head, and she made 
haste to say : " You must leave me now. I have not been well. 
I cannot bear this any longer." 

" Miriam," he asked, " before I go, can you give me no hope ? 
I have no right to look for happiness, cherie I who would now 
be a murderer but for the mercy of the good God ; but, cherie, 
I long to be happy have you no word for me ? " 

" If I should ever have, I shall send for you," she answered, 
not trusting herself to look up. " But go now." 

He caught his one arm about her, and before she could re- 
sist he had kissed her cheek, and had left her. And having en- 
tered the house, she looked out through the Venetian blinds to 
see" him ride away. 

The broad leaves ot the palm had turned from a deep, cool 
green to a rich gold ; the petals of the magnolia to a color that 
was russet in the shade and a fiery crimson in the sun ; the sum- 



1 96 ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. [May, 

mer roses were departing and the winter roses returning, and still 
Miriam had sent no manner of word to St. Landry. She had 
told Clyffe nothing but that she had concluded not to marry, al- 
though he pestered her with ^questions. Cyrille Rapides had in- 
terceded for St. Landry; the cure at Rosaries did not approve 
of the course she was pursuing; yet she persisted .on her way, 
though she found it toilsome. If St. Landry came again, per- 
haps she would listen to him, she thought. But St. Landry did 
not come, and she began to feel that in reality all was over be- 
tween them. Then she began to pray earnestly to Heaven that 
he would return to Palmetto. 

One afternoon late in December Miriam went down to the seat 
under the palm, her first visit to it since the lessons Rapides had 
given her were broken off. She did not remain long, for the place 
brought up sad memories. As she turned to go home her eyes 
strayed to the palmetto grove, and she saw St. Landry standing 
under one of the trees. He took off his hat, but the only sign of 
recognition she gave was a little start of surprise. That evening 
Tesis brought her a note from his master. She opened it and 
read : 

" I found that you never came to the palm, and for the 
sake of old times I have gone there very often. I shall not 
offend again. ST. L." 

"There is no answer," she said to Tesis, and then went in 
and cried over the note. That evening at dinner she complained 
to Clyffe of the palm. She found it unsightly and declared 
that it should be cut down. Clyffe replied that he thought 
otherwise. 

For a week after this event she kept herself indoors, pretend- 
ing to think it possible she might meet St. Landry anywhere 
within the bounds of Palmetto. At the end of the week she 
called to mind that, considering Palmetto was a property of some 
seven square miles, she was not exercising common sense in so 
rigidly housing herself. " Clyffe !" she announced one morning 
after breakfast, " I am going out for a stroll." Clyffe nodded 
his head, not knowing why this should be communicated to 
him. He would have wondered the more had he known that 
Miriam's stroll would but take her to the palmetto grove. 

As she entered the grove she drew in with long breaths 
the scented .air. Standing still she looked about, then ad- 
vanced to one of the trees and touched it gently. " This is his 
tree," she thought; "for from here he could best see the palm 



1891.] ST. LANDRY' s DELINQUENCY. 197 

Oh ! " she cried in sudden alarm at seeing something black in 
the grass at her feet. Stooping cautiously, she picked it up. 
It was a man's soft felt hat. Immediately upon this she heard 
a footstep advancing towards her from behind. Bending over, 
she crushed the hat to her bosom, her face white and red by 
turns. 

" May I have my hat ? " asked St. Landry's voice. 

She turned about slowly, still bending over, and, with one 
hand pressing her bosom, handed him the hat. " I did not 
know that you were here," she denied eagerly in a voice that 
was almost a whisper. 

" Are you displeased to find me here ? " he asked. 

She hesitated so long that he thought she would never an- 
swer, and was about to repeat his question, when she faltered, 
" No." 

" I wrote you that I would never offend again," he said. 
''You see I have kept my word." 

She looked up quickly, and before her tace again fell he 
saw that she was smiling, though there were tears in her eyes. 

She let him take her hand, and he whispered, " Cherie, am 
I forgiven ? My penance has been long." 

She bent her head persistently, and he pursued, " Every- 
thing is over and forgotten, cherie ? " 

Miriam withdrew her hand slowly, looked up as if about to 
speak, hesitated, then turned and walked away. 

He stood staring after her, and the cool wind that had come 
up from over the lake stirred strongly among the palmettos. 

FELIX GARNETT. 




JOHN Bo YLE O'REILL Y. [May, 



JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.* 

A RARE quality in this book, and one which proves the au- 
thor's fitness for the office of biographer, is his absolute subor- 
dination of himself to his theme. The biography becomes, 
wherever possible, autobiography. Facts have the light of a 
lucid style upon them. The story has the reader's undistracted 
first thought. That it is well told is his pleasant after thought/ 

In the circumstances under which he was compelled to write 
it was hardly to be expected that Mr. Roche should have made 
the most of his knowledge of the life and work of the lamented 
dead. Succeeding to O'Reilly's editorship of The Pilot, these 
pages were written, to quote from his modest preface, " in the 
scant leisure of a busy life, made doubly so by the loss which 
called them forth." He wrote in the bondage of contract, date, 
and space, and with an embarrassing riches of material. More- 
over, he was still too near his subject. 

"The picture," he says again, "has not been over-colored by 
the hand of friendship." Rather has Mr. Roche carried artistic 
reserve too far. His conscientious effort to resist the fascination 
of his theme makes him at times constrained. 

Still, in all essentials, John Boyle O'Reilly is faithfully de- 
picted ; and none can trace the story of his short and crowded 
life to its pathetic close without re-echoing the words of Cardinal 
Gibbons at the announcement of his death : " A loss to the 
country, a loss to the church, a loss to humanity." 

John Boyle O'Reilly was a man with a Providential mission, 
whose scope is described by the words just quoted. He. was born, 
as Thomas Wentworth Higginson well expressed it, to be interpre- 
ter and reconciler of race to race and of class to class. He came 
to* America to do a special work in the levelling of the mountains 
of racial and religious prejudice ; in the filling up of the valleys 
of abjection and abasement into which, at least in New England, 
the people of his own faith and race were plunged ; and in hew- 
ing straight ways whereon the erstwhile despised Irish Catholic 
might advance even to worldly distinction without compromising 

* Life of John. Boyle O'Reilly. By James Jeffrey Roche. Together with his complete 
Poems and Speeches, edited by Mrs. John Boyle O'Reilly. Introduction by his Eminence 
James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore. New York: Cassell Publishing Com- 
pany. 



1891.] JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 199 

the honor of his faith or ancestry. From this point, of view we 
will consider the story of his life ; touching on the romantic vi- 
cissitudes of his youth only for their value as a preparation for 
his life-work. 

John Boyle O'Reilly wrought out his mission unconsciously. 
This simple and self- distrustful man would have been the last to 
dream of himself as a man with a mission. His master-passion 
was Ireland. The man and his life-long conscious purpose are 
here, in this brief passage from his " Statues in the Block" a 
passage, by the way, 'not excelled for strength and beauty by 
anything else he has written : 

" My Land ! I see thee in the marble, bowed 
Before thy tyrant, bound at foot and wrist 
Thy garments rent thy wounded shoulder bare 
Thy chained hand raised to ward the cruel blow 
My poor love round thee scarf-like, weak to hide 
And powerless to shield thee but a boy 
I wound it round thee, dearest, and a man 
I drew it close and kissed thee mother, wife ! 
For thee the past and future days; for thee 
The will to trample wrong and strike for slaves ; 
For thee the hope that ere mine arm be weak 
And ere my heart be dry may close the strife 
In which thy colors shall be borne through fire, 
And all thy griefs washed out in manly blood 
And I shall see thee crowned and bound with love, 
Thy strong sons round thee guarding thee. O star 
That lightens desolation, o'er her beam, 
Nor let the shadow of the pillar sink 
Too deep within her, till the dawn is red 
Of that white noon when men shall call her Queen ! " 

Love of his own land must have a glorious growth in the 
soul of his ideal patriot. 

li Love of thee holds in it hate of wrong 

And shapes the hope that moulds humanity." 

So it was with him. His broad humanity was the hospitable 
banyan-tree, developed from the plant of patriotism which 
grows in Irish soil indivisible from religion, " a plant of double 
root." 

In sight of Dowth Castle, Drogheda, Ireland, where John Boyle 
O'Reilly was born on June 28, 1844, r i ses the Hill of Tara, 
scene of Ireland's ancient national and religious glories. Close 
beside it runs the river Boyne, name reminiscent of national and 
religious humiliation. 



2co JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. [May, 

Dowth Castle, dating back to the days of the English Pale, 
is not so well known by its nineteenth century name, the Net- 
terville Institution, so called for the nobleman who owned it in 
the beginning of the century, $nd, dying, devoted it and a por- 
tion of its lands to charitable and educational uses. A National 
school was built on its grounds, of which William David O'Reilly,, 
the poet's father, was head-master for thirty-five years. 

On his father's side young O'Reilly traced his ancestry back 
for a thousand years, through the soldierly and chivalrous 
O'Reillys of Cavan. .This noble stock gave also to the New 
World Count Alexander O'Reilly, governor of Louisiana under 
the restored Spanish domination, the friend of prisoners and 
implacable foe of the slave-trade. His mother, Eliza Boyle,, 
a woman of strong character, cultivated mind, and much per- 
sonal beauty, was a near relative of Colonel John Allen, who- 
distinguished himself in the French wars under Napoleon. 

Amid this historic environment, and with these family tradi- 
tions, the boy lived until he had passed, not his eleventh year, 
as his biography states, but only his ninth, as the author was 
informed in a letter from O'Reilly's sister, received too late 
for use. 

" He had to kneel on a chair to sign his indentures," she 
writes, describing the day he left home to enter the printing- 
office of the Drogheda Argus as apprentice. Writes his biogra- 
pher : 

"The circumstances under which he was induced to begin 
the struggle of life at such a tender age were these : His brother 
William, two and a half years his senior, had been bound as an 
apprentice in the Argus establishment He was a delicate youth, 
and after six months' service was obliged by ill-health to give 
up his place. John, then a fine, manly little fellow, hearing his. 
mother lament the loss of the premium, which amounted to fifty 
pounds, offered to take his brother's place, and the offer was 
ultimately accepted." 

There can be few reminiscences of a childhood so patheti- 
cally brief. He tells himself of his dearest childish possession, 
"the little, brown, fat dog who wore the hair off his back with 
lying on it to play with the big dogs or with me.'* 

" His smile was irresistible," writes his sister, " but I think 
his greatest charm was in his manner. From earliest childhood 
he was a favorite with everybody, and yet the wildest boy in 
Dowth. If any mischievous act was committed in the neighbor- 



1891.] JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 20 F 

hood John was blamed, yet everybody loved him and would hide 
him from my father when in disgrace." 

He was, nevertheless, a steady and omnivorous reader, and a 
constant verse-maker. His first completed effort, written at the 
age of eleven, was a grateful little elegy on Frederick Lucas, the 
pioneer English Catholic Home-Ruler. 

All through his life O'Reilly cherished the tenderest thought 
of the pious mother from whose loving care he so' early drifted. 
She died while he was still in Australia, her life shortened by 
her anxieties for her best-loved son. We find his mother's mem- 
ory often in his poems ; never more sweetly than in one on 
the name of ** Mary " : 

" Sweet word of dual meaning ; one of grace, 

And born of our kind advocate above ; 
And one by memory linked to that dear face 

That blessed my childhood with its mother-love, 

"And taught me first the simple prayer, i To thee, 
Poor banished sons of Eve, we send our cries.' 
Through mist of years those words recall to me 
A childish face upturned to loving eyes." 

From his fifteenth to his nineteenth year young O'Reilly was 
employed, first as type-setter, later as reporter, on the Guardian Y 
of Preston, England, making his home with an aunt, Mrs. Wat- 
kinson, the beloved " Aunt Crissy " of his letters from America. 
Here in this quiet old English Catholic town the soldier blood in 
him began stirring. The iron of his country's wrongs had en- 
tered his soul. Like most of the young patriots of his time, he 
would have no half- measures. He dreamed of a great uprising 
which would make Ireland a republic. 

When recalled home in 1863 he became a Fenian, enlisted 
in the Tenth Hussars, and bent all his energies to the spreading 
of republican principles in the British army. 

An indefensible act from the moral standpoint ? Yes; but be- 
fore passing capital sentence consider the state of Ireland in 
1863. "She was a drugged, poisoned, stupefied body," said 
O'Reilly to the writer of this review; "and the Fenian move- 
ment was the beating of it to waken it out of the fast-settling 
torpor of death." The English policy of endeavoring to com- 
bine religious freedom and national slavery had developed " the 
Castle-priest " and his unconcealed hostility to Irish national as- 
pirations. Often he was a model of piety and sincerity in his 
own fashion ; with the martyr-spirit ready to leap in flame from 



202 JOHN Bo YLE O'REILL y. [May, 

his death-wound. But Ireland's world-wide apostolate, even 
though it had to be furthered by submission to English rule, 
and not her petty national possibilities was his dream, There 
was many a " Monsignor McGstidder " in Ireland in John Boyle 
O'Reilly's young manhood ; and if he was far outnumbered by 
priests like " Father Phil," at least the hot-blooded young 
patriots, conscious for the time being only of the bit and curb, 
had not learned that such priests loved Ireland as truly, if more 
wisely, than themselves. O'Reilly learned it, as he testifies in 
his "Priests of Ireland " in 1873. But he learned it by bitter 
experience. 

" I never knew what it all meant till I found myself in pris- 
on," he said in later years. "They only said to us: 'Come, 
boys; it may be prison or death, but it's for Ireland' and- we 
came " 

As his biographer truly says : 

" One does not weigh dangerous consequences against gener- 
ous impulses at nineteen years of age. No more does he in- 
quire with minute casuistry into the exact moral values of the 
deed." 

O'Reilly frankly admitted the errors and blunders of Fenian- 
ism. Early in his American career, and strongly and steadfastly 
through the whole course of it, he raised his voice against secret 
societies. The most obstinate "Invincibles" of them all heard 
his words with respect. He knew whereof he spoke ; his patriot- 
ism had , borne the supreme test; and, however little to their 
faith or taste the policy of constitutional agitation which 
O'Reilly heartily adopted at the inception of the Home-Rule 
movement in 1873, they knew he urged it from a sincere heart. 

But of the young Fenian in the British army : 

" The magnetism of the boyish soldier," writes his biographer, 
" won more converts to treason than his fervid eloquence. Even 
the uncompromising loyalty and Protestantism of an Orangeman 
from the ' black North ' succumbed to his fascination, and did 
not recover from the spell until the Fenian malgre lui found 
himself a life convict and wondered how it had come about." 

" You've ruined the finest regiment in the service," was 
Colonel Valentine Baker's testimony to the thoroughness of 
O'Reilly's work when finally, through the inevitable informer, 
the latter was discovered and arrested. 

After a rather farcical trial, on July 9, 1866, sentence of death 






1891.] JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 203 

was passed on all the military prisoners. The same day it was 
commuted in the case of O'Reilly and four others to life im- 
prisonment. Subsequently, through the efforts of Lord Odo 
Russell, O'Reilly's sentence was further commuted to twenty 
years' penal servitude. We will not follow him through his va- 
rious English prisons Arbor Hill, where Robert Emmet had 
been before him ; Mountjoy ; Pentonville ; Millbank, where he had 
his six months' solitary confinement ; Dartmoor, where trje mid- 
summer task was the pounding of putrefying bones, the refuse ol 
the prison, in a shed on the brink of the prison cesspool, and 
where the men were in such state of semi-starvation . that they 
would eat anything that a dog would eat. 

Fac-simile pages of some of his letters to his family from 
prison are given in the life. While awaiting sentence in Arbor 
Hill he wrote : 

" Not a word yet not even a hint of what my doom is to 
be ; but whatever it may be I'm perfectly content. God's will 
be done. It has done me good to be in prison ; there is more 
to be learned in a solitary cell than any other place in the 
world a true knowledge of one's self." 

" Never grieve for me, I beg of you. God knows I'd be 
only too happy to die for the cause of my country. Pray for 
us all ; we are all brothers who are suffering." 

After the life-sentence : 

"I wrote these slips before I knew my fate, and I have 
nothing more to say, only God's holy will be done ! If I only 
knew that you would not grieve for me I'd be perfectly happy 
and content. My own dear ones, you will not be ashamed of 
me at any rate ; you all love the cause I suffer for as well as 
I, and when you pray for me pray also for the brave, true- 
hearted Irishmen who are with me. Men who do not under- 
stand our motives may call us foolish or mad, but every true 
Irish heart knows our feelings and will not forget us. Don't 
come here to bid me good-by through the gate. I could never 
forget that. I'll bid you all good-by in a letter. 

" God bless you ! JOHN." 

O'Reilly had made up his mind to do his utmost to pre- 
serve the health of mind and body through the term of his im- 
prisonment. 

" Some people would call it strange " we quote from a 
MS. of O'Reilly's printed for the first time in this volume 



204 JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. [May r 

" that I should still regard that cell in which I spent nearly a 
year of solitary confinement with affection ; but it is true. Man 
is a domestic animal, and to a prisoner with ' 20 years ' on his 
door the cell is Home. I look back with fond regard to a 
great many cells and a great' many prisons in England and 
Australia, which are associated to my mind in a way not to be 
wholly understood by any one but myself." 

He bore the term of solitary confinement a punishment 
which has unhinged many strong minds wonderfully well. 

" He found solace," writes his biographer, ''in his thoughts 
and in the pages of The Imitation of Christ, which he was al- 
lowed to read ; but he endured many hours of the keenest an- 
guish. At times his mind was abnormally active ; he felt an 
exaltation of the soul such as an anchorite knows ; he had 
ecstatic visions.'-' 

But sometimes the vigorous physical nature of the man 
and he was only twenty-three asserted itself. He made three 
successive attempts to escape, each ending in recapture and the 
punishment cell. 

O'Reilly was one of the sixty-three political prisoners on the 
ship Hougoumont, which sailed for the penal settlement of West 
Australia November 23, 1867. It carried also 320 criminal con- 
victs. " A convict ship," wrote O'Reilly, describing the voy- 
age, "is a floating hell." Its .horrors were mitigated for him,, 
however, by the kindness of the ship's chaplain, Father De- 
laney. Arrived at the penal settlement he found another friend 
in the person of Father Lynch, Catholic chaplain of Free- 
mantle prison, who had him detailed as assistant in the li- 
brary, and finally it was a Catholic priest, Father Patrick 
McCabe, who planned and helped his escape from the con- 
vict settlement of Bunbury, a little more than a year later. 

Of his year in Bunbury his biographer writes : 

"Among the criminals with whom he was forced to associ- 
ate were some of the most degraded of human kind murder- 
ers, burglars, sinners of every grade and color of vice. They 
were the poison flower of civilization's corruption, more depraved 
than the savage, as they were able to misuse the advantages of 
superior knowledge. They were the overflow of society's cess- 
pool, the irreclaimable victims of sin too often the wretched 
fruits of heredity or environment. Happily for the young, gen- 
erous, clean-minded rebel, who had been doomed to herd with 
this prison scum, God had given him the instincts of pure hu- 
manity ; and ill-fortune, instead of blighting, had nourished their 



1891.1 JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 205 

growth. He looked upon his fellow- sufferers with eyes of mercy, 
seeing how many of them were the victims, directly or indirect- 
ly, of cruel, selfish social conditions. In the Australian bush he 
saw humanity in two naked aspects : the savage, utterly ignor- 
ant of civilized virtues as of civilized vices; and the white con- 
vict, stripped of all social hypocrisies, revealing the worst traits 
of depraved humanity. Both were 'naked and not ashamed.' 
For the savages, so-called, he entertained a sincere and abiding 
admiration. ' Why/ he said, years afterwards, ' I found that 
those creatures were men and women, just like the rest of us ; 
the difference between those poor black boys and the men of 
the Somerset Club was only external. I have good friends 
among those Australian savages to-day, that I would be as 
glad to meet as any man I know. " 

The date of his escape from Bunbury is February 'i 8, 1860. 
He was taken up by a Yankee whaler, the Gazelle, of New 
Bedford, Mass., Captain David R. Gifford commanding, Henry 
C. Hathaway third mate. Here it is well to advert to a slander 
which, writes Mr. Roche, " in keeping with its character, did not 
find voice until the subject of it was dead " namely, that 
O'Reilly had broken his " parole " in escaping from the penal 
settlement This slander may have had its 'root in the reference 
of Sir William Vernon Harcourt to O'Reilly's escape as the 
crime of prison-breach in the House of Commons in the win- 
ter of 1885,' when amnesty was asked (without O'Reilly's 
knowledge, be it said) for O'Reilly and James Stephens. When 

k O'Reilly learned of the inclusion of his name in the petition 
he promptly cabled : " Kindly withdraw my name." 
After his death the London Times revived the cry of convict 
and prison-breach. Searching inquiry, continues his biographer, 
has failed to discover any one willing to stand sponsor to the 
lie of broken parole. Its prompt refutation came from Captain 
Henry C. Hathaway, now of New Bedford, Mass., and the Rev. 
Patrick McCabe, now of Waseca, Minn., both of whom were 
parties to his escape. Writes Father McCabe : 

" ST. MARY, WASECA COUNTY, MINN., 

"November 19, 1890. 
" MY DEAR MR. ROCHE : 

" I have your letter of the 6th inst. Absence from home pre- 
vented an earlier reply. John Boyle O'Reilly never broke his 
parole, never having one to break. From the day that he land- 
ed from the convict ship Hougoumont, in Freemantle, up to the 
day of his escape from Bunbury, he had been under strict sur- 
veillance, and was looked upon as a very dangerous man and 



206 JOHN Bo YLE O'REILL y. [May, 

treated as such. No man living knows this better than I do. 
Silence the vile wretch that dares to slander the name of our 
dear departed friend, and you will have my blessing. 

" Yours ^sincerely, P. McCABE." 

O'Reilly landed in Philadelphia November 23, 1869, and on 
the same day presented himself before the United States Dis- 
trict Court and took out his first papers of naturalization. In 
the summer of 1870 we find him settled in Boston, employed 
by Mr. Patrick Donahoe, founder and proprietor of The Pilot > 
as editor of that newspaper. Six years later, when through 
blameless financial misfortunes The Pilot passed out of Mr. 
Donahoe's hands, O'Reilly bought a one-fourth interest in it ; 
the Most Rev. John J. Williams, Archbishop of Boston, purchas- 
ing the rest. The new proprietors assumed the debt of $73,000 
due to poor depositors in Mr. Donahoe's bank at the time of 
his failure, and paid it out of the profits of The Pilot in ten an- 
nual instalments. 

In entering into association with Archbishop Williams in the 
management of The Pilot O'Reilly said to him : " I will con- 
duct The Pilot as becomes an Irishman, a Catholic, and a gen- 
tleman. And," said the archbishop, after death had severed 
their fourteen years' association, "he kept his word." 

With his work as a journalist John Boyle O'Reilly began his 
Providential mission. Twenty-one years ago the position ( of 
Catholics in New England was far other than it is to-day. 
They were strong in numbers. The splendid vitality of their 
faith was manifest in its powers of endurance ; but in wealth, in- 
fluence, and independence of spirit they were woefully behind the 
Catholics of other long-settled sections of the country. There 
was reason for this. The immigration to Boston from Ireland, 
whose beginnings antedate the present century, drew largely 
from the most oppressed districts. The immigrants who fled from 
landlord tyranny and Protestant intolerance at home found a 
vigorous transplant of the arrogant Anglo-Saxon political feeling 
to the " mere Irish " and a grim and dominant Puritanism await- 
ing them on the new shores. 

Notwithstanding Matignon and Cheverus, and the Protestant 
Governor Sullivan, Catholic and Irish were, from the outset, 
simply interchangeable terms and terms of odium both in the 
popular New England mind. In vain the bond of a common 
language. In vain the Irishman's prompt and affectionate ac- 
ceptance of the duties of American citizenship. To but slight 



1891.] JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 207 

softening of prejudice even his sacrifice of blood and life on 
every battle-field in the Civil War, in proof of the sincerity of 
his political profession of faith. He and his were still hounded as 
a class inferior and apart. They were almost unknown in the 
social and literary life of New England. Their pathetic sacrifices 
for their kin beyond the sea, their interest in the political for- 
tunes of the Old Land, were jests and by-words. Their religion 
was the superstition of the ignorant, vulgar, and pusillanimous ; 
or, at best, motive for jealous suspicion of divided political al- 
legiance and threatened " foreign " domination. Their children 
suffered petty persecutions in the public schools. The stage and 
the press faithfully reflected the ruling popular sentiment in their 
caricatures of the Catholic Irishman. 

Naturally, in an atmosphere so closely resembling that of the 
land of bondage, the New England Catholics, as a community,, 
developed marked characteristics of reserve, caution, and slight 
self-esteem. 

It is true that while the church was poor and weak, and dis- 
tinctively allied with the foreign element, it attracted many con- 
verts from old New England families of wealth, position, and in- 
tellectual prominence. These accessions, however, had no very 
perceptible influence on the fortunes of the body Catholic. The 
bond of unity of faith can co-exist with marvellous divergences 
on all other points ; and the convert, who had neither racial nor 
social sympathies with the mass of his fellow-religionists, was 
hardly fitted to be interpreter and reconciler between them and 
the dominant class, with whom, in all but religion, his heart was. 

What the despised " foreign " element needed was a lay leader,. 
of one blood as well as of one faith with themselves. Catholic 
and Irish, he had also to embody in his own person, so bril- 
liantly that the dullest or most unwilling eyes must see them,, 
those qualities which the Protestant Anglo-American had hereto- 
fore most prized as the visible sign of his own superiority. He 
came in the persoa of John Boyle O'Reilly. 

There was many a riper scholar, many a better lay theologian,, 
among the Catholics of the United States, but lacking the natural 
gifts and the providential training which made O'Reilly the great 
educative influence which he became among Irish-Americans 
and all other Americans. It is ill to underrate the natural 
man. O'Reilly was gifted with rare beauty and personal mag- 
netism. The rough experience of barracks, prison, and convict 
colony had not impaired the courtly manners which were his in- 
heritance. He was naturally brave, modest, and tactful. Suffer- 



2o8 JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. [May, 

ing had made him patient, sympathetic, and magnanimous. He 
was a pleasing speaker, a promising journalist. A true poet, he 
came in time to have part with Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller 
and John Hay in that literary .movement which Mr. Roche hap- 
pily calls " the renaissance of natural poetry." 

He made this grand equipment effective, first by his loyal 
identification of himself with everything pertaining to his own race 
and faith. He preached to the first colored class-orator of Har- 
vard in 1890 only what he practised in his own person in 1870, 
for in many ways the Irish Catholics in New England were at 
that time subjects of an ostracism hardly less galling than that 
which chafes the self-respecting negro to-day. " There are digni- 
ty and power in his hands," wrote John Boyle O'Reilly of Cle- 
ment Garnett Morgan, "if he be true to himself, which consists 
In being true to his people. Let no weak nerve draw him for 
an instant from their loving association. Their virtues are his 
own; let him labor to reduce their faults. The Anglo-Saxon 
will accept him only when he has proved his strength in the 
mass." This was the spirit in which his presence appealed to 
Boston, and his words to the great constituency which he reach- 
ed every week through The Pilot. The founder of The Pilot 
had built up for it a national circulation in the 4o's, when it 
.had the field of Catholic journalism almost to itself. This 
O'Reilly maintained in the face of a more critical generation, and 
with competitors springing up on every side to divide the 
field. 

The unstinted infusion of his own individuality into its col- 
umns was the primal factor in this result; but he re-enforced 
his own work with contributions from able writers at home and 
abroad. He would have his paper an expression of the best 
thought, a mirror of the noblest achievements of the Irish blood 
and the Catholic faith the world over. 

" Don't moan that the Catholic press is poorly patronized," 
he would say, " but give the people a good paper, and they 
must take it." By his dignified and wisely generous manage- 
ment he made a paper at whose quality not even the most 
bigoted anti- Catholic could sneer. 

But John Boyle O'Reilly had not been many years in Bos- 
ton before it became a very perilous pastime to sneer at any- 
thing pertaining to Irish Catholics. All un-American discrimin- 
ation against them in politics or business met his instant and 
practical protest. He had a custom of publishing in The Pilot 
" free advertisements 17 for business houses which attempted, how- 



1891.] JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 209 

ever adroitly, the " no-Irish" or " no- Catholic'' policy. These 
advertisements would stand in a conspicuous place till the of- 
fending parties " came to Canossa/' so to speak. They usually 
came after the second advertisement. In the same way he would 
track to their cover, and pillory to the public gaze, the dark- 
lantern anti-Catholic societies, no matter how plausible their pro- 
claimed intent, or how close to him in social or literary interest 
their membership. 

No man dared say twice to him : " We don't mean your 
kind of Irish or Catholic, O'Reilly." All that bore the name 
was his, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh ; and this man, 
who cherished no personal enmities, who forgave and succored 
even the wretch who betrayed him, was merciless in his resent- 
ment of an insult to the least of his people, until condign satis- 
faction had been made. Thus he inspired a wholesome fear in 
the bully, and won the respect of all honest and fair-minded non- 
Catholics, for there is nothing your New England Yankee honors 
above "grit." 

"How gladly," writes his biographer, "he welcomed any 
praise of their virtues, how eagerly he jumped at the least ex- 
tenuation of their faults !'' And for what fault or crime could he 
not plead, and generally with sound philosophical basis, some ex- 
tenuating circumstance ? He had no patience with those exhort- 
ers, however well-meaning, who would reproach the Irish with 
a human, vice or folly, as if it were their own exclusive national sin. 

We have spoken of his enmity to secret societies. He pro- 
tested against them not only in the name of the religion which 
forbade them to his own people, but in the name of true Amer- 
icanism. They were a national danger, whatever the race or 
faith of their members. 

Thus, when the whole country was shocked by the murder 
of Dr. P. A. Cronin in Chicago, in the May of 1889: "This is 
the worst crime ever committed through the agency of secret 
societies since the murder of Morgan by the Free- Masons" 

" One of the worst consequences of England's long misgov- 
ernment of Ireland," said O'Reilly to the writer of this sketch, 
" is the number of Irish people born, so to speak, with mal- 
formed consciences." It was in a pause on the eve of publica- 
tion, while awaiting the verdict in the Cronin murder case, and 
the conversation drifted to the origin of the evil seeds which 
bore this poison-fruit in America. He told us of strange 
characters in the penal settlements men who had been mad- 
dened by the sins against justice which they saw daily commit- 

VOL. LIII. 14' 



2io JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. [May, 

ted in the name of law, growing to believe themselves heaven- 
commissioned to rid their country of tyrant or informer. " They 
were kindly, generous, scrupulous men on all other subjects," he 
added, "but here you struck flint. Enlightenment and remorse 
by-and-by ? Never. They told their deeds with calm satisfac- 
tion. They ate and slept like little children. They bore their 
punishment with a martyr's equanimity." All of which reminds 
one of Faber's remarks somewhere about brutality in war and 
agrarian outrages, and the occasional theological difficulty of de- 
ciding how far these crimes may be also sins ! 

O'Reilly, in common with all true-hearted Irish Catholics, 
hated the too-numerous association of his people with the liquor- 
traffic. The green-bedecked saloon on St. Patrick's Day was 
unconcealed pain and shame to him. But here again he found 
the evil fruit of alien misgovernment. " Intemperance went into 
Ireland with foreign rule," he said at the banquet of the Na- 
tional Catholic Total Abstinence Union in Boston, in 1888. 
And he continued : 

"You will find (and I say it as an outsider who has given 
the subject some consideration) that the saloon-keeper among the 
Irish people in this country is nearly always an emigrant. There 
are very few Irish- Americans born in this country who have gone 
into the liquor-trade. The people coming here from Ireland 
were unskilled. The thousands or tens of thousand industries 
which enter into the life of a prosperous nation were taken away 
from Ireland. 

"They were left with no opportunities whatever of acquiring 
knowledge other than that which pertained to the servile work of 
tilling the land, while the land was held by strangers. In Ireland 
a man with seven sons had seven farm laborers in his house ; in 
Boston, for instance, the same man would have seven sons at 
useful and perhaps different occupations. That is the reason why 
many of the men coming from Ireland, notwithstanding they 
were provident, thrifty, and ambitious, were tempted to go into 
the liquor business as a means of acquiring money more rapidly. 
That is one of the considerations .which I think ought to be re- 
membered by your organization as a reason for dealing lenient- 
ly with men in that traffic. But I believe that of all the classes 
affected by it, the first to relieve itself from the influence of the 
saloon is going to be the Irish-American class, because of these 
two facts : that we are not drunkards that we come from no de- 
graded or immoral stock ; and because we are learning all the 
manifold industries and means of an honorable living which are 
open to us in our American business centres." 



1891.] JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 211 

O'Reilly valued his personal advantages, his early- won liter- 
ary fame, and immense social popularity and influence chiefly as 
they promoted the cause of his people. And how effectively 
they promoted it ! As one of his thousand friends in the priest- 
hood, the Rev. Arthur J. Teeling, truly said : 

" Like Esther of old, he went among his country's enemies and 
made them her friends; he exalted the condition of the people of 
his race ; he won for them, for his native land, respect and esteem.'' 

" A convict self-emancipated, he set us free," said Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson of O'Reilly's work as a dispeller of old 
Puritan, anti-Catholic prejudice in Boston. 

George Parsons Lathrop, the author, who has become a 
Catholic since O'Reilly's death, publicly owned that he had never 
been able to throw off the shackles of New England tradition and 
the narrowness of vision engendered by it, so as to see human 
life and thought in their entire relations, till he met O'Reilly in 
Boston literary club circles. 

But if he was thus jealous for the rights of Irish-American 
Catholics, and intent on their intellectual and social advancement, 
he was never unmindful of their duties. He would have Irish- 
Americans the best of Americans, not only for their own sakes, 
but for the sake of America and Catholicity. Almost his first 
editorial utterance in The Pilot was a scathing rebuke to the Irish 
Catholics who had attacked the Orange parade in New York, 
on July 12, 1870. This while the Irish- American journals of 
New York and elsewhere (for the soothing of the wounded van- 
ity of their constituencies) were denouncing Governor Hoffman 
for permitting the Orangemen to march, and denouncing the mil- 
itia for the bloodshed and loss of life attendant on the subduing 
of the riots. 

" Why," he indignantly demanded, " must we carry, wherever 
we go, those accursed and contemptible island feuds ? Shall we 
never be shamed into the knowledge of the brazen impudence of 
allowing our national hatreds to disturb the peace and the safety 
of the respectable citizens of this country? Must the day come 
when the degrading truth cannot be muffled up : that the mur- 
derous animosity of Irish partyism has became a public nuisance 
in almost every corner of the world ? We cannot dwell on this 
subject We cannot, and we care not to, analyze this mountain 
of disgrace, to find out to which party the blame is attached. 
Both parties are to be blamed and condemned ; for both have 
joined in making the name of Irishmen a scoff and a by-word 
this day in America." 



212 JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. [May, 

He granted the bitterness of the Orange insults to the reli- 
gion of the majority of Irishmen, and the Orange alliance with 
American Know-nothingism ; but added : " If our Know-nothing 
snake attack us, we must ever remember that we can cure its 
bite by the plant of toleration, and kill itself with the whip ot 
ridicule." 

This was a new Irish gospel from a layman, but singularly in 
line with the pastoral letter of Bishop Rosecrans, of Columbus, 
which appeared at the same time. Received with disappointment 
and displeasure at first an Irish contemporary had naively voiced 
national sentiment by describing under the head of "Orange 
Outrage" the sound drubbing which several Orangemen, appear- 
ing in their regalia, had received at the hands of their Catholic 
neighbors ! O'Reilly's counsel commended itself to the approving 
second thought of his justice-loving countrymen. 

Strangely enough, as his biographer notes, " the last words that 
he ever penned for The Pilot, after twenty years of untiring ser- 
vice as the guide and friend and counsellor of his people, were in 
condemnation of the foolish, futile, dangerous dissensions among 
men who, enlisted in the service of their country, would forget 
the enemy before them to turn their arms against one another." 

O'Reilly had equally stern condemnation for Irishman or Eng- 
lishman, Catholic or Protestant, who sought to introduce foreign 
issues into American politics. Of an attempt to form an " Irish- 
American Party" in 1872 he wrote: "The day. is surely coming 
when the necessity of punishing the author of such criminal fol- 
ly will be forced upon the Irish people of America." And a 
year later on the same theme : 

" The Irishman who would proscribe a native American, and 
the native American who would proscribe an Irishman, are guilty 
of the same crime against the principles of the Constitution. But 
the Irishman is guilty of more than the other; when he joins a 
secret society he is recreant to his religion; when he joins a pro- 
scriptive society he is recreant to his citizenship." 

He would as strongly have condemned the wild proposal of 
a " Catholic party " to-day. " Advance the Catholic cause on 
citizen lines," was his constant urging. Let Catholics by their 
character, education, patriotism, compel respect and the recog- 
nition of their right to that political or other preferment for 
which they are fitted. Let them advance themselves in journal- 
ism, letters, business, society, and everywhere remember that 
they have the honor of their faith in their hands. 



1891.] TOHN BOYLE O'REILLY. 213 

O'Reilly attended the Catholic Congress held in connection 
with the American Catholic Centenary celebration November 1 1 
and 12, 1889; and was appointed one of the committee on fu- 
ture Catholic congresses. This committee met in Boston, July 
25, 1890. Ten days before the meeting he wrote of it to his 
friend, Thomas B. Fitz, president of the Catholic Union of Bos- 
ton : 

u I am a member of the committee, but I have almost de- 
cided to resign after giving my reasons to the committee. I 
am convinced that national conventions of citizens called as 
Catholics, or as Baptists, Methodists, etc., are uncalled for, and 
in the case of the Catholics particularly are apt to be injurious 
rather than beneficial. 

" If we had reason, as the German Catholics have had, to 
protest against national legislation, we should be only doing our 
duty in holding national conventions. But we have no reason 
of this kind, nor of any kind, that I can see. I do not believe 
that the judgment of the Catholics of the country advises the 
project of formulating any distinct Catholic policy in America." 

Similarly he spoke to Cardinal Gibbons in Boston for a 
meeting of the American archbishops on the day before the 
meeting. He added that if, however, such congresses should 
confine their papers and discussions to subjects coming legiti- 
mately under the jurisdiction of laymen, and should seek to 
remedy certain local disadvantages under which Catholics labor, 
he would certainly approve of them. He instanced as practical 
subjects the great question of colonization, whereby our peo- 
ple might be to a great extent diverted from cities and thickly- 
populated centres, to seek homes for themselves and their fami- 
lies in agricultural districts. " Aiding and directing emigrants," 
he continued, " especially emigrant girls strangers in a strange 
land is another matter which appealed to our race and human- 
ity to consider and amend present conditions. The encourage- 
ment of temperance, a careful analysis of the labor problem, 
and such like practical questions, would offer abundant matter 
and range for profitable discussion." 

The Cardinal showed great interest in O'Reilly's views, and 
said that they were well worthy of serious consideration, that 
there was much to be said in favor of them, that the Con- 
gress would be open to no objections, and could not involve 
any dangerous complications, and would be received with gene- 
ral favor by the American people if its programme comprised 



2 1 4 JOHN Bo YLE O'REILL v. [May, 

benevolent and economic subjects, affecting the moral and so- 
cial well-being of our people, and such subjects as would foster 
and develop a healthy spirit of patriotism, a love for our politi- 
cal institutions, and if it at ''the same time exposed and de- 
nounced all political corruptions and innovations which endan- 
gered the perpetuity of our cherished civil heritage. 

Archbishop Ireland, Archbishop Riordan, Bishop Spalding,, 
and other bishops, besides a majority of the laymen attending 
the meeting, received Mr. O'Reilly's suggestions with equal 
favor. 

On the other hand, he entered heartily into the project of a 
Catholic educational exhibit at the World's Exposition in Chi- 
cago in 1893, as a definite and immediate work to be furthered 
by the committee on future congresses. 

John Boyle O'Reilly was a steady and consistent advocate ot 
Catholic popular education. We are sorry to miss from his 
quoted editorial utterances his article on the perfect Catholic 
school. 

"There is one way," he said, "to make Catholic parochial 
schools the most popular in America, even with non-Catholics: 
make them the best schools in the country by an all-round 
training intellectually, spiritually, physically, and manually. 

" In intellectual and spiritual training the Catholic schools 
are the best now ; and in physical training, ince the advent of 
the parish gymnasiums, they are sure to excel; but to complete 
their excellence they must train the pupils in the skilful use of 
their hands, in the use of the few tools that underlie all me- 
chanical work, in free-hand drawing, etc. 

"The parochial and convent schools have an immense ad- 
vantage as manual training-schools. They are independent, un- 
hampered by cast-iron' rules and ignorant committee inspection,, 
and free to take advantage of every form and opportunity of 
instruction. 

" Here are the elements ot a Catholic school : 

" Spiritual Instruction ; 
Intellectual Instruction ; 
Physical Instruction ; 
Manual Instruction. 

"The Kindergarten system can best be utilized by our con- 
vent schools. 

"The expense ot this added instruction, which is immensely 
beneficial, is not too heavy for the poorest parochial school. A 
few small foot-lathes, with turning-tools, scroll-saws, hand-saws, 
planes, chisels, hammers, drawing-paper, or blackboards, a few 



! 



1891.] JOHN Bo YLE O'REILL Y. 215 

hundred feet of cheap lumber, in a shed, with a good mechanic 
to train the hands of the youngsters to draw the design and use 
the necessary tools, and you have a department of the school 
which will be more popular than the literary department, and 
certainly quite as useful. Such a school will turn out more 
youths likely to succeed in the varied walks of life than any 
school based on the present exclusively literary system of in- 
struction." 

" Here is one result of Mr. O'Reilly's editorial on the four- 
fold training," said the reverend director of the Cathedral schools 
in Springfield, Mass., to the writer a year ago, displaying at the 
same time their fine gymnasiums and industrial departments. 
O'Reilly nearly always took part in the opening exercises of 
the parochial school gymnasiums. 

He educated his own children at the convents of the Visi- 
tation and the Sacred Heart. " I sent my children to the con- 
vent," he said, " and the convent sent me back angels." We 
have a pathetic memory of a little daughter fastening a medal 
of the Blessed Virgin on his canoe, and standing guard by him 
on Good Friday to see that he kept "the black fast" properly. 

Notre Dame University conferred the degree of doctor of 
laws on him in 1881 ; Georgetown University the same degree at 
its centenary in February, 1889. His last public utterance was 
an address to the students of Boston College during the com- 
mencement week" of 1 890. 

The project of an American Catholic University enlisted 
his warm sympathy and steadfast help. Invited to be the 
poet of its dedication day, he wrote for the occasion his 
" From the Heights." 

To John Boyle O'Reilly the brotherhood of man was the 
most literal of truths. He worked for the Negro-American 
in the same spirit in which he worked for the Irish- Ameri- 
can. The cry of the oppressed in Russia or Farther India 
or Central Africa smote his heart as sorely as if it came 
from his native Meath. A few months before his death he 
read with intense sympathy Cardinal Lavigerie's appeal for 
the suppression of the slave-trade in Africa. The cardinal 
declared that the infamous traffic could be suppressed by force 
of arms if only "one thousand men, prepared for suffering 
and sacrifice men who desired no reward or recompense, ex- 
cept that which the consciousness of having given away time, 
health, and even life, brings with it would undertake the 
task. If there are any such men in America," said the car- 



2 1 6 JOHN Bo YLE O'REILL Y. [May, 

dinal, " I will be glad to hear from them, and particularly 
glad to enroll the emancipated blacks in my little army." 

" There !" exclaimed O'Reilly, " that is the work I would 
like to do." 

" But for the hostages to fortune," adds his biographer, " I 
think he would have volunteered to raise the little army on 
the spot" 

Of the four notable poems of his maturity, one was for Ire- 
land, " The Exile of the Gael " ; one for America, " The Pilgrim 
Fathers " ; one commemorated Wendell Phillips ; and one the 
negro proto-martyr of American liberty, Crispus Attucks. His 
only novel, Moondyne, written but a few years after his escape 
from Australia, was based, not, as one would naturally expect, on 
the Irish national struggle, in one phase of which he bore so 
notable a part, but on phases of English life. Its hero, Joseph 
Wyville, " Moondyne " to the Australian aborigines, was an 
Englishman. Its motive was the reform of the English penal 
system. This gives the measure of the man. 

It may be remembered that Moondyne was severely criti- 
cised by some Catholic journalists on the ground that neither in 
its chief character nor its spirit was it Catholic. Answering a 
very intemperate attack on the book, O'Reilly said : 

" To demand of a Catholic author that his chief character 
shall be a Catholic is absurd. A novelist must study types as 
they exist." . . . The author " put the man there who actually 
belonged to the place. The leading traits of ' Moondyne ' were 
mainly studied from the life. . . . There is not, could not be, 
an anti- Christian word in Moondyne. If there were it should 
not stand one moment. The words put up and knocked down 
by Mr. McMaster are not in Moondyne. They are his own." 

It is relevant to repeat here the judgment of a wise priest, 
who was also a close friend of O'Reilly's : 

" John Boyle O'Reilly's temptation, not always successfully 
resisted, was to make too much of the goodness of human na- 
ture, without due advertence to its need of supernatural -help. 
This he was overcoming with maturing years, and the deeper 
knowledge and more regular practice of his faith. He thought 
so well of human nature because he judged other men by himself. 
He was a great natural man." 

Here is the explanation of whatever may disappoint the 
Catholic reader in Moondyne. 






1891.] JOHN BOYLE Cf REILLY. 217 

A Catholic monarchist would condemn some of his poems 
as " revolutionary." But devotion to monarchical traditions 
forms no part of the religion which flourishes best in the at- 
mosphere of freedom; and John Boyle O'Reilly was too firm 
in faith and reverence to be a revolutionist, in the evil, Old 
World sense of the word. His friend, the Rev. Thomas J. Co- 
naty, D.D., read him aright : " Liberty was his life-idea God 
its source and Humanity its application." 

Absolutely free, as another priest, the Very Rev. Wm. Byrne, 
D.D , V.G., of Boston, noted, from " that intellectual pride and 
self-sufficiency which impel some men ... to invent a way 
of salvation all their own," he was a practical Catholic. For 
many years previous to his death he had approached the sacra- 
ments every three months. He always kept the anniversary of 
his marriage with Holy Communion. He went to his religious 
duties with the readiness and simplicity of a child. 

A Protestant friend, the Hon. E. A. Moseley, of Washington, 
sharer of many a vacation trip with O'Reilly, writes: " What 
most impressed me in Boyle's character . . . was his childlike 
faith in the teachings of his youth, his firm, unshaken conviction 
and his beautiful trust and repose in his religion." 

He writes himself of the church to another Protestant friend: 
" A great, loving, generous heart will never find peace and 
comfort and field of labor except within her unstatistical, sun- 
like, benevolent motherhood. J., I am a Catholic just as I am 
a dweller on the planet." 

If anything could have tried his faith it would have been 
an apparent conflict between the interest of the Irish national 
cause and the obligations of religion. But when the Papal re- 
script of 1888 against the "plan of campaign" and "boycot- 
ting " was proving a stumbling-block to many a patriotic Irish- 
man in America and in the Old Land, O'Reilly simply said : 

" If there be in our political machinery one or more separ- 
ate practices that can be morally condemned, we shall not hesi- 
tate to change them for the better. We reiterate our deep 
respect for the word and person of the Holy Father; and we 
reassert our unquestionable right to continue our ancient and 
honorable struggle for national self-government." 

In this spirit he wrote all through the troubled season which 
followed ; and his wise, manly, and Christian course won warm 
commendation at Rome and from the Irish bishops. 

Cardinal Gibbons, in his introduction to the Life of O'Reilly, 



2 1 8 JOHN Bo YLE O'REILL y. [ay, 

praises " the conservative prudence, scarcely to be expected in 
one so vehement by nature," with which he usually handled 
burning questions. 

" Kindness was the fruit, Courtesy the flower, of John Boyle 
O'Reilly's character," writes his biographer. He was naturally 
kind, but let us remember that " kindness springs from that 
part of man's nature where God's image is engraven deepest." 
His charity included not only generous giving of money, time, 
and influence, but that which sometimes costs more gentleness 
of judgment, kind interpretation of motive, prompt forgiveness 
of injuries. He was scrupulous in his regard not only for the 
rights but even for the vanity of others. " I hate sarcasm as a 
quality in life or in writing," he said. He found something to 
respect in every creature. If he impulsively wronged or hurt 
any one, he never rested till he had made generous reparation. 
He was slow to suspect and incapable of jealousy. 

He put all these characteristics into his journalistic work. 
" Never do as a journalist what you would not do as a gentle- 
man'' ; " Conquer by magnanimity," were his constant counsels 
to his associates. He could not have endured association with 
a suspicious or vindictive character. He would not admit the 
possibility of anything but generous rivalry and a community 
of interest among Catholic newspapers. He proclaimed with 
pleasure every addition to their numbers, every evidence of any 
one's prosperity. He would have no quarrel with another jour- 
nalist of his own faith. " See only the good in those who are 
working for the common cause," was another watchword in his 
office. 

So he lived and labored, growing steadily in helpfulness and 
reverence and mercy, tuning his life more and more harmon- 
iously to the key-note himself had chosen : " Not love but 
sacrifice." He had made a great place for himself ; he had 
wrought a great work for his fellow-men ; and he was still 
young enough to justify the hope that nobler achievements were 
in store for him, when Humanity was called to write Irreparable 
against the calamity of his death. He had no peer ; he left no 
heir-apparent to his own peculiar place and work ; but his mem- 
ory and example are vital forces still, and the sacrificial seed 
he sowed so lavishly must bear befitting harvest. 

KATHERINE E. CONWAY. 






1891.] " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" 219 

"WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" 

THE QUESTION ANSWERED. 

THE above question forms the title ot an article by Mr. 
Felix Oswald lately published in The Arena. This article is 
one proof of the general neglect into which sound logic has 
fallen at the present time, of the scarcity of solid science con- 
trolled by a justly rigorous adherence to principles in a certain 
section of the literary world, and of the extreme facility with 
which it admits fantastic theories under the guise of popularized 
.science. 

Every one who has the least knowledge of Christianity and 
Bouddhism, on reading the somewhat singular title of the afore- 
mentioned article, must say at once that the answer to the 
question it proposes is assuredly negative. How great, then, is 
the surprise of even the least intelligent reader when he finds 
Mr. Oswald asserting in the most naive manner that Christ was 
a remote disciple of Sakyamouni ! After such a statement, we 
look for at least some new and solid proof, and are extremely 
surprised to find the entire article filled up with mere assertions, 
supported only by the weakest reasoning, betraying an altogether 
insufficient knowledge of the subject, a lamentable ignorance, 
even, of those things which any writer who attempts to treat of 
topics of this kind is bound to know. 

We will not stop to consider such sort of assertions as those 
which Mr. Oswald puts forth, when, e. g., he tells us that the 
knowledge of Bouddhism must have been extended even as far 
as Palestine long before the birth of Christ. Statements of this 
kind cannot be hazarded without some evidence to back them ; 
and when history does not furnish even feeble and insignificant 
support to a thesis, one refrains from affirming it, or else incurs 
the just reproach of drawing on his imagination for his facts ; a 
procedure which science does not tolerate, and which renders the 
fanciful theorist unworthy of serious treatment. 

We dismiss, therefore, these hypotheses of Mr. Oswald with- 
out discussion, and make him welcome to all the benefit he can 
get from them. The question how far Bouddhism was or was 
not propagated beyond India is one of secondary importance. 
What is essential is a comparison between religious doctrines, 



220 " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" [May, 

legends, and narrations, and an examination of their mutual re- 
lations. 

According to Mr. Oswald, Christ must have been an adept 
of Bouddhism, the Gospel an echo of the Bouddhist books, be- 
cause there are such resemblances between the founders of the 
two great religions under consideration, between the histories 
whether real or legendary of both, that the hypothesis of a de- 
rived origin of one from the other imposes itself upon every im- 
partial mind. 

This is the point we are going to examine, in order to dis- 
cover how far the hypothesis of Mr. Oswald is tenable. We 
will begin with doctrines. What were the doctrines preached by 
Sakyamouni become a Bouddha ? It is not easy to determine 
this question, if one consult Western authors. Moreover, one 
who adopts this course is easily exposed to the accusation of 
having chosen the opinion most favorable to the view sustained 
by himself and to his personal religious beliefs. In order to 
avoid this accusation we will borrow from the Bouddhists them- 
selves the statement of their profession of faith. This proce- 
dure is very much facilitated by the recent publication of a 
Bouddhist Catechism, edited by a doctor of the religion of 
Bouddha for the use of his coreligionists and of Bouddhist 
missionaries in Christian and Mohammedan countries. Its au- 
thor is the Bhikshu or mendicant monk Subhadra, who is a 
high authority among the believers in Nirvana. His work 
being too long to be quoted entire in this article, we shall 
give a very exact abstract of its contents, preserving the very 
words of the author. 

The catechism of Subhadra is composed of an introduction 
explaining the fundamental principles of the Bouddhist doctrine, 
and of three sections explaining in detail each of these funda- 
mental principles. 

The introduction describes at the outset the Bouddhist. 

He is one who reveres Bouddha as the dispenser of spiritual 
light, the supreme teacher and guide of all living beings; who 
also, believing in his doctrine, observes its precepts and has 
given a public testimony of his faith by repeating the formula of 
Recourse, so-called. 

This formula is thus composed : 

1 have recourse to Bouddha. 

1 have recourse to the doctrine (Dharma, the law). 

I have recourse to the community of believers (Sangha). 

By this formula one professes faith in Bouddha as his spirit- 



1891.] " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST? " 221 

ual master, recognizes his doctrine as the basis and essence of 
truth and rectitude, and acknowledges the community of the 
elect as the faithful interpreter of the teachings of truth. 

This formula is obligatory, and only after professing it in 
presence of a reunion of the faithful does one really become a 
member of the great Bouddhist community. 

Its three members are like three stars guiding the sea-farer 
over the sea of the world ; and one must add to it another for- 
mula expressing his respect for this sacred triad. 

Section i. The Bouddha. 

Bouddha is the founder of the kingdom of truth and right- 
eousness, the Blessed One who is self- illumined, perfect in holi- 
ness, in wisdom, and in mercy. 

He is neither a god nor the envoy of a god, come for the 
salvation of the world. He is a mere man, but infinitely supe- 
rior to ordinary men ; one of the long series of sublime, self- 
illumined Bouddhas who appear in the world at long intervals 
and are so morally and spiritually superior to suffering and dy- 
ing humanity that the childish imaginations of the multitude 
transform them into Gods or Messiahs. 

Bouddha is only a term of quality denoting a man who has 
acquired the true knowledge and moral perfection by his own 
efforts. 

After this preamble the author relates the life of Bouddha. 

The young prince who was destined to receive this title was 
a son of King Suddhodana, and Queen Maya, who reigned over 
the Indian tribe of the Sakya. He received at birth the name 
of Siddhartha, " the one who has perfectly attained his end." 
He was born in the year 623 B.C. Certain Brahmins of the 
royal court foretold that he would become a powerful monarch ; 
or otherwise, if he should renounce the world, a perfect 
Bouddha. Afterwards a holy hermit came from the Himalaya 
to venerate him and proclaim him the master of perfection and 
salvation. 

King Suddhodana, ardently desiring to see his son occupy 
the throne with glory, tried to hinder him from meditating on 
spiritual things, and to attach him to the world by luxury and 
enjoyments. He kept him confined in palaces and gardens 
where everything breathed pleasure and indulgence. He had a 
court composed of numerous young people, and the companions 
of his pleasures contributed to keep 'him attached to them. At 
the age of sixteen he was married to the Princess Yasodhara 
(bearer of glory), and numerous young girls, trained in the arts 



222 " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" [May, 

of music and the dance, nourished continually in his heart the 
love of diversions. 

In spite of these unceasing allurements, the Bouddha none 
the less became disgusted with f the world and its vanities. This 
reaction was occasioned by the view of four objects successively 
presented before his eyes. The first of these was a decrepit old 
man, the second a diseased man covered with sores, the next was 
a corpse, and the last a venerable hermit. He was led by the 
sight of these objects to perceive the nothingness of life, and the 
miseries which belong to it and at last bring it to a termination 
in death. No longer regarding earthly existence as a good and 
a boon, but as an evil which one ought carefully to shun, and 
seeing in sensual pleasures a source of corruption and misfortunes, 
he resolved to pursue an end better than a wretched life termi- 
nating in death. From this time forth he sought for the means 
of escaping from suffering, death, from the re-births in which he 
believed like the disciples of the Brahmins, and resolved to. imi- 
tate the holy hermit the sight of whom had so deeply moved him. 

The trial which he underwent was made more violent by the 
efforts of his relatives and his wife, who left nothing untried to 
turn him aside from his new design. But nothing could shake 
his resolution. One night, while all. were sound asleep, he arose 
noiselessly, cast a parting glance upon his wife and child, had his 
horse saddled, and departed hastily in the darkness, flying with 
the utmost speed of his horse. He was accompanied by his 
faithful squire Tcharna. After a long gallop he halted, gave his 
arms, jewels, and horse to his companion, and sent him back to 
recount what he had witnessed to his relatives and his wife. 

Being left alone, Siddhartha remained seven whole days on 
the bank of a river engaged in meditation upon the great truths 
which had impressed his mind ; after which, having exchanged 
clothes with a beggar whom he met in that neighborhood, he went 
to the capital of the kingdom of Magadha, called Ragagriha, or 
dwelling-place of kings. 

In that place, seeking for the truth of which he had yet ob- 
tained only imperfect glimpses, and wishing to, arrive at the solu- 
tion of the great problem of pain and death, he attended the 
school of two learned and pious Brahmins whose reputation was 
high in Magadha. 

They instructed him to seek for salvation in religious practices, 
whose effect should be to incline to mercy that principle which 
is the author of the world. But Siddhartha, who had on this oc- 
casion taken the name of Gotama, soon felt the emptiness and 



1891.] " WAS CHXIST A BUDDHIST?" 223 

insufficiency of their doctrines, and betook himself to other 
Brahmins who taught mortification as the means of obtaining 
deliverance from earthly evils and from re-birth. Yielding at once 
to their persuasion, he gave himself up to the most violent aus- 
terities, and that for the space of six years. He went so far as 
to lose his bodily strength and to fall into a state of weakness 
which was nearly mortal. He then understood that these aus- 
terities served only to trouble his soul and arrest his progress in 
the path of virtue. He abandoned them without hesitation, and 
w.as himself abandoned by his companions in penance as an ascetic 
who was a traitor to his duty. 

Caring little for their disapproval, Gotama went on his way, 
meditating and seeking always in his mind the solution which 
he had been so long pursuing. 

A prophetic dream had apprised him that he was approach- 
ing the goal of his efforts. After a long meditation, he sat down 
under a fig-tree, his face turned toward the East, resolved not to 
get up till he had reached the end of his aspirations. 

He was then and there attacked by a violent temptation. 
All the human desires of greatness, glory, and pleasure arose in 
him at once, and the goods of the earth presented themselves be- 
fore him under the most seductive aspect. 

He felt as if he were vanquished ; but he remained uncon- 
querable, shook off these dreams, rejected these phantoms, and 
came forth victorious from the mortal combat. 

Then the veil which hid from him the truth fell from before 
his eyes ; he was suddenly enlightened (bouddha), and the truth 
was disclosed to his view. 

He understood the cause of birth, decay, pain, death, and re- 
births, and at the same time the remedy for these evils the way 
of deliverance of Nirvana. From this time he was bouddha. 

He had to undergo, nevertheless, a last trial, a final tempta- 
tion on the part of Mara, the spirit of evil and pleasure. He is- 
sued from this, as from the first conflict, victorious, repulsed the 
advances and seductions of the tempter, and protested that he 
would not die until he had preached and solidly established his 
doctrine, and thus provided the true and only means of salvation 
for men and gods. For, according to the Bouddhists, the gods, 
if they exist, are finite and transitory beings, subject to re- 
births, like men, although their life should extend to a period of 
many millions of years. The Bouddhist pays no regard to 
them, and looks upon the Saint of his doctrine as superior to 
all gods. 



224 " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" [May, 

The new Bouddha immediately began his itinerant work of 
sowing the good seed of the word. The first persons whom he 
encountered were the five ascetics who had quitted his company 
when he abandoned the life of. mortification which he had led at 
the outset. They still wished to shun him as an apostate from 
the true faith, but his majestic appearance, the sublime expres- 
sion of his countenance, made such a profound impression upon 
them, that they felt themselves vanquished, and submitted to his 
direction after a first sermon, in which he explained to them the 
fundamental principles of his doctrine. Henceforth they recog.- 
nized in him the man perfectly enlightened, the teacher of the 
truth, the guide to Nirvana. 

The Bouddha immediately received them as disciples and with 
them formed the first community (sangha), the primordial germ 
of the great Bouddhist church. The five converts were actually 
a productive germ, and in five months the number of his ascetic 
disciples had already reached sixty, besides a great many lay ad- 
herents. 

Seeing himself at the head of such a numerous troop of dis- 
ciples, the Bouddha resolved to disseminate the good doctrine in 
the world, and sent forth his disciples singly to preach the way 
of salvation, giving them their commission in these words : 

" You are now free from all bonds, human or divine. Go, 
preach salvation to all living beings through compassion for men. 
There are many people in the world of a right heart and a 
pure intention who will perish unless they hear you preach the 
doctrine of redemption. Go, and they will become, through you, 
supporters and confessors of the truth." 

After bidding farewell to his disciples, Bouddha continued 
his peregrinations, converting Brahmins, nobles, and kings. In 
the course of his journeys he came to his natal city. His father, 
shocked at first by the poverty of his mode of life as a mendi- 
cant ascetic, was eventually convinced by the words of the seer 
and introduced him with honor into his palace. There he 
made a similar impression on the heart of his wife Yasodhara, 
and received his son into the community of the elect. Soon 
afterwards he departed, to continue his mission far and wide in 
the world, and during forty- five years he incessantly preached 
the word of salvation. He went from city to city and from 
hamlet to hamlet, exhorting the people and teaching them by 
maxims and parables. During the rainy season only he re- 
tired to the abode of some, one of his disciples, or to one of the 



1891.] " W^s CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" 225 

demesnes which had been given to the infant community by 
opulent believers. 

Meanwhile the reputation of the Bouddha and of his doc- 
trine increased daily. Thousands of men and women of every 
rank and condition pressed around him, desiring to enter the 
monasteries of both sexes and to pronounce the higher vows, 
while a countless crowd embraced the practices enjoined upon 
persons living in the world. 

Neither the Bouddha nor his disciples became the object of 
any persecution. The only instance of attempted violence was a 
conspiracy planned by one of the chiefs of the elect against 
his life, for the sake of getting rid of him and usurping his 
place. Bouddha triumphed over his hatred by his inexhaust- 
ible goodness, and the unhappy man abandoned his criminal 
project. 

When he was eighty years old, the Bouddha felt his strength 
failing and his death drawing near. He informed his disciples 
of his condition, and admonished them to hold firmly and ex- 
clusively to the rules he had traced, rejecting unwaveringly 
everything which had even the appearance of a deviation. 

A little after .he sank into an extreme feebleness, and asked 
for water to assuage his thirst. His disciple Amouda ran to a 
neighboring spring, the water of which was always troubled and 
dirty. O wonder ! the water had become pure and limpid. At 
the same time the face of the Bouddha became so shining that 
a robe of cloth of gold in which he had been vested seemed 
to lose all its lustre. 

On the morrow he had himself laid upon a couch between 
two withered trees, when suddenly the two trunks were covered 
with blossoms which fell down upon the blessed man, while soft 
music was heard in the air. 

The Bouddha said : " You see, my brethren, how heaven and 
earth honor me ; but the true honor which ought to be given 
to me is to follow my instructions." He reminded them anew 
of the necessity of always conforming to his teaching, not be- 
lieving themselves to be left without any guide after the death 
of their chief, but looking to his doctrine for guidance. " For- 
get not," he added, "that whatever is born perishes. Put forth 
all your efforts to arrive at the deliverance"; and saying this, 
the blessed man departed from life.* 

* It is worthy of remark that our Bhikshu [from whom the author of the article has taken 
the above narration. Ed.~\ has passed over certain features of the legend which are little 
honorable to the hero. For instance, it relates that the Bouddha died from the consequences 
of an indigestion brought on by his gluttony. 
VOL. LIU. 15 



226 " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" [May, 

We have dwelt thus long on this part of our subject in or- 
_der that our readers may know well what sort of person he was 
whom some prefer to Christ. Let us now pass on to our next 
section. f * 

Section 2. The Law and Doctrine. The law is the true way 
of salvation, comprehended by intuition, announced by the Boud- 
dha and consigned to the holy books of the Bouddhists. These 
books are divided into three parts, containing, respectively, the 
words, discourses, maxims, and parables uttered by the Bouddha 
himself during his earthly life ; the moral and disciplinary precepts 
dictated by him for the direction of his communities ; the meta- 
physical doctrines upon which the moral principles of the Boud- 
dhist are founded. In order to comprehend this last class of 
books it is requisite to have reached a high perfection and % the 
state of intellectual superiority to which it gives rise. 

These books contain the pure truth, which is not found 
elsewhere, and which one ought to believe firmly ; yet he should 
by no means think that these truths were communicated by 
a divine or celestial revelation. That would be an essential 
error. The Bouddha was illuminated by himself, and was in- 
debted only to a light which arose spontaneously within his own 
intelligence. The revelation is the doctrine and the lessons 
which he taught to men involved in the darkness of ignorance 
and human passions. 

An essential feature of the doctrine of the Bouddha is, that 
he delivered it to men only from his natural goodness and com- 
passion, in order to aid them to escape from a condition in 
which they drag themselves from one miserable existence to an- 
other, from a current which bears them along through a thou- 
sand pains and sufferings from birth to death, and from one life 
to another. 

Bouddha's principal task was to discover the cause of all 
these miseries ; and he found it in the desire to live in attach- 
ment to life. 

The man who has gained insight into this truth must before 
everything else eradicate this desire from his heart, and he will 
succeed in doing this if he acknowledges and meditates upon 
the four great fundamental truths, namely : that life is insepara- 
ble from human miseries, that these miseries have a source, that 
this source must be cut off, and that to do this is possible. The 
man who is persuaded of these four axioms has lost the desire 
of life and is ripe for redemption. 

The Bouddha insisted strongly on the sufferings of life, which 



1891.] " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" 227 

was for him truly and only a vale of tears. Birth, sicknesses, old 
age, death, the loss of loved ones, the enforced contact with 
hated individuals, etc., made up the perpetual themes of his pes- 
simistic homilies and his exhortations to renounce their cause, 
to wit, the love of personal existence, which one should eradicate 
to the -last fibre from his heart. 

But this does not suffice for salvation, since it is necessary 
besides to follow the sublime eight-fold way, viz.: rectitude of 
view, of aspiration, of speaking, of manner of living, of conduct, ot 
efforts, of reflection, of recollection. 

The believer should abandon the t\vo extremes of sensual 
pleasures which debase, and of asceticism which torments and sad- 
dens without contributing to salvation. 

The middle way just indicated alone conducts to wisdom, to 
perfect understanding, to deliverance, to Nirvana. But what is 
this Nirvana or final state of the liberated man to which he is 
bound to aspire with all his desires, and after which he must 
strive with all his efforts? 

There are few conceptions which have given rise to more di- 
verse expositions and have remained more uncertain. For some 
it is annihilation, for others it is absorption in the great All. 
For others still it is a sort of paradise. 

According to our Bhikshu, it is a state of the heart in which 
every desire, every passion, every feeling of fear, pain, malevo- 
lence, have entirely disappeared ; a state of repose, of peace, and 
joy, through the assurance of complete and inamissible deliver- 
ance. But it is impossible to define Nirvana by language ; no 
one knows what it is unless he has experienced it in his heart* 

The Nirvana is the deliverance which one can attain even in 
this life. Nevertheless, many men are at present incapable of it ; 
all they can do is to secure a series of re-births, each more for- 
tunate than the foregoing one, until they reach the final term. 
In itself re-birth depends from our will ; it is produced only by 
the force of our attachment to life; this is the true creative pow- 
er which other religions have personified in God ; it is the agent 
creator, preserver, and destroyer, which is the true and only di- 
vine trinity. The conditions of re -birth depend from the man and 
his acts, or rather from the act, from that which is called the 
Karma (act). This Karma which works in us is not an individual 
virtuality, but a general potency diffused through the universe, and 
operating in every being ; it is the law of causes and effects in 

* It is altogether improbable that this was the primitive notion of the Bouddha's teaching. 
For him it was, more than probably, the annihilation of individual personality. 



228 " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST f " [May, 

the moral world, the law making causes produce their necessary 
consequences, individualizing itself in each one, and playing the 
part of what Christians call providence, destiny, or even God. 
But it is a blind and necessary force, operating fatally. 

The world has not been created ; it has not come out of 
nothing ; it is not the work of a divine creator a notion- which 
sprang from human ignorance, since there is no personal God, 
and no such thing as creation. As for the origin of the uni- 
verse, Bouddha has said nothing about it, regarding the know- 
ledge of this subject as useless for salvation. 

Moreover, human language cannot render an account of it, be- 
cause finite forms cannot express the eternal, tience, whenever 
men have attempted to explain it, they have been able to put 
forth only vain speculations, false and contradictory theories. 

When one shall have arrived at perfect illumination, he will 
then comprehend the true idea. But, to this end, he must be 
firmly resolved to walk in the eight-fold way. Every one can 
do this, on condition that he strive sincerely and enter into a 
community of the elect, in order to live secluded from the world, 
and aiming unceasingly at perfect wisdom. Few, alas ! are able 
to resolve to take this course. 

Besides the ascetics there is also a class of laical adherents to 
Bouddhism whose obligations are entirely different, and who can- 
not attain to perfection and the Nirvana because of their attach- 
ment to earthly goods and, in consequence, to life. 

A Bouddha, no more than, any other, can deliver us by his 
personal merits. God himself cannot preserve any one from the 
consequence of his acts, which follow them as a shadow follows 
a body, and spring from them necessarily. Wherefore, the whole 
Bouddhist doctrine may be resumed in the one word " justice"; 
and the notion of mercy is entirely shut out. 

The chastisements which are the consequences of crimes, even 
the most grievous, are not in themselves eternal, although they 
may be indefinitely protracted by the persevering impenitence of 
the criminal. These chastisements are not merely unhappy re- 
births, for Bouddhism recognizes also the existence of places of 
darkness and torment in which the criminal must expiate all his 
offences to the very last. Before this expiation has been accom- 
plished good works can have no effect to restore the condemned 
to a terrestrial re-birth, to a new knowledge of the way of sal- 
vation, and to the possibility of re-entering this path. 

The doctrine recognizes also the existence of places of de- 
light, in which the fruit of good works is enjoyed until it becomes 



1891.] " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" 229 

exhausted, after which one who retains an attachment to life is 
subject to a re -birth in fortunate conditions. 

According to the Bouddhist doctrine, our actual being is only 
a form which vanishes at death. Hence the question arises, 
What is that in us which survives and becomes embodied by a 
new birth ? 

This something is nothing else than our will, our desire to 
live, which constitutes the essence of our being, and which, by 
the operation of Karma, seizes on the elements necessary to re- 
construct and adapt to itself a new phenomenal form. 

This being so, what is the will which is able to produce 
this kind of phenomena ? Is it of the same nature with what 
we call a soul ? By no means. The belief in an individual, 
subsistent soul, having only a temporary existence in the body, 
is a gross, heretical error in the eyes of Bouddhists. The princi- 
ple called soul is only an aggregate of diverse faculties, which is 
dissolved at the death of -the subject. What is reincarnated after 
death is the individuality, which takes a new personality accord- 
ing to its Karma, and perpetuates itself from one existence to 
another until the arrival at Nirvana. Then only individualism is 
lost, and with it suffering, death, and re-birth finally cease.* 

Repentance for faults is good and can aid in obtaining per- 
fection and salvation, not by effacing faults and their consequen- 
ces, but by determining the believer not to commit the same 
again and to follow the good way. But it has no retroactive 
effect. Such is also the effect of prayers, pious reading, etc., but 
nothing beyond. A Bhikshu ought not to make use of such 
means, which are proper only for beginners. 

The universality of absolutely fatal laws leads the Bouddhist 
to acknowledge that salvation can be wrought out in all religions, 
although that of the Bouddhist renders it easier. 

Our author finishes his catechism by a concise resume of the 
essential characteristics of Bouddhism : 

1. The reign of perfect goodness and wisdom without a per- 
sonal God. 

2. The persistence of individuality without an immortal soul. 

3. Eternal happiness without a localized heaven. 

4. The way of salvation without an external Saviour, wrought 
out by each one without prayers, sacrifices, or penances, without 
the ministry of priests, without the intercession of any saint, with- 
out any divine mercy, but by a natural and necessary law. 

5. Complete perfection attainable in this life upon the earth. 

* This proves that Nirvdna is really the loss of personal existence. 



230 " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" [May, 

The teachings of the Bouddha are entirely exempt from errors. 
But the sacred books of Bouddhism which are not his work 
contain many which have crept into them in the process of 
time. 

The doctrine of Bouddha is in itself eternal, but new conditions 
of the universe may demand modifications suited to the times. 
New Bouddhas will come to teach and establish these. 

In fine, the actual Bouddhism is only one stage in the grand 
way of the illumination of humanity. Before Siddhartha other 
Bouddhas have appeared and revealed the doctrine of salvation. 
Others will come who will renew his mission. By the laws of 
nature one arises every time that the doctrine has become so ob- 
scured that men can no longer find the way which conducts to 
the deliverance. 

Our author does not hesitate to place Christ among those 
Arhats who have arrived at the Nirvana, and his doctrines among 
the teachings of the Bouddhas of past times; therefore his name 
ought to be venerated by Bouddhists. " Nevertheless, his doc- 
trine was not entirely pure ; at this day the European nations 
are in a condition to receive the true light and are ripe for 
deliverance." 

The fqregoing sketch of Bouddhism and its principal features 
may suffice for our purpose. 

And now I demand of every man of good sense if it is al- 
lowable even to propose the question: " Was Christ .a Boud- 
dhist ? " though it were only to answer it in the negative. 

Was there ever a doctrine more opposed to Bouddhism than 
are those of the Gospel ? Bouddhism denies the existence of 
God, recognizes neither the creator, the redeemer, nor the judge 
of men. In its doctrine there is no acknowledgment of provi- 
dence, of heaven, of grace or pardon, of the human soul, or even 
of human personality; of anything in the universe except an as- 
semblage of forces operating naturally and necessarily, as the 
magnet acts on iron and oxygen on the matter which it burns. 
According to this doctrine, life is an evil to be annihilated, 
prayer a folly, repentance a vain sentiment. Bouddhism recog- 
nizes neither church, doctrinal or disciplinary authority, or priest- 
hood. But what need is there of all these details ? The perusal 
of the foregoing pages will have sufficiently convinced all our 
readers that the doctrine of Sakyamouni is in its essential princi- 
ples and all its details the complete negation of Christianity. He 
who taught men to pray without ceasing, and to say in this con- 
tinual prayer, " Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy 



i SQL] '" WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" 231 

name : thy kingdom come ; give us this day our daily bread, and 
forgive us our trespasses," not only rejected the Bouddhist faith, 
but pronounced against it the most severe and complete con- 
demnation. We affirm without hesitation that only stupidity, ig- 
norance, or bad faith can explain the attribution of Bouddhist 
ideas to the divine Founder of Christianity. 

There are indeed some analogies between certain teachings, 
we will not say of the two religions, for Bouddhism is not a 
religion, but of the two doctrines. Both have in common the 
conception of certain virtues, esteem of the excellence of vir- 
ginity, of penitential acts, of the ascetic life. Also certain 
usages, ceremonies, processions, exorcisms, the use of bells calling 
to spiritual exercises, incense, etc. 

So far as the first mentioned points of analogy are concerned, 
namely, the moral virtues, Mr. Oswald has not perceived that 
the resemblance is altogether external. Renunciation, asceticism 
has, in Bouddhism, in nowise the object of liberating the soul 
from servitude to the body, in order to give it freedom to raise 
itself toward God. It is intended only to destroy life and the 
desire of existence. But if it were otherwise, what would that 
prove ? Can there not be a resemblance between two doctrines, 
without one being authorized to suppose that one has been bor- 
rowed or plagiarized from the other ? To this question every 
sensible man will answer, that not only there can be, but there must 
certainly be features of resemblance between the Biblico-Chris- 
tian religion and the beliefs, even the practices, of every people 
in whom human reason is not entirely extinct. In fact, Chris- 
tian morality is evidently nothing else than the natural law de- 
veloped, perfected, placed in a clearer light. The Christian dog- 
mas are, in part, truths which man can attain by reason. 
Everywhere, where there remains a glimmer of reason, a ray of 
truth, there must be found a belief, a principle of conduct, show- 
ing a likeness to one or another point of the evangelical doc- 
trines. Thus, every man who has not stifled the voice of con- 
science must perceive in himself a perpetual conflict between 
the senses and the spirit, and the necessity of subjecting the 
former to the latter. The Brahmins understood this before 
Bouddha, and so did likewise the Chinese philosophers. Christ 
could not do otherwise than sanction this principle by giving it 
its true expression in a perfect manner. The merit of virginity 
and of the ascetic life, for instance, was not ignored by the 
Romans, or the ancient Peruvians, as I have elsewhere shown 
(Rev. des Qu. Scientif., 1889, I.) Would any one perhaps wish 



232 " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" [May, 

that Christ should have rejected every truth known in some 
corner of the globe, in order to avoid the reproach of plagiar- 
ism ? Such questions deserve no answer. 

It is the same case with worship. Exterior worship is com- 
posed of certain rites expressive of the sentiments which man 
ought to cherish toward the God in whom he believes ; ador- 
ation, submission, gratitude, desire and hope for grace and par- 
don, finding utterance in prayer. Certain exterior acts are 
especially expressive in this sense, as the burning of incense, the 
lighting of tapers, chanting, instrumental music, religious pro- 
cessions, and the like. The true religion ought to employ these 
wonderfully efficacious means, as well as the others ; so much 
the more because by doing so it brings back those observances 
to their true destination, and re-establishes the rights of God over 
man and all other creatures. Besides, most of these usages 
had been customary during a long period among the Jews, and 
it is unreasonable to suppose that Christ would sefk in the re- 
mote regions of the world for that which he had before his eyes, 
among his own people, and in their temple. Moreover, several 
of the customs cited by Mr. Oswald are of later origin among 
the Bouddhists, and no one can tell where is the priority. 

But Mr. Oswald has found some other traits of resemblance, 
which must, perforce, furnish more conclusive evidence of 
plagiarism from India. These are certain facts related in the 
Bouddhist legends, and who would believe it ? the popery 
which is manifested in the Thibetan Lama, worshiped as God's 
vice-regent upon earth. 

The ignorance which he exhibits in this place would provoke 
a smile were it not that the assurance with which he makes 
his assertions is capable of deceiving persons who are even less 
well informed than 'himself, and cause them to believe in the 
reality of his fancies. Mr. Oswald does not know that the 
legends of the life of Bouddha are much later than Bouddhism, 
and that no serious man would dare to maintain that they ex- 
isted before the preaching of the Gospel in India during the 
first century of our era. It is very amusing, for example, to 
see him quoting the Thibetan Ryya y more than eight centuries 
posterior to the publication of the Gospels. Nor is he aware 
that Bouddhism did not penetrate into Thibet until the eighth 
century after Christ, when Popery had been known to the 
whole world for more than five hundred years. 

But Mr. Oswald does still better than this. He speaks of 
Feasts of the Immaculate Conception, of Masses for the repose of 



1891 ] " WAS CHRIST A BUDDHIST?" 233 

souls. This is indeed to make mockery of his readers, for 
Bouddhism knows nothing of all this. To pray for the repose of 
the departed souls is simply to deny the Bouddhist principles, as 
we have already seen. 

Many of the practices opposed to the original ideas of 
Bouddhism originated in the North, as offspring of what is called 
Northern Bouddhism, which had degenerated greatly from the 
primitive doctrine, and at an epoch when Christianity was known 
beyond the Pamir and the Indus. 

Every one knows that the legend of Krishna was composed 
of traits partly taken from the Gospel. This fact alone should 
render all readers very circumspect in regard to pretended pla- 
giarisms of Christian from Oriental sacred books. 

In fine, we regret to say that Mr. Oswald falsifies the 
Bouddhist doctrines and legends in order to make them approach 
to the teachings and narratives of the Gospels. It is entirely 
false, for instance, that the Bouddhist believes in the necessity of 
redemption by a supernatural mediator. On the contrary, 
Bouddhism denies both the possibility of a redemption, the ex- 
istence of the supernatural, and the utility of a mediator. Before 
whom should Bouddha fulfil the office of a mediator, since, ac- 
cording to Bouddhism, there is no God ? 

If questions of this kind are to be treated in future, we re- 
spectfully request that a little more science and serious argu- 
ment may be brought to the task. 

Our conclusion is: that all the evidence in the case proves 
that Christ is the living negation of Bouddhism. 

C. DE HARLEZ. 

University, Louvain, Belgium. 



234 d QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 

IV. 

" HAVE you ever been in the prison here ? " Miss Garrison 
asked of her friend the morning after she arrived. They were 
sitting on the veranda, with the sweet charm of the country about 
them, and nothing in sight to suggest the grim abode down by 
the river's bank. 

" Oh, dear, no ! " said Miss Forsythe, with a shrug of the shoul- 
ders and a grimace. *' I am happy to say I never had any 
friends or acquaintances there." 

" Do people never go to see the place through curiosity ? " 
inquired Miss Garrison calmly. 

" I believe they do some people. Tom went there once 
with a man who was up here from New York, and from what 
he says about it I have no wish to see the place. You didn't 
feel any desire to go, did you ? " She turned her head toward 
Miss Garrison with a look of surprise as the thought suddenly 
occurred to her. 

".I did not know but that Sing. Sing people felt in duty bound 
to know something about such a distinguished attraction," the 
other answered evasively and with a faint smile. 

" I know. Before we came here I always used to feel as if peo- 
ple living in the place must feel something like prisoners But 
I do not believe I have seen it but once since we were here. 
That is, in the town. You can't help seeing the hateful place if 
you go by on the river, as we sometimes do in a yacht. You'd 
have to keep your face turned to the Jersey side resolutely 
to avoid looking at it ; and the choice of evils is pretty close, 
isn't it ?" 

Miss Garrison made some excuse for going out by herself the 
next day. By inquiry, she found her way to the square brick 
building with its slits of windows. The warden's house, though 
connected with the prison, was rather pretty, with a luxuriant 
Virginia creeper climbing up the stone walls. She went to his of- 
fice. The warden was a hale old fellow with a full white beard, 
which, somehow, failed to make him venerable. Miss Garrison 
learned that visitors were admitted once in two months and that 
next week she could come and see Arkenbunjh. 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 235 

" I shall try to do so," she said with decision. " I am very 
much interested in his case." 

So some days later Miss Garrison, on the plea of a call, a^ain 
made her way without any companion to the prison. She felt 
rather nervous. Such conduct was unconventional and she would 
not have liked it to be known. She was taken down a flight 
of steps and a turnkey opened a barred door for her. Then 
she was shown into a dark room with seats arranged around the 
wall. Two or three men, in suits of dingy whitish-brown with 
black stripes running around them, sat on these seats talking to 
friends or relatives, while keepers remained in the immediate 
neighborhood. Arkenburgh was sent for, and Miss Garrison 
seated herself in a chair, seemingly much more composed than 
she was in reality. 

She had not very long to wait. The tall figure of Arken- 
burgh appeared, his closely-cropped hair revealing a head of al- 
most classic elegance. But those wretched prison-suits seemed 
to refuse to look anything but slouchy and ill-fitting! 

His bright eye was rounded and inquiring, and when he saw 
who it was a shadow passed quickly over his face. But a look 
of mingled respect and gratitude at once succeeded it. How 
much thinner he was than when she had seen him in the court- 
room ! though his eye was as bright and unshrinking as ever. 

He bowed with great dignity, and Miss Garrison stretched 
forth her hand. He took it and bent slowly above it, without 
any words. 

" I did not know whether you would remember me or not," 
she said, smiling slightly. " I hope you do not mind my coming. 
I am here for a few days, visiting friends, so we are neighbors." 

" You do not know me very well if you think I could ever 
forget to the day of my death what you were so kind as to do 
and say in that court-room. Your coming to see me is only an- 
other act of kindness, for which I am grateful." 

His voice was rich and full, and he spoke with a grave self- 
possession which impressed the young woman. They seated 
themselves, and after a slight pause she asked : u Do you find 
your health good ? And is the place very dreadful ? " 

" My health is very good. In fact," and a smile transformed 
his expression into one of winning sweetness, "the greater part of 
the prisoners really seem to thrive well on the prison air and 
diet. But, naturally, few would elect to remain here as a matter 
of choice not even for their health's sake." 

" Well, in one sense it must be easier to bear when one has 



236 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

the consciousness of innocence to sustain him. Mr. Arkenburgh," 
she went on a little hurriedly, " I do not wish to pain you by 
any allusions to the past, but I am an intimate friend of Miss 
Archer's." 

The sadness settled on his face again, but there was some 
sternness in it. 

" Do you know how she is ? " he inquired briefly. 

" I saw her a few days ago and she was perfectly well," Miss 
Garrison answered. 

"Has this affair troubled her much?" he asked after a mo- 
ment's pause. 

" She felt terribly, of course," returned the young woman. 

" Yet you, who had never seen me, and knew nothing of me, 
felt that I was innocent; and she, who was promised to me as a 
wife, believes me guilty and has abandoned me." 

There was almost solemnity in his repressed tones, but the 
grave face did not betray any strong feeling. 

" Do not blame her too severely," Miss Garrison said. " You 
do not know how she has suffered, poor thing ! " 

"Pardon me; I do know how she has suffered," said Arken- 
burgh. " She wrote me so that I could not fail to see just what 
was rankling in her mind. She was filled with outraged pride 
that she had been associated with a felon. One would ha^e 
supposed that I had deliberately tried to bring disgrace upon her. 
But in one sense I am glad she wrote just as she did. It helped 
me more than anything else could have done. That is past and 
through with, however," he continued calmly. 

" What do you have to do ?" asked Miss Garrison. " I hope 
you will not think this is merely idle curiosity." 

"Do not have any fear that I shall misapprehend your motives," 
he answered earnestly, bending his calm eyes upon her with the 
greatest respect. " You have done me the greatest benefit any 
one ever did. You believed me innocent when twelve honest 
men had with due deliberation declared me .guilty. I tell 
you now, in the name of all that is sacred, that your true wo 
man's instinct was right. I am as innocent of this crime as you. 
I do not know as a condemned criminal's word is of great force, 
but I do know that to you it will be strong corroboration oi 
yo-tr belief." 

" It is, if there were any needed," exclaimed Miss Garrison. 
" I have tried to look at the matter calmly and study the evi- 
dence, but I have never faltered in my conviction. Only I d< 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 237 

not know whom you are trying to screen, or why you so pas- 
sively let yourself be punished for another's sin." 

She looked at him wonderingly. He was silent a moment, 
while he met her glance with that straightforward expression in 
his eyes which spoke of simplicity and rectitude. Then he said 
slowly : 

" If you are really kind and generous you will not seek for 
an answer to those questions ; neither from me nor elsewhere. 
What I have done I did knowingly, and I would do it again 
under the same circumstances. It is a question of temperament 
with me, as much as that pure, womanly touch of sympathy and 
belief, which I shall treasure my life through and which has 
lightened the burden of this" he touched his prison suit "was 
one of temperament in you." 

"You ought not to put too much value on an action so 
simple and spontaneous," she said deprecatingly. " I think any- 
body would have done the same. It was a sense of justice," she 
added, smiling. 

" You must let me feel that it was a very sweet and womanly 
thing," he returned. "Are you interested in prisons?" he said 
after a moment. 

Miss Garrison felt an inclination to laugh. It was the first 
time she had ever stepped within a penal institution, and she 
felt how very remote from her was the philanthropic spirit which 
the question implied. 

" No," she answered. " I do not believe I have much of an 
inclination for going round doing good. I am here on a short 
visit, and I thought I would come and see how you were get- 
ting along. You may put the visit down to feminine curiosity 
in part, for I would really like to know wliat you do in this 
place That is, if you do not mind speaking about it," she add- 
ed quickly. 

" I shall be only too happy to gratify you in any way," Ark- 
enburgh said with great simplicity. " My occupation is marking 
the places for buttons on trousers and to do up the pieces into 
bundles. It is not very aesthetic work, but it is considered one 
of the most desirable things to do. I must tell you one pleasant 
thing. My place in the workshop is in the corner, which is 
bright and sunny, and from the window I can see the Hudson. 
It is very pleasant," he added cheerfully, " to see the boats pass- 
ing up and down. I work here all day. The food is very sim- 
ple but clean, and, whether it is the regular occupation or the 
variety afforded by going to meals, my appetite is excellent. 



238 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

The cell is the worst part of the whole thing. It certainly is 
small. I can touch the top with my hand and almost reach from 
side to side with my outstretched arms. I could hardly endure 
this cramped space at first, buf now I do not mind it very much. 
I am getting to be an old prison-bird, you know." He' smiled 
faintly. 

" That is about all there is to it. You can imagine that the 
most cruel part is working at something which does not contrib- 
ute in the least to my advancement, and feeling that a portion 
of my life is practically going to waste. Still, good behavior 
secures a commutation of part of the term, and I behave myself 
very well." 

"How I wish something could be done !" said Miss Garri 
son vehemently. " Is there anything that you would like ? " 

" No ; thanks. Except that I would like to have you tell 
me your name, if you will," he said. 

" My name is Garrison Miss Katherine Garrison," she replied. 
" And now I must go, Mr. Arkenburgh," she went on, rising. 
" I believe you are innocent and that you could have established 
your innocence if you had wished to. Why you do not wish 
to I cannot conjecture, though I am beginning to get an idea 
about that, too," she said, nodding her head. " Perhaps I may 
see you again some time, though the warden tells me that visits 
are allowed only once in two months. I hope your health will 
keep good. Good-by ! " < 

She extended her hand and he clasped it again, and again 
bowed above it with dignity and respect. 

" Good-by ! You have done a good work in coming to see 
me. It has exalted my ideal of a woman. Thank you once 
more for your generous instinct in regard to me." 

Miss Garrison bowed and the turnkey escorted her to the 
door. She stepped into the warden's office on her way out and 
asked him if the prisoners were allowed to receive anything 
from friends or relatives. Whereupon the good man gave her 
a small printed slip, telling her that it set forth all that was 
allowed. 

Having folded it and put it in her pocket-book, Miss Gar- 
rison regained the free outer air with a great sense of satis- 
faction. How good it seemed to be once more where the wind 
of heaven could freely play around her ! 

When she was alone in her room that evening she took 
the printed slip from her pocket and read it. It was as 
follows : 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 239 

" SING SING PRISON, Nov. , 18 . 

"RULES FOR THE GUIDANCE OF THE FRIENDS OF PRISONERS IN THIS 

INSTITUTION. 

" Each prisoner is allowed certain privileges, by the Prison 
Authorities, only on condition of his good behavior. Disobedi- 
ence to the Prison rules forfeits for him all privileges for such 
a length of time as the Agent and Warden may direct. 

" First. He may receive a visit from his friends (one or more 
at the same time) ONCE in two months. When an extra 
visit is desired an application must be made to the Warden, 
giving the reasons therefor, which should be important. On 
Sundays and Holidays visiting is not permitted, the Prison be- 
ing closed. 

" Second. He may receive a box of delicacies to eat ONCE 
in two months. Coffee, tea, chocolate, and other articles which 
require cooking here not allowed.' 

" Third. He may receive chewing tobacco, underclothes, socks, 
handkerchiefs, towels, bedding, carpet for cell, looking-glass, hair- 
brush and comb, tooth-brush, shoes, slippers, gloves, and mittens. 
These articles may be sent at any time. 

" Fourth. He may write one letter each month, and receive 
all letters, of a proper character, that come for him. His friends 
may write as often as they please. Extra letters are allowed to 
be written by him only in special cases of sickness or important 
business. 

" Fifth. He may receive all papers, magazines, and books, of a 
proper character, that come for him. Daily and weekly political 
papers, criminal and sensational papers, immoral and sensational 
novels, not allowed. 

"Sixth. All boxes and packages by express (which must be 
prepaid], and all mail matter, should be plainly marked with the 
prisoner's name in full, and the date of his sentence. Compliance 
with this rule will prevent mistakes in the Prison delivery. 

"ALBERT F. BURROUGHS, 
" Agent and Warden Sing Sing Prison. 

" Approved: 

"WILLIAM SANDFORD, Suft N. Y. State Prisons" 

Miss Garrison made a running commentary on some of the 
rules. " I could send him a box of things to eat. They don't 
say anything about the size of the box. I wonder if he smokes ? 
1 Carpet for cell.' I do not believe he has one, and I should 
think it would be a comfort. That bare stone floor ! He can 
receive all the letters that come if they be of a ' proper character/ 
If I write it will certainly be a letter of a ' proper character.' Pa- 
pers and books ! Why, that is nice. They ought to be a re- 
lief after making button-hole places in trousers all day long." 



240 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

She sat thinking, with the printed slip on her lap. " I won- 
der if he thought it was Addie waiting for him when he came 
in. He certainly did not expect to see me, and there was a 
little look of disappointment o^n his face when he saw it was I. 
Oh ! why is that man there ? " she exclaimed impatiently. Then, 
as if she did not like to think of it any more, she made her 
preparations for the night and went to bed. 

Miss Garrison spent a fortnight with her friend, Miss For- 
sythe, at Sing Sing. Then she went back to town. A week 
later a large box came to Sing Sing prison for Paul Arken- 
burgh containing delicacies. There was no note or card with 
the box. A Turkish rug, narrow and long, also came for him. 

" The poor man is suffering unjustly and it is only decency 
to try and make his lot as endurable as possible," the young 
woman had said to herself when getting these articles ready for 
Sing Sing. But it must be confessed that she found satisfaction 
in the thought that no one knew anything about the strong in- 
terest she had conceived for a State prisoner. 

IV. 

A fortnight after she had returned to the city she received 
a note from Addie Archer: "Papa has had a severe accident. 
He was coming down stairs a week ago when he was seized 
with a dizzy attack and fell.. At first it did not seem as if it 
was anything serious ; but he must have injured himself inter- 
nally, for he suffers a great deal and cannot leave his bed now. 
The doctor says it is a very serious thing, but hopes that papa 
will come out all right. You know how fanciful sick people are, 
my dear Kate. Well, papa has got the idea in his mind that 
you must come down here. He thinks you would have stayed 
longer when you were here if you had enjoyed yourself, and he 
fancies that the trouble about that dreadful man in prison, which 
was so fresh and trying, made me remiss in my duties as a 
hostess. Nothing will satisfy him but that I shall write and ask 
you to come down for a while now. Will you ? Pray, don't 
fancy that because I am doing this to satisfy an invalid's ca- 
price that I should not be delighted to have you come myself. I 
wish you would come, although I am afraid it may not be very 
pleasant for you, with papa so sick and mamma dreadfully up- 
set. But I can assure you it will be a great relief to papa, and 
I shall be ever so grateful if you will come." 

Miss Garrison brought her lips closely together on reading 
this letter and her brows contracted with thought. It did not 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 241 

take her five minutes to decide, and having sent a telegram to 
announce her arrival, she took the Newport boat that evening. 

" There was a positive, visible relief in papa when he heard 
you were coming, dear," said Miss Archer to her the next 
morning. " He said : 'Now, try and make it pleasant for her, 
won't you ? ' and of course I said I would, and I will. Isn't it 
odd what funny ideas people get when they are sick ? " 

Miss Garrison allowed that the vagaries of invalids were very 
unaccountable. She had felt the moment she got Addie's let- 
ter that Mr. Archer's desire might have more method in it than 
could be admitted. He was not a man to be carried away by 
a gust of hospitable feeling. 

Naturally she expressed a desire to see the sick maji. But 
for a day or two after her arrival he did not feel equal to it. 
The third day she was ushered into his room. Mr. Archer 
was confined to his bed, and Miss Garrison saw at once from 
the ravages illness had made that his ' condition was rather a 
perilous one. She talked to him cheerfully, and he tried to as- 
sume some interest, but his mind would wander off in an ab- 
stracted way. Once, on turning to look at him, she found his 
eyes fixed on her with a strange expression in them of doubt 
and anxiety. 

He withdrew them as soon as he saw her attention was at- 
tracted, and turned his head restlessly on one side, while an ex- 
pression of pain shot over his features. When he rose to go 
he said to her:" "I am not very good company, but I hope 
you will find time to drop in on me sometimes, Miss Garrison. 
It is a relief to me to have a visitor to talk to." 

Three days later the doctor found his patient so much worse 
that he ventured to inquire of him whether he had arranged his 
affairs, or if there was anything he would like to attend to in 
case of a relapse. " Not that there is much immediate danger, 
you know," the doctor said comfortingly, " but you are not 
strong, and it is always the safe thing to look out for every- 
thing in time, my dear sir." 

The next day Miss Garrison dropped in to see him. He 
was evidently worse. He shook hands with her feverishly. 
" Can you stay here with me a little while, Miss Garrison ? " he 
asked her. She replied that she would with pleasure. " Then, I 
think I. will send the nurse out for an hour to get a little 
rest and air," and he insisted on the man's taking jthis recreation. 

After he had gone Mr. Archer asked Miss Garrison to take 
a chair and seat herself near him. She did so. For some mo- 

VOL. LIII. 16 



242 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

ments he said nothing. Once or twice he turned his eyes in a 
pained way upon her. At last, by a great effort, he brought 
himself to speak. 

" Miss Garrison, I wish yotf'to promise me solemnly that you 
will regard what I am about to say to you as a sacred confi- 
dence. Tell me that whether you will do what I want you to or 
not you will keep the information I have to impart a secret." 

Miss Garrison leaned toward the sick man and assured him 
that she would not betray any confidence he might repose in her. 

"I have' done something wrong," he went on, his forehead 
contracting and his lips trembling at the revelation they were 
about to make. " And then I have done another thing that has 
troubled me more than the first. I want you to help me, for I 
need some help very badly. I cannot speak to my wife or 
daughter about it." 

" I will help you all I can, Mr. Archer," said the young wo- 
man earnestly. She had a clear conviction now of what was 
coming and half shrank from it. 

" You know my clerk, Paul Arkenburgh, was accused and con- 
victed of stealing fifteen thousand dollars from the company ot 
which I was president. He didn't take the money. I took it!" 

The effort of making the disclosure left him panting and pal- 
lid. Miss Garrison was alarmed a little, though there was time 
for one proud thrill of satisfaction. She had been right ! 

" Do not try. to tell the rest now, Mr. Archer, if you find it 
too painful. I know now and you have gotten over the worst 
part. If you feel the strain too much, defer the rest until later." 

" No. I must say it all now. I could not rest in my grave if I 
did not try to repair this injustice. You do not know what a 
noble fellow that young Arkenburgh is. He is honesty itself 
' and the soul of generosity.'' 

Mr. Archer gave a sigh that was very like a groan. 

"It is the old story, Miss Garrison," he went on, with his lips 
twitching nervously, while his face flushed. "I needed the money 
only for a little while just at that time. I thought I could re- 
place it before its absence would be noted. But Arkenburgh's 
sudden trip to Albany just at the time the money was taken 
drew suspicion on him. There was no way out of it for him ex- 
cept convicting me, for I was the only other person who had 
the key. I was supposed to be confined at my house in Tar- 
rytown at the time, too ill to move with rheumatism. 

" He knew this, and when I saw him he said : ' It is much 
better for me than for you to suffer this imputation.' And I 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 243 

was weak enough to let him do it, Miss Garrison. It seemed a 
worse crime to break my wife's heart and ruin my daughter's 
career than to let him suffer for me. But I have paid for this 
by my suffering. It was terrible to see Addie turning against 
him as she did. I do not think she could have loved him very 
much or she would have suffered more on his account. 

" I have done this evil and I want to repair as much of it as 
I can," he went on. " I am going to get you to write out a 
statement of the whole thing at my dictation, and I will sign it and 
we will get other witnesses to sign it. With that paper you 
ought to be able to secure his release from prison. The gov- 
ernor would set him free on such evidence as this of his inno- 
cence. 

" I am not going to recover from this attack. It is my pun- 
ishment, and I deserve it. But, if it can be possibly done not 
for my sake, because I won't be here to feel it, but for my 
daughter's and her mother's I would like not to be known as 
the the guilty man. When I am dead will you try and do 
this, Miss Garrison ? If you promise me I know you will." 

He bent his sunken eyes on her with mournful intensity. 
Miss Garrison was greatly overcome, but she roused herself to 
say earnestly : 

" I will try and do both of them, if they can be done. But 
it would be hard if Mr. Arkenburgh should suffer this unjust sus- 
picion all his life. I will screen your name as much as can be. 
What led Mr. Arkenburgh to do such a noble thing ? " she 
asked Mr. Archer .gently. 

" He was indebted to me for his rise in the world, and grati- 
tude entered into his motive for such generosity. And then," 
Mr. Archer said sadly, " he was very much in love with Addie 
and he wished to spare her if he could." 

The poor man sighed deeply. Then he said in tones of the 
bitterest feeling : " And she has turned against him because he 
is a thief! Oh! how cruelly she has stabbed me by her hard- 
ness and the contempt with which she has spoken of that fine 
fellow by this name, which belonged to her father and not to 
him ! " 

" Do not dwell on the thought any more now, Mr. Archer," 
said Miss Garrison. " It is sad enough. I would not talk about 
it any more for the present. I will write the statement any 
time you wish, and then you will feel that you have made some 
restitution, for it must release Mr. Arkenburgh from his unmer- 
ited imprisonment." 



244 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

"Then you will help me? I can count on you, can't I?" the 
sick man said eagerly. 

" You may, assuredly," she said, taking the hand which Mr. 
Archer stretched toward her. 

She was glad to get away to give herself time to think over 
the situation. The satisfaction of being borne out in her in- 
stinctive belief about Arkenburgh was almost lost sight of in the 
mixed feelings which held possession of her now. There was a 
good deal of repulsion toward Mr. Archer. By his own admis- 
sion he was a thief! She was the guest, then, in the house of 
a man who had stolen money. Miss Garrison felt a most dis- 
agreeable sense of disgrace from such association. 

But the poor man was suffering, and he had asked her to 
help him. She would not be like Addie Archer. He wished 
to make such amends as he could. Miss Garrison appreciated 
that if the true facts in the case were to come out when justice 
could not be done to the criminal, and only innocent people 
would suffer, the good of such disclosure was hardly apparent. 
Arkenburgh must be released and his reputation restored, if pos- 
sible, without bringing disgrace on Mrs. Archer and Addie. 

But if Mr. Archer should not die! What could be done 
then ? She would, have a comfortable feeling, surely, in knowing 
that an innocent man was bearing the punishment of another's 
sin to spare two other. innocent persons misery and disgrace. "I 
hope he does die ! " She exclaimed to herself as this thought 
arose. '* It is the only way of getting things cleared up at all." 

Then she thought of Arkenburgh, quietly and resolutely .ac- 
cepting five years of ignominious imprisonment through generous 
feeling for the man who had befriended and helped him, and, 
doubtless, with loving thought of sparing the woman he loved a 
dark and blasting grief. And then Miss Garrison experienced 
another lively emotion as she recalled Addie Archer's treatment 
of her lover. She got fiercely indignant at the thought. ' It 
was all right to feet repelled at his being a thief. I feel that 
way myself towards the poor man upstairs there. It 
was right enough to renounce him, too, if she could believe 
this thing of him. But she need not have shown so much un- 
.pitying hardness and contempt toward him. She need not have 
poured all her pity out upon herself. Oh ! what a hateful tan- 
gle it is." 

The next morning she was the recipient of another confi- 
dence. Miss 'Archer told her, under pledge of the greatest 
secrecy, that she had engaged herself to Mr. Caldwell. The en- 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 245 

gagement was to be kept strictly private for some time. Miss 
Garrison was not quite as effusive in her congratulations as she 
might have been. It must be admitted that her judgment and 
feeling about the Archer family were largely affected by the 
thought of a tall; resolute man in a dingy prison-suit of striped 
cloth and with an invisible aureola around his shapely head. At 
least Miss Garrison felt that the aureola was there. Her friend 
was too full of her own happiness, however, to note the slight lack 
of ardor in her confidante. The lovers had agreed that papa 
was not to be disturbed about love or marriage until his health 
was better. 

In the afternoon Mr. Archer's nurse came and asked Miss 
Garrison if she could pay another visit to that gentleman's sick- 
room. Miss Garrison had been impatiently awaiting the sum- 
mons and obeyed at with alacrity. She was eager to have in black 
and white Mr. Archer's statement about the robbery. The in- 
valid's gaunt eyes met hers the moment she entered the room, 
and after the nurse had again been sent out for an airing, Mr. 
Archer hurriedly broached the subject. 

u There is ink and paper in that writing-table. Will you not 
take down what I say about Paul Arkenburgh now ? " 

The young woman was soon in readiness, and the old man 
began : " I, George Archer, do declare that Paul Arkenburgh 
is wholly innocent of the crime for which he is now undergo- 
ing punishment in Sing Sing. I stole the money, fifteen thou- 
sand dollars, and he deliberately allowed himself to be convicted 
of it in order to screen me and spare my family the disgrace of. 
such criminality. He did this through a sense of gratitude to 
me for having helped him in his career. I feel that I 
shall not live long, and I cannot pass into the future life with- 
out some effort to rescue this generous man from the burden 
he is so heroically bearing for my sake. This paper, written by 
Miss Katherine Garrison, will be witnessed as mine by her and 
the undersigned, my nurse. This should secure Arkenburgh's 
release and acquittal from the charge. 

" If this can be done without my guilt being" published I 
pray that it may. But, if needs be, and there is no other way 
of securing this result, then let it be known, since it is more just 
that my own should suffer for my evil-doing than a stranger, 
who has shown such magnanimity. I make this declaration with 
my sound mind and in the full use of my faculties. So help 
me God ! " 

" Now," said Mr. Archer, breathing heavily, " give me the 



246 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

pen." He grasped it and wrote his name to the declaration with 
a trembling hand. As soon as h? had done this he fell back in 
his bed and a sigh of relief escaped from him. Miss Garrison 
said nothing for a few moments,^ until he had somewhat recov- 
ered from the excitement of the confession. ' Then she said 
quietly : " You would like this to be witnessed by some one, 
would you not? I will write my name to it now." 

"Yes; and when the nurse comes in he will sign it," said 
Mr. Archer. " If you will, I would like you to remain here 
until his return." 

Miss Garrison readily consented. The sick man lay perfectly 
motionless, but with his eyes half-open. After a short time the 
nurse returned, and Miss Garrison explained to him briefly that 
the paper contained directions, which Mr. Archer had committed 
to^ her in writing, about something which he wished to have ac- 
complished after his death. The nurse then -signed it, and the 
young woman left the room with the vindication of Paul Arken- 
burgh's honor folded away within the bosom of her gown. 

She would have liked to bid farewell to the Archers at 
once. But Mr. Archer seemed to view her departure with 
shrinking, and she could not bring herself to pain a dying man. 
So she remained. He grew weaker daily. One morning, about 
ten days later, when Miss Garrison cams down to breakfast, 
Addie Archer advanced to meet her with eyes swollen 
from weeping. " Papa is dead," she said chokingly. " He 
died last night." Miss Garrison let the .girl cling to her and 
weep, while the thought arose in her mind that the angel ot 
death had slipped the bolts from Paul Arkenburgh's prison- 
door. She could not feel any regret at this death. 

She stayed with them until after the funeral. Then she 
returned to New York, on the plea that she had much to do. 
That week, without letting any one know where she was going, 
she took the train to Albany. Not very long after this a 
communication was sent to the warden of Sing Sing prison 
telling him that Paul Arkenburgh was to be released, as his 
innocence had' been clearly established. . 

V. 

Two days later Miss Garrison was sitting alone in her 
room, buried in thought, when the servant said that a gentle- 
man, who declined to give his name, wished to see her. 

" Tell him I will be down directly," she said, rising from 
her chair at once. She had not seen or heard from Paul 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 247 

Arkenburgh since her visit to the prison, but she knew that two 
days before he had walked forth from. Sing Sing free and inno- 
cent. She knew that it was he. She gave a few hasty touches 
to her hair, and then glided rapidly down the stairs and entered 
the drawing-room. 

Paul Arkenburgh had heard her step, and was watching the 
door as he stood drawn up to his full height. There was an air 
of distinction about his fine figure and handsome face which 
were much more in keeping with his dark clothes and gloved 
hands than they were with the dingy stripes of the Sing Sing 
prison-suit. 

She advanced toward him, her hand stretched out, a smile 
of warm welcome lighting up her face. He clasped her hand 
and bent his head above it, the hair still closely cropped. 

" I am very glad to see you, Mr. Arkenburgh," she said. 

" Thanks," he said simply, " I am free, and one ol the first 
things I wished to do with my freedom was to come to you. 
I wish you to tell me if I do not owe this in some way to 
you. I received a communication from the governor telling me 
that my innocence was proven by the confession of the guilty 
person, and also saying that the same generosity which had made 
me suffer to screen him would probably lead me to conceal the 
culprit's name now that I was free and declared innocent of all 
stain. Do you know who the person was, Miss Garrison ? " 

" Yes," she .replied softly. " He is dead, and although he 
has done only the least that could be expected in this effort to 
save you from your generous sacrifice, I am sure you will be 
careful to keep his guilt from becoming public." 

" I am not surprised that you, who felt that I was innocent 
when everything pointed to my guilt, should feel that I could 
not have any other wish than this. So far my release has es- 
caped noticed in the papers. Otherwise I should fear that there 
might be conjectures based on Mr. Archer's recent death and -my 
release which would be dangerous for the peace of mind of the 
survivors. But will you not tell me what part you played in my 
release ? " he continued earnestly. 

" I did nothing except convey to the governor a written 
statement which I wrote at the dictation of the real culprit, and 
which he signed and I and his nurse witnessed. It was very lit- 
tle. Do not let us speak of that, please. But I am sincerely 
glad that you are free." 

" And I have not thanked you for the box you sent to the 
prison for me," said Arkenburgh. "You must not think me con- 



248 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

ceited in believing it was you who did this, for I know there 
was no other who could have thought of me. Miss Garrison, I 
can never repay you for these kindnesses, but I feel them to the 
bottom of my soul." 

" They were trifles. Put ' them down to my philanthropic 
spirit," she returned lightly. " I am afraid your sensibility leads 
you into undue appreciation of small things done in your behalf." 

*' I wish you would help me with your advice on one point," 
he said, " if you will not allow me to show you my gratitude as 
much as I would like. This same person has arranged through 
a friend of his that I am to receive twenty thousand dollars. I 
could have borne the full term of my imprisonment to shield 
him through gratitude for what he did for me, and through 
understanding how he came to fall and what the consequences 
of his guilt would be should it become known. But I feel the 
strongest aversion to taking this money. It seems as if I were 
accepting not only a reward for what no money could have in- 
duced me to do, but as if it were meant for a sort of seal upon 
mv iip S a bribe to silence. It cuts me deeply to feel that he 
could have thought me capable of being affected by such con- 
siderations ; and yet I cannot escape this conviction." 

His large, grave eyes were fixed upon her face with pleading 
earnestness as he waited for her to speak. 

" And to think that such a man as that could have ever 
fallen in love with Addie Archer ! " was the thought that rose 
in Miss Garrison's mind. Then she said slowly : 

" I think you are wrong. There is no fault in this person's 
wishing to show his gratitude by such a course. If you could 
have heard him speak of your conduct you would know that he 
appreciated it and positively revered you for your noble action. 
I will tell you this. He declared in that written statement 
that if it were impossible to free you without publishing the real 
author of the theft then to publish him, for the sufferings of 
his own were more just than that you should endure such a 
punishment. No ! I am sure that he knew his honor, or at least 
the fiction of his honor, was safe in your hands. His daughter's 
treatment of you was anguish to him. I believe," Miss Garrison 
added impressively, " that if the truth were known his death was 
materially hastened by the remorse of conscience which he felt. 
I think you should take the money and regard this poor man 
the more kindly for having given it to you. And you know how 
good my intuitions of motives and innocence are," she said archly. 

" I believe I would follow your advice if it were against 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 249 

every conviction I had," exclaimed Arkenburgh with his grave 
simplicity, which quite took from his words the slightest air of 
being a complimentary phrase meant to flatter. " You have" the 
clearest, most womanly instinct I have ever seen. You have a 
fine temperament." 

"Thanks; you are very kind. But, pray, spare me, for I 
have all a woman's weakness for praise. Tell me what you are 
going to do?" 

. " I am going West within a week. A man there once sug- 
gested to me a scheme which I am sure is a profitable one. It 
may be too late to go into it. I have lost some months. But 
the idea is one that may be applied elsewhere and I will make 
it go. This money which Mr. which I have received, will 
enable me to make a much more advantageous attempt, Miss 
Garrison, I feel that I am paying the heaviest debt to gratitude 
now. This sojourn in a prison, wearing a felon's suit, seems to 
me to have left a taint on my life. I could never ask a woman 
to become my wife without telling her that at one time I occu- 
pied a cell in Sing' Sing. And there are many who would not 
care to accept a life with that dismal passage in it." 

" You are foolish there, I think," said Miss Garrison prompt- 
ly. " Believe me, even crime can be lived down. How much 
more the innocent, suffering for an offence which one did not 
commit, and suffering endured from the noblest of motives. If 
you ever should tell a woman this thing without letting her also 
know your motive in having accepted such a trial then you will 
be doing an unjust thing. You would be foolishly, stupidly an- 
gelic," she said, smiling, but wi^h considerable emphasis to the 
words. 

" And do you think a fine, sensitive woman could accept as 
a husband a man who was once an inmate of Sing Sing prison?" 
he asked seriously. " One reason I am going West is to start 
in a new field where I will not be known. If his relatives are 
to be spared, all talk about my innocence must be avoided. 
Hence there may remain a doubt whether I was not pardoned 
for some reason that does not clear my name perfectly. Can I 
ask a woman to be my wife who cannot bear her head 
as proudly because she bears my name ? " 

Miss Garrison tapped her foot upon the ground. She saw 
the difficulty too well. At last she said, as the thought occurred 
to her : " But if you had served your full term and then have 
been released, and Mr. and the man had lived, you could 
have had nothing but your word to give to the woman that you 



250 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. [May, 

were innocent. Now you have your release and this paper 
signed by him. I did not let the governor keep that. I have 
ft for you, and any time you wish you can give proof of your 
innocence. I will go and get you the paper now. I have kept 
it in my strong-box." 

She rose and left the room, returning in a few moments with 
the folded paper. Arkenburgh took it and read it. Then he 
put it in his pocket. 

" I cannot thank you enough," he said with that slow ear- 
nestness of speech which seemed to be his strongest expression 
of emotion. I hope you feel how deeply I appreciate your kind- 
ness. I convey sense of gratitude very poorly." 

"You convey it very well, by deeds more than by words. 
Have I not had good proof of how you regard a benefit ? But 
you must look at my action more simply and lightly. I felt you 
were undergoing a grievous wrong, and all I really did was 
what any one might have done. Do not think any more about 
it, please." 

"As if I could forget!" he said, rising. " Yet, with my 
freedom and the prospect ol beginning a prosperous career, I 
have never felt sadder in my life than I do now." 

He stood, tall and stalwart, but with a look of dejection on his 
fine face. 

"Will you see Miss the Archers before you go away ?" said 
Miss Garrison. 

"No. Is it not more consistent with the wish of the dead 
man that I should avoid any contact with them ? I never wish 
to see again in my life the face of Miss Archer. That was all a 
mistake, and the one thing I have to be grateful for to this ex- 
perience, outside of what it has taught me of a noble woman, is 
that it saved me from being the husband of that girl. I can 
never forgive her for the way in which she treated me as," and 
his voice softened, " I can never forget the way in which you 
treated me. Good-by, Miss Garrison." Arkenburgh's serious 
manner was almost solemn. 

" Good-by," she returned, struggling to make this parting 
wear more the air of any ordinary farewell. " I hope you will be 
successful beyond every hope in all that you desire." 

There seemed every reason for a warm pressure ot their 
hands. He bowed gravely and left her. Was there every reason 
why Miss Garrison should have hastened to her room and have 
busied herself about several things, while impatiently wiping from 
her eyes tears that would gather ? 



1 39 1.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 251 

She felt irritable and dejected for days. She fought against 
it fiercely, taking part in whatever came along in the way of 
amusement with great energy. Occasionally she met Addie 
Archer. She could not refrain from a slight coldness in her 
manner towards the girl. It seemed to her as if she were living 
on another's blood, like a vampire. It vexed Miss Garrison that 
she should care so keenly for Paul Arkenburgh's interests or hap- 
piness, and this vexation made her more cold to Miss Archer 
for recalling that worthy. "To 'think that he could have ever 
loved that girl ! " Miss Garrison said to herself on two or three 
occasions, when she had been subjected to this flux and reflux of 
disagreeable feeling. u It was cheap to escape that for a few months 
in Sing Sing." Which goes to prove that Miss Garrison was not 
superior to her sex in formulating judgments about her sisters. 

The following spring she received cards for Miss Archer's 
wedding. She did not go, but she felt a strange mixture of de- 
light and disgust over the event. For two or three seasons Miss 
Garrison went very much into society. During this time she re- 
ceived two or three offers of marriage, which she serenely de- 
clined. To the last applicant for her hand she vouchsafed the 
extraordinary remark that she did not think she would ever mar- 
ry ; which, strange to say, came very near the truth. She would 
rather have been burned at the stake than tell the reason why, 
though her dislike for Mrs. Caldwell seemed to increase, until at 
last she cut her dead with hardly any compunction of soul. 

As season after season passed with Miss Garrison still in the 
field of virgins some comments began to be made on her staunch 
adherence to spinsterhood. But they did not reach her ears, and it 
they had would not have affected her. She knew very well what 
she was doing, and she meant to do it. She lived with her un- 
cle, who was a cheerful soul, always ready to escort her to ball, 
opera, theatre, or reception. 

Eight winters went on in this uneventful way, or, rather, the 
eighth was just beginning. Her uncle had proposed their spend- 
ing it in Washington. Miss Garrison was nothing loath; and so a 
house was taken on K Street, and they transferred themselves to 
the Capital. 

One evening, early in the season, they were at a reception at 
the German minister's. It was rather late in the evening, and 
Miss Garrison was standing talking with animation to the secre- 
tary of the legation when she felt the light tap of a fan on her 
shoulder and the voice of the hostess saying : " My dear, I want 
to present a friend of mine to you," and as Miss Garrison 



252 A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 

turned she beheld a tall man of the most imposing presence be- 
fore her, with a violet gleam in his speaking eyes. She did not 
wait for the " Miss Garrison, Senator Arkenburgh ! " which the 
lady tried to deliver herself of before she extended her hand with 
a quick smile. 

" Why, do you know each other ? " cried the lady. " And 
here I have been promising myself the pleasure of making two 
charming persons acquainted." 

" We have known each other for a long time," exclaimed 
Miss Garrison, " and I am delighted with you for bringing me 
an old friend. But, I must confess, I did not know Mr. Arken- 
burgh was a senator. Pray, allow me to congratulate you, and do 
not think I take no interest in the current history of my country." 

Senator Arkenburgh bowed with the dignity of old. There 
was the same frank look in his eye and the measured gravity 
of speech. Miss Garrison asked after his health, and how had 
he liked the West. Was it not nice to get East again ? Or per- 
haps he had been East frequently. No ? this was the first time ? 
Well, it was rather a triumphant return, this coming back to 
mount the steps of the Capitol as a ruler of the land. 

" Yes, it is a triumph, after your last recollection of me," said 
Senator Arkenburgh. "Then I had just finished serving the State." 

" And are you settled in Washington now ? " asked Miss 
Garrison, disposing of the remark with a brief, faint smile. 

" Yes. I intended to go to New York to-morrow morning," 
said the senator, " but if you will kindly take my arm and ac- 
company me a little out of this crush you may give me the in- 
formation I was going to seek. It seems to me a happy augury 
that I should meet you almost at once at the first entertainment 
I have attended in Washington. Will you sit here for a few 
moments ? " 

He had brought her to a secluded nook in one of the rooms 
comparatively deserted. Miss Garrison seated herself and, when 
he had taken a low chair and placed himself at her side, began 
a volley of questions. Hardly would one be answered before she 
proposed another. The spot and occasion seemed to have in- 
spired her with great volubility. The senator had hardly a 
chance to do aught but answer. 

At last, taking advantage of a very small break in the con- 
versation, Senator Arkenburgh, bending slightly toward her, said : 
" May I not speak a little of yourself and of myself? Or shall 
I fatigue you with the latter prosy subject ? " 

" Oh ! you may talk of yourself as much as you please, but, 



1891.] A QUESTION OF TEMPERAMENT. 253 

pray, leave me out. There is so little about me as a conversa- 
tional topic." 

" First, then, let me tell you," Senator Arkenburgh went on 
with his firm, measured tones, " that I have succeeded in all the 
objects for which I went West. My business ventures there have 
been unusually successful, and it seems to me that a place in the 
Senate of our country is an offset for that striped suit in Sing 
Sing. But in my heart there has been an object higher and 
dearer far to me than either wealth or glory ; and my object in 
going to New York to-morrow was to see if I had any hope of 
winning that." 

Miss Garrison fanned hersell and waited patiently for him to 
continue. 

" When I left New York I carried with me the image of a 
noble woman in my heart. There she has ever been, and my 
waking and my falling to sleep have been with the thought of 
her as a comfort and an incentive. I was going .on to New 
York to-morrow to ask her, if I found her unwedded, to be my 
wife, now that I can offer her something more worthy than what 
I had then to bestow. But I do not need to go now, for I 
have found you here, and you are still Miss Garrison. 

"This may seem abrupt," he went on, "and you may think it 
very little like a lover to have remained so long without word or 
sign to tell of what was in his heart. But I wished to bring you 
something better than a prison-suit, and until I could I wished 
to leave you perfectly free. Had I found you married, the re- 
membrance of you would have been mine for ever, and that would 
have been more to me than marriage with any other woman. 
No one would have had a right to take that from me. And if 
you had married, it would have been because your heart had 
been given to another, worthier than I, whom you loved. And 
God knows I only desire your perfect happiness. Now, tell me, 
with the same womanly candor and truth with which you spoke 
to me the sweetest words I have ever heard in my life, just after 
I had been sentenced as a thief tell me if I may hope to win 
this greatest prize that I have set before myself." 

She had let her fan fall in her lap, and her eyes had been 
downcast as she listened, motionless except for her quickened" 
breathing. As he finished she drew a long, slow breath before 
she raised her face to his, with the frankest smile upon her lips. 
Her answer was in her eyes. He drew her head toward him 
and pressed his lips upon her forehead, folding his arms tenderly 
about her. JOHN J. A BECKET. 



254 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER.* 

* 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
SEPARATION FROM THE REDEMPTORISTS. 

THE events which led to the .separation ot the band ot 
American missionaries from the Redemptorist community took 
place in the spring and summer of 1857. A misunderstanding 
arose about the founding of a new house in Newark, N. J., or 
in New York City, which should be the headquarters for the 
English-speaking Fathers and become the centre of attraction for 
American subjects, and in which English should be the lan- 
guage in common use. Application had been made by Bishop 
Bayley, and afterwards by Archbishop Hughes, for such a 
foundation, but superiors, both in the United States and in Rome 
the latter dependent on letter- writing for understanding the 
difficulties which arose became suspicious of the aims of the 
American Fathers and of the spirit which actuated them. To 
establish their loyalty and to explain the necessity for the new 
foundation, the missionary Fathers believed that one of their 
number should go to Rome and lay the matter in person be- 
fore the General or Rector Major of the order. The choice fell 
on Father Hecker, who sailed on August 5, 1857, arrived in 
Rome the 26th, and was expelled from the Congregation of the 
Most Holy Redeemer on Sunday, the 2Qth of the same month, 
the General deeming his coming to Rome to be a violation of 
the vows of obedience and poverty. 

The grounds of his expulsion were then examined by the 
Propaganda, from which the case passed to the Holy Father, 
who sought the decision of the Congregation of Bishops and 
Regulars. Pius IX. gave his judgment as a result of the examin- 
ation made by the last-named Congregation ; but he had made 
a personal study of all the evidence, and had given private 
audiences to both the General and Father Hecker. It was de- 
cided that all the American Fathers associated in the missionary 
band should be dispensed from their vows as Redemptorists, 
including Father Hecker, who was looked upon and treated by 
the decree as if he were still as much a member of the Congre- 
gation as the others, his expulsion being ignored. This con- 

* Copyright, 1890, Rev. A. F. Hewit. All rights reserved. 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 255 

elusion was arrived at only after seven months ot deliberation, 
and was dated the 6th of March, 1858. The decree, which will 
be given entire in this chapter, contemplates the continued activ- 
ity of the Fathers as missionaries, subject to the authority ot 
the American bishops ; their formation into a separate society 
was taken for granted. Such is a brief statement of the entire 
case. If the reader will allow it to stand as a summary, what 
follows will serve to fill in the outline and complete a more 
detailed view. 

And at the outset let it be fully understood that none ot 
the Fathers desired separation from the order or had the 
faintest notion of its possibility as the outcome of the mis- 
understanding. One of the first letters of Father Hecker from 
Rome utters the passionate cry, u They have driven me out ot 
the home of my heart and love." We have repeatedly heard 
him affirm that he never had so much as a temptation against 
his vows as a Redemptorist. But in saying this we do not 
mean to lay blame on the Redemptorist superiors. In all that 
we have to say on this subject we must be understood as re- 
cognizing their purity of intention. Their motives were love ot 
discipline and obedience, which they considered seriously en- 
dangere'd. They were persuaded that their action, though se- 
vere, was necessary for the good of the entire order. And this 
shows that the difficulty was a misunderstanding, for there is 
conclusive evidence of the loyalty of the American Fathers ol 
Father Hecker no less than the others ; as also of their fair 
fame as Redemptorists with both the superiors and brethren ot 
the community up to the date of their disagreement. When 
Father Hecktr left for Rome, the Provincial gave him his writ- 
ten word that, although he disapproved of his journey, he bore 
witness to him as a good Redemptorist, full of zeal for souls ; 
and he added that up to that time his superiors had rjeen en- 
tirely satisfied with him; and to the paper containing this 
testimony the Provincial placed the official seal of the order. 
On the other side, a repeated and careful examination of Father 
Hecker's letters and memoranda reveals no accusation by him 
of moral fault against his Redemptorist superiors, but on the 
contrary many words of favorable explanation of their conduct. 
When the Rector Major, in the midst of his council, began, to 
Father Hecker's utter amazement, to read the sentence of ex- 
pulsion, he fell on his knees and received the blow with bowed 
head as a visitation of God. And when, again, after prostrating 
himself before the Blessed Sacrament and resigning himself to 



256 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

the Divine Will, he returned to the council and begged the Gen- 
eral on his knees for a further consideration of his case, and 
was refused, he reports that the General affirmed that his sense 
of duty would not allow him to act otherwise than he had done, 
and that he by no means meant to condemn Father Hecker in 
the court of conscience, but only to exercise jurisdiction over 
his external conduct. 

In truth the trouble arose mainly from the very great differ- 
ence between the character of the American Fathers and that of 
their superiors in the order. It is nothing new or strange, to 
borrow Father Hewit's thoughts as expressed in his memoir oi 
Father Baker, that men whose characters are cast in a different 
mould should have different views, and should, with the most con- 
scientious intentions, be unable to coincide in judgment or act in 
concert : 

" There is room in the Catholic Church for every kind of re- 
ligious organization, suiting all the varieties of mind and char- 
acter and circumstance. If collisions and misunderstandings often 
come between those who have the same great end in view, this 
is the result of human infirmity, and only shows how imperfect 
and partial are human wisdom and human virtue." 

What Father Hewit adds ot Father Baker's dispositions ap- 
plies as well to all the Fathers. In ceasing to be Redemptorists, 
they did not swerve from their original purpose in becoming reli- 
gious. None of them had grown discontented with his state or with 
his superiors. They were all in the full fervor of the devotional 
spirit of the community, and as missionaries were generously wear- 
ing out their lives in the toil and hardship of its peculiar voca- 
tion. But both parties became the instruments of a special 
providence, which made use of the wide diversities of tempera- 
.ment existing among men, and set apart Father Hecker and 
his companions, after a season of severe trial, for a new aposto- 
late. They did not choose it for themselves. Father Hecker had 
aspirations, as we know, but he did not dream of realizing them 
through any separation whatever. But Providence led the Holy 
See to change what had been a violent wrench into a peaceful 
division, exercising, in so doing, a divine authority accepted with 
equal obedience by all concerned. 

What Father Hewit further says of Father Baker applies ex- 
actly to Father Hecker : 

" For the Congregation in which he was trained to the reli- 
gious and ecclesiastical state he always retained a sincere esteem 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 257 

and affection. He did not ask the Pope for a dispensation from 
his vows in order to be relieved from a burdensome obligation, 
but only on the condition that it seemed best to him to terminate 
the difficulty which had arisen that way. When the dispensation 
was granted he did not change his life for a more easy one. . . 
Let no one, therefore, who is disposed to yield to temptations 
against his vocation, and to abandon the religious state from 
weariness, tepidity, or any unworthy motive, think to find any 
encouragement in his example ; for his austere, self-denying, and 
arduous life will give him only rebuke, and not encouragement." 

After the expulsion the General begged Father Hecker to 
make the convent his home till he was suited elsewhere, and 
Father Hecker, having thanked him for his kindness and 
stayed there that night, took lodgings the following day in a quiet 
street near the Propaganda. During the seven months of his stay 
in Rome < he frequently visited the General and his consultors, 
sometimes on business but at other times from courtesy and 
good feeling. 

He at once presented the testimonials intended for the Gen- 
eral to Cardinal Barnabo, Prefect of the Propaganda, who ex- 
amined them in company with Archbishop Bedini, the Secretary 
of that Congregation. As may be imagined, the attitude of these 
prelates was at first one of extreme reserve. But every case gets 
a hearing in Rome, and that of this expelled religious, and there- 
fore suspended priest, could be no exception. A glance at the 
credentials, a short conversation with their bearer, a closer exam- 
ination of the man and of his claim, produced a favorable impres- 
sion and led to a determination to sift the matter thoroughly. 
The principal letters were from Archbishop Hughes and Bishop 
Bayley. The former spoke thus of Father Hecker : " I have 
great pleasure in recommending him as a laborious, edifying, 
zealous, and truly apostolic priest." 

Some of the letters were from prominent laymen of the City 
ot New York, including one from Mr. McMaster, another from 
Dr. Brownson, and another from Dr. Ives ; in addition he had 
the words of praise of the Provincial in America already referred 
to. Finally he showed letters from each of the American Fathers, 
one of whom, Father Hewit,. was a member of the Provincial 
Council, all joining themselves to Father Hecker as sharing the 
responsibility of his journey to Rome, and naming him as the 
representative of their cause. 

It is not our purpose to trace the progress of the investiga- 
tion through the Roman tribunals. We will but give such facts 

VOL. I.III. 17 



258 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

and such extracts from letters as throw light on Father Hecker's 
conduct during this great crisis. One might be curious to know 
something about the friends he made in Rome. The foremost 
of them was the Cardinal Prefect of the Propaganda. 

* 

" The impression that Cardinal Barnabo made upon me," he 
writes in one of his earliest letters, " was most unexpected ; he 
was so quick in his perceptions and penetration, so candid and 
confiding in speaking to me. He was more like a father and 
friend ; and both the cardinal and the archbishop (Bedini) ex- 
pressed such warm sympathy in my behalf that it made me feel, 
... in a way I never felt before, the presence of God in those 
who are chosen as rulers in His Church." 

In another letter he says : 

"He (the cardinal) has been to me more than a friend; he is 
to me a father, a counsellor, a protector. No one enjoys so high 
a reputation in every regard in Rome as the cardinal. He gives 
me free access to, him and confides in me." 

There is much evidence, too much to quote it all, that the 
cardinal was drawn to Father Hecker on account of his simplic- 
ity and openness of character, his frank manner, but especially 
for his bold, original views of the opportunity of religion among 
free peoples. Cardinal Barnabo was noted for his sturdy temper 
and was what is known as a hard hitter, though a generous oppo- 
nent as well as an earnest friend. He espoused Father Hecker's 
cause with much heartiness ; official intercourse soon developed 
into a close personal attachment, which lasted with unabated 
warmth till the strong old Roman was called to his reward. 

Father Hecker speaks in his letters of spending time with 
him, not only on business but in discussing questions of philoso- 
phy and religious controversy, and in talking over the whole 
American outlook. 

The cardinal became the American priest's advocate before 
the Pope, and also with the Congregation of Bishops and Regu- 
lars after the case reached that tribunal. " When I heard him 
speak in my defence," he said in after times, " I thanked God 
that he was not against me, for he was a most imperious char- 
acter when aroused, and there seemed no resisting him." 

Archbishop Bedini, the Secretary of the Propaganda, was an- 
other hearty friend. Our older readers will remember that he 
had paid a visit to America a few years before the time we are 
considering, and that his presence here was made the occasion 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 259 

for some of the more violent outbreaks of the Know-nothing ex- 
citement. He knew our country personally, therefore, and was 
acquainted with very many of our clergy ; his assistance to the 
Roman Court in this case was of special value. He became so 
demonstrative in his friendship for Father Hecker that the Pope 
was amused at it, and Father Hecker relates in his letters home 
how the Holy Father rallied him about the warmth of his advo- 
cacy of the American priest's cause, as did various members of 
the Pontifical court. 

At that time and for many years afterwards Doctor Bernard 
Smith, an Irish Benedictine monk, was Professor of Dogmatic 
Theology in the College of the Propaganda ; he is now the hon- 
ored abbot of the great Basilica of St. Paul without-the-walls. 
How Father Hecker came to know the learned professor we 
have been unable to discover ; but both he and Monsignor Kirby, 
of the Irish College, became his firm friends and powerful advo- 
cates. Without Doctor Smith's advice, indeed, scarcely a step 
was taken in the case. 

An unexpected ally was found in Bishop Connolly, of St. 
John's, New Brunswick. He had 'been robbed on his way between 
Civita Vecchia and Rome, and that misfortune gave him a special 
claim to the regard of the Pope, with whom he soon became a 
favorite. The Holy Father admired in him that energy of char- 
acter and zeal for religion which distinguished him in after years as 
Archbishop of Halifax. On hearing of Father Hecker's case he 
studied it on account of sympathetic interest in the aspects of 
Catholicity in the United States, part of his diocese being at 
that time, we believe, in the State of Maine. How ardent his 
friendship for Father Hecker soon became is shown by his ex- 
clamation: "I am ready to die for you, and I am going to*tell 
the Pope so." He even offered to assist Father Hecker in pay- 
ing his personal expenses while in Rome. In a letter to the 
American Fathers of December 18 Father Hecker writes: 

" Another recent and providential event in our favor has 
been the friendship of Bishop Connolly, of St. John's, New Bruns- 
wick. By his extraordinary exertions and his warm friendship 
for us he has succeeded in giving us the vantage ground in all 
quarters where we were not in good favor. I told you in the 
last note that he had spoken to the Holy Father in favor of 
our cause, but I had no time to give you the substance of what 
was said. Bishop Connolly is a full-blooded Irishman, but, for- 
tunately for us, not implicated in any party views in our coun- 



260 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

try, and seeing that the Propaganda regarded our cause as its 
own and had identified itself with our success, ... it being 
friendly to us as missionaries, he exerted all his influence in 
our favor. His influence was not slight, for the Pope had con- 
ceived a great friendship for him, and heaped all sorts of honors 
on him. Well, he had a regular tussle with his Holiness about 
us and our cause, and when the Holy Father repeated some 
things said of me against me, of course he replied : ' Your 
Holiness, I should not be at all surprised if some fine day you 
yourself would have to canonize one of these Yankee fellows.' 
In one word, he left nothing unsaid or undone with the Pope 
in our favor; and the Pope suggested to him obtaining dispen- 
sation of our vows and forming a new company. ' They cannot 
expect me,' he said, ' to take the initiatory step ; this would be 
putting the cart before the horse. Let them do this, and pre- 
sent their plan to me, and if I find it good, it shall have my 
consent.' . . . The bishop has also seen and won over to our 
favor Monsignor Talbot, who said to him : * The only way now 
of settling the difficulties is to give the American Fathers the 
liberty to form a new company for the American missions.' In 
addition, the bishop wrote a strong document in favor of our 
missions and of us, and presented it to Cardinal Barnabo, which 
will be handed in to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, 
who have our affairs in hand. ... If this good bishop 
should come in your way, whether by writing or otherwise, you 
cannot be too grateful for what he has done for us. After Car- 
dinal Barnabo and Archbishop Bedini we owe more to him than 
to any one else. 

" Wind and tide are now in our favor, and my plan is to 
keep quiet and stick close to the rudder to see that the ship 
keeps right." 

On his way home from Rome Bishop Connolly wrote the 
following letter to Father Hecker, dated at Marseilles, January 
20, 1858: 

" From the deep interest I feel in your concerns you will 
pardon my curiosity in wishing to have the earliest intelligence 
of your fate in the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars. I 
could wish I were near you all the time, and have nothing else 
to attend to ; but you "have got One more powerful than I at 
your right hand. Fix your hopes in Him and you will not be 
confounded. After having done everything on your part that 
unsleeping energy as well as prudence could suggest, you must 






1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 261 

take the issue, however unpalatable it may be, as the undoubted 
expression of God's will, and act (as I am sure you will act) 
accordingly. . . . You must keep steadily in view the glori- 
ous principle for which you came to Rome, and which I am 
convinced is for the greater glory of God and the greater good 
of religion in America. If you can start as a religious body with 
the approbation of Rome, this would be the holiest and most 
auspicious consummation. ... Be guided at every step by 
the holy and enlightened men whose sympathies you have won 
and in whose hands you will be always safe : Cardinal Barnabo 
in primis, and after him Monsignor Bedini and Doctors Kirby 
and Smith. United with them at every step, failure is impos- 
sible you must and you will succeed. ... I am sure that 
you know and feel this as well as I do (for we have been 
marvellously of the same way of thinking on nearly all points), 
but as I feel I must write to you, as it may be, perchance, of 
some consolation to you in your troubles, I thought it better to 
say it over again. . . . If a letter or anything else from 
me could be of any service, I need not tell you that I am still 
on hand and only anxious to be employed. [Here follows his 
address in Paris and Liverpool] With all good wishes for your 
success, and with the hope of hearing the happy tidings from 
your own hand before I leave Europe, I am, Reverend dear Sir, 

" Very faithfully yours in Christ, 

" f THOMAS L. CONNOLLY, 

"Bishop of St. John's, N. B" 

From what has been so far communicated to the reader, it 
will be seen that Father Hecker's case had the strength of 
friendship to assist it. But he was himself his best advocate. 
His traits of character were lovable, and the very incongruity 
of such a man forced to plead against the direst penalty known 
to a religious, was a singularly strong argument. His cheerful 
demeanor while fighting for his life ; his puzzling questions on 
social and philosophical points ; his mingled mysticism and prac- 
tical judgment ; his utterance of political sentiments which, as he 
truly said in one of his letters, if spoken by any one but an 
American would elicit instant reproof; his total lack of obse- 
quiousness united to entire submission to lawful authority, all 
helped to make for himself and- his cause friends in every di- 
rection. 

The unanimous adhesion of the American Redemptorist mis- 
sionaries was a powerful element in his favor, and a priceless 
boon for his own consolation. He was continually in receipt of 
such words as these : " We all desire you to consider us fully 
identified with you and to act in our name." "We have the 



262 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [May, 

utmost confidence in your discretion, and your conservative 
views are quite to our mind." His whole heart went out in 
response to these greetings. On October 24 he writes to the 
Fathers : 

f 

" The contents of your note were what I had a right to ex- 
pect from you : sympathy, confidence, and reliance on Divine 
Providence. How much these trials will endear us to each 
other ! If we keep together as one man and regard only God, 
defeat is impossible. Do not forget to offer up' continually 
prayers for me. How much I see the hand of Providence in 
all our difficulties ! And the end will, I trust, make it evi- 
dent as the sun." 

But where he placed his entire trust is shown by the fol- 
lowing, a part of the same letter : 

' " Our affairs are in the hands of God. I hope no one will 
feel discouraged, nor fear for me. All that is needed to bring 
the interests of God to a successful issue is grace, grace, grace ; 
and this is obtained by prayer. And if the American Fathers 
will only pray and get others to pray, and not let any one 
have the slightest reason to bring a word against them in our 
present crisis, God will be with us and help us, and Our Lady 
will take good care of us. So far no step taken in our past 
need be regretted. If it were to be done again it would have 
my consent. The blow given to me I have endeavored to re- 
ceive with humility and in view of God. It has not produced 
any trouble in my soul, nor made me waver in the slightest de- 
gree in my confidence in God or my duty towards Him. Let 
us not be impatient. God is with us and will lead us if we 
confide in Him." 

During his stay in Rome he corresponded regularly with 
his brother George, whose ever-open purse paid all his ex- 
penses. We have also found a very long letter of loving friend- 
ship from Doctor Brownson, conveying the profoundest sympa- 
thy. This came during the most critical period of the case and 
gave much consolation. It called forth an answer equally 
affectionate. 

He received exceedingly sympathetic letters from Fathers de 
Held and de Buggenoms. The former was at the time rector 
of the house in Liege, and wrote a letter to Cardinal Barnabo, a 



1891 ] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 263 

copy of which has been preserved, which treats most favorably 
of Father Hecker's character and discusses his case at length, 
petitioning a decision which should reinstate him in the order. 

Late in November he sought an interview with Cardinal 
Reisach, holding him closely interested for two hours, conversing 
upon American religious prospects and quite winning his friend- 
ship. By means of such interviews, which, at Cardinal Barna- 
bo's suggestion, he sought with the chief prelates in Rome, he 
became widely known in the city, and the state of religion in 
America was made a common topic of conversation. 

The following introduces a singular phase in the case. It is 
from a letter written before the end of September, less than a 
month after his arrival : 

" My leisure moments are occupied in writing an article on 
the ' Present Condition and Future Prospects of the Catholic 
Faith in the United States/ for the Civilta Cattolica. They 
have promised to translate and publish it." 

The Civilta is still a leading Catholic journal, the foremost 
exponent of the views of the Society of Jesus. At that time it 
was the official organ of* Pius IX., who read all its articles in the 
proofs, and it went everywhere in Catholic circles. The editors 
became fast friends of Father Hecker, though we are not aware 
that they took sides in his case. His article was divided in the 
editing, and appeared in two successive numbers of the maga- 
zine. It attracted wide attention, being translated and printed 
in the chief Catholic periodicals of France, Belgium, and Ger- 
many, and published by Mr. McMaster in the Freeman's Jour- 
nal. In Rome it served a good purpose. To some its views 
were startling, but its tone was fresh and enlivening. It under- 
took to show that the freest nation in the world was the most 
inviting field for the Catholic propagandist. We suppose that the 
author's main purpose in writing was but to invite attention to 
America, yet he so affected public opinion in Rome as to ma- 
terially assist the adjustment of the difficulty pending before the 
high tribunals. Cardinal Barnabo was quite urgent with Father 
Hecker that he should write more of the same kind, but either 
his occupations or his expectation of an early return home hin- 
dered his doing so. As it was, he had caused himself and the 
American Fathers to be viewed by men generally through the 
medium of the great question of the relation of religion to the 
young Republic of the Western World. That topic was forturt- 



264 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [May y 

ate in having him for its exponent. He was an object-lesson 
of the aspirations of enlightened Catholic Americans as well as 
an exalted type of Catholic missionary zeal. Very few men of 
discernment ever really knew Father Hecker but to admire him 
and to be ready to be persuad-ed by him of his life-thesis : that 
a free man tends to be a good Catholic, and a free nation is 
the most promising field for apostolic zeal. 

Soon after his arrival in Rome he made the acquaintance of 
George L. Brown, an American artist of some note, and a non- 
Catholic. He was an earnest man, and Father Hecker attacked 
him at once on the score of religion, and before December had re- 
ceived him into the Church. This event made quite a stir in Rome. 
The city was always full of artists and their patrons, and Mr. 
Brown's conversion, together with the articles in the Civilta, in- 
fluenced in Father Hecker's favor many persons whom he could 
not directly reach. This was especially the case with the Pope, to 
whose notice such matters were brought by Archbishop Bedini, 
his office enabling him to approach the Holy Father at short in- 
tervals. He exerted a similar influence on all the high officials of 
the Roman court 

In spite of all this favor the usual delays attendant upon 
serious judicial investigations oppressed 'Father Hecker with the 
heavy dread of " the law's delay," detaining him in Rome from 
the first week in September, 1857, when the case was opened in 
the Propaganda, till it was closed by the decision of the Con- 
gregation of Bishops and Regulars early in the following March. 
Nor was the " insolence of office " quite absent. He was once 
heard to tell of his having been snubbed in the Pope's antecham- 
ber by some one in attendance, and often put aside till he was 
vexed with many weary hours of waiting and by being compelled 
to repeatedly return. 

" I had to wait for three days," we read in the memoranda, 
" and then was reproached and scolded by the monsignor in 
attendance for coming late. I had not come late but had been 
kept waiting outside, and I told him so. ( You will see those hills 
of Albano move,' said I, ' before I move from my purpose to 
see the Holy Father.' When he saw my determination he chang- 
ed and gave me my desired audience." 

When events had taken the question out of the jurisdiction of 
the Redemptorist order and into the general court of the Cath- 
olic Church, its settlement was found to be difficult. The resto- 
ration of Father Hecker by a judicial decision would not, it is 
plain, have left him and his companions in that harmonious rela- 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKEP. 265 

tion so essential to their personal happiness and to their success 
as missionaries. It was then suggested that they should petition 
for a separate organization under the Rule of St. Alphonsus ap- 
proved by Benedict XIV., acting directly subject to the Holy 
See, thus making two Redemptorist bodies in the United States, 
as is the case with various Franciscan communities. It was also 
suggested that the Cisalpine, or Neapolitan Redemptorists, at that 
time an independent congregation, would gladly take the Amer- 
ican Fathers under their jurisdiction. The alternative was what 
afterwards took place the dispensation of the Fathers from their 
vows, in view of their forming their own organization under direc- 
tion, of the Bishops and the Holy See. A petition praying the 
Holy Father to give them either the Rule of Benedict XIV. in 
the sense above suggested, or their dispensations from the vows, 
was drawn up and forwarded by the Fathers remaining in Amer- 
ica, the dispensation being named as the last resort. Father 
Hecker's legal case not being decided, he was advised by Cardi- 
nal Barnabo to reserve his signature to this document for the 
present. It will be seen at a glance that the dispensation from 
the vows and an entirely new departure in community existence 
was more in accordance with his aspirations. But no aspiration 
was so strong in him a's love of his brethren, and he was fully 
determined not to be separated from them if he could pre- 
vent it. 

Much delay was caused by waiting for further testimonials 
from American bishops confirmatory of the good character of the 
Fathers and of the value of their labors as missionaries. Father 
Hecker, meantime, wrote many letters to his brethren discussing 
the alternatives in question. 

In one of October 24 he tells of a pilgrimage he made to 
Nocera, to the tomb of St. Alphonsus, bearing his brethren in his 
heart with him. He also visited the Redemptorist house there 
and in Naples, and was quite charmed with the fathers, who were 
entirely willing to receive the Americans into their organization, 
which, as the reader knows, was separate from that of the Gen- 
eral in Rome. Knowing the mind of his brethren, and deter- 
mined to take no step alone, Father Hecker would have been 
content with this arrangement had it seemed good to the Holy 
See. Meantime he tells how greatly he enjoyed his visit to No- 
cera, how he said Mass over the holy body of the founder, and 
adds : " Ever since I feel more consoled and supported and con- 
fident." 

The following is from a joint letter of the American Fathers 



266 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER [May, 

dated November 1,7 ; they prefer, in case Father Hecker is not 
reinstated, being separated from the order and made "immedi- 
ately dependent on the Holy See, or the Prefect of the Propa- 
ganda, rather than anything else ; called, for instance, 
'Religious Missionaries of the - Propaganda,' if the Holy Father 
would make us such. With the Rule of St. Alphonsus and the 
same missionary privileges we now enjoy, and our dear Father 
Hecker among us again, we should feel happy and .safe. . . . 
But we wait for the words of the Holy See to indicate our 
course." 

His words to them are to the same effect: "Our first effort 
should be directed to the securing our hopes through the Transal- 
pine Congregation [this means the regular Redemptorist order to 
which they then belonged]. . . . If this is not successful, then to 
endeavor to accomplish our hopes through the Cisalpine [Neapoli- 
tan] Fathers, who will be heart and soul with us and grant all 
our best desires. Or, thirdly, to obtain permission to act as a 
band of missionaries in our country under the protection, for the 
present, of some bishop. . . . It is a consolation to me to see 
that our affairs are so far developed and known, and our views 
are so identical that you can act on your part, and write, with- 
out having to delay for information [from me]. You can easily 
imagine that it was no pleasant state for me to be in while in 
suspense about what would be the determination you would come 
to. Thank God and Our Lady, your recent letter set that all 
aside ! The work now to be done is plain, and the greatest care 
and prudence is to be exercised not to commit any fault, or 
make any mistake which may be to us a source of regret after- 
wards." 

In another letter he says that Cardinal Barnabo spoke of the 
unpleasant relations likely to exist after his restoration to the 
order, and then continues : 

"The cardinal had a long conversation with me, and he sug- 
gested whether God might not desire of me a special work. I 
told him I would not think of this while the dismission was over 
my head. He said, ' Of course not ; for if you are a mauvais 
sujet, as the General thinks, God will surely not use you for any 
special mission.' ' The letter here details more of the exchange 
of views between the cardinal and Father Hecker, the latter as- 
tounded to hear from this direction suggestions so closely tally- 
ing with his own interior aspirations about the apostolic outlook 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 267 

in America. " But," continues the letter, " you must well under- 
stand that I should not accept such a proposition for myself be- 
fore having asked the best counsel of men of God and received 
their unhesitating approval of its being God's will. There are 
holy men here, and I take counsel with them in every impor- 
tant step; and they are religious, so that they are good judges 
in such important matters. ... If God wishes to make use 
of us in such a design, and I can be assured of this on compe- 
tent authority, whatever it may cost, with His grace I will not 
'shrink from it. I call competent authority the approbation ot 
good and holy men, and one like the cardinal, who knows the 
country, knows all our affairs now, and has every quality of mind 
and heart to be a competent judge in this important matter. 
Though you have made me your plenipotentiary, yet this is an 
individual affair, one we did not contemplate, one of the highest 
import to our salvation and sanctification, and must depend on 
God and our individual conscience. 

" Even before making this proposition to you I asked advice 
from my spiritual director, and he approved of it. You may be 
confident that in every step which I take I endeavor to be ac- 
tuated by the spirit of God, and take every means to assure my- 
self of it, so that hereafter no scruple may trouble my conscience, 
and God's blessing be with me and you also." 

He writes thus towards the end of September : " The more 
I think of our difficulties the more I am inclined to believe 
that they may have been permitted by a good God for the very 
purpose of a work of this kind. If wise and holy men say so, 
and we have the approbation of the Holy See, is it not a mis- 
sion offered to us by Divine Providence, and ought we not 
cheerfully to embrace it ? " 

And on October 5 : "I hope God has inspired you with 
some means of coming to my. help. Indeed, it is a difficult po- 
sition, and the best I can do is to throw myself constantly on 
Divine Providence and be guided by Him. You will remember, 
and I hope, before this reaches you, will have answered my 
proposition in my last note, whether or not you would be 
willing to form an independent band of missionaries to be de- 
voted to the great wants of the country. I have consid- 
ered and reconsidered, and prayed and prayed, and in spite 
of my fears this seems to me the direction in which Divine 
Providence calls 2^s. . . . With all the difficulties, dangers, 
and struggles that another [community] movement presents be- 



268 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

fore me, I feel more and more convinced that it is this that 
Divine Providence asks of us. If we should act in concert 
its success cannot be doubted success not only as regards 
"our present kind of labors, but in a variety of other ways 
which are open to us in oyr new country. ... If you 
are prepared to move in this direction it would be best, and 
indeed necessary, not only to write to me your assent, but also 
a memorial to the Propaganda to Cardinal Barnabo stating 
the interests and wants of religion and of the country, and then 
petition to be permitted to turn your labors in this direc- 
tion. . 

" Such a course involves the release of your obligations to 
the [Redemptorist] Congregation, and this would have to be ex- 
pressed distinctly in your petition, and motived by good rea- 
sons there given." 

Further on in the same letter he adds : " Since writing the 
above I have had time for more reflection, and consulted with 
my spiritual adviser, and this course appears to be the .one Di- 
vine Providence points out.'' 

This very important letter ends as follows : " I endeavor to 
keep close to God, to keep up my confidence in His protection, 
and in the aid of Our Blessed Lady. I pray for you all ; you 
cannot forget me in your prayers." 

Then follow suggestions about obtaining testimonials from 
the American hierarchy for the information of the Holy See in a 
final settlement of the entire case. The prelates who wrote, all 
very favorably, were : Archbishops Hughes of New York, Ken- 
rick of Baltimore, Purcell of Cincinnati, Bishops Bayley of New- 
ark, Spalding of Louisville (both afterwards Archbishops of Bal- 
timore), Lynch of Charleston, Barry of Savannah, and De Goes- 
briand of Burlington, Vermont. 

On October 26, while wondering what would next happen, 
he writes : " As for my part, I do not see one step ahead, but 
at the same time I never felt so closely embraced in the arms 
of Divine Providence." But on the next day : " It seems to me 
a great and entire change awaits us. ... We are all of us 
young, and if we keep close and true to God and there is 
nothing but ourselves to prevent this a great and hopeful fu- 
ture is at our waiting. I know you pray for me ; continue to 
do so, and believe me always your wholly devoted friend and 
brother in Jesus and Mary." 

On November 12 : " My present impression is that neither 



1891-] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 269 

union with the Cisalpine Fathers nor separation as a band of 
[independent Redejrnptorist] missionaries in the United States 
will be approved of here. . . . What appears to me more and 
more probable is that we shall have to start entirely upon our 
own basis. This is perhaps the best of all, all things considered. 
. . . Such a movement has from the beginning seemed to 
me the one to which Divine Providence calls us, but I always 
felt timid as long as any door was left open for us to act in 
the Congregation. . . . I feel prepared to take this step 
with you without hesitation and with great confidence. . . 
I should have been glad, as soon as my dismission was given, to 
have started on in such a movement. But then it was my first 
duty to see whether this work could not be accomplished by 
the Congregation [of the Most Holy Redeemer] ; and, besides, 
I was not sure, as I now am, of your views being the same as 
mine. . . . All indicates the will of Divine Providence in 
our regard and gives me confidence. . . . 

"Father Hewit's letter, confirming your readiness to share your 
ortunes with me, was most consoling and strengthening. God. 
knows we seek only His interest and glory and are ready to 
suffer anything rather than offend Him. . . . 

" We should take our present missions as the basis of our 
unity and activity ; at the same time not be exclusively restricted 
to them, but leave ourselves at liberty to adapt ourselves to the [re- 
ligious] wants which may present themselves in our country. Were 
the question presented to me to restrict myself exclusively to 
missions, in that case I should feel in conscience bound to obtain 
from holy men a decision on the question whether God had not 
pointed out another field for me. . . . Taking our missions 
and our present mode of life as the groundwork, the rest will 
have to be left to Divine Providence, the character of the coun- 
try, and our own spirit of faith, and good common sense." 

In the same letter, that of December 25, he hopes that if the 
Holy See separates them from old affiliations they will form a 
society " which would embody in its life what is good in the Amer- 
ican people in the natural order and adapt itself to answer the 
great wants of our people in the spiritual order. I must confess 
to you frankly that thoughts of this kind do occupy my mind, and 
day by day they appear to me to come more clearly from heaven. 
I cannot refuse to entertain them without resisting what appear 
to me the inspirations of God. You know that these are not 
new opinions hastily adopted. From the beginning of my Cath- 
olic life there seemed always before me, but not distinctly, some 



2 ;o THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

such work, and it is indicated both in Questions of the Soul and 
Aspirations of Nature. And I cannot resist the thought that my 
present peculiar position is or may be providential to further 
some such undertaking. . . . It might be imagined that these 
views were but a ruse of the devil to thwart our common cause 
and future prospects. To this I have only to answer that the 
old rascal has been a long time at work to reach this point. If 
it be he, I shall head him off, because all that regards my per- 
sonal vocation I shall submit to wise and holy men and obey 
what they tell me." 

Father Hecker had his first audience with Pius IX., after 
much delay, on December 22. " I felt," he said, in giving an 
account of it in after years, " that my trouble in Rome was 
the great crisis in my life. I had one way of telling that I was 
not like Martin Luther : in my inmost soul I was ready, entire- 
ly ready, to submit to the judgment of the Church. They had 
made me out a rebel and a radical to the Holy Father, and 
when I saw him alone, after the usual salutations, and while on 
-my knees, I said : ' Look at me, Holy Father ; see, my shoul- 
ders are broad. Lay on the stripes. I will bear them. All I 
want is justice. I want you to judge my case. I will submit.' 
The Pope's eyes filled with tears at these words, and his man- 
ner was very kind." The rest of the interview is given in a 
letter : " The Pope bade me rise and told me he was informed 
all about my affairs. Then he asked what was my desire. I . re- 
plied that he might have the goodness to examine the purpose 
of my coming to Rome, 'since it regarded the conversion of the 
American people, a work which the most intelligent and pious Cath- 
olics have at heart, among others Dr. Ives, whom you know.' 'Yes,' 
he said; 'has his wife become a Catholic?' I replied in the af- 
firmative. ' But what can I do ? ' he said ; ' the affair is being 
examined by Archbishop Bizarri (Secretary of the Congregation 
of Bishops and Regulars), and nothing can be done until he gives 
in his report; then I will give my opinion and my decision.' 'Your 
decision, most Holy Father, is God's decision, and whatever it 
may be willingly and humbly will I submit to it.' While I was 
making this remark his Holiness paid the greatest attention, and 
it seemed to satisfy and please him. ' The American people,' he 
continued, ' are much engrossed in worldly things and in the pur- 
suit of wealth, and these are not favorable to religion; it is not I 
who say so, but our Lord in the Gospel.' 'The United States, your 
Holiness,' I replied, ' is in its youth, and, like a ^young father of a 
family occupied in furnishing his house, while this is going on 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 271 

he must be busy; but the American people do not make money to 
hoard' it, nor are they miserly.' 'No, no,' he replied; 'they 
are willing to give when they possess riches. The bishops tell 
me they are generous in aiding the building of churches. You 
see,' he added, ' I know the bright side as well as the dark side 
of the Americans ; but in the United States there exists a too 
unrestricted freedom, all the refugees and revolutionists gather 
there and are in full liberty.' ' True, most Holy Father ; but this 
has a good side. Many of them, seeing in the United States that 
the Church is self-subsisting and not necessarily connected with 
what they call despotism, begin to regard it as a Divine institu- 
tion and return to her fold.' ' Yes,' he said, ' the Church is as 
much at home in a republic as in a monarchy or aristocracy. 
But then, again, you have the abolitionists and their opponents, 
who get each other by the hair.' 'There is also the Catholic 
faith, Holy Father, which if once known would act on these par- 
ties like oil upon troubled waters, and our best-informed states- 
men are becoming more and more convinced that Catholicity is 
necessary to sustain our institutions, and enable our young coun- 
try to realize her great destiny. And allow me to add, most 
Holy Father, that it would be an enterprise worthy of your 
glorious pontificate to set on foot the measures necessary for the 
beginning of the conversion of America.' 

" On retiring he gave me his blessing, and repeated in a loud 
voice as I kneeled, ' Bravo ! Bravo ! ' ' 

" Pius IX.," said Father Hecker afterwards, " was a man of 
the largest head, of still larger heart, moved more by his impulses 
than by his judgment ; but his impulses were great, noble, all- 
embracing." 

It will not be out oi place here to look more closely into 
Father Hecker's conscience and study his motives. One might 
ask why he did not simply submit to the infliction visited upon 
him by his superior in the order, and humbly withdraw from 
notice till God should find a way to vindicate him. But his 
case was not a personal one. He was in Rome representing a 
body of priests and a public cause, and every principle of duty 
and honor required an appeal to higher authority. Nor was 
vindication the chief end in view, but rather freedom to follow 
the dictates of the Holy Spirit in accordance with Catholic tra- 
ditions and wholly subject to the laws and usages of the Church. 
Beyond securing exactly this he had no object whatever. On 
February 19, 1858, he thus wrote to his brother George: 



272 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

" But there is no use of keeping back anything. My policy 
has all along been to have no policy, but to be frank, truthful, and 
have no fear. For my own part I will try my best to be true 
to the light and grace given me, even though it reduces me to 
perfect insignificance. I desire nothing upon earth except to 
labor for the good of our Religion and our Country, and what- 
ever may be the decision of our affairs here, my aims cannot be 
defeated. I feel, indeed, quite indifferent about the decision 
which may be given, so that they allow us freedom." 

.As illustrating Father Hecker's supernatural motives and rec- 
titude of conscience the following extracts from letters to the 
Fathers will be of interest. In September, when the arrow was 
yet in the wound, he wrote : 

" I have no feelings of resentment against any one of the 
actors [in this matter]. On the contrary I could embrace them 
all with unfeigned sentiments of love. God has been exceedingly 
good not to let me be even tempted in this way." 

Again, on December 5 : 

" Your repeated assurances of being united with me in our 
future fills me with consolation and courage. We may well re- 
peat the American motto, ' United we stand, divided we fall.' 
Never did I find myself more sustained by the grace of God. 
How often I have heard repeated by acquaintances I have made 
here : ' Why, Father Hecker, you are the happiest man in 
Rome ! ' Little do they know how many sleepless nights I 
have passed, how deeply I have suffered within three months. 
But isn't Almighty God good ? It seems I never knew or 
felt before what it is to be wholly devoted to Him." 

On December 9, after a long exposition of the need of a new 
religious missionary institute for America : 

"Considering our past training, and many other advantages 
which we possess, I cannot but believe ( that God will use us, 
provided that we remain faithful to Him, united together as one 
man, and ready to make any sacrifice for some such holy enter- 
prise ; and my daily prayer is that the Holy Father may re- 
ceive a special grace and inspiration to welcome and bless such 
a proposition." 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKE*. 273 

With his Christmas greetings he wrote : " From the start I 
have not suffered myself to repose a moment when there was 
anything to be done which promised help. Whatever may be 
the result of our affairs, this consolation will be with me I did 
my utmost, and everything just and honorable, to deserve suc- 
cess. No one would believe how much I have gone through at 
Rome, but I do it cheerfully, and sometimes gaily, because I 
know it is the will of God." 

On February 19, 1858: "The experience I have made here 
is worth more than my weight in gold. If God intends to em- 
ploy us in any important work in the future, such an experience 
was absolutely necessary for us. It is a novitiate on a large 
scale. I cannot thank God sufficiently for my having made it 
thus far without incurring by my conduct the displeasure or 
censure of any one." 

And a week afterwards : " You should write often, for words 
of sympathy, hope, encouragement are much to me now in these 
trials, difficulties, and conflicts. In all my Catholic life I have not 
experienced oppression and anxiety of mind in such a degree as 
I have for these ten days past." 

March 6 : "So far from my devotion to religion being di- 
minished by recent events, it has, thank God, greatly increased ; 
but many other things have been changed in me. On many 
new points my intelligence has been awakened ; experience has 
dispelled much ignorance, and on the whole I hope that my faith 
and heart have been more purified. If God spares my life to 
return, I hope to come back more a man, a better Catholic, 
and more entirely devoted to the work of God." 

The following is from a copy of a letter to Father de Held 
dated November 2 : " One thing my trials have taught me, and 
this is the one thing important to love God more. It almost 
seems that I did not know before what it is to love Him." 

When it became evident that the Holy See would decide the 
case so as to make it necessary for the Fathers to form a new 
society, Father Hecker did not accept even this as a final in- 
dication of Providence that external circumstances had made it 
possible for him to realize his long-cherished dreams of an 
American apostolate ; for he was at liberty still to refuse. HJ 
redoubled his prayers. His pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Al- 
phonsus is already known to the reader ; he caused a novena of 

VOL. LIII. IS 



274 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

Masses to be said at the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual Help 
in the Redemptorist Church in Rome ; he said Mass himself at 
all the great shrines, especially the Confession of St. Peter, the 
altar of St. Ignatius and that of St. Philip Neri ; he earnestly en- 
treated all his friends, old ones at home and new-found ones in 
Rome, to join with him in his prayers for light. 

He furthermore took measures to obtain the counsel of wise 
and holy men. Every one whom he thought worthy of his 
confidence was asked for an opinion. Finally he drew up a 
formal document, known in this biography as the Roman 
Statement, and already familiar by reference and quotation, and 
placed it in the hands of the three religious whose names, in 
addition to those of Cardinal Barnabo and Archbishop Bedini, 
appear at the end of the extract we make from its original 
draft. It opens with a summary of his conversion, entrance 
into religion, and missionary life, and embraces a full enough 
statement of the trouble with the General of the order a mat- 
ter of notoriety at the time in the city of Rome. He then de- 
scribes his own interior aspirations and vocation to the aposto- 
late in America, backing up the authority of that inner voice 
with the external testimonials of prelates and priests and lay- 
men, whose letters had been procured by the Propaganda as 
evidence in the case before the Congregation of Bishops and 
Regulars. 

" If God has called me," he continues, " to such a work, 
His providence has in a singular way, since my arrival at Rome, 
opened the door for me to undertake it. The object of my 
coming to Rome was to induce the General to sustain and fa- 
vor the extension of our missionary labors in the United 
States. It was undertaken altogether for the good of the order, 
in the general interests of religion, and in undoubted good 
faith. Under false impressions of my purpose, my expulsion 
from the Congregation was decreed three days after my arrival. 
This was about three months ago, and it was the source of the 
deepest affliction to me, and up to within a short time my 
greatest desire was to re-enter the Congregation. At present it 
seems to me that these things were permitted by Divine Provi- 
dence in order to place me in the position to undertake that 
mission which has never ceased to occupy my thoughts." 

After some description of the state of religion in America 
the statement concludes : 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 275 

"These [American non-Catholics] require an institution 
which shall have their conversion to the Catholic faith as its 
principal aim, which is free to develop itself according to the 
fresh wants which may spring up, thus opening an attractive 
future to the religious vocations of the Catholic young men of 
that country. 

" Regarding, therefore, my early and extensive acquaintance 
among my own people, politically, socially, religiously, with the 
knowledge of their peculiar wants, with their errors also ; and 
the way in which God has led me and the graces given to me ; 
and my interior convictions and the experience acquired con- 
firming them since my Catholic life, and also my singular posi- 
tion at present the question, in conclusion, is to know from 
holy, instructed, and experienced men in such matters whether 
or not there is sufficient evidence of a special vocation from 
God for me to undertake now such a work." 

What follows is placed at the bottom of the last page of the 
statement : 

" EPIPHANY, 1858, ROME. 

" This document I had translated into Italian, and I gave it 
to Cardinal Barnabo, Archbishop Bedini, Father Francis, Pas- 
sionist my director while in Rome Father Gregorio, definitor, 
Carmelite, and Father Druelle, of the Congregation of the Holy 
Cross, and each gave a favorable answer." 

Father Hecker often said that he was fully determined to 
forego the entire matter, go back to the Redemptorists, or drift 
whithersoever Providence might will, if a single one of the men 
whom he thus consulted had failed to approve him, or had so 
much as expressed a doubt. He had inquired who were the most 
spiritually enlightened men in Rome, and had been guided to 
the three religious whom he had associated with Cardinal Bar- 
nabo and Archbishop Bedini to assist him in coming to a de- 
cision. 

The end came at last, and is announced in a letter of March 
9, 1^58: 

" The Pope has spoken, and the American Fathers, including 
myself, are dispensed from their vows. The decree is not in 
my hands, but Cardinal Barnabo read it to me last evening. 
The General is not mentioned in it, and no attention whatever is 



276 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKEK. [May, 

paid to his action in my regard. The other Fathers are dis- 
pensed in view of the petition they made, as the demand for 
separation as Redemptorists would destroy the unity of the Con- 
gregation, and in the dispensation I am associated with them. 
The Cardinal [Barnabo] is wholly content ; says that I must ask 
immediately for an audience to thank the Pop?. . . . Now let 
us thank God for oar success. 1 ' 

On March 1 1 : " We are left in entire liberty to act in the 
future as God and our intelligence shall point the way. Let us 
be thankful to God, humble towards each other and every one 
else, and more than ever in earnest to do the work God de- 
mands at our hands. . . . The Pope had before him all the 
documents, yours and mine and the General's, and the letters 
from the Archbishops and Bishops of the United States. Arch- 
bishop Bizarri (Secretary of the Congregation of Bishops and 
Regulars) gave him a verbal report of their contents and read 
some of the letters. Subsequently the Pope himself examined 
them and came to the conclusion to grant us dispensation. But 
there was / in the way, who had not petitioned for a dispensa- 
tion. And why not ? Simply because Cardinal Barnabo would 
have been offended at me if I had done so. ... I could not 
go against the wishes of the cardinal. A few days after he had 
given me his views, and with such warmth that I could not act 
against them, he saw the Pope, who informed him of his in- 
tention to give us dispensation and to set aside the decree of 
my expulsion. On seeing the cardinal after this audience he 
told me that I might communicate this to Archbishop Bizarri. 
I did so by note, telling him that if the Pope set aside my ex- 
pulsion and was determined to give the other American Fathers 
dispensation from their vows, in view of the circumstances which 
had arisen I would be content to accept my dispensation also. 
This note of mine was shown to the Pope, and hence he imme- 
diately associated me with you in the dispensation. 

" The wording of the decree is such as to make it plain that 
it was given in view of your memorial, and its terms are calcu- 
lated to give a favorable impression of us. ... Archbishop 
Bizarri told me yesterday, when I went to thank him for his 
part, that in it the Holy See had given us its praise, and he 
trusted we would show ourselves worthy of it in the future. I 
rejoined that since the commencement of our Catholic life we 
had given ourselves soul and body entirely to the increase of 
God's glory and the interests of His Church, and it was our 
firm resolve to continue to do so to the end of our lives. He 



THE LIFE OF FATHER HECK EX. 277 

was quite gratified with our contentment with the decision, for 
I spok^, as- I always have done, in your name as well as my 
own. 

" But whom do you think I met in his antechamber ? The 
General [of the Redemptoristsj. When he came in and got seated 
I immediately went across the room and reached out my hand to 
him, and we shook hands and sat down beside each other. 
In the course of the conversation he inquired what we 
intended to 'do in the future. My reply was that we had 
been guided by God's providence in the past and we looked 
to Him for guidance in our future. . . . As to my re- 
turn [home], the cardinal says I must not think of departing 
till after Easter. Indeed, I see that before I can obtain an au- 
dience to thank the Holy Father it will be hard on to Easter. 
If there be a few days intervening I will go to Our Lady of 
Loretto to invoke her aid in our behalf, and for her protection 
over us as a body and over each one in particular. In May, 
earlier or later in the month, with God's blessing and your pray- 
ers, I hope to be with you. 

" The decree, which places us, according to the Canons, under 
the authority of the Bishops, you will, of course, understand does 
not in any way make us parish priests. The Pope could not 
tell us in it to commence another congregation, although this is 
what he, and Cardinal Barnabo, and Archbishop Bedini, and 
others, expect from us. He [the Pope] said that for him to tell 
us so [officially] would be putting the cart before the horse. 
These are his words." 

On March 18: "It is customary here, before giving dispensa- 
tion of vows to religious, to require them to show their admission 
into a diocese. As this was not required in our case, we are con- 
sequently at liberty now to choose any bishop we please who will 
receive us. ' Choose your bishop, inform him of your inten- 
tions, and if he approves, arrange your conditions with him.' 
These are the cardinal's words, and both he and Archbishop 
Bedini suggested New York. . . . My trip to Loretto has 
come to naught, as I can find no one to accompany me, and 
then my health, I fear, will not bear so much fatigue. I shall 
come back with some gray hairs ; I thought to pull them all out 
before my return, but on. looking this morning with that inten- 
tion I found them too many. However, that is only on the out- 
side ; within all is right young, fresh, and full of courage, and 
rea-ly to fight the good fight.'" 



278 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

The following is a memorandum of his second audience with 
Pius IX. : 

" Yesterday, the i6th of March, the Pope accorded me an 
audience, and on my enterin'g his room he repeated my name, 
gave me his blessing, and after I had kissed his ring he told me 
to rise, and said : 'At length your affairs are determined. We 
have many causes to decide, and each must have its turn ; 
yours came finally, and now you have our decision.' ' True/ 
I replied, ' and your decision gives me great satisfaction, and 
it appears to me that it should be satisfactory to all concerned.' 
' I found you,' he rejoined, ' like Abraham and Lot, and (mak- 
ing a motion with his hand) I told one to take this, the other 
that direction.' 'For my part,' I said, 'I look upon the decision 
as providential, as I sought no personal triumph over the General, 
but entertain every sentiment of charity towards him, and every 
one of my former religious brethren.' This remark appeared to 
move the Pope, and I continued : ' I thought of your Holiness' 
decision in the holy Mass of this morning, when in the Gospel 
our Lord reminds us not to decide according to the appearances 
of things, but render a just judgment; and such is the one you 
have given, and for our part we trust that you will receive in 
the future consolation and joy [from our conduct].' ' As you 
petitioned,' he said, 'with the other Fathers as one of the Con- 
gregation, in giving you dispensation I considered you a mem- 
ber of the Congregation.' 'So I understood it,' was my reply; 
' and as a [private] person I felt no inclination to defend my 
character, but as a priest I felt it to be my duty ; and in this 
regard your Holiness has done all that I have desired.' ' But 
you intend to remain,' he inquired, ' together in community ? ' 
' Most assuredly, your Holiness ; our intention is to live and 
work as we have hitherto done. But there are many [spiritual] 
privileges attached to the work of the missions very necessary to 
their success, and which we would gladly participate in.' ' Well, 
well,' he answered, ' organize, begin your work, and then demand 
them, and I will grant them to you. The Americans, however, 
are very much engrossed in material pursuits.' ' True, Holy 
Father,' I replied, 'but the faith is there. We five missionaries 
are Americans, and were like . the others, but you see the grace 
of God has withdrawn us from these things and moved us to 
consecrate ourselves wholly to God and His Church, and we 
hope it will do the same for many of our countrymen. And 
once our countrymen are Catholics, we hope they will do great 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 279 

things for God's Church and His glory, for they have enthusi- 
asm ' 'Yes, yes,' he rejoined, 'it would be a great consolation 
to me.' I asked him if he would grant me a plenary indulgence 
for my brethren and my friends in the United States. 'Well,' 
he said, ' but I must have a rescript.' ' I have one with me 
which perhaps will do,' I answered. Looking over it, he made 
some alterations and signed it. I knelt down at his feet and 
begged him to give me a large blessing before my departure, 
in order that I might become a great missionary in the United 
States which he gave me most cordially, and I retired. 

" His manner was very affectionate, and in the course of the 
conversation he called me ' caro mio' and ' figlio mio' several 
times. We could not desire to leave a more favorable impres- 
sion than exists here in regard to us and our part in the recent 
transaction, and we have the sympathy of the Pope and the 
Propaganda. Rome will withhold nothing from us if we prove 
worthy of its confidence, and will hail our success with true 
joy. I look upon this settlement of our difficulties as the work 
of Divine Providence, and my prayer is that it may make me 
humble, modest, and renew my desire to consecrate myself 
wholly to God's designs." 

He writes to the Fathers, March 27: "The seven months 
passed here in Rome seem to me an age ; and have taxed me 
to that extent that I look forward to home as a place of rest 
and repose. When I think of the fears, anxieties, and labors un- 
dergone I say to myself enough for this time. On the other 
hand, when I remember the warm and disinterested friends 
God has given us on account of these difficulties, and the happy 
issue to which His providence has conducted them, my heart is 
full of gratitude and joy. To me the future looks bright, hope- 
ful, full of promise, and I feel confident in God's providence, 
and assured of His grace in our regard. I feel like raising up 
the cross as our standard and adopting one word as our motto 
CONQUER ! 

" I have just received the documents for you to give the 
Papal benediction at the missions, and will send them. A letter 
reached here this week from the Bishop of Burlington, Vt, and 
it is strongly in our favor ; it concludes by saying that all that 
we required to make us a religious Congregation was the special 
blessing of the Holy Father." 

Again, on April 3 : " Monsignor Bedini asked of the Pope the 
special benediction that Bishop De Goesbriand suggested, and he 



28o THE LIPE OF FATHER HECKER. [May, 

replied : ' Did I not give it to Pere Hecker, and through him to 
his brethren, when he was here ? ' ' But/ answered Monsignor 
Bedini, ' give them this benediction this time on the request ot 
the bishop.' And he answered.: 'It is well; I do.' So there is 
a special blessing from the Holy Father in view of our forming 
a religious body. Indeed, that is so well understood here that 
several have inquired what name we intend to adopt, etc. Ot 
course to all such questions my answer is : 'I can say nothing ; 
the future is in God's hands, and we intend to follow his provi- 
dence.' . . . 

" Good Cardinal Barnabo looks upon us with a paternal re- 
gard, and when I expressed in your name how warmly we re- 
turned his affection, and what a deep gratitude we owed him, he 
was deeply moved, and replied that he did not deserve such sen- 
timents, and that he had only done justice. Since the settlement 
of our affairs I have let no occasion pass to express our grati- 
tude to those who have befriended us ; and as for Cardinal Bar- 
nabo, Monsignor Bedini, Bishop Connolly, and Doctor Bernard 
Smith, Benedictine monk, they should be put at the head of the 
list of our spiritual benefactors and remembered in all our pray- 
ers. Now that we are a body, I would advise this to be done 
at once. The Holy Father stands No. I ; that is understood. 

" How much I have to relate to you on my return ! Many 
things I did not venture to write down on paper, and many I 
can communicate to no one else but you. How great is my 
desire to see you ! it seems that I have no other. 

" I have taken passage for Marseilles on Tuesday after Eas- 
ter, the 6th of April, and intend to take passage on the 
Vanderbilt, which leaves Havre on the 28th. ... I saw the 
General on Tuesday of this week, to take leave of him. After 
some conversation we left in good feeling, promising to pray pro 
invicem. God bless him ! " 

Before leaving Paris Father Hecker received extremely affec- 
tionate letters of congratulation from his old friends, Fathers de 
Held and de Buggenoms. 

The following is the decree of the Congregation ot Bishops 
and Regulars : * 

* Nuper nonnulli ex Presbyteris Congregationis SSmi Redemptoris in provinciis Americae 
Septcntrionalis foederatis existentibus SSmum D. N. Pium PP. IX. supplici prece depreca- 
bant ir, ut eis ob speciales circumstantias concederet ab auctoritate et jurisdiction? Rectoris 
Majoris subtrahi, ac a proprio Superiore Apostolicae Sedi immediate subjecto juxta regulam 
a Benedicto XIV., sanctae memoriae, approbatam gubernari. Quod si id eis datum non esset, 
dispensation em a votis in dicta Congregatione emissis, humillime expostulabant. Re sedulo 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 23 1 

" Certain priests of the Congregation of the Most Holy Re- 
deemer in the United States of North America recently pre- 
sented their most humble petition to our Most Holy Lord Pope 
Pius IX., that in view of certain special reasons he would grant that 
they might be withdrawn from the authority and jurisdiction of 
the Rector Major and be governed by a superior of their own, 
immediately subject to the Apostolic See, and according to the 
[Redemptorist] Rule approved by Benedict XIV., of holy memory. 
If, however, this should not be granted to them, they most hum- 
bly asked for dispensation from their vows in the said Congrega- 
tion. After having carefully considered the matter, it appeared 
to his Holiness that a separation of this kind would be prejudi- 
cial to the unity of the Congregation and by no means accord 
with the Institute of St. Alphonsus, and therefore should not be 
permitted. Since, however, it was represented to his Holiness 
that the petitioners spare no labor in the prosecution of the holy 
missions, in the conversion of souls, and in the dissemination of 
Christian doctrine, and are for this reason commended by many 
bishops, it seemed more expedient to his Holiness to withdraw 
them from the said Congregation, that they might apply them- 
selves to the prosecution of the works of the sacred ministry un- 
der the direction of the local bishops. Wherefore his Holiness 
by the tenor of this decree, and by his Apostolic authority, does 
dispense from their simple vows and from that of permanence 
in the Congregation the said priests, viz.: Clarence Walworth, 
Augustine Hewit, George Deshon, and Francis Baker, together 
with the priest Isaac Hecker, who has joined himself to their pe- 
tition in respect to dispensation from the vows, and declares 
them to be dispensed and entirely released, so that they no 
longer belong to the said Congregation. And his Holiness con- 
fidently trusts that under the direction and jurisdiction of the lo- 
cal bishops, according to the prescription of the sacred Canons, 

perpensa, Sanctitas Sua existimavit hujusmodi separationem unitati Congregationis officere, 
et S. Alphonsi institute minirae respondere ideoque baud permittendum esse. Cum autem re- 
latuui sit oratores nulli labori parcere in sacris expeditionibus peragendis, et in proximorum 
conversione, Christianaque institutione curanda, et idcirco a pluribus Antistibus commenden- 
tur, visum est SSmo Domino magis expedire eos a praefata Congregatione eximi, ut in sacri 
ministerii opera promovenda sub directione Antistitum locorum incumbere possint. Quaprop- 
ter Sanctitas Sua presbyteros Clarentium Walworth, Augustinum Hewit, Georgium Deshon, 
et Franciscum Baker, una cum presbytero Isaac Hecker, qui eorumdem postulationibus quoad 
dispensationem a votis adhaesit, a votis simplicibus, etiam permanentise in Congregatione SSmi 
Redemptoris emissis, hujus Decreti tenore,Apostolica auctoritate dispensat, et dispensatos, ac 
prorsus solutos esse declarat, ita ut ad eamdem Congregationem amplius non pertineant. 
Confidit vero Sanctitas Sua memoratos Presbyteros, qua opere, qua exemplo, qua sermone, in 
vinea Domini sub directione et jurisdictione Antistitum locorum, ad praescriptum SS. Ca- 
nonum adlaboraturos, ut seternam anirnarum salutem alacriter curent, atque proximorum sanc- 
tificationem pro viribus promoveant. 

Datum Romas, ex Secretaria Sacrje Congregationis Episcoporum et Regularium, 
Die 6 Martii, 1858. 

[L. * s.l G. CARD. DEI.LA GKNGA, PrceJ. 

A., ARCHIEPI.SCOPUS PHILIPPRN, Sec. 



282 ARRIERE PEN SEE. [May, 

the above-mentioned priests will labor by work, example, and 
word in the vineyard of the Lord, and give themselves with alac- 
rity to the eternal salvation of souls, and promote with all their 
power the sanctification of their neighbor. 

" Given at Rome, in tlie office of the Sacred Congre- 
gation of Bishops and Regulars, the 6th day of 
March, 1858. 

[L. s.] G. CARDINAL BELLA GENOA, Prefect. 

" A., ARCHBISHOP OF PHILIPPI, Secretary" 

NOTE. I wish to add to this, that the relations between the 
Redemptorists and Paulists are, and I trust will continue to be, 
most amicable. 

AUG. F. HEWIT, C.S.P., Superior. 



ARRIERE PENSEE. 

MAY! I adore the air of you, 

The tinting of your skies of blue ; 

Your fields by daisy-buds empearled, 
Your cherry-blossoms wet, and hurled 

By wandering winds ; your clover new 

That lies a green bespread with dew ; 

Your meadow larks O merry crew ! 

Ah ! is it wrong to love May's world ? 
May I adore ! 

I know I love the changing view 
Because it changes all day through. 

The leaves are closed and then uncurled; 

Their beauty, whether wide or furled, 
Comes from our 'God Him, changeless, true : 
May I adore ! 

MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 283 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 

THE temperance campaign has opened in Great Britain un- 
der cheering auspices. Three important points have been 
gained, the first of which is the second reading of the Liquor- 
Traffic Local Veto Bill for Wales. Of 364 members present 185 
voted in favor and 179 against the bill, thus giving a majority 
of six for the second reading. The government as a government 
did not take sides, but left its supporters free. The Catholic 
Home Secretary, Mr. Matthews, however, both voted and spoke 
against the bill. Official Liberals, like Sir Charles Russell, have 
declared in favor of securing for the people complete control over 
the liquor-traffic, and Cardinal Manning, in a letter to a meet- 
ing held in support of the bill, declared that " the only adequate 
remedy for the drink-traffic is the local veto, by which the peo- 
ple may be able to protect themselves and their homes It is 
the only means of defence." 

The bill deals with Wales only ; it assigns " vetoing dis- 
tricts," and gives to one-tenth of the rate-payers of any district 
the right to secure a public meeting of the rate-payers. This 
meeting, when duly summoned, is empowered to decide any one 
of three questions : first, whether at the expiring of the existing 
licenses all the public-houses in such a district should be closed. 
If two-thirds of the rate-payers then present and voting say yes, 
the liquor-traffic ceases, all public-houses in that district are shut 
up, and this without any compensation, and for the period of 
five years, for which time the question is settled when the vote 
is in the affirmative. Should the vote be negative, the question 
may be raised again in two years' time. A second question, 
however, may be put to the meeting at once, in case the tem- 
perance advocates fail in securing the two-thirds majority for 
complete closing, and that is, Whether the public-houses in the 
district should be limited to a certain fixed number? If this 
question, being put to the vote, is answered in the affirmative 
by a bare majority of those voting, then all the licenses in the 
district are to be consecutively numbered by the licensing au- 
thority, according to his discretion, and no license is to be 
granted to any present holder bearing a number higher than that 
specified in the resolution. Should the second proposal be nega- 
tived, a third course may be adopted. A resolution may be 



284 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [May, 

proposed in favor of issuing no new licenses, and of merely re- 
newing year by year those already in existence. This, if car- 
ried by a bare majority, becomes the law for that district. 
Such are the main proposals of the bill, which has passed its 
second reading. How it will fare in committee and what will 
be the reception accorded to it in the House of Commons re- 
main to be seen. 

* * * 

The second point which the temperance cause has gained 
is, the decision in the highest court the House of Lords that 
the holder of a license has no legal right to its renewal, and 
that, however well he may have conducted his house, it is at 
the discretion of the licensing authorities to close it if they judge 
fit to do so. This is in opposition to the view which has hith- 
erto prevailed and to common practice, which has been that, pro- 
vided the liquor-seller has complied with the laws regulating his 
trade, he has a right to a renewal. On the other hand, although 
it is decided that full discretion is possessed by the licensing au- 
thority, yet it is held that it is a Judicial discretion a discretion, 
that is, which is not arbitrary or contrary to what the laws per- 
mit and it is very doubtful whether a magistrate or a board of 
magistrates which should refuse to grant licenses on the ground 
that the liquor-traffic ought to be entirely prohibited would be 
sustained in such decision by the higher courts. For as long as 
the law of the land permits the traffic under certain conditions, a 
magistrate entirely vetoing it would, in all probability, be held 
to have exceeded his powers. 

* * * 

The third point gained by the temperance party is the in- 
timation that the National Liberal Federation, of which Mr. 
Schnadhorst is the animating spirit, and which is the controlling 
" machine " of the Liberal party, is about to adopt its principles 
and to incorporate them into, the Liberal profession of faith. 
This is at once an indication of strength already attained for, 
as Mr. Schnadhorst himself said, the National Liberal Feder- 
ation,- as such, cares more for votes than principles in them- 
selves and an important auxiliary for the future. That the 
victory is not yet attained, however good may be the ground 
for anticipating it, is proved by the fact that the revenue from 
the excise this year has exceeded the estimate by 1,000,000. 

* * * 

The active warfare between union labor and free or non- 
union labor, of which we have several times made mention and 



1891 ] T? E OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 285 

which has bcL-n carried on so long and on so large a scale, 
has, to all appearances, at last come to an end, and has resulted 
most disastrously for the New Unionists. The last conflict was 
between the Seamen and Firemen's Union as principals on the 
one side, and the gigantic organization of the ship-owners, the 
Shipping Federation, on the other. The conflict was carried on 
chiefly in London and at Cardiff, and at the outset the Union 
most interested had allies in the dockers, stevedores, and others. 
Efforts were made to bring the unions of the railway servants 
and of the miners into co-operation. These efforts, however, 
failed, and in the end the Seamen's and Firemen's Union was 
left alone, being abandoned by its allies. The secretary made 
an effort to have a general strike at every port, but met with 
so much opposition from local branches that he was compelled 
to declare the strike to be ended. This defeat, together with 
those at Southampton, in Scotland, and at Liverpool, seems to 
show that the New Unionism is still a long way oft from the 
realization of its programme. It has also shown those in sym- 
pathy with this programme that the strength of the unionists is 
not to be measured by the success of the great London strike ; 
a success which was due to various causes. In- all likelihood 
the strike-policy will be abandoned for a time. The Labour 
World, which is edited by Mr. Michael Davitt, advises the 
unionists to devote themselves to the work of organization for 
two or three years, and to renew the war after having in this 
way attained sufficient strength. 

* * # 

A more powerful influence for peace will be found in the ap- 
pointment, announced by the government, of a royal commission 
for inquiry into the relations between employers and employed. 
It is certain that no better plan for bringing about a peaceful 
settlement could have been adopted. These questions are the 
most important of our times, and they are also the most diffi- 
cult. It is of supreme importance that those who are called up- 
on to legislate or in any way to deal practically with these mat- 
ters should be in possession of the fullest knowledge, and there 
is no way so well adapted to attain this knowledge as by 
means of a body of men, skilful and competent themselves, who 
shall have power to summon before them all .who have any in- 
formation worth giving. The Sweating Committee of the House 
of Lords shed a flood of light over many dark places in Great 
Britain, and has been the means already of promoting several 
measures for the removal of injustice. This new commission 



286 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [May, 

will be wider in its scope and greater in its influence, and 
we hope and believe that until it has reported there will be 
a. cessation of the conflict so far as the same involves principles, 
and that the evidence it will call forth and the report on that 
evidence will lead to some solution of the questions at issue. 

* * * 

It has taken the government nearly two months from the 
time of its announcement of the appointment of the commission 
to settle the terms of reference and to select the commissioners. 
We hope that this is rather a token of the care and attention 
which has been given to the matter than an augury of the fu- 
ture and of delay and hesitation in making the report. The 
terms of the reference are as follows : " To inquire into ques- 
tions affecting the relations between employers and employed, 
the combinations of employers and of employed, and the condi- 
tions of labor, which have been raised during recent trade dis- 
putes in the United Kingdom, and to report whether legisla- 
tion can with advantage be directed to the remedy of any of the 
evils that may be disclosed; and if so, in what manner? The 
number of commissioners is very large, no less than twenty- six, 
and includes ' representatives of all the different interests. The 
Marquis of Hartington, a large landholder, presides. He has al- 
ready been the president of several very important commissions, 
and by general consent he is as good a president as could 
have been chosen. The government is represented by Sir 
Michael Hicks-Beach and by Sir John Gorst, whose recent utter- 
ances on the labor question have attracted so much attention, 
and who was present as one representative of Great Britain at 
the Berlin Labor Conference, and who has, as he himself says, 
long been a close student of these questions. We have no room 
to go through the complete list ; suffice it to say that employers 
of labor and employed, the old political economists and the new, the 
old unionists and the new, have all thejr representatives. Certain 
prominent men in the recent agitations, like John Burns and 
Michael Davitt, have not been chosen, but persons of similar 
opinions are on the board, and will secure a full hearing, as wit- 
nesses for those who do not act as commissioners. 
# # # 

Meanwhile, besides the New Unionism, there has sprung up 
recently a " New Conservatism." The appointment of this labor 
commission is itself an evidence of this. A clearer proof, 
however, is found in the words and actions of by no means a 
small number ot prominent Conservatives. Lord Randolph 



1891-! THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 287 

Churchill has spoken in favor of the legal eight-hour day for 
miners. Sir John Gorst, who is Under-Secretary for India in 
the present ministry, advocates, among other things, the appoint- 
ment of a Minister of Industry to deal with all questions which 
affect the working- classes. Mr. Howard Vincent and Sir R. Paget 
spoke in the House of Commons in support of a measure so so- 
cialistic in its character that it was opposed even by labor mem- 
bers. And it is worth pointing out that it is from workingmen 
that much of the proposed legislation meets with opposition. 
The legal eight-hour day, even for miners alone, is far from 
meeting with the unanimous approval of those affected. But 
whatever differences may exist all are agreed upon one point, and 
that is that of all questions the labor question, in its various rami- 
fications, is by far the most important of those with which poli- 
ticians have to deal. 

# # * 

The bills introduced into Parliament are a turther evidence 
of this. As we mentioned last month no less than five meas- 
ures dealing with the regulation of factories and workshops were 
under discussion. Two of these have been referred to commit- 
tees to be consolidated and amended. Further proposals affect- 
ing more or less directly the position of the working classes 
have been brought before the House. It may be remembered, 
perhaps, that during the political campaign of 1885 the demand 
that each- agricultural laborer should be made the owner of 
" three acres and a cow " was warmly advocated by Radicals, 
barely tolerated by Liberals, and vehemently opposed by Con- 
servatives. Mr. Gladstone, however, having formed his alliance 
with the Irish party at the opening of the session of 1886, by 
adopting a resolution in furtherance of this plan brought about 
the overthrow of the Conservative government. But Home Rule 
for Ireland took precedence. Many changes have taken place 
since that time, but Mr. Jesse Collings, its promoter from the be- 
ginning, has been true to his cause, and with the help of his former 
opponents, and, in fact, without a division, has obtained for his 
Small Holdings Bill a second reading. It is true that an im- 
portant concession has been made in the omission of any com- 
pulsory power requiring the local authorities to purchase or pri- 
vate persons to sell. But it will undoubtedly, if passed, go far to 
attain the object sought the fixing of the agricultural laborer 
on the soil. For it enables the local authorities to borrow 
money from the treasury at a low rate of interest for the sake 
of purchasing land to be let in small parts not larger than fifty 



288 'I HE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [May, 

acres. A remarkable proviso, and one which seems to be a step 
towards the nationalization of land resembling in appearance 
but really very different from Mr. George's plan is that three- 
fourths of the purchase money, with interest, is always to remain 
a charge upon the property, thus constituting the state a per- 
petual owner of the land dealt with in that manner. This pro- 
posal is in accordance with the recommendations of a committee 
which reported in 1888. We doubt very much whether such a 
proposal will not defeat the end and object of the measure, 
which is to attach to the soil the people who at present are 
but toilers for the advantage of others, and to do this by giv- 
ing them the rights and privileges of proprietorship. For can 
any one who has to pay for ever so large an annual quit- rent 
feel himself to be really a proprietor ? 

* * * 

Friends of State Socialism, as well as its opponents, have in 
the British Post-office and its action towards the messenger 
companies an instructive object-lesson an exemplification in 
practice worth a ton of theory. The post-office in Great Britain 
has by law a monopoly of the carriage of letters and of tele- 
graphic business ; and through the parcel-post system it does 
a very large part of what is done in this country by the ex- 
press companies, although it has no monopoly. The district 
messenger system, however, has only been started within the 
last few years, and this in a manner far from being as perfect 
as that which has existed for twenty years or more in this 
country. Within the last few months a second company has 
introduced the electric call. The British citizen was just begin- 
ning to enjoy privileges and conveniences to which Americans 
have become habituated when the postmaster-general inter- 
fered, and declared that the monopoly of the post-office was 
being infringed, and that the companies must entirely abandon 
the carrying of letters. But to appease the indignant citizens 
a post-office messenger and express service has been started, 
far less efficient and useful than those which private enterprise 
was carrying on. The points in this matter which deserve 
the consideration of those who advocate the extension of the 
sphere of state action are these : The post-office, having a 
monopoly, goes on for years in its old routine, and makes no 
effort to introduce improvements which have long been accom- 
plished by private enterprise in other countries. As soon as 
private enterprise undertakes to supply this deficiency, and 
just as it is in a fair way to do so, the post-office inter- 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 289 

venes, requiring that the undertaking shall be given up as il- 
legal. Shamed, however, by the indignant remonstrances of the 
public, the post-office offers to do the work itself; but its 
plan is found to bear no comparison in general usefulness to 
the suppressed service, and to be enmeshed in the bonds of 
red-tapeism. The postmaster-general has been severely cen- 
sured for interfering, but, it seems to us, -without warrant ; for 
if the law really has given such a monopoly he is but a ser- 
vant and minister of the law, and has no dispensing power. 
And even if it should appear, as is maintained by the com- 
panies, that their undertaking is not illegal, such a result would 
but strengthen the case of those who oppose the extension 
of state action in these matters ; for it would be an instance 
of the way in which officials invariably magnify their office. 
* * * 

The most interesting event in the political world during 
the past month has been the election of the Austrian Lower 
House. As anticipated, Count Taaffe's allies, the Old Czechs, were 
defeated, and even almost annihilated. The Young Czechs, ene- 
mies of all compromise with the Germans, as well as being Radicals, 
have driven their opponents out of the field. Count Taaffe has there- 
fore to seek for support elsewhere. Austrian politics are inter- 
esting to a student of the constitutional form of government as 
an example of the manner in which extremes may meet in this 
as in other things, for in Austria, as in Russia, the emperor's will 
is, to a very large extent, law, and not only is he himself, like 
the English monarch, above parties, but the minister of his 
choice enjoys to a certain extent the same privilege. This, how- 
ever, is brought about in a way just the opposite to that by 
which it is accomplished in Russia. In Russia the people are 
politically slaves ; in Austria they are perfectly independent and 
free. They are so perfectly free and independent, indeed, that 
in a house which has only 353 members there are no less than 
sixteen parties German Liberals and German Conservatives ; Old 
Czechs, Young Czechs, and Independent Czechs ; Clericals pure 
and simple and Italian Clericals ; Poles, Ruthenians, Roumanians, 
Slavonians. This is only a partial list of these parties. The 
most numerous is that of the German Liberals, consisting, as it 
does, of 110 members; but, standing alone, it is powerless. In 
this divided house a ready resource for a minister is to form a 
coalition, and this he does by persuading a sufficient number of 
parties to adopt his ideas, making of course some concessions in 
return. Thus he gets his majority. Count Taaffe, himself a 

VOL. LIU. 19 



290 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [May, 

Conservative Clerical, has lost his former supporters in this elec- 
tion, and therefore has sought, by forming an alliance between 
the German Liberals, his former opponents, and the Poles and 
Ruthenians, to obtain the requisite majority. The German Lib- 
erals, it seems, have proved themselves somewhat impracticable, 
but after long negotiation the ministry has been reorganized by 
the admission into it of one German Liberal, one Pole, and one 
representative of the Czech land-owning nobility. The policy 
of the emperor and this ministry is to group all the moderates 

together against extremists of every school. 

* * * 

In Italy the most important event has been the misunder- 
standing between that country and our own about the lynching 
in New Orleans, but as in these notes we do not discuss home 
politics we will say nothing on this point. The Rudini ministry 
still retains office, to the surprise of many. It has inaugurated 
its financial economies, for effecting which it was created dimin- 
ishing the length of service for soldiers, curtailing the expenditure 
on the African colonies, and effecting various other savings. 
There can be no doubt that the effect of these proceedings has 
been -to shake the Triple Alliance, rendering somewhat doubt- 
ful the renewal which should take place in 1892. It would 
seem, too, that the protectorate over Abyssinia, which it was 
thought had been accepted by that state, is by no means an 
accomplished fact, Count Antonelli having returned from his 
mission without success. As to the relations between the new 
government and the church, there is not much to say, except 
that it seems to be more courteous in tone and manner, and 
that, perhaps, is something for which to be grateful after the 
coarse brutality of Signer Crispi. 

* * * 

The death of Prince Napoleon is the chief thing to chroni- 
cle with reference to France, and so low have the Bonapartists 
fallen that, while interest was, of course, taken in the event, it 
was not looked upon .as a matter of the least importance. Even 
the division in the ranks of this ever- dwindling party between 
the prince's followers and those of his eldest son, Victor, has 
not been healed, for he died unreconciled and unforgiving, and 
in his last will he has directed his followers to look for counsel 
in political matters to his second son, Prince Louis. As regards 
his submission to the church, we have the best reason to believ< 
that it was really and sincerely made, for the Abbe Puyol, who 
gave him the last sacraments, has publicly declared that th< 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEM\ 291 

prince was fully conscious. It is to be remembered also that, 
un-Catholic and anti- Catholic as the actions and words of the 
greater part of his life had been, nevertheless almost the last 
public action of the prince in politics was a manifesto in defence 
of religion and against the persecution it was undergoing at the 
hands of the French Republic in 1883. How sincere he was in 
this we leave it for others to judge. 

The hoped-for rapprochement between France and Germany 
has been definitely put an end to by the action of the German 
emperor in re-imposing the severe restrictions upon intercourse 
between Alsace-Lorraine and France. Indeed, the bonds of union 
between the enemies of Germany France and Russia seem to 
be growing closer, if we can take the decoration of President Car- 
not by the czar as anything more than an act of politeness ; and 
it certainly seems to imply something more. In other respects 
the course of events in France has been satisfactorily peaceful. 
Cardinal Lavigerie's policy (if we may so call it) seems to be 
daily gaining in strength ; in recent elections the adherents of 
the republic have been returned with greater majorities. The 
government is strange to say acting with vigor in the repres- 
sion of betting and gambling, and protectionism is waxing more 
and more powerful. These events, together with diplomatic con- 
tests with England as to Egypt and Newfoundland, are the only 
incidents worthy of mention in the current affairs of France. 
* * * 

As in France so in Germany, a death is' the chief thing to 
chronicle. In Dr. Ludwig Windthorst the Catholics of the Ger- 
man Empire have lost their bravest and most successful cham- 
pion, and the despoiled king of Hanover a devoted and self- 
sacrificing advocate. At the time Prince Bismarck was all- 
powerful there was but one man of whom he was afraid, and 
but one man who succeeded in thwarting schemes upon which the 
prince had resolved, and not only in thwarting but to a large ex- 
tent in reversing them. This man was Windthorst. And what 
he achieved was through power of intellect alone and skill in 
parliamentary tactics, and in spite of great personal disadvan- 
tages ; for he was far from pleasing in appearance, being hump- 
backed, near-sighted, and almost a dwarf. If the detailed account 
of his life could be written, it would be of immense value for 
showing what service a layman can render to the church in our 
times, and might perhaps stir up to emulation laymen in other 
lands to serve the church and the causes which she has at heart 
temperance, purity of politics, the well-being of the poor. He 



292 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [May, 

lived to see the fall of his great opponent, and to receive him- 
self from the emperor marks of special esteem and regard. May 
his great, honest soul rest in peace! We hope that he may 
have a worthy successor. 

The youthful sovereign of "Germany seems to be finding out 
the truth of the saying that in politics nothing succeeds like suc- 
cess. The failure of his endeavors to enter into more friendly 
relations with France, and his peevish, ill-tempered infliction of 
punishment on his own subjects for the bad behavior of the 
" howling dervishes " of Paris, are making even Germans some- 
what critical as to his claim of absolute control over every de- 
partment of government. And what his subjects feel is more 
clearly brought home to the minds, of his allies : want of confidence 
in a man so full of confidence in himself is being more and 
more keenly felt, and a general feeling of uneasiness and appre- 
hension exists. 

* * * 

The other countries of Europe present little to which intelli- 
gent interest is attached. In Servia and Roumania, and also in 
Norway, there have been changes of ministry. Servia presents 
the spectacle of an ex-king now wrangling with a queen divorc- 
ed from him by an invalid decree made by a state bishop ; then 
bringing accusations against a former prime minister of having 
connived at murder, to which accusation a tu quoque is the re- 
joinder. In Bulgaria a state assassination has taken place, and 
it is thought that it found its inspiration in the same country 
as that to which was due the kidnapping of Prince Alexander. 
Russia proceeds inexorably on her way of repression, grinding 
down her Jewish subjects, narrowing the sphere of individual 
action, depriving of religious freedom those even to whom it 
has been most solemnly promised. So seldom is it that 
there is anything pleasing to record of this dismal prison-house 
that we may mention the following incident of a more agreeable 
character. -On the I3th of March the emperor and the empress, 
and his majesty's four brothers, with their imperial consorts, at- 
tended the funeral of their old English nurse, who had died at the 
age of eighty-two. The czar and the grand dukes walked on foot 
through the melting snow and dirt behind the hearse along the 
Neva Quay from the Winter Palace to the church, while the 
empress and the grand duchesses followed in carriages. They 
remained in church as chief mourners throughout the funeral 
service. It is a pleasure to be able to record such an act of 
kindness. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 293 



TALK ABOUT 'NEW BOOKS. 

THE title of Dona Emilia Pardo Bazan's novel * holds out a 
promise which her performance does not adequately keep. It is 
true that there always have been, and doubtless will continue 
to be, Christian women who, through a more or less mistaken 
notion of duty, assume of their own free will the galling yoke of 
a loveless marriage and bear it without flinching to their life's 
end. But there is not only nothing distinctively Christian in 
such conduct, but we must insist that only the patience and 
fortitude with which the burden continues to be carried condones 
the great initial fault of having stooped to take it up. There have 
been places and times and isolated cases which seem to admit of 
an alternative opinion ; but times change, and so do manners, and 
ways of considering vital social questions. And among such 
questions none is so vital as that of marriage, whether looked 
at from the natural or the Christian point of view. . Generally it 
it is the hinge on which life makes its most important turn. 
Catholic theology recognizes its individual and fundamental char- 
acter in affirming that the parties contracting it are them- 
selves the ministers of the sacrament by which humanity renews 
itself and supplies the material for the supernatural order. 
Hence the invidiousness of applying so great a title as a " Chris- 
tian Woman," a title which connotes so much and which is ap- 
plied by excellence to the stainless Mother of Jesus Christ, to 
the story of Carmen Aldao and her repulsive marriage. 

But to say this is not to deny the title of Christian to . Dona 
Pardo Bazan's heroine. It is merely to question the motive for 
delineating her in such a way that the criticism passed upon her 
conduct by Luis Portal, the free-thinker of the tale, shall seem 
entirely just. It is more than that : it is Christian, although it 
is coupled with deserved slurs against excrescences which human 
weakness and wickedness have often succeeded in confounding 
with Christianity itself: 

" You say," Portal remarks to Salustio, " that Senorita Aldao 
realizes the ideal of a Christian woman. Nonsense, my boy ! 
Will you kindly tell me what attractiveness we can find in that 
ideal if we examine it carefully ? The ideal for us ought to be 

* A Christian Woman. By Emilia Pardo Bazan. Translated by Mary Springer. New- 
York : Cassell Publishing Co. 



294 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [May, 

the woman of the present, or, better, of the future ; a woman 
who could understand us and share our aspirations. You will 
say that she does not exist. Then let us try to manufacture her. 
She will never exist if we condemn her before she is born. 

" What are the virtues whicfi you attribute to your aunt, and 
which you admire so much ? In what do they consist ? They 
appear to me negative, irrational, brutal. Don't start up in that 
way I said brutal. She has married a man who is repulsive to 
her, given herself up to him like an automaton: and all for what? 
In order not to sanction by her presence another person's sins. 
Who can be held responsible for anybody's actions but his own ? 
That young lady is either demented or a stark fool ; and the 
friar who countenances her and seconds her well, I don't care 
to say what I think of him, because my tongue would run away 
with me. He understands better than she does what she is 
binding herself to, and he ought to have prevented such a bar- 
barous affair." 

That, indeed, is precisely what " the friar " had sought to do 
within the limits of judicious warning and advice. Portal goes 
on to say : 

" A woman such as our modern society needs would go out to 
service, would take in sewing, or scrub floors, if she was not 
happy in her father's house, if her self-respect was wounded, but 
she would never give up her liberty, her heart, and her person 
to such a husband. You have caught the infection of Chris- 
tianity. You must get rid of it. A perfect Christian woman ! 
And why is it that you are charmed with a perfect Christian 
woman ? Are you, perchance, a perfect Christian man ? Do you 
aspire to be one ? Or do you believe that the destined progress 
of society depends upon the wife being a Christian and the 
husband a rationalist ? " 

The trouble with Carmen is precisely that, though undeniably 
a Christian, she is riot by any means a perfect Christian 
woman. Not only must one say that her special reason for 
marrying Don Felipe was a poor one, but it must be added that 
there is not now, whatever there may seem to have been in 
days when civilization was one-sided, because it had failed to 
assimilate or comprehend that equality of the sexes which the 
Gospel initiated and is to perfect, any good reason why women 
should consider it praiseworthy to contract a loveless mar- 
riage. We strongly suspect, indeed, that it was precisely this 
lesson which the author of the novel had it in mind to teach. 
Her delineations of Carmen and the Franciscan friar, Father 
Moreno, might well have been the work of a high-minded 



1 8g i.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 295 

Christian woman, heartily attached to her traditional faith, and 
anxious to help clear away the obstacles which retard its tri- 
umph in our modern life. Were that unmistakably her motive, 
one could hardly quarrel much with the object-lesson she has 
so vigorously given. The as yet untranslated sequel to the 
present story perhaps shows her hand more completely. Taken 
by itself, this one does not afford quite grounds enough for pass- 
ing judgment on the animus of its production. 

A French novel * by M.' Henry Rabusson takes up the mar- 
riage question from a somewhat unusual point of view. Madame 
d'Orgevaut, a young and charming widow whom death had 
soon released from the burdens, of a mariage de convenance, has 
two suitors, to one of whom her heart seriously inclines. This 
is M. Gaetan Faurel d'Amberieu, a distinguished savant whose 
name, whose manners, and whose person, all seem to indicate 
high-breeding and high principles. The other is the Prince de 
Dhun, a nephew of the late Count d'Orgevaut, whose admira- 
tion for his aunt not only antedated her widowhood but had 
once found insulting expression during her husband's lifetime. 
The rebuff then received, and the coldness with which he had 
been ever afterwards treated, ended in converting into a real 
passion what had begun as a criminal caprice. The Prince de 
Dhun has been an evil-liver, and his unreturned love, when ren- 
dered hopeless by Madame d'Orgevaut's second marriage, makes 
him a physical wreck. As M. Rabusson puts it : 

" It is hard for love to take root in the heart of a libertine, 
but when by chance it does find a place there, it disorganizes 
and absorbs it; where all the energies are worn or weakened, 
nothing can resist the great resolvent. Paul de Dhu,n had, 
therefore, no desire for a reaction ; the news ' of Luce's 
marriage, the failure of the last attempt to save her the idea 
of which had come to him too late had given the last blow 
to his moral courage. As for his vitality, long since compro- 
mised by lesions of his heart and lungs, which the recent pros- 
tration of his whole being had aggravated more, even, than the 
excesses of his youth, it was departing little by little, escaping 
from him drop by drop, leaving, day by day, his cheeks more 
wan, his eyes more sunken, and his back more bent. He had 
aged so in four or five months that there was little left for him 
to do but die, in order to cease filling everybody with pity." 

We quote in order to give the reader a complete if offensive 
idea of Madame d'Orgevaut's rejected suitor. The man whom 

* Madame d'Orgevaut's Husband. By Henry Rabusson. Translated by Frank Hunter 
Potter. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 



296 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [May, 

she accepts has the misfortune to displease all her friends, whose 
votes are unanimous in favor of the prince. They are actuated 
by an instinctive distrust of M. Faurel d'Amberieu, which noth- 
ing seems to justify until an accident reveals that he is not ot 
noble birth but simply the son**of one Faurel, a schoolmaster in 
the village of Amberieu, so that he is, or appears to be, travel- 
ling under false pretences. This fact, however, when ascertain- 
ed and speedily imparted by Luce d'Orgevaut's well-intentioned 
relatives, has no effect, since it had been told her in advance' 
by her lover himself. He has confessed that he had applied for 
and obtained legal sanction to adopt his present name, thinking 
it would help him to advance in his chosen pursuits, and also 
but this only in response to a close question from Luce that it 
would aid him to a better marriage than he could otherwise 
aspire to. But his love for her, like hers for him, is unmistak- 
ably genuine, and his timely avowal of his little vanity enables 
her to triumph when others seek to damage him with her by 
revealing it. 

Gaetan's confession, however, has not been complete. The 
vanity which induced him to assume the coveted " particle " is a 
constitutional weakness, and pardonable. There has been a bad 
action in his life one which offends against the male code of 
honor, a'nd makes its detected perpetrator a pariah in the eyes of 
his own sex as certainly as an offence against purity lowers a 
woman in the estimation of both men and women. Pressed, not 
exactly by poverty but by an ambition which needed for its real- 
ization greater resources than he could command, he once stole 
money ' entrusted to him, intending to risk it at cards, and re- 
place it when he should succeed in winning. He did win, he 
would have restored it, and his honor would have seemed un- 
stained, had he not been discovered by the benefactor from 
whom he had taken it, at the very moment of success. He was re- 
pentant, he was pardoned, and his secret kept. But -for a letter 
written by him spontaneously in a burst of gratitude, confessing his 
sin explicitly and avowing his shame and sorrow, no trace of it 
would exist save in his memory and that of the man he had 
wronged. Forgiven by Daniel Bre:het, Gaetan has also forgiven 
himself, and so completely that he does not realize that pardon 
cannot obliterate a fact so damning, and that for him all question 
of contracting marriage with " an irreproachable woman " was set- 
tled negatively in advance. It is not until the night of his 
marriage with Luce, and it would never have been at all had 
not circumstances then forced the avowal from him, that he 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 297 

fully makes known his past. A breach opens instantly be- 
tween the pair, and, although it is apparently patched over for 
the time, it continues to widen until the woman's love dies out, 
killed by the knowledge of the man's shame, and they separate. 
When Gaetan, who has slain the Prince de Dhun in a duel, tells 
her that she had never had any true tenderness for him ; that 
she lied when she pretended to pardon him and promised to for- 
get, and that, being a woman, she is " not even capable of in- 
dulgence," she replies : 

" Well, I will tell you why I have not been able to pardon, 
to forget. You think that it is chiefly because you deceived me 
in concealing your past. You recollect, no doubt, fine scenes in 
dramas or comedies, where one sees the guilty one purified by 
confession and raised up by love ? Ah ! no, that is not true. 
In life, nothing is raised up, nothing is purified. It belongs only 
to God to efface, to cause to disappear the traces of a fault, be- 
cause it is in His power alone to forget or recollect at will. 
And do you know why no one will ever see, in reality, a happy 
or even a peaceful married life where there is not a stainless 
past on either side, unless there be on both sides equality in 
vileness ? The guilty person who is really worthy of being re- 
habilitated comprehends that there is no rehabilitation possible, 
save in a solitude courageously and voluntarily borne ; he under- 
stands that there will always be in his conscience and in the 
memory of others, in that of the being whom he loves, some- 
thing which would protest against this lustral pardon. Saint 
Mary Magdalene never married. What I tell you is the truth! 
The rest are paradoxes of writers, illusions of fools ! . . . 
Those who knew your secret, who might have spoken, did not 
speak ; circumstances and your will prevented them. . . It is 
you who have been compelled to speak, and what accuses you is 
your unworthiness; it is against that you are struggling. And I 
will repeat to you, if it can spare you one regret, I could not 
have been happy, even though you had confessed everything to 
me before we were marred. Certainly I should have forgiven 
you before ; I was able to do it afterward ! I should have for- 
given you more willingly, I grant that. But who would have 
taken away my memory? Who would have reconstructed the 
pedestal which I had raised for you, and which you would your- 
self, of your own accord, have thrown down ? Bah ! paradoxes, 
illusions ! Now let us separate. I can bear no more. The cup 
has overflowed ; this duel, this murder, this new crime with which 
I find myself associated this time with a share of real responsi- 
bility, terrifies me, 'drives me to despair. Ah ! unhappy " 
"Ah, what an accent! Perhaps you loved him, after all." 
"No! but I regret with my whole soul that I did not love 
hi ';;/." 



298 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [May, 

Condemning first of all this low view of the rehabilitating 
power of repentance, we go on to remark that the lion in the 
fable said of the pictures wherein men were continually repre- 
sented as victors in the hunt, that if lions had been the artists 
the pictures might have been ^different. Probably a woman capa- 
ble of writing a novel as serious, well-considered, and just in 
sentiment as this of M. Rabusson's would not have put into Luce's 
mouth the sentence we have italicized. -What is it but an ad- 
mission a blunt avowal, rather, that in the novelist's eyes un- 
pardonable sins are reducible to offences against the male men 
commit them when they rob other men ; women when they lose 
the one virtue which man prizes in his chosen mate. This blot 
aside, M. Rabusson's novel, which, by the way, has been put into 
admirable English by the translator, is interesting, powerful, and 
well worth reading. 

There is room, as we all know, for people of good taste to 
differ in opinion concerning Mr. Kipling as a story-teller. There 
can hardly be much where Miss Mary E. Wilkins's merits in the 
same line are concerned. The present collection * has, perhaps, 
some failures to hit their author's highest mark in it ; perhaps, 
.we say, having heard a usually hypercritical judge remark that 
he " liked even her failures" but not because we recall any of 
them to which we should care to apply the term. They seem 
to us, without exception, not merely faithful transcripts of New 
England life in some of its humbler forms -they could be that 
and yet remain uninteresting and unamusing but full of point, 
wonderfully clever in diction, and as complete in direct and artis- 
tic reproduction as an instantaneous photograph taken by a com- 
petent judge of a sitter's best points. For the matter of that, 
these little sketches, in which there is hardly a line or a word too 
much, leave the same impression as pictorial representations do. 
They are cut out, as it were, with a single stroke of the die. 
Miss Wilkins, we believe, describes her method by saying that 
the conclusion of a story is always what first occurs to her, and 
that all else arranges itself to lead up to it. Certainly, like 
the wasp, these stories carry their sting in their tail. Only, it 
is seldom anything so venomous as to deserve such a remark. 
Where all are so good it is not easy to name favorites. There 
is " The Solitary," which compresses into a dozen pages an idea 
which George Eliot expanded into Silas Marner, and which 
Francois Coppee has handled, and handled not so well, in our 
judgment, in "The Captain's Vices." "Sister Liddy " is full of 

* A New England Nun and Other Stories. By Mary E. Wilkins. New York : Harper & 
Brothers. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 299 

the material of pathetic laughter, while " A Village Lear " is 
pathos pure and simple. " A Gala Dress," " An Innocent Game- 
ster," "A Village Singer," and "A Poetess " possess a predomi- 
nantly melancholy charm, but laughter and tears lie side by side 
in this writer's storehouse of things new and old. 

It must be owned that one avows with some hesitation a pref- 
erence for such a story as " The Solitary " above those in which 
an artist like Frangois Coppee * treats an almost identical mo- 
tive that of the regenerating power of unselfish pity or love. 
It is a matter of material and environment rather than of concep- 
tion and handling which weighs down the balance with the 
present critic ; something homely and familiar in accent, some- 
thing purer too, if less intense, in sentiment, which wakens a 
readier sympathy with the surly Nicholas Gunn than with Cap- 
tain Mercadier or the ex-criminal Jean Francois Leturc. But the 
Frenchman's tales are very excellent specimens of the 'short story, 
somewhat marred, it is true, in translation by awkward turns of 
speech which a little care might easily have remedied. " At 
Table" is hardly to be called a story; it is the reverie of a 
dreamer who, at a costly banquet, is haunted by the thought of 
the pain and labor and risk of life which have gone to the mak- 
ing of this hour of pleasure for a few rich people. An accent 
of Tolstoi breaks through it. " An Accident " is the most intense 
in a collection whose chief note is, perhaps, intensity. In form 
it is the confession of a murder, made to the Abbe Faber at the 
Church of St. Medard, in Paris. " The Sabots ot Little Wolff " 
is a charming little Christmas tale for children, more German 
than French in sentiment and conception. "A Voluntary Death-" 
is painfully morbid and un-Christian. 

Mr. J. C. Heywood by no means fulfils as a novelist his pro- 
mise as a poet. The two-volume talef which is, we suppose, the 
first-fruits of his Catholic life, could hardly be his and not possess 
many merits. But its defects, considered purely on the literary 
side, are also many. It is ill-constructed, it abounds in slang, its 
characters, notably " Vivy " and her lover, " The Hon. Frank 
Glyder," are painfully caricatured, and the whole American busi- 
ness of "Bill Mundly," "Mumps," and "Parley" has an air of 
being dragged in by the ears, so as to relieve the monoto- 
ny of catechism by broad farce. Somehow they do not mix 
well. One understands the pressure which tends to constrain al- 

* Ten Tales. By Francois Coppe'e. Translated by Walter Learned. New York : Har- 
per & Brothers. 

t Lady Merton : A Tale of the Eternal City. By J. C. Heywood, author of Herodias, 
Antonius, Salome, etc. London and New York : Burns & Gates. 



300 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 

most every convert who has had a literary training, to open his 
mind and heart to the general public concerning that great change 
which has, for the first time, .brought home to his intelligence the 
adequate and satisfying object on which mind and heart were 
meant to feed. If he be a pQet, which Mr. Heywood has con- 
vincingly proved himself to be ; or a novelist, which he quite as 
certainly has not yet shown ; his first thought is like enough to 
cast his mental and moral processes into the form of a tale or 
poem. For the motives on which these are naturally built are love 
and beauty ; and what he feels is that he has found the very 
source of love and the embodiment of beauty. Not only are 
there to him no dry pa^es in the catechism, but history is a 
mirror reflecting the face of God and His dealings with man- 
kind. For that reason, too, the Catholic reader, as such, gets a 
pleasure from even tales like Mr. Heywood's, which present al- 
most no attractive side to the general reader. 

There are some very clever ones among Mr. Briggs's rhymed 
charades.* These, for example, whose answers we will not offend 
the /reader's perspicacity by giving : 

"The queen, with beauty's fatal gift accurst, 
Calmly laid down my second on my first. 
Thus can the mind the body frail control, 
And every man be valiant but my whole." 

" My first, if frequently repeated, 
Implies a speaker self-conceited. 
Devotion to my third is reckoned 
A flagrant instance of my second. 

" Would you have the voice of Spurgeon ? 

Use my whole to keep it mellow. 
You will find the Russian sturgeon 

An accommodating fellow. 
He will give you all the sound 

Where the substance may be found." 

Mr. Egan's new book,f which we are glad to see accompan- 
ied by a third edition of his deservedly popular collection of 
shorter tales, is very pleasant reading. Mr. Egan, like another 
of our still younger writers, Mr. Harold Dijon, has caught the 
true idea of what fiction intended for youthful Catholic readers 
should aim at. Example, not precept, is the story-teller's trade. 
No one can escape a moral, more or less obvious, whatever view 
of art or morality he holds or supposes himself to hold ; but it 

* Original Charades. By L. B. R. Briggs. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 

t The Disappearance of John Long-worthy. By Maurice Francis Egan. Notre Dame, 
Ind. : office of the Ave Maria. 

The Life Around Us. A collection of stories. By Maurice Francis Egan. New 
York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. . 301 

is wise not to insist on making it too prominent, to which- 
ever extreme of the ethical line one's education or predispo- 
sitions may incline him. Mr. Egan has a light hand and a 
penetrating eye ; he is familiar with many varieties of society, 
especially in the Eastern States ; his literary knowledge is am- 
ple and varied and his taste excellent. To all these advantages, 
so desirable for one who would paint the " Life Around Us " 
so as to accentuate its true bearing on the life that is to come, 
he adds a thoroughly Catholic feeling and a graceful, unstudied 
manner of delineation and expression. The Disappearance of 
Jo Jin- Longwortky, whose central motive is perhaps to show 
the futility of attempts to reconstruct society on the model pro- 
posed some years ago by Mr. Walter Besant, is a clever study 
of life in New York among two or three varieties of the class 
sometimes known as " second- growth Irish." The girls, Mary 
and Esther Galligan, are very well done, and so, in her very 
different line, is Nellie Mulligan. It would be a very desirable 
result of work like this of Mr. Egan's, if the too common and 
most deplorable type embodied in Miles Galligan the hard- 
drinking, self-seeking, small politician could be made an offence 
in the eyes of all our young people. Until it can be eliminated 
or frowned down, too many of our nicest girls will continue to 
aver with Esther when she meets that very different specimen, 
Arthur Fitzgerald, that " a nice young Catholic man," honest, 
intelligent, self-respecting, sober, religious, yet bent on success 
by all honorable means, is a companion who rarely comes in 
their way. 

Mr. Robert Buchanan's new novel * is sensational as a matter 
of course, yet not so much so as some of his previous work. 
There is an ill-assorted couple in it who are severed in the first 
place by what the man mistakes for murder or very near it. 
He knocks his wife down in order to rob her of money bestowed 
by an Anglican curate for the purpose of saving their sick baby's 
life, and leaves her bleeding and unconscious. We mistake, how- 
ever, in employing the word " rob " in England, it seems, if 
Mr. Buchanan's version of the law is correct, a man cannot rob 
his wife, since all that she has, no matter how obtained, is his, 
not hers. The wife recovers after the husband has fled, and 
presently falls heir to an independent fortune, in the enjoyment 
of which she and her little girl are living whdn the story takes 
them up again seven years later. The woman lives under an 

* The Wedding Ring: A Tale of To-day. By Robert Buchanan. New York: Cassell 
Publishing Co. 



302 . TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [May, 

assumed name, so as to evade her husband should he be still 
living. Her nearest neighbor, Sir George Venebles, has been 
seeking her hand in marriage for some years, but has always 
been refused it. Presently Mr. Bream, the Anglican curate of the 
first act of the drama, turns^ up again as assistant to the very 
High Church and celibate rector of the village where Sir George 
is magnate. He and Mrs. Dartmouth recognize each other, but 
keep their secret until an accident reveals to the curate the death 
of the first husband. He makes known the fact to the widow and 
Sir George, who immediately affiance each other. They have bare- 
ly done so when the husband reappears, as plausible a villain as 
ever, 'demanding not merely the property and the child, to which 
English law entitles him, but also the affection, respect, and obe- 
dience to which he has also a clear legal title. The story is an old 
one, and Mr. Buchanan has not greatly varied it in presentation, 
except in the use he makes of the rector and the curate. The 
former is on the husband's side in every particular, takes his re- 
pentance for genuine, and rates his once-esteemed parishioner, 
the wife, as a very poor specimen of what Christianity can do, 
because she even hesitates as to her duty. In his view she ought 
to reserve nothing ; her plain obligation is " to receive with ten- 
derness the gentleman to whom she owes a wife's duty, a wife's 
obedience." The curate, on the other hand, goes in energetically 
for divorce and her remarriage to Sir George, a programme not 
carried out in the end only because the returned prodigal is 
murdered on his wife's doorstep by a man whose domestic hap- 
piness he had ruined and whose wife he had abandoned as well 
as betrayed. 

Mr. Aldrich's new volume * of poems is, of course, melodious, 
correct, and agreeable in versification. Perhaps it is not often 
much more than that, except for an occasional pleasant conceit, 
or a picture like that embodied in the subjoined lines, called 

"Memory": 

" My mind lets go a thousand things, 
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings, 
And yet recalls the very hour 
'Twas noon by yonder village tower, 
And on the last blue noon in May 
The wind came briskly up this way, 
Crisping the brook beside the road ; 
f hen, pausing here, set down its load 
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly 
Two petals from that wild-rose tree." 

* The Sisters' Tragedy. With Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic. By Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 303 

I. AX EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.* 
"The Catholic Standard Library," of which Piconio's commen- 
tary forms a part, is published in a very neat style. The present 
volume contains the commentary on the .Epistles to the Thessa- 
lonians, to Timoth) , to Titus, to Philemon, and to the Hebrews. 
The translation of Piconio's text is excellent, but we cannot admire 
the version of the Scriptural text, although it is verbally accurate. 
The great excellence of the commentary of Piconio has been 
long and universally recognized. 



2. THE PACIFIC COAST SCENIC TOUR.f 

This is not a particularly brilliant book of travel, but it is a 
particularly honest one, which is far better. Much of the ground 
covered by the author is familiar to the writer of this notice ; 
indeed, we have been over a portion of it within the last six 
weeks, and so we are in a position to judge the correctness of 
his statements, and the accuracy of his descriptions. And we are 
simply surprised to find how faithfully our most vivid impressions 
are reflected and our actual experiences are re-echoed in the pages 
of this book. Mr. Finck depicts things in their every-day garb, 
and as they appear to the ordinary traveller without exaggera- 
tion and without affectation. He is not without enthusiasm, 
however, and his descriptions, while always sober and accurate, 
are often full of spirit and animation. The tour that he takes us 
through embraces, beyond all question, some of the very finest 
scenery on the face of the globe, and he gives us in a few skil- 
ful touches the grand outlines and distinctive features of these 
wonderful and varied scenes. Could the great scenic attractions ot 
this country be grouped close together, as they are in Switzerland 
and Italy, few Americans would visit Europe for the sake of the 
scenery, for we have here in vast profusion all that they have 
there, and very much more besides. Nor is it at all unlikely 
that in the near future the tide of tourist travel will abandon the 
beaten paths of the Alps and the Apennines, and turn westward 
to explore the fragrant forests and virgin lakes and towering 
peaks of the Sierra Nevadas, the Cascades, and the Rockies. 
Here are still new wonders to marvel at and new worlds to con- 
quer ; and here without doubt the poetry and romance of the 
future will find their most congenial home. 

* AH Exposition of the Epistles of St. Paul. By Bernardine a Piconio. Translated and edit- 
ed irom the original Latin by A. H. Prichard, B.A., Merton College, Oxford. London : John 
Hodges. 

t The Pacific Coast Scenic Tour. By Henry T. Finck. New York: Charles Scribner's 
Sons. 1890. Illustrated. 



304 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [May, 

3. THE INTERIOR OF JESUS AND MARY.* 

A truly exquisite edition of a great work that has passed 
through more than twenty editions in French, and has been 
-translated into every European language. 

The book treats of a subject which should attract more at- 
tention than all else,- and this* is nothing less than the life of our 
Lord and his Blessed Mother. Not that it portrays their ex- 
terior life as told in the Gospel, but the spirit of that life, " hid- 
den to the wise and prudent, but revealed to little ones." It is, 
therefore, a book for interior souls, and such souls will be aston- 
ished at the riches disclosed to them by Father Grou, riches 
suitable for every feast and season. 

The work may be used as a book of meditation or of spir- 
itual reading. The author would have us go to God with the 
greatest simplicity, leaving aside all studied discourse, and not 
attaching too much importance to reasonings and methods. 
" Let the heart alone speak, .and let it express what it feels. 
When it has no feeling, let it groan over its insensibility ; let it 
complain lovingly to God of this, and let it tell him all by its 
silence." "The soul that is under the action of God is never for 
one movement idle, as those imagine who have no true idea of 
what rest in God really means.'* 

We concur with the editor of this translation in recommend- 
ing the treatise Abandonment ; or, Absolute Surrender to Divine 
Providence (Benzigers, New York), as an excellent sequel to the 
Interior of Jesus and Mary, 



4. SUMMA APOLOGETICA DE ECCLESIA.f 

This work is one more contribution to the great number of 
manuals of apologetic literature already in the field. The learned 
author gives his production the rather pretentious title of Summa. 
In his preface, however, he rather hesitatingly asserts the claim. 
The whole object of the work is not revealed in this initial dec- 
laration. In the same preface he tells us that he had, when 
writing, a twofold object in view, to wit : the demonstration of 
Catholic truth and to point out to theologians the sources of ar- 
guments apt for that purpose ; and, furthermore, to develop the 
value and use of each of those sources. 

Our author follows the method of the illustrious Cano in dis- 

* The Interior of Jesus and Mary. From the French of the Rev. J. Grou, S J. New 
York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.; London : Burns Gates. 

t Summa Apologetica. de Etclesia Catholua. Auctore de Groot, Ordinis Proedicatorum. Ad 
mentem Sti. Thomae Aquinatis. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 305 

tinguishing ten theological sources, but on account of his special 
aim he departs from the order established by his predecessor. In 
the first volume we are brought immediately face to face with 
the church, which is a sufficient motive of credibility on account 
of the notes and marks with which she is clothed. 

Lacordaire accounts for the fact that there is no complete de- 
fence of Christianity because the restless tide of time multiplies ever 
and always new proofs, and, on the other hand, the objections 
which are raised are infinitely variable, the difficulties of each gen- 
eration beroming contemptible with the lapse of years. This is 
undoubtedly the motive which inspired our author to put into a 
new -dress the arguments with which numberless compendiums 
have made us familiar wretched compendiums, Dr. Ward used 
to call them. Father de Groot, however, by following closely the 
scholastic method, renders his matter more lucid than most writers 
of his class of whom we have any knowledge, since Hurter's ex- 
cellent work can scarcely be called a compendium. 

The whole work is divided into twenty-two questions, em- 
bodying a lucid exposition of the subjects treated of. In places 
the various opinions current in schools are enumerated, followed 
by the author's thesis and its proofs ; finally the objections drawn 
from the nature of the subject or contingent facts are ably re- 
futed. The style is so simple and didactic that it cannot fail to 
materially assist the student. 

The author pays his respects to the schismatic churches at 
more length than is usually done in works of this kind. He is 
evidently familiar with the best German, French, and Italian apolo- 
gists. He is not, however, so happy in his English selections. We 
have, for instance, the hackneyed piece of verbose rhetoric written 
by Macaulay on the Papacy, and which has done so much service 
to Continental authors that it has richly earned its nunc dimittis. 

The learned Dominican devotes the fifth article of the ninth 
Question to an explanation of the sense which the church at- 
taches to condemned propositions, and beginners will find his elu- 
cidation of this rather intricate technology very useful. The elev- 
enth Question treats of the relations between church and state, 
and seems to us to be the best in the book. 



5. THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE IN VERSE.* 
This is a translation of the Gospel of St. Luke from the Vulgate 
version into Latin hexameters. It is an ingenious and elegant com- 
position, the version faithful, and the poetical construction correct. 

* Sanctum EvangeHum ^Secundum Lucam in Carmlna Versum. (Auctore Reverendo 
Domino Stephano Mazzolini.) For sale by Benziget Brothers. 
Y_L. uil. 20 



3o6 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [May, 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

ALL COMMUNICATIONS RELATING -TO READING CIRCLES, LISTS OF BOOKS, 
ETC., SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION, NO. 
415 WEST FIFTY-NINTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. 

The Ozanam Reading Circle has been favored with a letter 
from one of the most earnest workers in the cause of Catholic 
literature. It contains many suggestive statements in the Socratic 
form of interrogations. We commend it to the studious members 
of all Catholic Reading Circles : 

" Is it not a veritable bringing of coals to Newcastle to say 
anything to the members of the Ozanam Reading Circle by 
way of suggestion ? 

" Merely as a sign of acknowledgment of a keenly-felt honor 
does the undersigned respond to a request made by the Rev. 
Father McMillan, and on the assumed strength of what the rev- 
erend father unknowingly calls ' experience/ here are a few de- 
tached observations. 

"The. associates in this laudable enterprise, fathered by the ener- 
getic Paulists, must by this time feel more than sanguine of success 
full success. Alas ! who that has looked on or shared in any great 
enterprise has been perfectly satisfied ? The ultimate realization of 
our ideals is for another world, but a relative success in this work, 
how can we doubt of it when the impulse given is so strong and 
the guiding hands so sure ? Onward, then, with hearts uplifted, 
and though it has come to be a sort of an article of faith that 
all literary associations die within the fifth year of their existence, 
let this one, which is not a literary club of the usual style, show 
that permanency is possible. But what is your design ? What 
is the highest object you have in view ? 

4< It has occurred to me frequently, while reading of your do- 
ings in THE CATHOLIC WORLD, that perhaps it would be well 
to do in your case what St. Bernard deemed advisable to do in 
his, after he had gone to the monastery j to ask himself, often, 
what he was about ' Bernard, what brought you here ? ' It is 
the writer's experience that members of similar associations are 
apt to fall too easily into what might be called the community 
spirit (wrongly understood, of course) and rest quite content to 
go along with the rest, satisfied that as the body knows what 
it is about, individual members need not concern themselves with 
keeping bright and warm and strong the true community spirit a 
fatal error. Has this movement in favor of a better acquaintance 
with Catholic literature for its sole object to make known to Catho- 
lics that they possess treasures worth their while to take note of ? 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 307 

" A noble object surely. Matthew Arnold, in one of his 
essays on the ' Strength of Catholicism,' says something to this 
effect : If he were a Catholic living in England he would suffer 
much, but he would find also much to comfort him. Among 
the consolations he would give himself would be a frequent visit 
to the reading room of the British Museum, and there he would 
linger in loving contemplation of the vast section, stretching on 
and up from the ' Hell of the yellow law-books to the Heaven 
of the Acta Sanctorum' devoted to the Abbe Migne's collection, 
which contains all that concerns the Catholic Church from 
every point of view, dogma, discipline, art, literature, science, etc. 
He says : ' In this same room you may also find all the theolog- 
ical works of the various forms of Protestantism ; but what a 
poor show they make, beside this array of condensed Cath- 
olicism.' We surely do not need assurances from Matthew Arnold 
or from any other outsider of our superabundant wealth. And 
yet I do fear that too many even of our educated Catholics are not 
fully informed in this matter. Do we really need to be told 
how rich and varied is the store from which we can adorn and 
arm and feed ourselves ? Whether we really need this informa- 
tion or not, we will not discuss, but let us feel sure we are 
engaged in a good work in proclaiming our treasures. But this 
cannot be the sole motive of our combined efforts. Is it not 
rather to awaken in our hearts an enthusiasm for carrying the 
light to those who, thanks to much of the popular literature, are 
growing to believe that enthusiasm is a folly, that there is 
nothing worth striving for? 

"Do we not wish to counteract the pernicious effect of the 
flippant reading of the day by working ourselves up to a relish for 
studious reading ? And is not the means we have been ad- 
vised to take something like a beginning of that after-course of 
studies so many have been, longing for? The students in col- 
leges, convents, and common schools can only go so far. How 
far ? Indeed, only to the borders of the great wonderland of 
study. And must education be deemed ended when the medals 
have^ been pinned on amidst the flourish of pianos, violins, harps, 
etc. Bishop Spalding said something boldly true last summer 
at one of the commencements ; something to the effect that there 
was a tendency to rest satisfied with the medal and diploma 
that we too easily believed all sufficient these outward signs 
of inward progress. It would be well to heed such warnings as 
went with Bishop Spalding's cheering words to the graduates. 
But how are we going to solve the problem of a continued and 
studious life with the demands of our social and domestic en- 
vironments ? A great many seem to think the problem unsolv- 
able and give it up, and content (?) with the carpe diem philos- 
ophy, are heard of no more among the light-bearers; they drop 
out of the ranks, or rather, they drop into the great nameless, 
aimless multitude. Would that it were the multitude for which 
Christ said he * had compassion ' ! Will these Reading Circles, 



308 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [May, 

then, not help us to reach a satisfactory indication of the ways 
and means of doing one's duty to home and to other claimants, 
yet leaving us time enough to strive for personal perfection in 
every sense of the word? Will not communion with the divinely 
lighted minds of our great Catholic writers help immensely to- 
wards this perfection of mind- and heart and soul ? I think so, 
and if I were a travelling agent of your association canvassing 
members, I think I would feel sure of being in the right lines 
in holding out to the recruits the assurance that membership 
would mean for them a means of living up to their education 
and vastly more. 

" Is it not an imperative duty for each member of such a 
favored section of the Columbian Reading Union as the 
' Ozanam ' to be on fire for the more and more clearly de- 
fined object of these associations ? 

" We must not let ourselves be talked out of our purpose nor 
sneered out of it. Let us work with wakeful souls. How shall 
we keep our souls awake amidst all the inducements to comfort- 
able somnolence ? Hero worship ! Will that help ? Let us try 
and find only the true heroes and heroines as we shall find 
them, busy and ceaselessly busy in our very midst ; busy even in 
what the world deems the idle haunts of prayer, busy in the 
seclusions sacred to the higher Christian life. The saints are of 
all times. Should we fail to discern the living, acting ones in 
our midst? Then let us 'sit down and take thought' from 
what the written records show ; let us familiarize ourselves 
with our Acta Sanctorum, not merely look at the goodly volumes 
on the top shelves of our libraries. 

" Memoirs, too ; biographies and letters of our saintly ' kith 
and kin ' whose names are neither in the library nor in the 
martyrology, but whose names are surely written in heaven. It 
is to be regretted that we have not more good English transla- 
tions of the many treasures in that line the French possess ; 
such translation is a work for those of the members whose educa- 
tion and leisure permit. We want ever so many books done in 
the style of Kathleen O'Meara's Ozanam ; of Mrs. Craven's Lady 
Fullerton ; of Chocarne's Lacordaire, and pre-eminently of Father 
Elliott's Father Hecker. Is not this life going to be a great argu- 
ment in favor of the possibility of the 'Modern Spirit' being 
proved a good spirit when it is properly directed ? Has not 
Father Hecker given the lie beautifully to those who hold that 
the practical, realistic American cannot be a saint ? ' Ever old, 
ever new/ holds good of the saints of God as of the God of the 
saints. We must insist, then, on the reading of biographical liter- 
ature not, however, to the exclusion of every other or any other. 

' The books not directly Catholic in tone concern us closely. 
We want to know, and often to show, why they fall short of their 
purpose in spite of their fascinating form, why their arguments 
are not convincing. We can the better see what ails Carlyle 
when we know Newman well ; why Matthew Arnold's suggestions 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 309 

do not cheer us when we read Father Hecker's Analysis of the 
Age ; and George Eliot's Romola, despite its artistic and other 
merits, signifies very little to those who have read Capecelatro's 
St. Philip Neri, and so on with all -of them. Comparative studies 
would be far more satisfactory than a too prolonged investigation 
into one side only. 

" Will it not be feasible, as your association grows, to institute 
a course of lectures on the Philosophy of History, following, let us 
say, our own Allies' splendid work, The Formation of Christendom ? 
These lectures would help much toward the interpretation of litera- 
ture. Novels have a great hold on all readers, and they touch on all 
questions of time, and even of eternity. The philosophy of life, 
as shown in history, would help us benefit by some of these 
novels, and save us from the false theories they advocate. To 
sum up as briefly as possible, let us then 

1. Endeavor to know what we want, and why we want it. 

2. Let us cultivate a taste for studious reading. 

3. Let us always have a good Catholic work on hand, what- 
ever amount of attention we choose to bestow on the magazines, 
reviews, and other books. 

4. Let us try to find out the means by which those whose 
station in life does not permit a full participation in our work 
can be benefited as much as possible (cheap editions, a la 
Franklin Square, a la Harper, or any other way known to the 
publishers). 

5. Let every member assume the right to act as an irrepres- 
sible agent in favor of at least one good Catholic weekly. We 
have many which are very good. Why should we not try also 
to make THE CATHOLIC WORLD reach a few more thousands ? 

Ottawa, Ont. M. L. M." 

* * * 

The co-operative plan, upon which we rely so much for the 
rork of our Reading Union, has been selected by the Rev. S. 
Messmer, D.D., as the only feasible way under the circum- 
mces now existing of establishing at the Catholic University 
truly representative " Library of American Catholic Litera- 
ture." Besides documents bearing on canon law and church 
history, Dr. Messmer hopes to get odd copies of magazines, lo- 
:al publications giving the history of missions, parishes, con- 
sents, educational and charitable institutions ; also biographies of 
men who have had some part in the development of the Cath- 
olic Church in this country. The members of our Reading 
Circles are requested to assist in this praiseworthy undertaking. 

.,# 

Through the Columbian Reading Union a lady has been di- 
rected to a priest to receive instructions for admission to the 
church. In a letter received from her she savs that she is de- 



310 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [May, 

lighted with her " first encounter with a real shepherd of the 
one true church." Though her family suspect that something 
strange has happened, she hopes to overcome the obstacles in 
her way. She has found Father B. " kindness itself," and relies 
implicitly on his judgment in her case. We commend her to 
the prayers of our zealous members. 

* * # 

We shall welcome any further suggestions concerning Cana- 
dian authors. This letter has given much encouragement to 
those preparing the list of authors known as Catholics. 

" I have read with much attention and benefit that portion 
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD devoted to the Columbian Reading 
Union. I was much interested in your list of Catholic authors. 
Before I read the fact in your list, there were many of the 
names among them I had no idea were Catholics. 

" I did not notice many names of Canadian authors on your 
list. In fact we here have but few English speaking, or rather 
writing, Catholics who have published works. Our writers as 
yet confine themselves to a less lasting form of literature. How- 
ever, I think you might justly add to your list the following : 

" Very Rev. M. F. Howley, D.D., vicar-apostolic of the west 
coast of Newfoundland, quite a prominent man in that colony, 
and author of An Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland, 
published in 1888 by Doyle & Whettle, . of Boston. 

" Rev. A. McD. Dawson, LL.D., at present of Ottawa, On- 
tario, whose latest work, A History of the Scotch Catholics in 
Canada was published last year, if I mistake not, in the office 
of the Catholic Record newspaper of London,. Ontario. Dr. 
Dawson has also published a Life of Pius IX. and several other 
works in prose and verse. 

"Joseph Pope, too, at present private secretary to Sir John A. 
McDonald, our Canadian premier, last year published a work on 
the early French voyages to Canada, which I have seen favora- 
bly reviewed. Mr. Pope is a brother of Miss A. M. Pope, who 
has contributed several articles to the WORLD. 

" If I might make a suggestion, I think if you would publish 
a -list of such novels by Catholics as may be had at a price to 
compete with the prices usually paid for novels, with the publish- 
ing house, etc., you would assist .such of us, away here in the 
East, as have no means of seeing the general catalogues of pub- 
lishing houses. But you are now doing a great deal and we 
must not expect too much. C. Fx HAMILTON. 

" North Sydney, C. B." 

A list of cheap editions of good novels was prepared by the 
Columbian Reading Union over two years ago. For lack of funds 
it could not be published. No generous millionaire has yet ap- 
peared for this important work of assisting the publication and 
dissemination of our leaflets and book-lists. M. C. M. 



1891.) \VITH THE PUBLISHER. 311 



WITH THE PUBLISHER. 



THE Publisher regrets that the third paper of Dr. Barry's 
series of articles on Science and Religion did not reach THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD in time to appear in this issue. It is ready 
for the June number, however, and the series will go on to 
completion without any further interruption. 



The Publisher has not space enough at command to repro- 
duce all the flattering comment that came from all sources on the 
occasion of the celebration of THE CATHOLIC WORLD'S last 
birthday. And with congratulation there was invariably some 
just and good criticism always worth more than a gross of 
compliments. In this respect the Publisher is glad to note that 
his "correspondents are beginning to make use of his invitation to 
help him by their suggestions, and are replying to his request 
for some " good-natured growls. " Of course he cannot attend 
to all at once, but he means to devote some of his space in 
each issue to all in turn whose criticism is just and good-natured. 
Here is a specimen taken from his mail of last month, and he 
may be pardoned for quoting at length : 

" As an old subscriber to THE CATHOLIC WORLD I beg to 
offer my congratulations as it enters upon the twenty-seventh 
year of its existence, bearing evidence of renewed life and vigor. 
During the past twenty-six years it has indeed proved invaluable 
to many readers, but it has been especially helpful to those who, 
finding themselves under the bondage of a false creed, had 
many difficulties to fight against on their way. to ' the promised 
land.' And many a one whose peaceful homo is now within 
that land ' flowing with milk and honey ' can, doubtless, thank 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD for the helping hand it gave him in 
his struggles from darkness to light 

" The contents of the magazine being so admirable, its exte- 
rior would, perhaps, pass without conrnent had not the Pub- 
lisher drawn the attention of his readers to the * bright new 
cover' in which the beginning of the fifty-third volume makes 
its appearance. The heavy paper and the slight typographical 
change are certainly improvements over former numbers. Fain 
would I say the same of the color. I pray, Mr. Publisher, is 



312 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [May, 

it intended to illustrate a certain concoction advertised on the 
back cover ? Has each number been dipped in ' Scott's Emul- 
sion of Pure Cod Liver Oil with Hypophosphites of Lime and 
Soda ' ? 

" Time, however, may cure its bilious complexion. But, 
even though the ailment b. permanent, the value of its inner 
self will always make it a welcome visitor to 

4< Your obedient Servant. 

In reply the Publisher begs to assure his correspondent that 
while he feels the new cover is open to some criticism because 
of its color (commercially known as " moss rose," but which he 
is sure a jury of his countrymen would pronounce a yellow), 
he is nevertheless convinced that it is far " brighter " than the 
dress of its predecessors.. Perhaps it goes too far in this re- 
spect, but a defect of this kind can readily be remedied in the 
future. The change is, in any event, a step towards improve- 
ment, and is meant as a step only. We hope soon to be able 
to decide upon an original design for the cover which will be at 
once " bright " and pleasing. 



# 
# # 



Another writer laments the fact that the eclectic character of 
the first volumes of THE CATHOLIC WORLD is no longer main- 
tained. The Publisher is not sure that the majority of his read- 
ers would desire a return to that feature of the earlier volumes 
of the magazine. We need all our present space, generous 
as it surely is, for original matter. It was and is among the 
purposes of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to give opportunity to 
Catholic, and American writers, and of these there are now a 
number large enough to make it no longer necessary to fill up 
the pages of the magazine with translations from the Catholic 
Continental periodicals. This, of course, was not the sole reason 
for the custom in the past, but it must be remembered that in 
those days contributors to our pages were not as numerous as 
at present. But the eclectic feature has in itself many good ar- 
guments in its favor so good, indeed, that the present manage- 
ment is considering the advisability of issuing from this office at 
as early a date as is possible, either a new Catholic eclectic maga- 
zine, or of adding to THE CATHOLIC WORLD a new department 
devoted entirely to translations and summaries of the best articl< 
in the Continental magazines. The Publisher has so many plans 
at present under consideration that he cannot undertake to say 
which of these plans may be adopted. 



1891 ] WITH THE PUBLISHED. 313 

One thing is certain. To add fifty or sixty more pages- to 
the present magazine at the same subscription price, or to realize 
any of the many plans contemplated for its improvement, we 
should have a larger number of readers. Between good materi- 
als and promising opportunities and their realization there is a 
chasm as deep as that between good flour and good bread, deep 
enough to be blue at the bottom. To stride that chasm some- 
thing of a Colossus is needed. Between its plans and their real- 
ization THE CATHOLIC WORLD needs the Colossus of a big 
subscription list. Again the Publisher reminds his readers that 
on them rests the realization of these plans ; they are the build- 
ers of that Colossus. And hence he repeats his old question to 
the reader of these lines: What are you doing towards the 
building ? 



* 
# 



F. A. Brockhaus, of Leipzig, has ^'ust published a posthumous 
work of the distinguished archaeologist, Dr. Henry Schliemann. 
The first portion was completed by the author just before his 
death, and describes the excavations made at Troy last year. In 
the concluding part, written by Dr. W. Doerpfeld, full particulars 
are given of the various discoveries made, which in many 
respects confirm and complete Schliemann's published accounts 
of the results of his labors. 

Longmans, Green & Co. have just issued The System of the 
Stars, by Agnes M. Clerke. Miss Clerke is a Catholic and a frequent 
contributor to the pages of the Dublin Review, as many of our 
readers may remember. Her History of Astronomy in the Nine- 
teenth Century, published five years ago, met with the warmest 
commendation from writers best qualified to speak on the sub- 
ject, and her authority to discuss the most profound questions 
raised in the science of astronomy is unquestioned. Her present 
volume forms the subject of a flattering and lengthy critical 
review by Mr. A. W. Benn in a recent issue of the Academy, in 
which the hope is expressed that she " may be encouraged to 
follow up this admirable work with a companion volume on the 
solar system." The work is said to be in no sense a popular 
treatise, but is one which, in the opinion of her reviewer, may 
be consulted with profit by many specialists. All of this is 
profitable reading, and worth remembering in the present discus- 
sions concerning the possibilities and opportunities for the higher 
education of Catholic women. 

In the second series of his Historical Oddities (London : Me- 
thuen & Co.) S. Baring-Gould betrays, in his second essay, a 



314 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [May, 

surprising " oddity " in giving to the celibacy of the priesthood 
a genesis from the principles of the Gnostic heretics. 

D. Appleton & Co. have published Thomas A. Janvier's new 
book, Stories of Old Ne:.v Spain. These fascinating tales of life in 
Mexico and our Southwest form a new page in our literature, for 
the author has preserved the" coloring, atmosphere, and strange 
character of the life as vividly as Kipling has delineated certain 
phases of life in India. For this volume Mr. Janvier has written a 
new story entitled " A Mexican Night," and the collection includes 
" San Antonio of the Gardens," which has been called the most 
beautiful American short story of recent years. 

Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, announce for publication early 
this month The Spanish Conspiracy, by Thomas Marshall Greene, 
author of the Historic Families of Kentucky. The book is a review 
of the early Spanish movements in the Southwest; contains proofs 
of the intrigues of Wilkinson and Brown, and gives a history of the 
early struggles of Kentucky for autonomy. 

Roberts Brothers have just published a new novel by George 
Meredith entitled One of Our Conquerors. 

A book of some value to all who are interested in the subject 
of copyright law in England and America will soon be issued 
from the press of G. P. Putnam's Sons. It will contain contri- 
butions from Brander Matthews, R. R. Bowker, and Haven 
Putnam. 

The Catholic Publication Society Co. has just published: 

The Hidden Life of Jesus : A Lesson and Model to Chris- 
tians. By Henri-Marie Boudon. Translated from the 
French by Edward Healy Thompson. Third edition. 

Life and Writings of the Blessed Thomas More. By Rev. 
T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R. 

Interior of Jesus and Mary. By Pere Grou. New edi- 
tion. Revised and edited by Rev. S. H. Frisbee, S.J., 
of Woodstock College. 2 vols. 

The Blessed Sacrament and the Church of Saint Martin at 
Liege. By the Abbe Cruls, Translated by permission 
of Monseigneur Doutreloux, Bishop of Liege, by Wm. 
S. Preston. Illustrated. 

Acts of the English Martyrs, hitherto unpublished. By 
Rev. John Hungerford Pollen, SJ. With a Preface by 
Rev. John Morris, SJ. Quarterly Series. 

The same company announces : 

Life of the Blessed Angelina Marsciano, Foundress of the 
Third Order Regular of St. Francis of Assist. By Mrs. 
Montgomery. 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 315 

Mrs. Hope's Works. A new and popular edition in uni- 
form binding. 

St. Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits. By Stewart 
Rose. Third edition. With about one hundred illustra- 
tions. 

Benziger Brothers' new publications are : 

How to Get On. By Rev. Bernard Feeney. 
The Holy Face of Jesus. By the Sisters of the Divine 
Compassion. 

They have in preparation : 

Life of St. Aloysius. Illustrated. 

Hunolt's Sermons. Vols. VIL, VIII.: The Good Christian. 
The Nezv Third Reader of the Catholic National Series. 

Illustrated. 
Hand-book of the Christian Religion. Translated from the 

German of Rev. Father Wilmer, S.J., by Rev. James 

Conway, SJ. 
Simplicity in Prayer. 

Dodd, Mead & Co. announce for early publication : 

Samuel Houston (1793-1862), by Henry Bruce, in their 
series "The Makers of America." 

The Journal of Maurice de Guerin. With a biographical 
and literary memoir by Sainte-Beuve. From the twen- 
tieth French, edition by Jessie P. 'Frothingham. 

In their series the " World's Great Explorers," Ferdinand 
Magellan. By F. H. H. Guillemand. 

Macmillan & Co. have published Mr. William Winter's new 
book, Gray Days and Gold, and a new edition of his Shake- 
speare's England, issued in uniform style. 

They announce a new edition of Lander's Imaginary Con- 
versations, in six volumes, the first of which was issued in April. 
It is hoped that the whole publication will be completed by 
December. The edition is by Mr. C. G. Crump, who edited the 
" Pericles and Aspasia " for the " Temple Library " series. The 
text will be a reprint from the complete edition of Landor's 
works published in 1876, compared with previous editions, and 
a bibliography is added to each conversation showing the various 
forms in which it was originally published. There will be short 
explanatory notes. A limited edition on large paper will also 
be published. 



316 BOOKS RECEIVED. [May, 1891. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

THE BLESSED SACRAMENT, AND THE CHURCH OF ST. MARTIN AT LIEGE. 

From the French of Dean Cruls. By William S. Preston. New York: 

The Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns & Gates. 
MAY DEVOTION. By C. Deymann, O.S.F. New York and Cincinnati: Fr. 

Pustet & Co. 
MEDITATIONS ON THE VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS. By a Sister of Mercy. 

New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 

A CHRISTIAN APOLOGY. By Paul Schanz, D.D., D.Ph. New York and Cin- 
cinnati : Fr. Pustet Co. 
FIRST LESSONS IN ENGLISH GRAMMAR. PRINCIPLES OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR. 

Used by the Christian Brothers. New York : Wm. H. Sadlier. 
LIFE OF FRANCIS HIGGINSON. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 
BUSINESS BOOK-KEEPING. By George E. Gay. Boston : Ginn & Co. 
PERCY WYNN. By Francis J. Finn, S.J. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: 

Benziger Bros. 
THE HOLY FACE. From the French of Abbe J. B. Fourault. New York, 

Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros. 
THE DISEASES OF PERSONALITY. By Th, Ribot. Chicago : Open Court 

Publishing Co. 

L'CEuvRE DES APOTRES. Par 1'Abbe E. Le Camus. Paris : Letouzey et Ane. 
HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE. By T. H. Mead. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 
SONGS OF THE LIFE ETERNAL. By Edward R. Knowles. Boston. 
ORDER IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD. From the French. By T. J. Slevin. 

London : John Hodges ; New York, Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros. 
EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. By Bernardine a Piconio. 

Translated by A. H. Prichard, B.A. London: John Hodges; New 

York, Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros. 
MEDITATIONS ON THE GOSPELS. By Pere Medaille, S.J. London: Burns 

& Gates ; New York : Catholic Publication Society Co. 

REPORT OF THE KANSAS STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. Topeka : Kan- 
sas Publishing House. 
GUIDE IN ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. Edited by R. R. 

Bowker and George lies. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 
HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PHILADELPHIA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 

Philadelphia : Hardy & Mahony. 
THE LIFE OF FERDINAND MAGELLAN, AND THE FIRST CIRCUMNAVIGATION 

OF THE GLOBE 1480-1521. By F. H. H. Guillemard, M.A., M.D., 

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THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. By Wm. F. 
Markoe. St. Paul : Catholic Truth Society. 

SACRIFICIAL WORSHIP ESSENTIAL TO RELIGION. By the Rev. P. R. Heff- 
ron, D.D. St. Paul : Catholic Truth Society. 

CATHOLIC YOUNG MEN'S NATIONAL UNION CONVENTION. Brooklyn, 66 
Court St. : Chas. A. Webber. - 

THE STUDY OF THE IRISH LANGUAGE. By the Rev. Wm. Hayden, S.J. 
Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son; London: David Nutt. 

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CATHOLIC YEAR BOOK OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON. Boston: 
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THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD 



VOL. LIII. JUNE, 1891. No. 315. 



THE LADY OF ERIN. 

IT is hard to realize the lives of persons who inhabit coun- 
tries remote from our own ; it is harder still, perhaps, in the 
case of our own people -who are separated from ourselves by 
long lapse of ages. For we think it no wonder that we do not 
understand the ways of foreigners, but find it strange indeed 
that those whose blood, language, and religion we inherit 
should yet differ so widely from ourselves in manners and cus- 
toms. Hence the difficulty of interesting readers, city readers 
especially, in the life and times of the saint whose merits I 
intend briefly to set forth in this paper. Country folk lead a 
less artificial existence, and hence have a quicker appreciation of 
plain, natural manners in whatsoever age or clime. It may assist 
all to place the Celtic virgin and take in her surroundings if 
they will bear in mind that 'the Irish people of thirteen hundred 
years ago bore a great resemblance to the inhabitants of Pales- 
tine as we know them from Bible history. When we tell them 
how St. Briyid entertained kings, they may picture to them- 
selves such monarchs, more or less, as those four of whom 
Abraham himself, too, a chieftain -with his three hundred and 
eighteen followers defeated in a night attack (Genesis xiv. 14) ; 
when we set before them our heroine engaged in domestic duties, 
let them assist their imaginations with the delightful account of 
how the noble and beautiful Rebecca fetched water for the 
camels of the stranger at the well (Genesis xx. 20) ; when they 
read of leprosy in Erin, and are surprised at the novelty, they 
may fancy how this was naturall) to be expected in times when 
the tribal system made every village the . fortified capital of an 
independent chief, who was almost constantly at war with his 

Copyright. REV. A. F. HEWIT. 1891. 



318 THE LADY OF ERIN. [June, 

neighbors, and maintained himself by robbing those who were 
weaker than he was. In such a state of things the proper culti- 
vation of the soil became impossible, commerce was at a stand- 
still, and therefore not only war stalked abroad, but slayery, 
misery, disorder, and disease existed in .a degree not exceeded 
perhaps even in the modern" 'history of that beautiful but most 
unhappy country. 

With this preamble, I proceed to give my readers what I 
have very sparingly gleaned out of Father O'Hanlon's history of 
the great woman- saint of the Irish, he himself having sifted the 
store of at least a dozen biographies by writers of various times 
and nationalities, ancient ' and mediaeval, Irish, English, Italian, 
and German. 

Her name (Briyid in Irish, Brigid or Bride in English ; 
Father O'Hanlon follows the general manner of the Irish clergy 
at the present day, and spells it always Brigid) signifies fire or 
flame, and fire is always associated with her memory, not only 
for this reason, but because she was the beacon-light of all the 
women of Erin, and a fire was kept burning at her shrine in 
Kildare for seven hundred years after her departure for heaven. 

St. Briyid is, among the Irish, the flower and ideal of con- 
secrated virginity, just as St. Patrick of the clerical state, and St. 
Columba of the monastic profession. 

She was illustrious, however, not in Erin alone, and in 
Caledonia and Britain, but throughout Western Europe, and 
especially in Belgium and Germany, whither Irish missionaries 
had carried her fame. Her office was recited in those countries, 
and she had great popular veneration. Hence we find that her 
life was written not only by many Irishmen, but also by St. 
Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, in 1450, and by other 
Italians.* A life of her was published in Germany in 1478, a 
few years after printing was invented. Even in our own day 
two English Protestants Bishop Forbes and Rev. S. Baring- 
Gould have written her life. 

The more distinguished a person is the more people talk of 
him, and the more stories and anecdotes of every kind are 
related. Hence St. Briyid's life is full of legends, either true or 
based upon some fact in her career. That people spoke so of 
her shows how much they esteemed her holiness, to whom they 
thought God could refuse nothing. Hence Certani, an Italian 
priest, and one of her biographers, entitles his work : The Life 
of S. Briyid of Erin;- or, Wonder-working Holiness. 

The missionaries that went out from Erin in those days car- 



1891.] THE LADY OF ERIN. 319 

ried her fame, as I said, and so did the nuns of her order who 
founded convents in other countries. As for Erin itself, not only 
was the name of Briyid common amongst women, but there are 
hundreds of places called after her, showing where there had 
been, or now is, a church, a school, or a convent founded by 
her, or dedicated to God in her honor. 

The names Tempul Breeda, or Bride's Church, Kilbride, 
Rathbride, Tegbride, Bridewell, Bride's Glen, Bride River on the 
Liffey, Breeda River on the Lee, Innisbride, etc., are found all 
over Erin. There are churches now used by Protestants in 
England, Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man called St. Bride's, 
Kirkbride, etc. These are old Catholic churches of St. Briyid. 
In Scotland she was the patroness of the Douglas family, as you 
know who have read Scott's Marmion (canto vi. 14). King 
Edward III. of England had a daughter named Brigid who 
became a nun. 

In Erin there are many holy wells named Tubber Breeda, to 
which people go to pray, and hang a rag on a thorn-bush near 
by, by way of an offering or an ornament. The poor creatures 
cannot afford anything better. But they pray with more devo- 
tion at these waters, blessed by the saints of old, than in the 
new and beautiful temples erected in the nineteenth century, and 
prefer that their bones should be laid in the grass-grown grave- 
yard nigh the ruins of Tempul Breeda, rather than under the 
showy monuments of Glasnevin. 

There is another practice in some parts of Erin, in memory 
of the processions in ancient times on saints' days that is, the girls 
carry a little image about which they call Briyid Og", in English 
Young Briyid. They, also Hang a ribbon or handkerchief from 
the window, as the people used to hang out tapestry and flags 
formerly, by way of decoration, and they make Celtic crosses in 
a circle and wear them gracefully on the right shoulder on St. 
Briyid's Day. 

St. Briyid is represented in art as a nun sometimes, other 
times as an abbess ; sometimes with a dog by her side, or a 
wolf; or with a vine trailing round her dress, or a flame of fire 
over her head, or the sun on her breast, or a dove in her hand ; 
all these things referring to incidents in her life, or else symbol- 
izing her kindness even toward animals, her innocence, the fruit- 
fulness of her mission as foundress of convents, or the blaze of 
holiness whereby she illuminated Erin. There is a statue in the 
cathedral of St. Omer, in France, showing her as a dairy-maid, 
in allusion to the fact that she used to milk cows and make but- 

VOL. LIII. 21 



320 THE LADY OF ERIN. [June, 

ter and attend to all the other domestic duties, as was the cus- 
tom in those days for women in every position in life. 

Of the fame of St. Briyid at the present day it is not neces- 
sary to speak. The children of the Gael, like those of Israel, 
have been scattered all over the world. Wherever they go they 
build a church of St. Patrick* and one of St. Briyid, and the sun 
never sets on the spires that sustain the cross of Christ under 
which her name is invoked. Even now the stranger in P>in is 
restoring the ancient cathedral of Kildare from the ruins that 
have lain there for fourteen hundred years. The old round 
tower is still there, too, in excellent preservation. But though they 
may be credited with patriotism and taste in thus trying, to pre- 
serve one of Erin's most glorious monuments, they have lost the 
faith of Briyid, and are so few in number that they have been 
obliged to build a partition in the church for the greater comfort 
of their small congregation, who would shiver in the grand eld 
Catholic temple. 

Briyid was born at Fogart, County Louth, in the year 456, 
of Dubtach and Broca, converts of St Patrick and persons in good 
circumstances. She received such education as was customary 
then for persons of her condition, we cannot say precisely what, 
but probably reading, music, writing, and embroidery. Still, like 
the illustrious women of the Bible, and according to the simple 
manners of her time, even among the wealthy, she used to fetch 
water, herd sheep, milk cows, and attend to all household cares. 
Thus she grew up in usefulness, good health, and piety, and 
when about sixteen years of age, declining to marry,, was allowed 
by her parents to build a little hut for herself under a great oak- 
tree on the borders of the Currach. Her cell was called Kil-Darra, 
that is, the Cell of the Oak. In the course of time seven other 
girls were induced by her example to live a similar life. Then 
they all were blessed by the bishop, and the first convent in Ire- 
land was thus established. 

These women did not live in cloister that is, restricted to 
their own houses, like the Presentation nuns or those of the Visi- 
tation but led a life somewhat similar to that of our Sisters of 
Charity, only still more free. They not only did their own house- 
work but also herded their sheep and cattle on the magnificent 
field called the Currach, or race- course of Kildare, six miles long 
by two broad, the richness of which is so great that the pasture 
each morning seems as fresh and luxuriant as ever, in spite of 
the numberless flocks and herds that always graze upon it. 
Briyid used to spend much of her time out in the fresh air, mind- 






1891.] THE LADY OF ERJK. 321 

ing the sheep, and was a very early riser, two things very 
conducive to health, as one of the old chroniclers of her life 
remarks. 

The nuns used to copy out the Sacred Scriptures and other 
useful books, for there was, of course, no printing. They used 
to make vestments for the priests, altar-cloths, etc., and also sing 
the Divine Office, for we read how Briyid sent messengers to 
Rome to get advice about the proper prayers and chant which 
were to be used. She also wrote a rule for the many convents 
founded by herself, and some treatises, which have perished in 
the troublesome days gone by. In her days hotels were very 
rare or perh?ps unknown in most parts of Ireland, and travellers 
had to seek hospitality in private houses. Hospitality was con- 
sidered one of the first of virtues, and the nuns exercised it to 
a remarkable degree. They entertained bishops, priests, kings, 
and their followers all classes of persons. As there were no reg- 
ular hospitals in those early days of Christianity, the sick as well 
as the poor used to travel about, begging of all, and stopping 
overnight wherever they found a welcome. The state of things in 
Erin caused immense numbers of such wanderers to be seen all over 
the land, for, as the Annals of Innisfail say, Erin was in those days 
"a trembling sod." There were incessant wars and quarrels, 
public and private, rebellion, murder, and treachery. The claims 
on the hospitality of our saint were, therefore, constant, and so 
serious as to take up a great part of the nun's time and labor. 
They were regular innkeepers, in fact, in all but the reckoning, 
and their monastery was known to all the country around as the 
" House of Fire." The reason of this was that they kept a great 
fire always burning in an enclosure adjoining their residence, so 
that travellers arriving night or day might have a fire to sit down 
by and warm and rest themselves. You have read the poet's 
allusion to this in the song: 

" Like the bright fire that blazed in Kildare's holy fane, 
And burned through long ages of darkness and rain, . . . 
Erin, O Erin ! thus bright through the tears 
Of a long night of bondage thy spirit appears." 

This hospitable fire, whose brightness shining across the Cur- 
rach invited the weary traveller to shelter and warmth, was kept 
up^during St. Briyid's life and during the three hundred years 
that her convent flourished after her death. 

In 835 the Danes plundered Kildare and destroyed the mon- 
astery, but the fire escaped extinction. The country people took 



322 THE LADY OF ERIN. [June, 

care not to let it go out until the scattered nuns came again 
together, and thus it was tended not alone for its sacred purpose 
of hospitality, but also in memory of the Mistress of Erin, Light 
of Leinster, the Pearl of Kildare, as St. Briyid was variously 
styled. 

It was only in the year f*22O, after the conquest, that Henry 
of London, the English Catholic Bishop of Dublin, thinking, 
perhaps, that there was danger of superstition in the popular rev- 
erence for the holy fire, ordered it to be finally extinguished. 
This was seven hundred years after our saint's death, which took 
place February I, 523. 

It is no wonder that this fire was held in veneration, for the 
hospitality to the rich and the kindness to the poor which it wit- 
nessed were indeed akin to divine. It is related that St. Briyid 
was one day listening to a sermon on the Eight Beatitudes, and 
after it was over proposed to her seven companions that each 
should choose one virtue for special cultivation. She was very 
modest herself and would have the others begin, but they insist- 
ed that she should lead. Whereupon she chose the virtue of 
Mercy, and this is, perhaps, the most conspicuous trait in her 
character. 

Her life is full of anecdotes of her liberality to the poor. She 
received generous gifts from the wealthy, but immediately bestow- 
ed them on the needy, and God frequently increased her store in 
a wonderful or even a miraculous way when provisions fell short. 
Once when a poor person asked an alms she handed him a gold 
chain which a rich woman had bestowed on her. Another time 
she gave a cow to a poor leper, bidding him go and choose the 
best .in her herd. Once again she broke a silver cup in three 
pieces to divide amongst as many beggars. There was no money 
in Ireland then, as it appears, or else the saint kept none in 
hand. 

People afflicted with leprosy were common in those days, be- 
cause, as I said in the beginning, the constant wars prevented 
tillage, and fruit and vegetables were therefore very scarce. This 
class of people, having no asylums, roamed about the country 
begging, and of course often called at the convent-gate. St. 
Briyid, by her prayers, sometimes cleansed them of their dreadful 
disease, always relieved their necessities, and even put up with 
their impudence, and defended them against those who qould 
stand less than herself. One day a woman brought her a present 
of apples. While they were talking some lepers came up asking 
alms. Briyid bade the woman divide the fruit among them. 



1891 ] THE LADY OF ERIN. 323 

" Indeed, then, I will not," said the woman. " I brought these 
apples not for lepers, but for yourself and your nuns." The saint 
rebuked her for her want of charity, and said : " Your trees shall 
never bear fruit again " which prediction was verified. 

Another time two lepers came along covered with their fright- 
ful sores. The holy virgin blessed water and bade one of them 
wash the other. He did so, and behold ! the washed one became 
sound and whole. " Now you wash your comrade," she said to 
him that had been cured. He would not, and %as going away, 
but the saint herself washed the second poor wretch, and rid him 
of his loathsome disease, God working by her hands, while the 
sjlfish and ungrateful man got his malady back again. As I 
have said, the lepers sometimes abused her kindness. 

At one time the King of Leinster visited the convent and 
was entertained by the nuns. After his departure Briyid and her 
sisters sat down to their own dinner with whatever poor persons 
were present. One of these, a leper, refused to eat unless he got 
the spear which he had seen the king carry. Briyid actually 
sent a messenger after the king, who, out of respect for her, 
readily bestowed the weapon. Meanwhile the holy abbess kept 
the dinner waiting, and at last, on the return of her messenger, 
the troublesome leper received the spear and consented to eat, 
when they all sat down again together. 

" The just man is kind even to his beasts," says the Holy 
Bible (Proverbs xii. 10). So Briyid, like so many other saints, 
could not bear to see even a brute suffer, and one day, getting ready 
some bacon for certain guests, gave half of it to a poor dog that 
came 'hungry and whining to her feet. The legend tells us that 
still there was meat in plenty for the table, God miraculously 
supplying the want, and approving her tenderness of heart 
Says the poet : 

"He prayeth well who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast ; 
He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things, both great and small, 
For the great God our Father, 
He made and loves them all." 

The legends tell other things that go to show how she loved 
animals, and they obeyed her, as they did our first parents in 
Paradise, and others of the saints we read of. A wild boar 
escaping from the hunters took refuge among her swine one day. 
She blessed him, and he stayed there ever after. So a flock of 
wild ducks came at her call, and quacked their salutations 



324 THE LADY OF ERIN. [June, 

around her ; and even a wolf once leaped into her chariot and 
allowed her to pat his shaggy head. Some of these stories may 
be but stories ; at any rate they show what the people thought 
of the holiness of the Virgin of Kildare. 

St. Briyid's life was mainly a public one, as I shall explain 
later on, and we have but scant account of the internal affairs of 
her convent. They say, however, that she was naturally modest 
in her manner, notwithstanding that great force of character 
which raised hereto be head of all the nuns in Erin, and caused 
her counsel to be sought even by the bishops of the church. 
She preferred simple and lowly employment, and delighted in 
following the sheep over the wavy slopes of the Currach. 

At one time, when she and her sisters found themselves in 
another convent on Holy Thursday, we read that St. Briyid her- 
self took the task of washing the feet of those nuns who were 
sick, and therefore unable to assist at the solemn celebration of 
the Mandatum. So going one day to see a neighboring family, 
and finding the women all indisposed, Briyid and her nuns 
milked the cows for them, as well as set the house in order. 
On another occasion she was short of corn, and went to get 
some from the bishop. " I am sorry, dear sister," he answered, "but 
I fear I have hardly any for myself." " Oh ! yes you have," was the 
reply; "there is plenty of it in your barn." They went out to 
see, and the bishop found abundance of grain where he knew 
there had been a very scant supply. He ascribed this to the 
power of Briyid with God, and invited her to help herself of 
what she had given him. So she and her nuns took each one a 
sack of grain and returned home. 

We have a glimpse of the hidden life of the convent in the 
following exquisitely beautiful narrative : One of the nuns named 
Daria was blind, but perfectly submissive to this stroke of Provi- 
dence, and very edifying to all by her patience and sweetness. 
The holy abbess was conversing with her one evening about the 
beauty of the Son of God and the happiness of heaven, and 
their hearts were so full that they knew not how time sped. At 
last the sun came up over the Wicklow hills, and Briyid seeing 
the lovely landscape, sighed for her poor sister whose eyes were 
closed to all this beauty. Then she bowed her head and prayed, 
and rising signed with the cross of Christ the dark orbs of her 
gentle sister. Daria opened her eyes and saw the golden ball in 
the east, and the dewdrops glistening on the flowers, the grace- 
ful trees and the emerald green so grateful to the sight. Look- 
ing a little while she said : " Close my eyes again, dearest 



1891.] THE LADY OF ERIN: 325 

mother, for when the world is visible to the eye, God is seen 
less clearly by the soul." And Briyid prayed, and Daria's eyes 
grew dark once more. 

From what has been already said you will understand that 
Briyid and her companions were not at all recluses or hermits. 
Quite the contrary. Not only did they work on their own land, 
but they assisted their neighbors, visited the sick, attended 
church festivals in the country around, and travelled whenever 
their own affairs or their neighbors' good required it. Nay, 
more, they went about teaching the people their catechism, 
assisting the missionaries in this great work. 

Tachet de Barneval, a French writer quoted by Father 
O'Hanlon in his life of our saint, says distinctly that in those 
days not only priests but nuns went throughout Erin preaching 
and teaching. I have no doubt that the priests did the preach- 
ing, but the nuns then taught the catechism and prepared the 
women especially and the children for the sacraments. We know 
from the holy Scripture how women accompanied the apostles 
themselves,* 1 and the early history of the church shows us dea- 
conesses consecrated to this work by the hands of the bishop. 
Even in our own days, when the tradition of those rude ages, 
long after Brigid's time, in which women had to be kept be- 
hind grates and bars, has not yet died out, the pastors of the 
church in pagan as well as Christian lands are fain to confess 
that it is on women's aid they must chiefly rely for the holy 
and most important work of religious' instruction. It was St. 
Vincent de Paul, the Apostle of Charity and the founder of the 
sisters of that name, that, in 1630, first broke down the iron 
barriers and stone walls that separated the nuns from the peo- 
ple, who were famishing for want of their words and their pres- 
ence, and allowed the God given companion of man to take her 
proper place at the side of the priestly messenger of Christ. 

Briyid therefore travelled a great deal, being invited by the 
)ishops, successors to St. Patrick, to found convents in their re- 
spective dioceses. In spite, however, of the war-troubled char- 
acter of the times, she nor her companions ever m?t with disre- 

*I. Corinthians ix. 5, St. Paul writes: " Have we not power to lead about a woman, 
a sister, as well as the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Or 
I only and Barnabas, have not we power to do this?" Acts xviii. 18, 26: " But Paul, 
when he had stayed yet many days, taking his leave of the brethren, sailed thence into 
Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. . . . Now a certain Jew, named Apollo, born at 
Alexandria, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus, one mighty in the Scriptures. . . . Tnis 
man therefore began to speak boldly in the synagogues Whom when Priscilla and Aquila 
had heard, they took him to them, and expounded to him the way of the Lord more dili- 
genfy." 



326 THE LADY OF ERTK. [June, 

spect. It is true that it could not be said of them, as it was of 
that one who tested the virtue of Erin in the days of Brian : 

" Rich and rare were the gems she wore, 
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore " ; 

but they went without escort' clad only in the armor of inno- 
cence, and recognized" by their dress as consecrated virgins of the 
Lord ; and no Irishman, seeing them, thought of aught else but 
the honor and blessing derived from their visit to his native place. 

The saint thus visited every part of Ireland, and nothing is 
more common in her life than stories of how she lodged in the 
homes of the people where there was no convent to stay in, and 
often requited their hospitality by miraculously increasing their 
store. They tell of how once, when she was going along the 
road with her companions, an insane man met them and alarm- 
ed the sisters a good deal. But Briyid, going forward, said to 
him: " O man ! announce to us the word of God." The mad- 
man at once made answer : " O holy Briyid, I obey thee. Love 
God, and all will love thee ; honor God, and all will honor thee ; 
fear God, and all will fear thee." 

Briyid, like all the children of Erin, as the French chronicler 
before quoted says, delighted in music. Now, the harp was 
found in every comfortable house, and the stranger who could 
play on it was sure of a double welcome. One day, going into 
the house of a chief to obtain the release of a captive, while 
waiting for him to come in, she asked that some one should 
give them a little music. Those present all asserting their want 
of ability, one of the nuns said to a boy : " Go and ask Mother 
Briyid to bless your hands, and then you'll be able to play." 
The child did so. The abbess took his hands in her own, pray- 
ed, and blessed him, and he began to play beautifully. When 
his father entered he was astonished, and, recognizing God's 
work in favor of St. Briyid, readily granted the favor she had 
come to ask. 

The respect for St. Briyid made her protection very desirable, 
and the number of poor and sick that applied to her for help 
was so great, as well as that of the pilgrims, lay and clerical, 
who came to visit her, that a town grew up near her convent. 
It was a place of refuge which, whosoever entered, no one dar- 
ed to lay a violent hand upon him until the abbess heard his 
case and decided upon it. In the course of time it was made 
the see of a bishop, and Briyid was held in such esteem by 
the hierarchy that she had the naming of the first incumbent. 



1891.] THE LADY OF ERIN. 327 

Later on the see became an archbishopric, and shared dignity 
with Armagh itself, St. Patrick's own see, for the names and 
honors of Patrick and Briyid have always been associated in Irish 
history. 

Kildare flourished as a home of sanctity and learning from 
the death of Briyid in 523 until the invasion of the Danes in 
835, when it was plundered by those barbarians and its library 
and records destroyed. The Danes themselves becoming Catho- 
lics, the convent was rebuilt, and with much changing fortune 
continued to spread the light of faith and education, and to dis- 
pense the bread of mercy, till at last it withered and died trnder 
the harsh, cold spell of the Sassenach conqueror in 1172, and 
its holy fire was, as we have said, put out finally in 1220. 

Nevertheless, although the nuns died out, the monks were na- 
turally more able to make their way in those dark and evil days, 
and the Franciscans and Carmelites built monasteries at Kil- 
dare within the same century that saw the last of St. Briyid's 
daughters. The Carmelites, in fact, have clung to the spot with 
such marvellous tenacity that they have a house there at the pres- 
ent day, although many a time during the past seven hundred 
years have they been forced to fly with a price set on their 
heads. After the Catholic emancipation in 1829 things improved 
in Erin, and to-day there is an order of women there called 
Brigidines, and another styled Sisters of the Holy Faith, both 
founded under the patronage of the Virgin of Kildare. 

The holy nun passed out of thfs life, as said before, on the 
1st of February, 523, and her sacred remains were laid in the 
same tomb at Downpatrick, in Ulster, with those of the national 
apostle and of St. Columba, the great patron of cloistered men. 
This, the most holy spot in Erin, was violated and destroyed, of 
course, by the heretics in the days of Henry VIII., but it is said 
that the head of St. Briyid was saved by a priest, and carried 
to Neustadt in Austria, and afterwards given by the Emperor 
Rudolf II. to the Jesuits' Church at Lisbon, in Portugal. 

I had the happiness in 1880 of visiting that fair spot in 
Down where the ancient Catholic church, now in the hands of 
strangers, still tops the lovely hill on which St. Patrick laid its 
corner-stone one thousand four hundred years ago. There is a 
hole in the old graveyard alongside, which the people point out 
as having been the grave of the three great Irish saints, and this 
is constantly kept open on account of every visitor reverently 
taking a handful of earth from the sacred spot. Attempts have 
been frequently made to mark the place by a suitable monument ; 



328 THE LADY OF ERIN. [J 



une. 



but the stranger is in the land, ever ready to tear down the mon- 
uments, whether of the saints of the old church from which he has 
gone out or of the nation to which he is a declared enemy. How- 
ever, though her grave be desecrated, her memory is green as 
the sward that, fresh each morning, covers the hills of Down with 
a carpet more grateful to tlie eye than Persian looms could ever 
furnish ; her example still shines out " through the long night of 
bondage," and round the world wherever her children have been 
scattered, as brightly as the hospitable fire which so long blazed 
in " Kildare's holy fane." 

So we have passed in review the records of St. Briyid's ca- 
reer. I have omitted most of the wonders that are found in it, 
because I think they are its least wonderful part. When a per- 
son from childhood up always walks in the presence of God, and, so 
different from the great majority of us, tries to do his pleasure in 
every thought, word, and deed, what else should we expect than 
that God should favor such a one, shower his choicest gifts upon her, 
and make all nature obedient to her will, united, as it always was, 
with his own. Hence the miracles done by the saints are only 
what should be expected The wonder would be indeed if there 
were none found in their lives. The real wonder is that our 
heroine was able, amid the seductions and temptations of the 
world, the devil, and the flesh, to keep so pure in God's sight, 
to lead a life so unselfish, to work heroically during three score 
and ten years for God, her neighbor, and her native land. 

Again, what attracts one in St. Briyid is the plainness and 
simplicity of her way of living. Evidently there was nothing 
about her house that made any one feel unwelcome there. The 
rich admired its neatness, the poor saw at once that Briyid was 
as natural in her ways as themselves, but, withal, that exquis- 
ite politeness which sprang from genuine gladness to see her 
guests and which took care that they made themselves at home 
round her fireside. It was the same when she visited others, 
and accepted their hospitality for a night. Consecrated virgin 
and all as she was, she dropped in so easily into their household 
circle that they felt no uneasiness at her presence, or at the 
thought that they could not make her comfortable, but their 
hearts laughed with hers at the music of the harp, their souls 
burned within them at the holy fire of her conversation, and they 
preserved the memory of her visit as if Mary herself had come 
down to see them. Hence it was that they used to call her the 
Mary of Erin, that is to say, the one who best realized their idea 
of the Queen of Virgins. Indeed, I think of Joseph, the car- 



1891.] THE LADY OF ERIN. 329 

penter, and Mary, the artisan's wife, and Jesus, their hard- 
working son, in the little village of Nazareth, when I read of 
Briyid's simple ways. In that school at Rome, Trinita del Monte, 
where the daughters of the wealthiest and most influential families 

o 

of Europe are educated, the Blessed Virgin is represented in a fa- 
mous and beautiful painting as the Mater Admirabilis " Mother 
most admirable." Do you know how they depict her ? Sitting at 
home spinning flax with a wheel. So I think the Irish artist's ideal 
of Briyid as the dairy- maid, the Colleen Dhas Cruitha Nambo, is 
more charming and more useful than if he had made her a 
richly- dressed lady or a nun rapt in ecstatic devotion It is 
more charming because the farmer's daughter carries us further 
away from the artificial nonsense of fashion and deceit, and 
brings us " nearer to nature's heart," and hence to the God of 
nature ; it is more useful because it shows us the nobility and 
holiness of labor, and renews for us the pattern left us by Jesus, 
Mary, and Joseph in the workshop of Nazareth. 

blessed -toil ! O sacred hospitality ! O holy simplicity of 
Divine- Human Nature ! How sweet are thy attractions, how 
fascinating thy contemplation ! In the light of thy beauty verily 
all artifice in manner, posture, speech, or dress revolts one's very 
stomach. O single, seamless robe of Christ, knit doubtless by 
the busy hands of thy Virgin Mother, how forcible a lesson of 
Christian poverty dost thou teach ! O Son of God without a 
stone whereon to lay thy Head ! O consecrated one-story cot- 
tage in little Nazareth, what eloquence there is in thy littleness, 
thy plainness, thy simple furniture! 

1 suggest these thoughts to you, dear readers, in order that 
when, as I hope, you take up the life of St. Briyid, or the his- 
tory of Erin, you may not be shocked, or even, perhaps, dis- 
gusted on account of your nineteenth century materialistic 
notions of elegance, comfort, and propriety, at the plain, simple 
ways of people in patriarchal times. I acknowledge here and 
now the valuable lesson received from an illiterate Irishman, to 
whom I had expressed myself somewhat as you perhaps would 
if you had the surroundings of St. Briyid, or even of Nazareth, 
photographed for your inspection: "Tis the manner of the 
country," he said. And on reflection I felt that his brief, unpre- 
tending answer contained a sufficient explanation. But, in addi- 
tion, you must remember that "'tis the manner" of the wise to 
disregard fantastic and unnecessary lodging, dress, or food ; " 'tis 
the manner " of the saints to make all accidents of the body of 
no account in comparison with the care they take of the soul. 



330 THE LADY OF ERIN. [June, 

Little reck they the perishable casket if only they can preserve 
and beautify and cherish the living immortal jewel that lies 
within. " Tis their manner,'" in short, to imitate the Son of 
God. This, too, is the constant injunction of the church upon 
those who are to follow Jesus Christ more closely. Of their 
dress and life generally she' says what the Third Plenary Coun- 
cil of Baltimore (No. 78) decrees of the priest's house: "Let 
the priest's house be so gotten up that all luxury, as well as 
unholy and worldly decoration, be far from it, and everything 
about suggesting piety, order, and plain neatness, proclaim to all 
that a servant of our Crucified Saviour lives there." 

This double consideration, therefore, the manner of those early 
days, and the practice of that religious poverty which she pro- 
fessed, as well as her own lofty and noble character, explains the 
simplicity of the life of her who gained so much influence that 
she was called Hibernice Domina, the Lady of Erin. 

And this is the manner that produces heroes in civil as well 
as in religious society Search the annals of the United States, 
and see if our greatest rulers of men have not come nearly 
always from the village, the farm, or the prairie. Of the saints 
I will not speak, except to remind you that immediately upon 
receiving the seed of Christianity Erin began to bring forth 
holy men and women, scholars and missionaries, to whom 
Europe and ourselves owe the civilization we enjoy to-day. 
During three centuries the lamp of learning which had been 
extinguished in Gaul, Germany, Italy, and Spain was kept alive 
in Hibernia. All those countries, except perhaps the last, were 
evangelized by Irish priests, and many a continental city, such 
as Salzburg, Tarentum, Lucca, San Gallen, venerated an Irish- 
man among its bishops in those ages ; while not only did they 
establish many monasteries and convents throughout Europe, but 
the two first universities, Paris and Pavia, were founded by 
Irishmen. If you seek authority for these and similar assertions, 
I refer you to the Frenchman Montalembert, in The Monks of 
the West, and to the Englishman Butler, Lives of the Saints, 
March 10, 17, and elsewhere. 

And yet Erin suffers and Erin weeps. She is a slave unto her 
enemies and the enemies of God's Church. Europe owes her a debt 
of gratitude beyond estimation ; America is her debtor for many 
material and spiritual advantages. And yet " the age of chivalry 
is past"; the selfish nations neglect and ignore Erin, who pre- 
served for them religion and learning, just as they do Poland, 
who saved them from barbarism and slavery. Even the holiness 



1891.] DEUS Lux MEA ! 331 

of her sons and daughters obtains no official recognition from the 
church, and since the fire " in Kildare's holy fane " was put 
out not a single confessor or martyr have the efforts of Irish- 
men succeeded in placing on the altar which they honored by 
their lives and in whose defence they died. 

Yet she is Innisfail, the " Isle of Destiny." Her children are 
scattered like those of Israel, to be witnesses to God and His 
Christ the world over and the ages along. This is itself a 
sublime mission. Perhaps, in the secret designs of Providence, 
a still grander one is reserved for the land of Patrick, Briyid, 
and Columba. 

Pray for us, O Holy Virgin Brigid! that we may always love 
God and our neighbor, always love what is simple, natural, and 
true, having a contempt for all that is artificial and false. Pray 
for thy native land, that God may grant her peace and glory 
amongst the nations. EDWARD McSWEENY. 

Mount St. Mary's, Emmittsburgh, Md. 



DEUS LUX MEA.! 

Newman died saying " I see the Light ! " ; Goethe, "More light ! " 

I ENVY them whose sturdy hearts 
Welcome the brunt 

Of battle, dark with mortal darts; 

. Well to the front 

They stand, though the long line hath broke, 

Breathing alone the fiery smoke. 
I envy them, yet only so 
If the last breath that spends their life 
Sees Wrong enleagued with the foe, 
And Right triumphant in the strife. 

And sturdy him, whose trembling bark 
Now troughs the sea, 

Now upward cleaves the Stygian dark 
So awfully 

Storm- brooding on the quickening brine; 

And crests the billows for a sign 
Of beacon-safety ; if at last, 
Long stranger to the cheering light, 
Half-wrenched from the straining mast, 
He sees a new day born of night. 



332 DEUS Lux ME A / [June, 

And him whose high ideal shone 
Dimly and far; 

Not as the pillar-cloud led on, 
But as a star 

Hid in the mists of earth and sky, 

Glimmers inconstant from on high. 
Yet so, if with unwearied art, 
Still fashioning stairways to the Height, 
At last his strong and patient heart 
Sees darkness swallowed up of Light ! 

I envy him who holds as nought 
His little years ; 

But gives the Master he hath sought 
Sweat and tears ; 

Dead to the pride of power and pelf, 

Dead to the world and dead to self; 
Yet so, if he who daily dies, 
Seek nevermore surcease of strife ; 
Give holocaust for sacrifice, 
Till Death be swallowed up of Life, 



I envy not the sturdy will, 

And stirring brain, 
And heart content to drink its fill 

Of the world- pain, 

And the poor stumbling feet that bleed 
Incessant o'er some thorny mead, 

If but a glow-worm lead them on 

To visionary fields of light, 

And after all the toiling done 

The Daylight darkens into Night ! 

HUGH T. HENRY, 

Philadelphia, 



1891.] SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 333 



SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 

THE good Capuchin father, Henrkus Seynensis, on one oc- 
casion triumphantly clinched an argument by exclaiming, " Ut 
narrat Rabbinus Talmud!" taking for granted that the Talmud 
was not a book but a man. 

The same mistake might not be impossible even now. Not- 
withstanding the many centuries of its existence for it was 
begun six hundred years before the birth of Christ, and ended 
six hundred years after and notwithstanding the numerous allu- 
sions to it in works upon every department of art, science, or 
literature, the notions abroad in regard to it are strangely va- 
rious, vague, and contradictory. By some it is credited with di- 
vine inspiration; by others it is scorned as a mass of childish 
folly. In fact, no book except the Bible has perhaps been so 
frequently referred to, and yet, at the same time, so little known. 
Nor, in this fleet-footed age of ours, can we greatly wonder at 
this neglect, when we hear the verdict of one of the most 
ardent and most learned Talmudists of this century on this vast 
work. " In the whole realm of learning," says Emanuel 
Deutsch, " there is scarcely a single branch of study to be com- 
pared for its difficulty to the Talmud. Yet," he adds encourag- 
ingly, " if a man had time, and patience, and knowledge, there 
is no reason why he should not, up . and down ancient and 
modern libraries, gather most excellent hints from treatises, mono- 
graphs, and sketches, in books and periodicals without number, 
by dint of which, aided by the study of the work itself, he 
might arrive at some conclusion as to its essence and tendencies, 
its origin and development That work, every step of which is 
beset with pitfalls, has not yet been done for the world at 
large."* 

In the Middle Ages the Talmud was regarded with suspicion 
and dislike, partly as being the principal depository of those 
"traditions of men" denounced by our Lord as making "the 
Commandment of God of no effect," and partly as being in no 
inconsiderable measure the work of Jewish continuators subse- 
quent to the birth of Christ, and therefore implicitly if not for- 
mally anti-Christian in its later tendency. Hence the repeated 

*See Literary Remains of Emanuel Oscar Menahem Deutsch, who was for eighteen years 
attrcl-.ed to the Library Department in the British Museum. He died in 1873, at Alexandria. 



334 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

edicts that were from time to time issued against it, beginning 
with that of the Emperor Justinian, A.D. 553.* 

When Pope Clement V., in 1307, was asked to renew the con- 
demnation pronounced against it by some of his predecessors, he 
wished, before acceding to this request, to know what were really its 
contents, but found no one 'who could tell him. Whereupon he 
proposed that chairs for the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and Chal- 
dee, the three tongues nearest to the idiom of the Talmud, 
should be founded at the Universities of Bologna, Salamanca, 
Oxford, and Paris, expressing his hope that in due time one of 
these universities might produce a translation of this mysterious 
book. This hope was never realized. 

About two centuries later, one Pfefferkorn obtained the per- 
mission of the Emperor Maximilian (then before iPavia) for a 
fresh confiscation and conflagration of all discoverable copies of 
the Talmud. Reuchlin, the most , learned Hebraist and Oriental 
scholar of the time, was put on the junto which was to give 
weight and effect to the imperial decree. Reuchlin, however, 
declined to have any hand in the wholesale destruction of a 
book " written by Christ's nearest relations." If, he said, it were 
found to contain anything contrary to Christianity, the more ef- 
fectual remedy would be to refute it rather than to burn it ; 
since burning was but " a ruffianly argument." Upon this, Pfeffer- 
korn and his party denounced Reuchlin as a renegade and a 
Jew ; but he kept his ground, and, when the emperor asked him 
his opinion, reminded him of the wish of Pope Clement V. to 
found Talmudical chairs .at four of the chief universities. Mean- 
while the contest spread throughout Europe ; every authority, 
whether ecclesiastical, imperial, or literary, eagerly enlisting on 
the one side or the other in the fray. The Talmulphili, as 
they were called, eventually carried the day. To them 
to stand up for Reuchlin was to stand up for the Church. 
" Non te" Egidio di Viterbo wrote to him " Non TE, sed Legem, 
Non Thalmud, sed Ecclesiam!" 

In 1520 appeared the First printed Edition of the Talmud. 
Being issued with more haste than care, it is not without many 
mistakes ; still, it contains fewer than any subsequent edition. 
With the Third, that of Basle, in 1578, began the era of revision 
by a " Censor," whose irresponsible manipulations wrought mar- 
vels, his one anxiety being to trim and lop an utterly Oriental 
and Jewish production to fit in with the notions of the Europe of 

* Novella 146, Uepi 'Efipaadv, addressed to the Praefectus Praetorio Areobindus (quoted 
by Deutsch). 



1891.] SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 335 

the day. Even the names of persons and places were changed 
for others " evolved " out of his own head, when such substitu- 
tion fell in with his private ideas of edification to the reader. 
The result of these achievements was to tangle and break the 
clue to a labyrinth already most difficult to thread. Many scores 
of Talmudical codices, more or less fragmentary, still exist, how- 
ever, scattered in the great public libraries of Europe, from Oxford 
to Odessa, from which to construct a reliable edition. One such 
edition was begun several years ago, but, like the two " Trans- 
lations of the Talmud," commenced at different periods, this also 
has come to a stand-still. 

What, then, is this strange and complex work? Briefly, the 
Talmud * may be described as the Book of the Oral Law of the 
Jews, forming an uninspired, but more or less authoritative, sup- 
plement to the Pentateuch. And yet this definition is about as 
complete and satisfactory as that which describes the teeming 
earth as an oblate spheroid, composed of land and water. The 
Talmud is much more than a legal code : it is the storehouse of 
the archives of Israel. Its origin is coeval with the return from 
the Babylonian Captivity, when all the records of the people's 
faith and history which had escaped destruction were collected 
with the utmost care, and the interpretation and exposition of 
these treasured documents formed into a -science. This science, 
which gradually assumed enormous proportions, was called MID- 
RASH, an expounding.! ' The Talmud is the storehouse of " Mid- 
rash" in all its branches. Although not at first easily discerni- 
ble amid the tangled thickets of this luxuriant wilderness, there 
are two main currents flowing through the Talmud : the one, 
Prose; the other, Poetry; the one, Law; the other, Legend. The 
former is strictly didactic investigating, comparing, arguing; the 
other, pensive, imaginative, fanciful, rich in parable and proverb, 
delighting in allegories, many of which, having lost their key, 
babble unmeaningly their insoluble enigmas, while around and 
within them the sublime strangely mingles with the grotesque. 
These two currents in the " Midrash," which gradually embraced 
the whole of the Sacred Text, were respectively called Halachah 
and Haggadah. The Halachah Rule, Norm concerned itself 
with all the legal, levitical, and ceremonial rules and observances ; 
the Haggadah (Legend, Saga, illustrative story), chiefly with the 
prophetical, historical, and poetic portions of the Scriptures. 

* The primary meaning of the word is "study," "learning," from lamal, to learn; next, 
"arguing" ; lastly, it came to be the name of the great Corpus Juris of Judaism. 

t From darash, a word used for the verb and substantive alike; as our word "study" is 
used both for the process and the result. 

VOL. LIII. 22 



3.36 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

The Talmud, with its two main elements of Law and Legend, 
is divided into Mishna and Gemara Text and Commentary. 
, Both these terms originally meant " learning," but Mishna ex- 
presses rather a " repetition of the Law," a " second Law," while 
Gemara has come to mean a complement or filling-up or ex- 
pansion of the Mishna, as' the Mishna is of the Mosaic Law. 
The Pentateuch always remained the immutable and divinely- 
given constitution the Written Law ; whereas the Mishna and 
Gemara, together forming the Talmud, was the compilation of 
the Oral or Unwritten Law. This oral or corollary code of en- 
actments must have begun almost simultaneously with the Sinaitic 
dispensation ; receiving developments of detail from the primitive 
Council of Elders in the Desert, and, later on, incorporating the 
verdicts of the "Judges within the Gates." 

Putting aside all consideration of the fabulous number of 
books spoken of by apocryphal writers as having been given to 
Moses, together with the Pentateuch, it is evident from Scripture 
itself, and also from the testimony of Josephus, that there were 
certain laws and customs, not expressly mentioned in the Penta- 
teuch, in use long before the Talmud was in existence. Such, 
for instance, as the prohibition to carry burdens on the Sabbath ;* 
the list of the four principal fasts of the year ; f the abstaining 
from certain kinds of food prepared by heathens ; \ and the three 
daily times of prayer. <> The custom of saying grace before 
meals, alluded to in the First Book of Kings, || we meet with also 
in Josephus (Antiq., b. xii.), where King Ptolemy Philadelphus 
invited the Jewish Priest to bless the food, and give thanks for 
it, before partaking thereof. Again, the prohibition to use oil 
prepared by the heathen existed at the time of the Macedonian 
conquest. Seleucus Nicanor, who wished to gain the favor -of the 
Jews, commanded that those of their nation in Syria and Asia 
should receive money instead. These and many such by-laws 
can only be gathered from the Mishna, which also contains evi- 
dence that the pristine severity of the penal laws was consider- 
ably mitigated in course of time, either by the introduction of ex- 
ceptional formalities or in other ways. 

In the long space of time which intervened between the Mo- 
saic period and that of the Mishna, the Urim and Thummim had 
been lost, and Malachi, the last of the Prophets, had died. The 
Law was now all in all, as the one authoritative guide, the basis 
of every regulation affecting the life of the Jewish people. The 

*Jer. xvii 21, 22, etseqq. fZech. viii. 19. I Dan. iv. 10. 

$ Dan. i, 8. || I. Kings (I. Samuel) ix. 13. 



1891.] SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 337 

scrolls, few and scanty, brought back to Judaea by the exiles re- 
turning from Babylon, alone embodied their history and poetry, 
the sacred Law, and the utterances of the prophets precious 
remnants saved out of a vast mass of writings which had irre- 
mediably perished. 

The reorganization of these documents was taken in hand by 
the Sofarim, or "Men of the Great Synagogue," that most impor- 
tant religious and political Assembly, founded by Ezra or Esdras, 
and which arose with the commencement of the emphatically 
Jewish period which is not ended yet the period succeeding the 
Israelitish, as that succeeded the Hebrew era. 

From this epoch date the collection of the Canon, the institu- 
tion of the Targoumim, or translations of the Scriptures into 
Aramaic, and certain of the Midrashim interpretations or para- 
phrases. These being either moral lessons drawn from some 
particular text, legendary stories bearing upon the subject, or 
else exegetic explanations. Several Midrashim attained their 
present form as late as the sixth or seventh century, their 
authors having, out of several ancient and fragmentary rem- 
nants, compiled one complete " Midrash." 

The most important Midrashim are, the Mechilta, the Siphra, 
the Siphri, the Pesikta, the Midrash Kabbah, the Midrasli Tan- 
chouma, the Midrash Schocher Tob, and tlie lalkout.* The 
Mechilta, Siphra, and Siphri together constitute a commentary 
on nearly the whole Pentateuch. They are the oldest of the 
Midrashim, dating from the first to the beginning of the third 
century. The Pesikta, by R. Kahana, is on some chapters of 
the Pentateuch, and on the Prophets. The Midrash Rabbah, on 
the Pentateuch, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and the Book 
oi Esther. The Midrash Tanchouma, or lelamdenou, on the 
Pentateuch. The Midrash Schocher Tob, on the Psalms, Pro- 
verbs, and a part of Samuel. The lalkout, the latest of the Mid- 
rashim, is also the most complete, and the only , one which 
takes in all the Books of the Old Testament. In this Rabbi 
Simeon collected together, in the order of the verses of the 
Bible, the various commentaries upon them scattered throughout 
the Talmud and the earlier Midrashim. 

The compilation of the Talmudic Code was entirely in the 
hands of the Scribes. They, as our Lord said, " sat in MOSES' 

* Mechilta, custom, usage, rite. Sifra.Sifri, the book, (Levit.) books. Pesikta, decision, 
statute. Midrash Rabbah, the " Great" Commentary. Tanchouma, consolation. lelamde- 
nou, " we will teach," our teaching, instruction. Schocher Tob, that which takes in much 
Ht., "good drinker" ), receptacle of many things. 



338 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

seat." The task of the earlier Scribes from the Return from 
Babylon to the year 220 B.C.* was above all to arrange, pre- 
serve, and guard the sacred canon of Scripture. They scrupu- 
lously counted not only its words, but its very letters, in order 
to secure it from all possibility of interpolation or corruption. 
Moreover, with a view to preserve the true pronunciation of the 
Hebrew, the popular idiom having become a curious mixture of 
Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, it became necessary to point the 
text with its vowel sounds, these having been for the most part 
omitted, until then, in the writing of Hebrew. This punctuation 
is said to have been the work of Ezra. New rules, safeguards, 
and aids to the better keeping of the old precepts, were also made, 
as " fences about the Law." 

The class of Scribes called " Repeaters," and also " Master- 
builders," or Bahaim, succeeded, from 220 B.C. to 220 A.D. 
This momentous period comprised the Macchabean struggle, the 
Birth of Christ, the Destruction of the Temple f and of Jerusa- 
lem, and the Dispersion of the Jews. 

Palestine, during these 440 years, was ruled by Persians, 
Egyptians, Syrians, and Romans in turn. But whatever happen- 
ed, and in spite of proscription, ruin, and death, the work of the 
teachers and expounders of the Law went on ; sometimes the 
dying Masters, amid their tortures, naming those who were to 
take up their work. The highest ecclesiastical tribunal of the 
Jews was the " Great Sanhedrim." There were also two " Lesser 
Sanhedrim." When, in the New Testament, the Priests and 
Elders and Scribes are all mentioned together, the Great Sanhe- 
drim is referred to. This consisted of seventy-one members, all, 
intellectually and physically, picked men, not only learned in 
the Law, but also in the wide range of subjects bearing upon 
it. Moreover, the polyglot state of Palestine in those days 
necessitated their being good linguists, no member of the Great 
Sanhedrim being allowed to trust to an interpreter in the ad- 
ministration of justice. 

These Masters and Doctors of the Law were regarded by the 
people with the highest veneration and esteem, although not a 
few of the most eminent among them were humble tradesmen- 
weavers, carpenters, tanners, sandal- makers, bakers, ' and cooks. 

* The time of the Graeco-Syrian persecutions. 

t One of the most cherished legends of the Talmud tells how, when the Roman legion- 
aries entered the Holy of Holies, the Priests and Levites, led by the venerable High-Priest 
Simeon, bearing aloft the golden key of the Sanctuary, ascended to the summit of the burn- 
ng pile, whence, with all the emblems of their sacred trust, they threw themselves into the 
flames, rather than suffer them to fall into the hands of the conqueror. 



1891.1 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 339 

One newly-elected president of this great assembly was found 
busy and begrimed among his mounds of charcoal. Idleness, as 
is shown by many an aphorism in the Talmud, was regarded as 
a hateful and despicable vice. " Labor is honorable, and honors 
the laborer"; "Toil keeps the toiler warm"; "Work is better 
than piety that is idle " ; " Idleness begets hypochondriacs " ; 
" Add a trade to your studies, then will you be free from sin " ; 
" The tradesman at his craft need not rise up before the great- 
est of the Doctors." These are a few out of many maxims in 
the same sense. One reason for enjoining the pursuance of a 
trade was to render payment unnecessary for the nobler calling 
of Teacher. " Even as God freely and without price taught the 
Law to Israel, so ought we without price to teach it to our 
brethren" (The lalkoitt on Exodus, 286). "Rabbi Tzadok 
was wont to say: ' Make not of sacred learning a crown for thy 
pride, nor a shovel to dig with ; for, as saith Hillel, He who 
maketh a trade of the holy Law, he shall thereby perish.' ' 

The Talmud gives abundant testimony to the energy with 
which, after the return from the Captivity, and still more after 
the wars of the Macchabees, the Pharisees and many of the 
Priesthood planted colleges and schools, and in every possible 
way exerted themselves to facilitate education, alike in Judea 
and among the Jews scattered throughout the whole Roman 
Empire. The regulations, minute and stringent, with regard to 
public instruction, are carefully laid down, extending even to the 
supervision by the parents of their children's tasks to be pre- 
pared at home ; good grounding being particularly insisted on. 
As we have said, almost all the teachers, even in these schools, 
taught gratuitously, looking upon their office as holy and honor- 
able, and upon their pupils as their children and friends. The 
honor in which the office of teacher was held is shown by the 
drift of numberless similitudes and legends. In one of these it 
is related that, the land being parched with drought, the most 
pious men wept and prayed for rain, but without result. "Then 
an insignificant person, one who seemed to be of no account, 
prayed also ; when, behold ! the clouds gathered in the sky, and 
the rain came down. ' Who, then, are you ? ' exclaimed the pious 
men ' you, whose prayers alone have prevailed with God ? ' 
And he said: 'I am a teacher of little children.'' Again: 
" When God was about to give the Law, he asked the people 
what surety they had to offer that they would keep it. They 
answered: 'Abraham.' But God said: 'Abraham sinned; Isaac, 
Jacob, and even Moses sinned ' : these will not suffice.' * Wilt 



340 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

thou then, O God, accept our children to b>3 our sureties and 
our witnesses?' And God accepted the little children." 

About the year 30 B.C., Hillel I., the great Master of the 
Law, who was called the 'second Ezra,' became President* of 
the Great Sanhedrim. The T-ahnudic records are full of his meek- 
ness, patience, and piety, and contrast his lofty yet lowly spirit 
with the petulance of his jealous rival, Shammai. Hillel seems 
to have been the first to see the necessity of bringing into 
some sort of order the enormous mass of Oral Tradition which 
had, by his time, accumulated. He began by endeavoring to re- 
duce the six hundred sections then in existence to six. But he 
died ; and another century elapsed before the task was taken up 
by Akiba. 

Akiba, a poor shepherd lad, had become, through his great 
love for the beautiful daughter of " the richest and proudest 
man in Jerusalem," first, an indefatigable student, and, by de- 
grees, " the second Moses," one of the most famous Doctors of 
his time. He too, rashly heroic in his patriotism, and deluded 
by belief in Far Cochab as the Messiah, was cut off in his prime 
by the sword of the Roman executioner. The day of his .death 
was also that of the birth of Jehudah " Ha Kadosh," or " the 
holy," the great Rabbi who was to accomplish the work. 

Rabbi Jehudah, who lived during the reigns of Antoninus Pius 
and Marcus Aurelius, was the first to collect in a written form 
all the traditionary laws (c, A.D. 180) and embody them in the 
Mishna. It is said that he undertook the work with great re- 
luctance^ for hitherto it had been held as an inviolable rule 
that, except for private use, or in the way of notes of remem- 
brance, oral tradition, as the word itself implies, must only be 
transmitted by word of mouth, and that, by the Divine injunc- 
tio'n in Deuteronomy (iv. 2), ''Ye shall not add unto the word 
that I command you," it was .forbidden to write it down. The 
Law itself was to be read by all, expounded and administered, 
and every doubtful point settled, by the Great Sanhedrim ; but 
even the decisions of this, the nation's highest tribunal, were not 
written down, lest they might thus appear to be invested with 
authority as precedents. There was for Jehudah only a chjice 
between two evils. His people were just breathing again after 
the fearful slaughter under Hadrian, consequent upon their hav- 
ing taken up arms to hinder the erection of a temple to Jupiter 



* The President was also called Nasi, "Prince"; the Vice-President, Ab-Beth-Din 
Father of the House of Judgment." 
f Hyman Hurwitz, Essay on the Existing Remains of the Hebrew Post-Macchabean Sages 






i8oi.] SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 341 

on the sacred site of the Temple at Jerusalem,* and during which 
persecution a period of mutual massacres of Jews and Romans 
their schools were scattered or destroyed, and their most 
learned men cut off. He knew that the lull in the storm might 
be but momentary ; and, since the knowledge of the " unwritten 
Law " must either be entirely lost, or one of its precepts must be 
broken, he chose the latter alternative, " the loss of a single limb 
being preferable to the loss of the whole body." Another con- 
sideration which weighed with him was, the impossibility of even 
an Oriental memory retaining the mass of commentary and ex - 
emplification ever accumulating around the Scriptural Text. Al- 
though the Jews, in regard to their powers of memory, were in 
no respect behind the followers of Brahma or Zoroaster, who to 
this day repeat entire Vedas without the slightest error or omis- 
sion though understanding not a word, still there is a limit to 
the most abnormal human capacity. Jehudah therefore applied 
himself diligently to the work, and thus the Mishna f or Talmudic 
Text, was compiled. Being written in HebrewJ (which even at 
that time had become the language of the learned), and in a 
style extremely concise, it required elucidation and development 
These explanations, continued by the friends and successors of 
Rabbi Jehudah, and couched in the idiom of the period, formed 
the Gemara, the complement or commentary. In this way were 
produced the two ' Gemaras,' known as the Jerusalem Talmud, 
redacted at Tiberias, about A.D. 390, by the Rabbi Jochonan, in 
the East Aramaean idiom; and the much larger and more es- 
teemed Babylonian Talmud. This latter, written in Western 
Aramaean, at Syra in Babylonia, was compiled in great part by 
Rab Aschi, 365-427 A.D., continued by his son Mar, and com- 
pleted by Rab Abina, Rabbi Joshua, and the first- Saboraim || at 
the close of the fifth century. This forms the most trustworthy 
Canon of Jewish tradition. 

The Babylonian Talmud is about four times as large as the 
Jerusalem Talmud. It fills 2,947 folio leaves, in twelve volumes. 
Hut neither of the two codes was written down at first, and 
much that once existed has been lost. Besides the official Mish- 
na, into which R. Jehudah admitted only the best authenticated 
traditions, those of a more apocryphal character were collected 

* The number of Jews who then perished is estimated at 580,000 slain in fighting, mas- 
sacred, or executed. 

t Plural, Mish-na-yoth Repetition or secondary laws. 

\ Hebrew into which many Chaldaean and other Eastern words had become mingled. 
\N An idiom largely composed of Chaldasan, Syrian, with some Greek and Latin elements. 
|| The latest class of the Scribes, which succeeded to the Gaonim ("Noble" ones?). 



342 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

into a sort of external Mishna, called Bora'ita, still further addi- 
tions forming the Tasefta, or Supplement. The Mishna proper, 
the condensed abstract of about eight hundred years' legal expo- 
sition of the Mosaic text, is divided into 6 Sections, containing 
in all 72 Chapters, subdivided into 524 Paragraphs. The sub- 
jects of the Sections are as follows : 

Section I. Seeds. This, which begins with a chapter on 
prayers, deals with agrarian laws, forbidden mixtures in plants, 
animals, and garments, and regulates Tithes and portions to the 
Priests, Levites, and the Poor. 

Sec. II. Feasts. On Feasts, fasts, ceremonies, and sacrifices, 
with special chapters on the Feast of the Exodus, of the New 
Year, the -great Day of Atonement (this being especially solemn 
and impressive), the Feast of Tabernacles, and that, of Haman. 
Sec. III. Women. On betrothal, marriage, divorce, and vow?. 
Sec. IV. Damages. Includes much of the civil and criminal 
law, commercial regulations, and the law of trover. This section 
ends with the highly esteemed " Sentences of the Fathers " * 
(Aboth). 

Sec. V. Sacred Things. Sacrifices; the First-born; also on 
the measurements of the Temple (Middotk), 

Sec. VI. On Purification ; and the ceremonies and rules for 
different cases. 

For all practical purposes the Mishna was appealed to in pref- 
erence to the Mosaic Law ; just as in England Blackstone is ap- 
pealed to as the practical exponent of English jurisprudence 
founded on the laws of Edward the Confessor and Alfred the 
Great. The rules laid down in the Mishna for the administration 
of justice are singularly minute, careful, and humane, and its ad- 
monitions to the judges stringent and impressive e. g. : "He 
who unjustly hands over one man's goods to another shall pay 
for it to God with his own soul." " In the hour when the judge 
sits in judgment on "his fellow- men, let him feel, as it were, a 
sword pointed at his own heart." 

In criminal cases, the cross-examination of the witnesses was 
exceedingly strict; and in no case, however trifling, was a man 
addicted to garmbh'ng, betting, a usurer, or a slave, allowed, either 
for or against, as a witness. The Lex Talionis does not exist in 
the Talmud, " Paying measure for measure is in God's hands 
only." Bodily injuries inflicted are to be compensated by money, 



*The five chapters composed qf -these "Sentences," with a chapter from the Boraitha, 
and under the title of " Trait,< d'A,bpth," form the concluding portion of a work by Rabbi 
Moses Sc'hul, Sentences et Provcrbes du Talmud et du Midrasch. Paris, 1878 (Imprimerie 
gouvernemente). 



ina, 
ibbi 
;du 



1891.] SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 343 

The Sadducees had insisted on the literal carrying-out of the rule, 
" an eye for an eye," etc., but had been overruled by the Phar- 
isees. In the extreme punishments of flagellation and death, 
the thirty-nine strokes of the Mosaic code were the utmost per- 
mitted, this number being reduced if endangering the life of the 
culprit. 

The four modes of capital punishment * were : stoning, slay- 
ing by the sword, strangling, and ''burning." In the two last 
the criminal was- immersed up to the waist in soft mud, and two 
men, by tightening a cord, wrapped in a soft cloth, round his 
neck, produced instant suffocation. All that the "burning" con- 
sisted of was to throw a lighted wick into the mouth at this last 
gasp. The judges of capital offences had to fast all day ; nor 
was the sentence executed until it had been again examined by 
the Sanhedrim on the morrow. The place of execution was at 
some distance from the court, to give time for any fresh testi- 
mony in favor of the culprit, who was also allowed to stop four 
or five times, and, if he still had any plea to urge, be taken 
back before the judges. A herald went before him, proclaiming 
his name and crime, adding the words: " Whoso knows aught in 
his behalf, let him declare it ! " Ten yards from the place of 
execution it was said to him : " Confess thy sins, that thou 
mayest have part in the world to come." At least he must say: 
" May my death be a redemption for all my sins ! " 

The ladies of Jerusalem formed a society which provided a 
beverage of mingled myrrh and vinegar, that, like an opiate, be- 
numbed the man carried to execution. It was this benumbing 
beverage, offered the Divine Victim, which, " when he had tasted 
thereof, he would not drink." 

The Mishna, although it aims at being merely a civil code, 
at the same time has more regard to the intention in the fulfil- 
ment of a precept than to the fulfilment itself, and teaches that 
"He who does not stop short at the Gate of Justice, but pro- 
ceeds within the line of Mercy, in him the spirit of the wise has 
pleasure." ' 

Jurisprudence, however, is only one branch of the widely- 
spreading Talmudic tree. From the times of the institution of 
the Great Synagogue down to the completion of the Babylonian 
Gemara, the legal, philosophical, historic, and poetical development 
of the Jewish people was embodied, age after age, in this extra- 
ordinary work. In its pages fable and allegory are interwoven 

* Capital punishment was practically abrogated before the Romans had taken it out of 
the hands of the Sanhedrim (Deutsch). 



344 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

with graphic portrayals of the scenes, customs, and ways of 
thought of old-world empires and of peoples which have long ago 
dropped out of the life of nations. Not only does it mirror the 
larger features of its long contemporary history, but a thousand 
details which fill in the picture, give it life, and (if we may adapt 
a quotation) impart that " touch of nature" which "makes the 
Ages kin." Every topic it deals with is pointed and illustrated by 
the proverbs and similitudes which have always formed the favor- 
ite vehicle of popular Oriental teaching. Our L6rd, whose minis- 
try is full of them, did but adopt and perfect the immemorial 
method of his people. " Despise not the proverb and the para- 
ble," says the Midrash Rabbah,* for it is through them that men 
will listen to the precepts of morals and religion. If a king has 
lost a precious jewel or a piece of gold, does he not find it by 
lighting a small wick not worth a farthing ? " Again : " The rules 
of religion are like a basket filled with good fruit, but lacking 
handles, and therefore cumbersome to lift about. A man of 
sense makes handles to the basket, and moves it wherever he 
may list. And what are these handles but proverbs and pithy 
sayings ? " 

' Among these, in an Oriental setting, are not a few which 
we had thought peculiarly our own. Not only has La Fontaine 
drawn upon the Haggadahistic stores of the Talmud for some of 
his most telling Fables, but many a page of mediaeval and more 
recent writers, from Dante to John Bunyan, owes its inspiration 
to the same source ; the framework of their fiction being hewn 
out of this " forest primeval," even when not adorned with its 
flowers and foliage, or enwreathed with its arabesques of mythic 
monstrosities phantasmagoria from the dreamland of the Past 
For, mingled with the treasures of the Talmud, is a large amount 
of dross. Many a worthless shell from which the pearls are lost 
is embedded in its strange mosaic. Some writers account for the 
admission of objectionable matter by the exaggerated veneration 
in which the Jews held their " wise men," and every word, 
under whatever circumstances, that fell from their lips. Also, by 
the scruples of later Scribes to omit anything they found in the 
Oral Traditions, although it is probable that, in a long course 
of transmission, passages had come to be widely distorted from 
their original form.f Some indeed of the wild stones of Lilith, 



*On Canticles i. i. 

t There can ba no doubt that many an allegorical and symbolical expression has come to 
be mistaken by commentators as intended to narrate a fact, not merely to suggest a type 
e. g.: "Adam," it is said, "reached from earth to heaven " ; -but this expression was intended 
to indicate that in the spiritual part of his nature he was like the angels, and like the animals 






1891.] SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 345 

Asmodeus, and certain allegorical monsters, were transferred bod- 
ily from the Zend Avesta, others from the Vedas, not a few of 
the Talmudic angels and demons having also been adopted 
from Persian and Zoroastrian sources. 

The great Masters of the Law, with all the wiser portion 
of the Jewish nation, strongly condemned these wild extrava- 
gances. Rabbi Joshua Ben Levi, for instance, in the Jeru- 
salem Talmud, says, in reference to a portion of the Haggadah : 
" He who writes it down will have no part in the world to 
come ; he who expounds it will be scorched, and he who lis- 
tens to it will remain empty-handed, reaping no reward " a 
verdict which in any case explains the attitude of the popes* 
who condemned the book, or warned the faithful against it. 
Also, in its exposition of Scripture it is not only sometimes far- 
fetched and obscure, but also at variance with it e. g., in 
denying the doctrine of original sin, and in- apparently in- 
culcating two opposite beliefs as to the personality of Satan 
and the eternity of future punishment. 

The Talmud handles freely the creation of the Cosmos, not 
interpreting the " Days " of Creation otherwise than as succes- 
sive periods of unknown duration, and assuming "destruction 
after destruction," before the Divine Creator was satisfied with 
the earth as a habitation for man. According to the Hagga- 
dahistic legend, the minds of the heavenly host were much di- 
vided on the subject of the creation of man, some pleading for 
and some against it. "Suddenly God turned to the contending 
hosts, and deep silence fell on all. Then, kneeling before the 
Throne of Glory, appeared the Angel of Mercy, and he 
prayed and said : ' O Father ! create Man, thy noble image 
upon earth ! I will fill his heart with compassion towards all 
creatures. They will praise thee through him.' Then appeared 
the Angel of Peace. He wept, saying : ' O God ! Man will dis- 
turb thy peace ! Man will invent war, bloodshed, confusion, 
horror ! ' Then cried the Angel of Justice : ' Thou wilt judge 
him, O God ! He shall be subject to my law, and Peace shall 
dwell again on earth.' The Angel of Truth entreated, saying : 
1 Cease to create, O Father of Truth ! With Man thou Greatest 
the lie ! ' Then from the deep silence came the Divine word : 
' Thou shalt go with him thou, Mine own Seal Truth. Be- 
in the lower. Again, "Adam had two faces, the one looking to the East, the other Westward." 
Hut this was but a fanciful way of saying that man's spiritual nature tends towards the source 
of light and knowledge, while his material nature inclines towards the regions of darkness or 
debasement. 

* Julius III., 1553; Paul IV., 1559; St. Pius V., 1566; Clement VIII., 1592 and 1599. 



346 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

tween heaven and earth shalt thou abide, an everlasting bond 
uniting both.' ' 

. The abode of Truth, midway between earth and heaven, 
may help to account for her various obscurations, whether by the 
clouds of heaven, mysteries which veil her, or the smoke of 
earth the mistakes and misconceptions which mask and distort 
her face and form. 

The Talmud is full of the ministry of angels. Besides the 
" Seven Angelic Princes," and the Guardian Angels of the Na- 
tions and of men, every word of God and every good deed of 
man " becomes an angel." 

On Friday night (it is written in the Haggadah), when a Jew 
left the Synagogue a good angel and an evil one accompanied 
him. If, on entering his home, he found the table spread, the 
lamp lighted, and his wife and children in festal garments, ready 
to .do honor to the holy day of rest, the good angel said : " May 
all thy future Sabbaths be like this ! Peace unto this dwelling 
Peace!" And the evil angel, against his will, said, perforce, 
" Amen ! " If, on the contrary, the house was in discomfort 
and disorder, the evil angel derided him, saying : " May all thy 
Sabbaths and week-days be like this!" And the good angel, 
weeping, had to say " Amen ! " There is here no direct word 
to the housewife, and yet she could not well be more shrewdly 
admonished. 

To us, as Christians, the special interest of the Talmud lies 
in its numerous and vital points of contact with the New Testa- 
ment. The terms, " Salvation," " Redemption," " Baptism," 
" Grace," " Son of GOD," "Son of Man," " Kingdom of Heaven," 
were among the household words of the exponents of the Law 
to which Christianity gave their full and highest meaning. Even 
the formula, " Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (Ab, Ben, ve 
Ruach ha Kadosh), was theirs before it was ours. They had a 
term corresponding to our word " Trinity," namely Shilosh, and, 
in Aramaic, Talilutho ; and in some of their earliest post-biblical 
literature the doctrine intimated by that term has a categorical 
expression as distinct as any that are found in the creeds of the 
Church.* 

The souls of men are said to have been all created together 
and hidden away from the moment of creation. Each time that 
a child is to be born, a soul is ordered to go and inhabit the 

*Etheridge, Glossary to " the Targums of Otik'los, Lev., Djut.," p. 6, where he gives 
some remarkable passages from the Zohar and elsewhere, conclusively proving his state- 
ments. 



1891.] SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 347 

body of this new human being. The soul, being a pure spirit, 
is cognizant of everything, and being grieved at this command, 
supplicates its Creator to spare it that painful trial, in which it 
sees only sorrow and affliction. Then an angel, at the moment 
of the soul's union with the infant frame, touches the mouth of 
the child, causing it to forget all that has been. Had Words- 
worth this Talmudic teaching in his mind when he wrote his 
" Intimations of Immortality " from recollections of early child- 
hood ? 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. 

The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar. 

Not in entire forgetfulness 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our Home." 

Very piteous are the manifold endeavors of later Jewish in- 
terpreters to explain, in accordance with their unbelief in Christ 
as the Messiah, the great Prophecies concerning him. To take 
but one of these as an example the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, 
their treatment of which did not satisfy even their own nation 
on account of its diversity. Of the commentators who wrote 
after Christ, one says of this " Section," that it relates to Job; 
others say, to Hezekiah ; others, to Isaiah himself; others, 
to Jeremiah. Some, in the hopelessness of explaining how 
one and the same person could be a suffering and dying 
Messiah and yet their Deliverer and a King victorious over his 
enemies, divided Isaiah's description of his sufferings and his 
glory between the " Messiah Ben Joseph " and the " Messiah Ben 
Uavid "; while the most part saw in it the portrayal of their 
own nation. And further, " this Parashah," says Ibn Crispin, 
" the commentators agree (?) in explaining of the Captivity, al- 
though the singular number is used in it throughout." The 
Karaites* appropriated it to "the wise of their own sect," while 
thc-ir opponents, the Rabbinic Jews, applied it to some of their 
own " righteous." Rabbi Tanchum speaks of it as pointing to 
" one of the generation in exile ; the mystery connected 

with him not being revealed.' He protests against the notion 
ot its being hyperbolical or allegorical, as some writers had 
taught, and seems to think that the intention of the Prophet 

* The Karaites were a class of commentators who threw off the shackles, as they con- 
ed them, of Rabbinical rules and antecedents ; and to the Karaites were opposed the 
Rabbinists, who held to the customary methods of interpretation. 



348 SCOPE AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. [June, 

was, not to be understood. Shelomo Levi, Moses Elsheikh, and 
many others complain that all their commentators are at vari- 
ance as to the Prophet's meaning, and Ibn Ezra says of these 
expositors that " they shut the door of literal interpretation 
against themselves, and then weaned themselves to find an en- 
trance." He himself goes batik " to the teaching of our Rabbis 
the King Messiah/' The application of the subject to the 
Jewish nation was the one most widely adopted by the later 
exponents, yet, even in the controversy with Christians, the be- 
lief that the Messiah would die was not extinct in the second 
century. "The Holy One," it is written in the P'siqtha,* 
" brought forth the Soul of the Messiah, and said to Him, Art 
thou willing to be created and to redeem my sons after 6,000 
years ? He replied, I am. And God said^ If it be so, thou 
must take upon thyself chastisements, in order to wipe away 
their iniquity ; as it is written, ' Surely He hath borne our sick- 
nesses.' And the Messiah answered, ' These will I gladly take 
upon myself.' ' To this teaching of the older Traditions, Rashi, f 
in his earlier notes on the Talmud, returned. In the graphic 
story in which Joshua Ben Levi inquires of Elias and Simeon 
Ben Yochai as to the coming of the Messiah, he is told to seek 
him for himself, and that he will find him sitting at the gates 
ot Rome, among the poor who bare sicknesses. Rashi explained 
the words by reference to this " parashah " of Isaiah: ''And 
he, too, is stricken ; as it is written, And- he was wounded for 
our iniquities, and our sicknesses he bore."| But if Rashi wrote 
his commentary after A.D. 1096, and the hideous massacres of 
Jews in Speier, Worms, Maintz, and Cologne, by the wild and 
profligate rabble which swarmed thither after the first cru- 
saders were gone, the sufferings of his people might well have 
been in his mind when he wrote it. And " Sitting at the Gates 
of Rome" might very probably refer to the shelter repeatedly 
afforded to the persecuted Jews by the Vicar of the Christ 
whom their fathers had crucified. 

The doctrines of the Resurrection and of Immortality are 
enunciated in the Talmud with no faltering voice, while this pres- 
ent life is spoken of as a wayside inn, where, on our pilgrimage 
to our true country, we tarry, as it were, but for a night ; or, as 
a porch or outer court, in which we prepare ourselves for admit- 
tance into the Palace, our Father's House. And having reached 



^According to Hulsius, Theologia Judaica, p. 328 ; quoted by Dr. Puse y in his introduc- 
tion to The Jewish Interpreters of haiah. Oxford, London, and Leipzig, 1877. 

t Born, 1040; died, 1115 A.D. J. Sanhedrim. Chelek fol. 98 col. i. 






1891.] 'Scops AND HISTORY OF THE TALMUD. 349 

the heavenly home, the saved are represented as actively ad- 
vancing in excellence, and in the development of all the highest 
faculties of their nature. This is the interpretation of the text: 
" They shall go from strength to strength : every one of them 
appearing before God in Sion." 

In this brief notice we have but attempted to shed a glim- 
mer of light from the lamp of the learned into one or two of 
the countless intersecting galleries composing that catacomb of 
buried ages called the Talmud, for the sake of those who have 
not yet begun to explore its perplexing precincts for themselves. 
From this catacomb's storied walls we will, in conclusion, tran- 
scribe yet another parable; "There was One who betrothed to 
himself a beautiful maiden, and then departed far away'. The 
maiden waited long, but still he came not Friends and rivals 
mocked, saying, ' He has forsaken her. He will return no more 
for ever!' She went alone to her chamber, and took out the 
letters in which he had promised to be true to her. Weeping, 
she read them, and was comforted. And after many days her 
Betrothed returned. He asked her how she had kept her faith 
so long, and she answered by showing him his letters. Is- 
rael, in misery and captivity, was mocked by the nations for her 

hope of redemption, God would indue time redeem her 

and say, ' How couldst thou alone, among all the mocking na- 
tions, remain faithful ? ' And Israel would answer, pointing to the 

Law, 'Had I not here thy promise?" 

i 

ELIZABETH RAYMOND-BARKER. 



350 THE INDIANS OF CANADA. [June, 



THE INDIANS OF CANADA. 

IN an eloquent passage ^which lies buried in one of our 
prosaic blue books the late Hon. Joseph Howe, who was at the 
head of the Indian Department in 1872, expressed the hope 
that those who came after him would never forget " that the 
crowning glory of Canadian policy in all times past, and under 
all administrations, has been the treatment of the Indians." 
And, judging from the remarks made from time to time compli- 
mentary of the manner in which the Indian question has been 
dealt with on this side of the border, it would seem that Jo- 
seph Howe's hope has been so far fulfilled. But the lot of the 
Indian in this northern land was not always a happy one. 
Close upon the heels of the zealous French missionaries came 
the greedy French traders, plying the Indians with vilest liquor 
that they might the more readily and cheaply dispose of their 
furs. One would fancy on reading the history of this baneful 
traffic, against which the priests protested and Laval hurled his 
anathemas in vain, that the traders of France had exhausted 
the resources of alcohol in their dealings with the Indians ; yet 
it is of record that the natives expressed their preference for 
the English because they did not, like the French, water their 
liquor! in 1759 an English official reported that he had order- 
ed rum and flour to make a feast for certain Indians that they 
might forget the death of a relative; and, as late as 1829, an 
Indian superintendent closed an address to the Ottawas by a 
promise to give them a few gallons of rum. 

Notwithstanding the unscrupulous traffickers in ru.n and pel- 
tries, and other adverse influences, the sons of Loyola and other 
missionaries did much during the French rjgim; tor the, lifting 
up of the native races. The Executive Council of Lower Cana- 
da were constrained to state, in their valuable report of 1837 
on. Indian affairSj that "since the cession of the Province to 
Great Britain, when the crown succeeded to the position which 
the Jesuits had formerly occupied in respect to the Indians, no 
advance has been made, if indeed ground has not been lost, in 
Indian education." This tribute to the Jesuits is all the more 
valuable because it was made in the days before representative 
government obtained in Canada, when the minority ruled in 
Quebec, and the Executive Council was practically an English 
Protestant institution. 






1 89 1.] THE INDIANS OF CANADA. 351 

Early in the seventeenth century the Indians of Canada came 
in contact with the French ; and the Marquis Duquesne de Men- 
nonville, in addressing the Iroquois chiefs whom he had assembled 
in Montreal in 1755 for the purpose of securing their alliance, 
thus depicted the difference between the effect of French and 
English colonization on the natives : " Go and examine," said 
he, " the forts which our king has erected : you will see that 
the land beyond their walls is still a hunting-ground. Our forts 
have been set up, not as a curb on the tribes, but to be useful 
for your trade with us ; while no sooner do the British enter 
upon possession of your lands than the game deserts them, the 
forest falls beneath their blows, the soil is bared, and hardly will 
you find a bush left on your own domains to shelter you." The 
Indian title was not recognized by the French. They came and 
possessed such of the land as they desired, and for the use and 
benefit of those of its former lords who gathered about the 
missions and fortified places. Allotments were made by the new 
seigniors. When the flag of Britain replaced the fleur-de-lis, 
King George by solemn proclamation guaranteed to the Indians 
their lands and hunting-grounds, and reserved to the crown the 
privilege of treating with them for the alienation of any portions 
thereof. For many years after the cession what is now Ontario 
was but an Indian hunting-ground, with here and there on the 
frontier a few military outposts. When settlement advanced 
treaties were made with the Indians for the surrender of their 
vast domain, compensation being made to them sometimes in 
kind occasionally very trifling but more frequentl} in the form 
of permanent annuities at the rate of ten dollars for each member of 
the tribe to the number comprised therein at the date of treaty. 
Large tracts of land were reserved for the Indians, and laws 
were passed to protect their lands from trespass and themselves 
from fraud and fire-water. But, unfortunately, enforcement does 
not always follow the enactment of statutes. The " great frauds 
and abuses," which the king's proclamation and subsequent 
legislation were intended to stay, still continued. " The protec- 
tion," says the commissioners' report of 1845, "which the 
government intended to throw over the Indians was not and 
could not be sufficiently maintained." 

In truth it may be said that, with few other exceptions than 
the missionaries, the dealings of European peoples with the 
Indians were marked rather by avarice than justice; while the 
policy of governments was mainly shaped with a view to mak- 
ing them useful allies in war, the difference in this regard 
VOL. LIU. 23 



352 THE INDIANS OF CANADA. [June, 

between two proud nations of civilized Europe being, at one 
time, in the graphic words of Philippe de Gaspe, that " the 
King of France was paying his red allies only fifty francs for an 
English scalp," while " His Britannic Majesty, richer or more 
generous, was paying a hundred for the head of a Frenchman." 
Not until time had proved that the peace of 1815 was likely to 
be a lasting one was anything worth speaking of done in Canada 
by the governing power towards the civilizing of the Indians. 
Even as late as 1828 the deputy superintendent-general of 
Indian Affairs complained that " since the war . . . the 
officers have done little more than superintend the issue of the 
presents, while the more important object of keeping alive the 
affections of the Indians to the government . . . has been 
altogether overlooked " ; and, in another place, he points out that 
"a continuance of kindness" to the Indians who came annually 
from the United States to the distribution of presents would dis- 
pose them " again to take up the tomahawk when required by 
King George." Happily the time never came, and the tomahawk 
has ceased to be regarded as one of the " resources of civiliza- 
tion." In his despatch of the I4th June, 1836, Lord Glenelg 
assured the then governor of Canada " that he looked upon the 
moral and religious improvement of the Indians and theii 
instruction in the arts of civilized life as the principal object t< 
be kept in view in our intercourse with them." 

The old desire to make of the Indian merely an ally in wai 
now gave way to the laudable one of making him a useful mem 
ber of the commonwealth in times of peace ; and several in- 
teresting reports on the condition of the native races and the best 
manner of leading them into the ways of civilization were writ 
ten at the instance of the imperial authorities. Many a sug- 
gestion since given forth as new may be found in these ol< 
reports ; and through them there runs a due appreciation of that 
most powerful of all civilizers, religion. Sir George Murray, ii 
his despatch of the I5th of June, 1830, dwelt on the necessity 
of encouraging in every possible way the spread of religiou: 
knowledge and education among the tribes, and, wiser than cer- 
tain theorists of this generation, he gave it as his " decided opin- 
ion that these inestimable advantages should be allowed to flow ii 
through whatever channel they may find their way." In his ex- 
haustive report of 1839 Mr. Justice Macaulay stated that mucl 
had been accomplished by missionary piety and zeal; that " every 
proper encouragement should be afforded to those who undertake 
the work of Indian conversion," and that " they should be fn 



1891.] THE INDIANS OF CANADA. 353 

quently consulted and deference paid to their opinions and 
views." 

In *the voluminous report of the commissioners appointed to 
inquire into the affairs of the Indians in Canada, which was laid 
before the Legislative Assembly in 1845, are these, among other 
valuable recommendations : " That measures should be adopted to 
introduce and confirm Christianity among all the Indians, , . . 
and to establish them in settlements; that the efforts of the gov- 
ernment should be directed to educating the young, and to wean- 
ing those advanced in life from their feelings a-nd habits of de- 
pendence ; and that, for this purpose, schools should be estab- 
lished and missionaries and teachers be supported at each settle- 
ment." Further on this report reads: "Your commissioners do 
not find that the greatest progress in civilization has- been gen- 
erally made in settlements under the charge of the local superin- 
tendents, nor that their services are to be compared in this re- 
spect to those of the missionaries." 

The confederation of the Provinces in 1867, and the subse- 
quent absorption of British Columbia and the intervening Hudson's 
Bay country, into the Dominion brought under one central man- 
agement the affairs of a large Indian population in various 
stages of savagery and civilization. Many of the Indians of the 
older Provinces were rapidly reaching the point where the line 
dividing them from other citizens becomes indistinct and grad- 
ually vanishes ; while in the newly- acquired territory were tribes 
as ignorant of our ways as the natives whom Cartier found in 
the lodges of Hochelaga. In the older-settled parts of the coun- 
try there had been considerable intermingling of the exotic and 
indigenous races, and heredity was helping environment in the 
work of assimilation. Indeed, the great difference between the 
Indians of the Provinces and the other dwellers therein may be 
said now to consist in that a greater proportion of the former 
act on the principle of letting the morrovv always care for itself. 
The report of the Indian Department for 1890 describes them as 
"being, as a rule, self-supporting." The policy of the depart- 
ment, we are told, is based on the theory that " if a man will 
not work neither shall he eat." What a pity the rule could not 
be made absolute and general! These Indians have at their 
credit in the hands of the government fu.ids derived from the 
sale of surplus land, timber, etc., and rent of land leased, amount- 
ing to very nearly three millions and a half. Tne millions belong 
to the Ontario bands. Few of those in Quebec had much land 
or valuables to dispose of, and in the Provinces further east 



354 THE INDIANS OF CANADA. [June, 

care was taken not to overburden the natives with estates. The 
interest on the trust fund, which is at 4, 5, and 6 per cent., 
amounted last year to $162,257 70 and' the collections 6n the 
same account to $115,710 44. No appropriations are made from 
the capital sum except for works of a permanent character. The 
interest is charged with the cost of local management, medical at- 
tendance, works of a temporary nature, and a share of the education- 
al expenses ; but it is supplemented by an annual vote from the 
public chest of upwards of fifty thousand dollars, about twenty-four 
thousand dollars *of which goes to education, sixteen thousand to 
pay annuities under treaty in Ontario, and over four thousand to the 
relief of Indians without funds in Quebec. Only three hundred 
dollars of it is required for a similar purpose in Ontario. This 
parliamentary appropriation, with their share of the cost of run- 
ning the Indian Bureau at Ottawa, marks the extent to which 
the same thirty thousand "Indians in Ontario and Quebec are a 
drain on the federal exchequer. The interest money remaining 
after certain proportions have been set aside for the fixed charges 
just specified is equally divided among the members of the dif- 
ferent bands in the ratio in which the bands share in the capital. 

The Indian population of Ontario is returned at 17,776. But 
they are not all the descendants of native Indians, for Canada 
had an influx of red as well as white loyalists. The famous Six 
Nations of the Mohawk Valley, who fought on the side of King 
George, thought it best to go north with the flag of Britain ; 
and under the great 'seal they were given a tract of excellent 
land, six miles in depth on each side of the Grand River, ex- 
tending from the head of that stream to its entrance into Lake 
Erie, and comprising 694,910 acres.. They have increased and 
multiplied and are now a prosperous community of 3,425 souls, 
owning about one-third of the total trust-fund.- But though they 
have lived for generations in the centre of a Christian com- 
munity that appears to be constantly moved by a great desire 
to rend the veil of papal darkness which shrouds Quebec, 630 
of these Indians are officially classed as pagans. They have 
still their harvest festivals and their fantastic rites ; and with 
the schools and churches stands the " Long House," where 
once a year is offered the sacrifice of a snow-white dog. The 
Indian report for 1888 put the number of pagans at 862 ; and, 
whether due to it or not, the falling off synchronizes with the 
attacking of Ontario's heathen stronghold by a detachment of 
General Booth's army. 

The other principal tribes in this province are the Ojibbewas, 



1891.] THE INDIANS OF CANADA. 355 

Ottawas, Oneidas, Algonquins, Mohawks, Mississagas, and Dela- 
wares. The Oneidas and Mohawks are akin to the Six Nations, 
and the Delawares are the descendants of a colony of Indian 
converts to Moravianism, who migrated from the United States 
near the close of the eighteenth century and took up their abode 
on lands set apart for them by the Canadian government. A 
few hundreds of the Ontario Indians are still nomadic. The some 
seventeen thousand who enjoy fixed habitations had about sixty- 
five thousand acres of land under cultivation in 1889. In that 
year, though the harvest was light, they raised 277,995 bushels 
of grain, 89,561 bushels of potatoes, and 7,628 tons of hay. 
Their other industries were valued at $182,521. Comfortable 
houses, substantial outbuildings, improved machinery, and well- 
conditioned stock are no longer unusual with the Indians of On- 
tario ; and they have their quota of prudent husbandmen, the 
fruits of whose labors have won prizes at provincial fairs. The 
nomadic Indians are mainly Ojibbewas living north of Lakes Hu- 
ron and Superior, in a country which is still largely a primeval 
wild. Here they lead their old-time life, finding in forest and 
stream sufficient for the day. Over nine thousand of the O'ntario 
Indians are Protestants, about six thousand five hundred are 
Catholics, eight hundred are classed as pagans, and the religion 
of upward of thirteen hundred is marked "unknown." There 
were seventy-four schools in operation last year, with 1,824 
children on the rolls and an average attendance of 1,000. Twenty 
of these schools are Catholic, thirty-two Protestant, and twenty- 
two, undenominational. Several of the teachers are Indians. There 
are four industrial schools three Protestant and one Catholic 
with an average attendance of three hundred. 

In the Province of Quebec there are 13,600 Indians, nearly one- 
half of whom still live the life of nomads in the almost unencroached 
upon country to the north of the settled line along the Ottawa 
and St. Lawrence. The patrimony of the Quebec Indians is not 
nearly so extensive as is that of their Ontario kinsmen, and much 
of the land is far from being as fertile ; but from the nine thou- 
sand acres which those who had permanent dwelling-places culti- 
vated in 1889 tne y garnered 50,655 bushels of grain, 21,357 
bushels of potatoes, and 2,150 tons of hay. Their other indus- 
tries were valued at $183,105 a sum proportionately much 
in excess of that derived from similar sources by the Indians of 
Ontario. Many of the Indians permanently located depend large- 
ly on hunting and trapping for a livelihood, and farm on a very 
small scale. That they are not, however, intrinsically unfitted 



356 THE INDIANS OF CANADA. [June, 

for dull labor is proved by the fact that the Algonquins of the 
county of Ottawa, who still give a deal of time to the chase, did 
much work last year at road and bridge making on their reserve. 
Contracts were given to certain of the Indians who undertook to 
employ only Indian labor. The work was done quite satisfactor- 
ily and paid for from the fun'ds of the band held in trust by the 
government. The Iroquois of Caughnawaga and St. Regis some- 
\\ hat Gallicized remnants of the old Six Nation Confederacy, 
dubbed Iroquois by the French the Hurons of Lorette, and the 
Abenakis of Becancour and Saint Frangois du Lac are the most 
advanced of the Indians of Quebec. Very faint indeed is the 
line dividing them from other citizens. Many of them evince a 
decided bent for handicrafts, and their earnings from the manu- 
facture and sale of useful and fancy wares are considerable. It 
is absurd to expect every Indian to become a soil- tiller. They 
have their peculiar bents just like other peoples. The small 
band of Quebec Amalecites, who disposed of their land some 
years ago and live partly as hunters and partly as artificers, 
have probably no more aptitude for agriculture than those of 
our own race who prefer the factory to the farm. Nothing has 
been done towards the training of the Quebec Indians in manual 
arts, though the question of establishing industrial schools in their 
midst has been frequently broached. There a.re, according to the 
official returns,, only nineteen Indian day-schools in Quebec, five 
Protestant and fourteen Catholic. They have 516 pupils enrolled 
and an average attendance of 291. Four hundred and thirty- 
seven is given as the number of Protestants, and over six thou- 
sand are placed under the heading " religion unknown " ; but it 
may be safely said that, with the exception of very few more 
than the four hundred and thirty-seven, the Indians of Quebec cling 
to the faith delivered to their ancestors by the Catholic mission- 
aries of France. 

The native race is thinly scattered over the eastern maritime 
Provinces. There are 2,428 Micmacs in Nova Scotia and Prince 
Edward's Island, and 1,569 Micmacs ' and Amalecites in New 
Brunswick. These tribes are branches of the Algonquin family. 
The French brought them Christianity, and they have kept th 
faith. After the final cession of the country to England settle 
ment went on without any attention being given to the strag- 
gling Indians ; but in time small quantities of land were here and 
there set apart for them. They have about four thousand acres 
under cultivation, and in 1889 they raised 5, 714 bushels of grain, 
18,899 bushels of potatoes, and 2,091 tons of hay. Their other 






1891.] THE INDIANS OF CANADA. 357 

industries were valued at $52,250. Like other people down by 
the sea, some of the Indians prefer fishing to farming-, while oth- 
ers roam about in gypsy fashion, earning their bread by the 
cunning of their hands. The Micmac seems to be by nature an 
expert cooper and basket-maker. They have twelve day-schools 
all Catholic at which 241 pupils were entered last year. The 
average attendance was 119 The establishment of an indus- 
trial school has been suggested, but no step has as yet been 
taken in that direction. These Indians are an unobtrusive peo- 
ple, and they are as industrious as can be expected in view of 
the circumstances to which they have been subjected. They 
cost the country in 1889-90 $15,225 34. 

The entry of British Columbia into the Dominion added to 
Canada's population some thirty-five thousand five hundred 
Indians, ranging as to social advancement all' the way from the 
" superior race " of Shuswhaps to the Ahts, whom Dr. Powell, 
in his report of 1873, described as "a nation of savages." 
Catholic, Methodist, and Church of England missionaries were 
working among them, and churches and missions and convents 
and schools had been established long before the civil authorities 
gave thought to the natives. Dr. Powell spoke very highly of 
the character and general condition of the Indians of the interior, 
but those of the coast he described as having been corrupted 
and depraved by " the lower grades of the white race " with 
whom they came in contact. None of them, however, seem to 
have been, even when left to themselves, very high-toned moral- 
ists. They developed a more elastic system of changing spouses 
than is afforded by the Chicago courts ; and they have as decided 
a penchant for gambling as the members of a select baccarat 
club. But they appear to have been ahvays very good workers, 
not afraid of labor in any form, and able to take a hand at 
whatever offered. Twenty years ago they were spoken of as 
" large contributors to the general revenue," and the exports of 
furs and fish oils were credited "nearly, if not all," to the 
Indians. The departmental report for 1890 tells us that their 
course is still marked by u manly independence, intelligent enter- 
prise, and unflagging industry." They engage in farming and 
fruit-culture, fishing and fish-canning, hunting and trapping, and 
general work. They are producers and consumers on a large 
scale, and their personal property is valued at nearly a million 
dollars. The houses of those of them who live on the north- 
west coast are described as " superior to the habitations of fairly 
well-to-do white people," and " flower-gardens, house-plants, and 



35$ THE INDIANS OF CANADA. [J une > 

in some cases luxurious and ornamental articles of furniture, - 
make their homes very attractive.'' Good work has been done 
by the missionaries in elevating the moral tone of the natives, 
and the labors of the Catholic priests have been especially fruit- 
ful in beneficial results. Speaking of a most impressive religious 
celebration held by Bishop Durieu, " at which over a thousand 
Indians of different tribes were assembled," the Indian superin- 
tendent for British Columbia, in his report for 1890, states that 
" it would have been impossible to find any such concourse of 
people more orderly and devotional than were these Indians, 
gathered together from distant places, who doubtless years ago 
came in contact but to war with one another, and who, not so 
long since, were imbued with the most cruel and heathenish 
superstitions." Of the nearly twenty-four thousand Indians who 
live within the nine agencies of British Columbia, 5,242 are 
Protestants, 6,264 are heathens, and the remainder are Catholic. 
The others inhabit regions which have not yet been trespassed 
upon by census enumerators. The government has established 
and maintains four industrial boarding-schools in this Province, 
three of which are under the auspices of the Catholic Church. 
There are twelve ordinary schools eight of which are Protestant 
supported by the Indian Department. The total cost to the 
federal exchequer of the British Columbia Indians was $102,- 
074 44 last year, $34,913 21 of which was expended in the con- 
struction and maintenance of industrial schools. Previous to the 
purchase of its monopoly, and the accession of the country to 
Canada, the Hudson's Bay Company were the actual rulers of 
the territory stretching from Lake Superior to the Rocky 
Mountains. Whatever tricks of trade were indulged in by indi- 
viduals at the expense of the unsophisticated natives and tradi- 
tion says they were many and very fraudulent the company 
succeeded in securing the good-will of the Indians. But with 
the passing away of the dominion of the traders many events 
occurred to disturb the mind of the red man. Louis Kiel made 
his first attempt at rebellion by leading an armed resistance to 
the establishment of a provisional government on the banks of 
the Red River ; the small white population was suddenly 
augmented from the east ; from the south came a flow of fire- 
water, which, in the words of old Crowfoot, was killing his 
people fast ; and on the plains the buffalo was disappearing with 
a rapidity which pointed to speedy extinction. The government 
lost no time in grappling with the Indian' problem thus thrust 
upon it. The labors of the missionaries did much to smooth the 



1891.] THE INDIANS OF CANADA. 359 

way for the coming in of the civil power. No difficulties worth 
speaking of were met with in negotiating with the Indians, and 
between 1870 and 1877 seven treaties were made with the 
Saulteaux (akin to the Ojibbewas of old Canada), the Piegans, 
the Crees, the Bloods, and the Blackfeet. A corps of mounted 
police was formed, Indian agents were appointed, and a branch 
Indian office established in the centre of the new country. By 
the treaties the Indians relinquished their right and title to the 
territory in consideration of the perp :tual payment of $5 a head 
to every man, woman, and child; the payment of $25 a year to 
each chief and $15 a year to each deputy or councillor, together 
with official clothing, flags, medals, etc. ; the allotment of reser- 
vations of land in the proportion generally of one square mile to 
a family of five ; and the supplying of the requisite implements, 
cattle, seed, etc., to enable the Indians to make a beginning at 
farming. The government, at the urgent request of the Indians, 
covenanted to prevent the sale of intoxicants on reservations, and 
to establish and maintain schools. The Indians selected their 
lands, and reservations were made for the different bands in the 
localities in which they had been in the habit of living. Most 
of them seemed to understand that the pressure of events made 
a change in their mode of life a necessity. Some of them, in 
what is now the Province of Manitoba, had made beginnings, 
lived in houses and planted garden-plots ; but as you went west 
the attempts at agriculture grew ruder and rarer, though there 
was evidence everywhere that the red man was becoming gradu- 
ally seized of the conviction that he would have to look more 
and more to Mother Earth for subsistence. In 1878 the Hon. 
David Laird, then at the head of the Territorial Indian office, 
reported that " if it were possible to employ a few good, practical 
men to aid and instruct the Indians at seed-time," he was " of 
the opinion that most of the bands on the Saskatchewan would 
soon be able to raise sufficient crops to meet their most pressing 
wants." In the following year agriculturists were sent into the 
country to conduct farms which would serve as models for the 
Indians ; but this system w.as not productive of very beneficial 
results, and, instead of conducting model farms, the farming 
instructors now devote their time to superintending and directing 
the work of the Indians. The latter has proved to be the better 
system. A religious system of education was adopted and has 
been adhered to with good results. 

The first break in the smooth flow of Indian affairs in the 
Canadian Northwest was occasioned by Kiel's second, and to him 



360 THE INDIANS OF CANADA. [June, 

fatal, rebellion. It was not, it must be borne in mind, strictly 
speaking an Indian uprising. The half-breeds and their leaders 
tried to rouse the whole Indian population of the territories to 
arms ; but, though the two peoples are bound by many ties, they 
were only in part successful. Several of the bands preferred 
quiet to war, and others were** kept in the paths of peace by the 
missionaries, two of whom Fathers Lacombe and Scollen were 
specially mentioned in this regard in the report of the Indian 
Department for 1885. Without passing in review the details of 
departmental management, it is clear that the participation of the 
Indians in the rebellion was caused by influences working from 
without rather than from within the bands. The trouble was 
bat of short duration, and all traces of it were quickly wiped out 
The leaders in the perpetration of savage murders were executed, 
and others of the Indians whose blood-guiltiness was less in de- 
gree were punished in different ways. Affairs took again their 
normal course. 

In Manitoba and the Territories there are about fifty- two 
thousand Indians. Nearly half of these live in the far north ; no 
treaties have yet been made with them, and they are outside 
the jurisdiction of the department. The official report deals only 
with the other half, and it divides them, as to religion, thus : 
3,459 Catholics, 8,086 Protestants, 11,566 pagans, and 2,632 of 
unknown faith. A careful enumeration would probably some- 
what change these figures ; but they are sufficiently accurate to 
convey a general idea of the religious condition of the Indians. 
There were ninety- nine day-schools in operation last year, sev- 
enty-two of which were Protestant and twenty-seven Catholic. 
The government paid the salaries of the teachers, in whole or in 
part, and contributed per capita allowances to six Catholic and 
ten Protestant boarding-schools. T\vo industrial schools have 
been established and are wholly maintained by the government, 
under the direction of a Catholic and Protestant clergyman re- 
spectively. Two Catholic and one Protestant school outside treaty 
limits receive aid from the government. There were two thou- 
sand children enrolled at the different schools last year, and the 
average attendance was 1,162. The day-schools cost the gov- 
ernment last year $56,031 75, and the industrial and boarding- 
schools $127,347 30. The total expenditure in connection wit! 
the Indians of Manitoba and the Territories in 1889-90 was 
$940,261 72. Of this amount $356,361 71 went for rations am 
clothing, $129,627 to pay annuities, $79,143 10 for agricultural 
implements, seed, cattle, and the running of farms; $6,716 23 foi 



1891.] THE INDIANS OF CANADA. 361 

grist-mills, $3,059 08 to the Sioux about a thousand who came 
across the border some years ago and $187,975 55 to pay ex- 
penses of management, etc. These Indians had 11,950 acres of 
land under cultivation, and broke up 1,174 acres of new land in 
1889. They raised, though the year was not a fat one, 43,051 
bushels of grain, 68,628 bushels of potatoes and other vegetables, 
and 17,886 tons of hay. Their individual earnings from other 
sources aggregated nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The 
Indian Superintendent for Manitoba, in his report for last year, 
felt called upon "to congratulate the department upon the gen- 
eral prosperity and contentment prevailing among the different 
bands," and, in referring to Indian affairs in the Territories, 
the superintendent general tells us in his report for 1889-90 
that the eventual transforming of the wanderers of the plains 
into self-supporting members of the commonwealth has been " re- 
moved from the pale of uncertainty." The peace of the Terri- 
tories is effectually guarded by a corps of one thousand mounted 
police, and the commissioner of that force states in his report 
for 1887 that, with the exception of the Bloods, the Indians be- 
have " remarkably well." 

The Indians of Canada are not dying out. If statistics can 
be relied upon, they are increasing. Their number is now put at 
122,585. In 1889-90 they cost this country $1,178,446 16, up- 
wards of seventy thousand dollars of which was required to. meet 
the expenses of the general management of their affairs at Ot- 
tawa. In addition to the Parliamentary appropriation, $281,174 31 
of the trust fund was expended. 

Space has permitted of merely a bird's-eye view of the position 
of the Indians of Canada. But enough, perhaps, has been written 
to show that, if an earnest, honest, common-sense policy obtains, 
our Indian problem will, within a measurable time, dwindle " down 
to naught." 

J. A. J. McKENNA, 

Ottawa, Ont. 



362 CHUNKY. [June, 



CHUNKY. 

I SEE you're looking for my finger-ends ; you'll look a good 
while to find 'em ; they an't ,been there for twenty-five years ; 
whole first joint gone see ! but I kep' my thumbs an' I got a 
nail on one of 'em, too. That nail's handy to pick up with, 
mighty handy. 

I suppose you'd like to know how I come by these 'ere 
stumps. Well, I rubbed 'em off on coal an' slate an' rock like 
you grate horseradish. 

I was working then- at the Night-hawk, an' me an' Chunky 
was together ; we was always together ; lived under one roof you 
may say ; yonder's the house second o' them black double ones 
No 3 was his'n, No. 4 was mine. 

Chunky he had a stepmother. She was real good to him, 
but he said she made him kind o' homesick for his own mam- 
my. So he stayed with us a good bit o' the time. When we 
started picking slate that was at the Chenowith we worked 
alongside, an' my mammy she used to give Chunky his bath in 
our kitchen 'cause we had big tubs, an', besides, there was five on 
'em over to Chunky's to get washed. Well, six days in a week, 
as soon as ever he was dried off an' dressed, he'd say: " Sure'n 
I'm obliged to ye, Mrs. Deane " only he called it Dane, 'cause 
he was Irish, Chunky was. 

We kep' a cow, an' after work me an' Chunky used to go 
after her. She had the run o' the whole mountain, an' some- 
times we'd catch her down to Soldier Creek, then ag'in 'way up 
by the Whippoorwill, or maybe she'd be off on the Back Track. 
Often it'd be after dark when we'd get home ; then my mammy 
she'd give us both some supper. Onct I lamed my toe going 
barefoot, so I couldn't walk for a long time. Chunky he went 
after the cow himself, an' my mammy she didn't want him to do it 
without pay. But do you think he'd take pay ? No, he wouldn't ; 
he said he was making it up square for the suppers an' scrub- 
bings she'd given him. He hadn't no dark corners to him, Chunky 
hadn't. 

I was a little older than him, an' bigger, so I left the break- 
er first an' went inside to tend door. Then we couldn't get out 
at the same time ; but Chunky'd stay around an' wait for me. 



1891.] CHUNKY. 363 

When I come up on the lift, there he'd be a-sitting under the 
trestling, his eyes most dancing out of his face, an' he'd say: 
" Here y'are, Frid!" He couldn't say Fred, you know, being 
Irish. 

After I got to be door- boy he wasn't content to stay in the 
breaker, an' he sought for promotion ; but just then we had a 
new mine-boss come. He was a Welshman an' he did nothing 
but try to get rid of all that wasn't o' the same name. At any 
rate, he'd put in none new but Welshmen. He hated the Irish ; 
but he couldn't hate Chunky, 'cause nobody couldn't do that, 
you know, so he didn't turn him away, but he wouldn't advance 
him. 

When Chunky was seventeen an' I was near nineteen I'd 
got to be driver then we made up our minds to quit the Cheno- 
with. The Night-hawk was just built, an' the mine belonged to 
the Rainbow Company. We liked the superintendent an' the 
boss there, an' David Davis was getting too much for us. He 
went beyond what a boss is meant for. 

So we applied at the new place, an' got laborers' positions to- 
gether. This suited first-rate ; we went down an' come up in 
company, ate our dinners together, an' went snacks, if the one 
of us had anything better than the other in his pail. 

Then I got married. 'Taint much good getting married on 
laborers' wages, but youngsters want their own way, an' I had 
mine. I scratched on awhile ; then the first baby made me jump 
around a little more lively. I went to mining, an' the boss set 
me to work in a new vein. 

This was hard on Chunky. You see, when you get married 
your mind's took up away from your old friends. My woman an' 
me we liked to have Chunky set with us an' talk, an' then we 
liked to have him go. 

But Chunky he felt kind o' lonesome, an' when I was 
moved he couldn't stand it very good. One day he says : 
" Wouldn't ye like to have me working for you, Frid ? Maybe 
the boss'll let you exchange laborers wid Thornton." Thornton 
was -him we'd worked for together. Then I see how he felt the 
separation, an' I says to him: "All right." 

Thornton didn't like it much, 'cause Chunky'd been the best 
fellow at the Chenowith, an' he was the best at the Night- Hawk 
anywhere you'd put him he'd be the best : but the boss was 
with us, an' so it got fixed that I was to have Chunky, an' 
Thornton was to have one o' my men. 



364 CHUNKY. [June, 

Then Chunky was happy, an' I liked it, too, for by that time 
I was getting kind o' used to being married, an' looked round a 
bit. Besides, when there was two babies 'stead o' one an' it 
wasn't long 'fore there was two 'twasn't so peaceful to home; 
so I got in the way o' going ^to Chunky's house, or walking with 
him like we did when we was lads. 

Well, do you know we growed that thick ag'in that my wo- 
man she got jealous. She said Chunky an' me was too fond of 
each other, but Chunky said : " Is it me ye're beginning to be 
jealous of now, Mis Frid ? " that's what he always called her 
" sure an' ye had a right to be so always, for I've never let him 
out o' me heart." 

He'd stuck to me tight, that's the truth, an' he never let on 
that I'd dropped him for a while. He was true-hearted, Chun- 
ky was. 

He had a soft spot in him for babies, too. He could get 
my little ones to sleep quicker'n their mother could. The big- 
gest one an' him was great friends^ he was always for having her 
along on a walk she'd not cry a bit when she was on Chunky's 
shoulder. 

Welt, things went along pretty good, and then come the win- 
ter when my third baby was born. That was a boy, an' we was 
some proud to our house. But you'd think our pride was noth- 
ing by the side o' Chunky's ; he just took that baby for his'n. 

We wanted to call it Patrick Edward that was Chunky's 
real name but Chunky he said we must call it Fred or he'd 
go to law about it ; an' one day, before we'd come to a conclu- 
sion, in walks Chunky with a silver mug marked Frederick 
Deane ; from his friend, Patrick Edward Mulroy-, So that 
settled it. 

All this time Chunky was only doing laborer's work. I 
couldn't noways coax him to leave me for a better position, 
though the boss'd given him anything he'd asked for. It just 
seemed that by the side o' the pleasure o' working in my com- 
pany wages was no account. 

One day, when I'd been urging him, he says with a kind o' 
trembling in his throat : " I'm all right, Frid ; let me stick to you 
till the end." An' he did, Chunky did. 

Next spring, when little Fred was going on six months old, 
Chunky said to me : " I've transferred me money in the savings- 
bank to the name o' Friderick Dane, Jun." 

"An' what made you do that?" says I. " Because it's me 



1891.] CHUNKY. 365 

pleasure to do it," says he, an' I knowed there was no turning 
Chunky when he'd made up his mind, so I dropped it. 

On the twenty-ninth of April we went down to our work, 
me an' Chunky, like we'd always done. My other man was sick, 
an' we two worked alone. There wasn't many working near 
us our chamber was the last in the vein. 

Chunky had just sent up a car, an' the driver boy told us it 
was nigh onto twelve when he left the foot o' the shaft. So I 
said we'd quit an' eat our dinner. I went an' fetched our pails 
from the gangway where we'd hung 'em away from the rats, 
an' I was just handing Chunky his'n when he cried out sudden: 
"Look out!" an' I didn't look out none too soon, for the 
whole roof come down between us an' the gangway, an' there 
we was boxed up in the chamber like we'd been trapped. 

Chunky blowed out my light quicker'n a wink, an' I blovv- 
ed out his'n, an' for a minute we said nothing. Then we 
both begun to holler. But we didn't waste breath that way 
long; we knowed the cave-in 'd be discovered soon or late, an' 
then we'd be missed. 

So we sat down an' waited. 

Waiting in the dark an't ever pleasant, but when you're not 
certain you'll ever see light ag'in it's like being alive in your 
coffin. At length I says to Chunky: "We'd better eat some- 
thing" we'd never let go our pails. "All right" says he, "but 
let's only take a wee bite, for maybe we'll require more before 
we get out." 

" Like enough," I says, but I didn't know what I was talk- 
ing about then. 

Well, they say we was in there ten days ; if they'd call it 
ten months I'd believe 'em easier. We hadn't no way to tell 
the time, an' it seemed like we'd set there a week without mov- 
ing, when Chunky says : 

" If they're not coming to dig us- out, it's ourselves as must 
dig." 

Then he proposed we should find how much victuals we 
had in the pails an' set apart as little as we could get along on 
for one meal. 

After we'd done this I hunted round for the pick an' the 
drill, but they was nowhere to be found. Then I remembered 
they was lying near the opening when the cave-in come, so that 
was the end of 'em. 

But we couldn't set still no longer. We thought maybe 



366 CHUNKY. D une > 

'twasn't much of a fall, an' we could dig through anyway ; so 
at it we went. 

, You've heard tell o' tooth an' nail well, that's the way we 
worked, but after awhile we found it worse business than we'd bar- 
gained for. The chamber was^,a good large one, but we didn't dare 
fill it up ; the best we hoped to do was to make a hole 
through to get more air. So we took turns boring. Sometimes 
we'd come ag'in a solid chunk o' rock that wouldn't be bored, 
then we'd have to turn aside an' take another course for a dis- 
tance. 

Whenever we struck coal we thought ourselves lucky; then 
we scratched like rats under a red-hot pan. 

Do you wonder I an't got any finger ends ? 

All this time we heard no noise outside. I'd say : " Chun- 
ky, we can't live it out"; an' he'd say: " We must try to." 

The only way we knowed we hadn't been there for months 
was the way the victuals lasted us. Chunky was getting awful 
weak though. I knowed it by his voice, an' by the sound of 
his digging. He wasn't ever so strong as me, and he couldn't 
keep .up on such short fare. 

I didn't know how 'twas, but the victuals held out wonder- 
ful. We only took a few mouthfuls at a time, but after I'd eat 
a good many .times, my pail didn't get no lower. I mentioned 
this to Chunky, an' he says : " Maybe it's a miracle the saints 
is a- working for us " ; he believed in the saints, Chunky did ; 
he was better'n I was every way. 

At length he got so weak he couldn't work no more ; I had 
to scratch along by myself. Now an' then we thought we heard 
picks outside, an' that kep' us up some, but we wasn't sure. 

After Chunky got so weak, I didn't like to take my sleep 
'twas kind o' like leaving him alone. Onct when I was resting 
a bit, an' trying not to shut my eyes, I spoke to him so he'd 
know I was awake ; but he. didn't answer me. That scared me, 
an' I touched him. He was breathing, but his body was like a 
bag o' bones. 

Then a thought hit me on the side o' my head, an' I felt fdr 
Jhe dinner-pails. Chunky's was empty an' mine was more'n half 
full. Then I knowed why he was so weak : he'd chawed loud 
an' made believe eat, but he hadn't took a mouthful. 

This beat me all to pieces, an' I just set there an' cried, an' 
that woke up Chunky. He says his voice was like a baby's: 

" What's got ye, Frid ? " An' I busted out : " What made 






1891.] CHUNKY. 367 

you do it, Chunky?" An' Chunky he didn't say nothing at all. 
Then he hea'rd me at the 'dinner-pail an' he knowed what I was 
after, so says he : " I'm past ateing now, Frid." An' I asked him 
agin what made him do it ; an' first he was still like he'd died, 
but soon he says, choking a bit: 

" I knowed there wasn't enough for the two of us." 

That made me mad, an' I says, speaking kind o' strong : 
" You've as much right to live as me." 

Then Chunky he put up his hand an' felt round for my face, 
an' he patted me like he used to pat little Frid, an' says he : 
"No, ye've the best right; ye're the one as 's got the babies, 
Frid." An' I couldn't say no more, 'cause Chunky' d take his 
own way anyhow. 

This was about the last talking he did, only to say a little 
prayer now an' then. Well, you may know I didn't enjoy thy 
bites much after that. I wouldn't a' touched another crumb but 
for hurting Chunky's feelings ; he'd made me swear Pd do my 
best to keep alive. But I was growing weak myself by this 
time. 

The day Chunky died I heard the picks outside for sure,* but 
I went on digging to keep from going crazy. I was beginning 
to go out o' my head an' I didn't know "when I was took out. 
They said I was nigh dead what with the foul air I'd breathed, 
an' the starving an' the grieving; and indeed I was sick a long 
time. But I got well ag'in all but my finger-ends ; they never 
growed back. 

My boy Fred he went to a pay -school on the money what 
Chunky left him. He's a heap better eddicated than his daddy 
ever was, or Chunky either; but all the eddication in the world 
won't never put a soul in him like Chunky had. 

EDITH BROWER. 



VOL. LIU. 24 



368 SOME PLAIN WORDS WITH AGNOSTICS. [June, 



SOME PLAIN WORDS WITH AGNOSTICS. 

ACCORDING to Richard Holt Hutton the word Agnostic, as 
at present used, owes its origin to the suggestion of the well- 
known naturalist, Professor Thomas Henry Huxley. An Agnos- 
tic is one who denies that anything beyond this material universe 
is known or is even knowable. To a greater or lesser extent he is 
a sceptic, a doubter. Though he may admit the reality of phe- 
nomena, his knowledge, he tells us, goes no further. 

Sceptics have existed from time immemorial, and were of old 
strongly represented in the Grecian schools of Pyrrho of Elis. In 
our own time the more advanced sceptics not only deny the pos- 
sibility of knowing that which lies beyond the reach of our senses, 
but also maintain that we are not able to possess any certain 
knowledge of the reality of things, not even of material phenom- 
ena. Their life is like a dream ; they live in the midst of beings 
of whose very existence they are in doubt; they find no con- 
necting link between the inner world of thought and the outer 
world of the numerous realities that surround them not even 
with their own bodies. That such a system must sap the basis 
of all religion is evident ; for how is it possible to honor or adore 
that which we know not ? how can we aspire to a higher end 
if we are in doubt whethtr such a higher end exists ? or how 
will we be in a condition to perform duties the foundation of 
which is hidden to us ? 

Scepticism and agnosticism, then, are the. enemies of religion, 
both natural and revealed. They are the despair of the human intel- 
ligence the awful give-up in the search for truth, the natural 
outcome of the many errors into which the human mind has 
fallen. 

It is next to impossible to argue with a sceptic, for when we 
proceed to discuss a question with an intellectual adversary it is 
necessary that we agree with our opponent at least in some 
points. We must have common premises whereupon to build 
our reasoning. But the only principle of the sceptic is that he 
doubts of everything. The sceptic assures me that the world 
is for him a vast enigma ; that he can establish no relations be- 
tween his inner self and the outer world ; that the stars above 
his head, the waving trees around him, the rushing waters that 
his ear hears and his eye admires, the music of the birds an< 



1891.] SOME PLAIN WORDS WITH AGNOSTICS. 369 

the life with which the universe teems are, perhaps, only the cre- 
ations of his own imagination. He advances even farther, and in 
his most doubting mood tells me that perhaps his own individual- 
ity does not exist that he may be only the thought of some 
universal mind. I feel, in listening to him, the difficulty of my 
position as party to a discussion ; the very ground seems to sink 
from under my feet. What reply shall I make ? whence shall I 
draw my arguments? where shall I find a premise that my sceptic 
shall admit ? But, lo ! here is one. The sceptic is firm at least 
in one point : his doubt. He knows that he doubts. Of all else 
he has no knowledge ; but there is one certainty in his mind, 
and that is his doubt, for, were he to doubt whether he doubts 
or not, then he . could not assure me that he does doubt. But 
even in that case he must finally come to some certain affirma- 
tion if he does not want me to fall into an infinite series of doubts, 
before which absurdity even a sceptic would hesitate. Upon this 
frail platform we will endeavor to build up our argumentation, 
and, if possible, convince our sceptic. 

You tell me, sceptical friend, that you doubt, but in/ your 
very doubt I behold your existence; for if you did not exist it 
would be impossible for you to doubt, as doubt is a state of an 
existing mind. Your existence mirrors itself in your doubt. By 
the very fact, therefore, of your admitting that you doubt you 
must necessarily admit your existence. 

There is, moreover, within you, and you cannot deny it, 
that inner self-consciousness which admits of no doubt concern- 
ing your existence. But if you admit your existence, and are 
forced to admit it, I am equally forced to admit mine. But my 
consciousness assures me that I am a distinct person from you 
in other words, that you and I are not the same person. This 
you also admit by the very fact of your disputing with me, for 
if you and I were the same person a contradiction would be 
the result, for you doubt and I do not doubt ; consequently if 
you and I were identified we would be the 7 doubting and not 
doubting about the same thing at the same time, which is an 
absurdity. 

If, then, you admit that you and I are distinct persons, we 
have only the same reasoning process to follow to establish 
the existence of all other persons with whom we come in con- 
tact. We may, then, conclude that we possess certainty at 
least of the existence of ourselves and of persons distinct from 
ourselves. And let me remark in passing that certainty is a 



3/0 SOME PLAIN WORDS WITH AGNOSTICS. [June, 

state of the mind that excludes all reasonable doubt. I say 
reasonable doubt ; for groundless doubts can always be experi- 
enced without hurt be they ever so devoid of common sense. 

If we 'admit the existence of the world of human person- 
ality, we must also accept ^Jhe reality of the material world 
around us ; for we see that it strikes all individuals in the 
same manner. Certainly the senses of some may be deceiv- 
ed; but it is impossible that the senses of all should be so per- 
verted that they should be deceived in their primary objects. 
Such a deception would prove a universal confusion and contra- 
diction in the senses, which would be something unnatural and 
incredible a state of things for belief in which we have not the 
slightest ground. Hence, when the human race beholds the 
moon above its head in its different phases, that moon really 
exists; for otherwise the entire human race would be laboring 
under a hallucination. Moreover, to admit the non-reality of the 
outer world we should be forced to admit that all the senses are 
illusory in their action ; for in walking through a flower-garden, 
for instance, our hands touch the flowers and our sense of smell 
perceives their perfume and our eyes behold their color ; and 
thus it is with all else. 

But why reason on this subject ? Does * not common sense, 
does not our inner conviction assure us that the outer world has 
a true, a real existence, that our senses do not deceive us ; and 
do not sceptics themselves believe this, at least practically ? 

In all this many, perhaps most, agnostics will agree with us 
but when we endeavor to ascend higher, to that which is above 
the senses, they bid us halt ; for of the spiritual world they say, 
we can know nothing. Will they admit that we have the pow- 
er of reasoning ? Certainly. But what is reasoning ? It is the 
exercise of a faculty of the mind by which we draw conclu- 
sions from certain known principles or facts. Thus I take a walk 
upon the sea-shore, and as I look upon the sand I behold the 
impression of feet. I know without any proof that, as ther 
can be no effect without a cause, these impressions must have 
been produced by some feet. I would be unreasonable were 
not to admit this. Hence, I conclude that some one has bee 
here. But I may proceed further. From the nature of th 
footprints I am enabled to conjecture . the time when they wer 
formed. It is low tide now ; at high tide the place where th 
footprints are would have been under water. Had they been 
made at a previous low tide the water at high tide would have 
obliterated all trace of them, consequently they have been formed 






1891.] SOME PLAIN WORDS WITH AGNOSTICS. 371 

quite recently ; and thus from their position I can estimate 
pretty nearly the time when they were formed. I am also able 
to know with certainty in what direction the persons went, and 
from the nature of the footprints I may even find out with 
certainty by what kind of beings they were made. From the 
footprints I conclude that they were left by a man, a woman, 
and a child. My conclusions are certain because they have 
been logically drawn from evident premises 

And is not this same mode of reasoning followed even by 
Agnostics in their zoological, geological, and archaeological studies ? 
They tell us how the earth existed thousands and millions of 
years ago, what its climate was, what kinds of animals wandered 
around upon its surface, what birds lived in its atmosphere, and 
what fishes swam in its waters. But if it is in my power to reach 
causes the effects of which I possess some knowledge of, why 
may I not by the same process of reasoning arrive at causes 
of which I have no knowledge ? I know that the effect gives 
evidence of the nature of its cause; If, then, I study the uni- 
verse, may I not reason as I do when I behold footprints upon 
the sand ? 

The world did not make itself; I did not make if, nor any 
being like me. It is' a great effect, hence the world must have 
had a cause. This also Agnostics are willing to admit, but they 
deny that I can obtain any knowledge of the nature of that 
cause. But if the effect indicates the nature of the cause, I 
must logically conclude that all I admire in the universe must 
have eminently pre-existed in its cause, and that therefore the 
First Cause must be far more perfect than the world itself I 
could not suppose for an instant that it could be less perfect, for 
no one can give what he has not, and if the Cause of the world 
did not possess the perfections with which the effect is endowed, 
those perfections never would have existed, for nothing can pro- 
duce itself. And it is plain that a perfection which is creative is 
supreme and infinite. Bat among the perfections found in the 
universe I remark intelligence; therefore, the world must have 
had a cause endowed with intelligence, otherwise it is impossible 
to understand whence intelligence could have originated. 

I know what Agnostics will answer ; they will tell me that 
intelligence is only a higher- development of material forces. Be 
it so, for argument's sake; but it is, at all events, an organized 
development, and every organization presupposes an intellectual 
agent. Moreover, that material force which produces intellect 
must have come from somewhere it must have pre-existed in the 



372 SOME PLAIN WORDS WITH AGNOSTICS. [June, 

First Cause, and therefore the First Cause is intelligent. I am well 
aware that Agnostics will find replies even to this, but replies 
based only upon gratuitous assumptions and by no means upon 
experience. If they tell me that intelligence is only an accidental 
effect of many causes, it will be my turn to demand proofs. 

Moreover the perfect harmony of the universe convinces me 
that the world was produced by intelligence. If, walking upon 
the sea- shore, I were to notice a name written in the sand, how 
ridiculous it would be were I to assert that the name had been 
written by the waves, or that it had been produced by accident. 
Will not every one conclude tliat some one had been there to 
trace the characters in the sand ? Am I required to be less 
reasonable when I behold the beautiful universe and trace it to 
its cause ? Whence came the stars, and the laws that rule them, 
the plants, the animals, the mind of man ; were they all acci- 
dentally produced by some blind, unthinking agent ? One must 
be a fool, Agnostic or not, to harbor such a thought fora single 
instant 

Whose mind arranged the laws that govern mathematics ? In 
what intelligence did they take their being? In none? Are 
they the outcome of chance ? Only an insane man could 
seriously assert this. It is then evident that I am able to form 
some idea of the nature of the world's First Cause. It must be 
a mighty intelligence. 

Moreover there have been men, great and learned men, who 
have believed that they know much about that First Cause. In 
the kingdom of thought these men have ruled the human race. 
Are they all to be now rated as fools ? And has wisdom only 
been born in these latter times in the Agnostic school of Professor 
Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer? 

Mr. Herbert Spencer says so ; it is Professor Huxley's opinion. 
But what does Plato say, and Aristotle and Socrates and Seneca, 
and Augustine and Aquinas, and a host of others what do they 
say ? And must these men be eclipsed by these later lights, the 
Agnostics ? The beauty and order of the universe served to con- 
vince Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero of the existence of an intelli- 
gent First Cause, and the minds of these illustrious men never 
fell into Agnosticism. And who is there among the Agnostic 
who can stand against the great teacher and king of the ages 
Jesus Christ ? 

" Whence," says St. Augustine, " do I know that you live, as 
I see not your soul ? Whence do I know it ? You will answer : 
because I speak, I walk, I work. Fool, from the works of the body 






1891 ] SOME PLAIN WORDS WITH AGNOSTICS. 373 

I recognize a living man ; can you not from the works of the 
creature recognize the creator?" Does it not seem as though, 
sending his piercing eye through the centuries to come, Au- 
gustine addressed himself in these words to our modern Ag- 
nostics ? 

We sometimes hear people say that they will take nothing 
on authority, but will reason for themselves. Whether such 
persons do reason for themselves or not, the fact is that the vast 
majority of mankind are led by others, to whom they leave most 
of the reasoning. A most important question, therefore, is, Who 
shall be the teachers of men ? For instance, it is now univer- 
sally believed that the earth revolves around its own axis and 
performs a yearly revolution around the sun. This is taught in 
all the schools, it is learned in early childhood, and unhesitatingly 
believed by all, although it is an apparent contradiction to what 
we perceive by the senses. But why is it admitted? Is it be- 
cause all have reasoned the matter out and have proved it sat- 
isfactorily ? No ; for, perhaps, not one in a hundred knows the 
arguments by which the earth's rotation is proved ? Nevertheless 
they admit it, because the learned teach it, because they read it in 
books and all believe it. As it is with this dogma of science, 
thus is it with a great many other things in the world. Why 
has Agnosticism become popular among a certain class of people ? 
Because some men of reputation have taught it, and perhaps be- 
cause it has a high-sounding name. But how many of those 
who call themselves Agnostics are able to give any reason, even 
a plausible one, for their opinions ? 

If we will be led by others, why not go to those whose 
knowledge has been the admiration of centuries to a Plato, an 
Aristotle, a Cicero, an Augustine, or an Aquinas above all, to 
Jesus Christ and his apostles. Have, perhaps, our wonderful 
modern inventions thrown new light upon such subjects a future 
state, the authority of conscience, the existence of God ? They 
have not even elucidated the first principles of science in the 
natural order, and they confess it ; how, then, can they be ex 
pected to render a clear account of the world above the 
senses ? 

We do not depreciate the progress our modern world has 
made in certain branches of science, but we are not afraid to 
assert that our many discoveries have added little or nothing to 
first principles of morality and metaphysics, and are, as a rule, 
merely limited to facts, and the generalizations deduced from 
them. 



374 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [June, 

Let, then, sceptics doubt ; let them grope in the dark, and 
let Agnostics love their darkness ; we thank God that we are 
children of the light, and that the eternal radiance of an uncreat- 
ed Deity is reflected upon our intellects by the wondrous works 
of creation. We behold his loveliness in the flowers of the field ; 
his light shines upon us through the starry realms above our 
heads. We hear his voice in the storm- wind, his whisper is. 
in the gentle zephyr, and we love to gaze upon the reflection 
of his countenance mirrored on the bosom of the deep. We 
know there is a God, for the heavens proclaim his glory. We 
know him because our souls crave him and are unrestful till they 
possess him. We know him though we comprehend him not. 
We know him, we love him, and it is our highest ambition to 
serve him for ever. 

CHARLES WARREN CURRIER, C.SS.R. 



THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 

III. EITHER SCIENCE IS A DREAM, OR RELIGION IS TRUE. 

BY an argument as simple as it appears to me conclusive, I 
have endeavored to prove these two things. First, that I recog- 
nize' outside of the facts, and collocations of facts, like the words 
I am at this moment writing, which exhibit thought, design, or 
purpose which, in other terms, are the effects of what philos- 
ophers have named a Final Cause I know, and cannot but 
know, that this page manifests, by means of written sentences, 
the intention I had in putting it together. But secondly, by a 
like process (whether of direct perception or by reasoning from 
the analogy of my own acts), I am certified of the existence of 
other minds, with which I can enter into communion. To deny 
that purpose as manifested in the products of my own hands 
and brain, would be scepticism, were it possible, as in fact it is 
not. Equally sceptical would it be to call in question the 
ten thousand phenomena which I did not originate, but which 
have no meaning unless they proceed from an intellect framed 
on the pattern to which mine corresponds. Intercourse 
with other men could never take place, did I not incessantly 
refer their expressions to the common standard within me, and 
apply, so to speak, the key of mental interpretation which I 
carry about, to their language, gesture, and visible motions. 



1 89 1.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 375 

Even as I understand them, so do they understand me. There 
is a Light of the Intellect as surely as there is a sun in Heaven. 
Deny it, or take it away, and darkness follows. The mind 
which cannot affirm what other minds perceive and in their turn 
acknowledge, is stricken with paralysis. Therefore I conclude 
that a world of intellect, or a mental universe, exists, of which 
we are all members and citizens. How do I arrive at the 
knowledge of it ? I answer, by interpreting phenomena accord- 
ing to the laws, axioms, and ascertained inferences of my indi- 
vidual reason. 

Now this, and none other, is the foundation upon which sci- 
ence, inductive as well as deductive, is built. Deduction starts 
from self-evident truths, for which no ground can be assigned 
except their self- evidence. In other words, the mind certifies 
that they are objectively valid ; that they cannot be dreams or 
delusions. They are per se nota. Induction, again, yields either 
certain or probable results, by appealing to a principle of which 
the value must be determined by some other than the inductive 
process itself in short, by the intellect affirming at its own risk. 
Every physical science ph'otographs, as it were, a portion of 
the universe. But it does more. It introduces among phe- 
nomena a method, an intelligible order ; it ranges details in their 
places, connects them as antecedents and consequents, and casts 
them in the moulds of our mental categories. True it is that 
the senses bind them .up after a fashion, or, as I may say, sift 
and sort the momentary impressions, and reduce the boundless 
chaos to an ordered whole, writing its record on the brain tab- 
lets and in the. nervous system. Nevertheless, sense is not 
science. The brain may register feelings, but it is not the brain 
which interprets them so as to furnish us with scientific induc- 
tion, nor does it elicit answers to the questions no mere brain 
has ever put, of the How, and the What, and the Why. To 
set down a list of sensations in shorthand may be useful, or 
even indispensable, before I attempt to reason about things. 
Only I. cannot end there, and call my list a chapter of 
science. Induction mounts up to laws ; deduction confessedly 
begins with axioms. And what are laws and axioms but men- 
tal statements, tested, if you please, by the experience of the 
five senses, yet in nowise depending on them for their truth 
or validity ? 

Religion and science agree, therefore, in one grand postu- 
late, which I will call the fact of a real correspondence be- 
tween our minds and the Nature of Things. Evidently, if that 



3/5 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [June, 

postulate is unfounded, or not self-evident, I can never know 
anything outside my own consciousness, and the world of mat- 
ter, no less than the kingdoms of the spirit, is an empty dream. 
For in what way do I lay hold of the physical phenomena 
round about me, except by bringing to bear upon them the 
ideas of Reality, Substance,'* Existence, of Quantity, Quality, 
and Relation, every one of which is a mental form ? Or how 
could they affect me, the thinking subject, if they did not by an 
inscrutable process give rise in my mind to these very con- 
ceptions ? All physics, from this point of view, are metaphys- 
ics. Only by piercing into things with thought can we be said 
to understand them. It is thought which affirms law and order, 
invariable succession, the uniformities of action and reaction, the 
fixed times, and conditions, and quantities, according to which 
elements unite to form compounds and are dissolved again. 
The whole range of physical science is subject to number, to 
mathematics. But the late Professor Jevons, with whom I agree, 
has shown that number is a logical idea, founded on the appre- 
hension by the mind (not by the senses, be it observed) of di- 
versity. Animals have experience of various objects, but they 
cannot count them ; still less can they reflect upon the ab- 
stract notion implied in the fact of variety and not to be seized 
except by a purely mental process. Let us consider now what 
this involves. 

Either the principle of number is valid for the things them- 
selves, or science, which cannot go one step without it, is a sort 
of algebraic castle-building. Induction everywhere proceeds by 
number, weight, and measure, in the province, of physical re- 
search. It is constantly employed about numerical proportions, 
and can hardly lay the balance aside for a moment. We dare 
not, then, imagine the idea of number to' be wholly subjective, 
and not in the things outside us, without ruining physical science 
from foundation to summit. On the other hand, if it be allowed 
that number is rooted and established in the material universe, and 
not painted into them by the pencil of our metaphysic fancies, it 
follows that forces, elements, and energies of what kind soever are 
built up in the likeness of Objective Thought, and are stamped 
with intelligence. To quote the beautiful Platonic language, they 
are seals or impressions of an archetypal mind. For number, I 
have safd, is a logical idea. The great system in which we 
find ourselves cannot, then, be simply alien from us, a blind 
and brutal something of which we shall never grasp the mean- 
ing because it has none. It must have a meaning. Every idea 



1 89 1-.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 377 

into the sphere of whose illumination it is brought, shows its 
meaning more and more, lights up its heights and depths, and 
is constantly revealing how profoundly the Greeks were in the 
right when they named it the Cosmos, or the system of things 
ordered by reason. 

Inductive science, I repeat, is not an echo, but an answer the 
response to questions carefully and cunningly devised by a mind 
which moves about in worlds akin to it. Modern teachers would 
scout the notion that in unlocking one after another the closed 
doors of the great universe, they are but travelling through the 
stages of hallucination, or playing with dice which they have load- 
ed beforehand. Nothing will persuade them of the unreality as- 
cribed, by German metaphysicians like Fichte, to the phenomena 
with which they deal. The laws of gravitation, electricity, magnet- 
ism, spectrum analysis, and the rest, are to them as real as their 
own existence. On what ground, do we ask ? The reply must 
be at last that intellect, observing and experimenting in accord- 
ance with its proper nature, has affirmed their truth. Veri- 
fication is simply the establishment of a perfect correspondence 
between facts outside us and reason within us. It gives back, in 
forms commensurate with our mind, the realities by which we 
have been impressed ; and that could never be, unless the world 
were a system of intelligible principles, co-ordinated into one by 
most subtle and far-reaching harmonies. Scientific inquiry sets 
out with an assured confidence in the possibility of the end to 
which it is directed, and that end is explanation. Not, of course, 
that we look with our present limited senses, imperfect instru- 
ments, and easily fatigued attention, to attain the knowledge 
which alone would .deserve to be called adequate. But whether 
we compass the explanation or no we feel certain, when the prob- 
lems of matter and life are put before us in the several instances, 
that an explanation there is. No one could so befool himself as 
to think, in the presence of any phenomena whatsoever, that they 
had neither a cause by which they came to be, nor a purpose 
to which they were subservient. The idea of a cause is involved 
in the very fact of their being at all ; and that of a purpose in 
their belonging, as they manifestly do, to the general system of 
things. For we never meet with isolated phenomena; while 
among the myriad facts which fall under observation, not one 
completely and adequately explains itself. Thus it is that Science 
makes progress.. It moves backwards along the series of efficient 
causes, and onward along that of ends or purposes. At every 
step it inquires how and why ? But the chain of connection, as 



3/8 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [June, 

I cannot too frequently observe, is woven by the intellect out of 
its own ideas. The great hierarchy of laws and forces is at once 
real and notional neither blind, unintelligible matter (which I hold 
to be a contradiction, if not in terms yet in fact), nor abstrac- 
tions which have no footing in things visible. This T will show 
by a further argument derived from the nature of induction as we 
practise it. 

When we predict the future from the past, or what comes to 
the same thing when from a given number of specimens we 
decide the characteristics of all others belonging to that particu- 
lar class, it is evident that our inference derives its strength 
from a principle tacitly assumed, which enables us to dispense 
with complete observation. We cannot argue from particulars to 
particulars. How, then, do we proceed ? Either we assume the 
" uniformity of nature," as writers tell us nowadays* or we trace 
out a necessary connection between a given cause and the events 
or the attributes which we inductively predicate. Again, it may 
be said, with Professor Jevons, that we " invent hypotheses, until 
we fall upon one which yields inductive results in accordance 
with experience," and then, on the supposition that the condi- 
tions do not change, we hazard our prophecy. In every case 
and here is my first point we are driven back to an abstract 
principle, or set of principles, which the mind formulates and then 
proceeds to test. If experience bears them out in only a single 
case, some degree of probability in their favor arises. But as 
the witness of experience grows, the evidence multiplies ; chance 
is more and more eliminated; and a certain number of coinci- 
dences between the facts and the hypothesis will suffice to per- 
suade the reason that our theory is not only .probable but true. 
Sir Isaac Newton has in this way demonstrated the law of 
gravity; nor is scientific induction possible except on the like 
method. From which I go on to my second point. That 
hypothesis, I affirm, ought to be received as certain and indu- 
bitable which, if it be granted, the phenomena of the universe 
are shown to have a reasoned connection one with the other, and 
to be susceptible of explanation on a piece, or systematically ; 
while, if it be rejected, no account whatever can be rendered of 
that which makes the universe to be a whole composed of so 
many agreeing parts, and conspiring to exist and to advance in 
the manner of which we are conscious. For such an hypothesis 
fulfils all the conditions of scientific induction. It explains the 
facts ; and by the facts it is verified in its turn. Now I say that 
the only view which is allowable to a properly trained mind, on 



I 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 379 

summing up the evidence of phenomena with the aid of the most 
precise investigation, is that the present system of things has been 
established and is carried forward by a self-conscious intellect 
before which the past and the future alike are spread out, to 
which the infinite details were known from the beginning, and 
by which the ends or purposes of things, and the great final pur- 
pose to realize which they all combine, were foreordained. 
Theologians call that Supreme Intellect by the name of Provi- 
dence. Mankind have ever worshipped it as God. 

I am not pretending to be wise above what is written. But 
I cannot help seeing the order of the world; and order means 
mind, or it becomes not merely an enigma but a contradiction. 
Resting on the corner-stone of knowledge, which is self-evidence ; 
and appealing to the test of induction that is, to experiment I 
say that an Objective Intellect does account for TO ev nai KaXozt, 
as Aristotle calls it, for the intricate yet harmonious, the endless 
yet simple, arrangements of things, by which all are means and 
ends in a system that has lasted unnumbered millions of ages. 
I am convinced that to deny the governing Intellect is to com- 
mit ourselves to Chance or Hazard. Who can really hesitate 
between these alternatives when they are understood ? Mind or 
no mind ; that is the question. What a question for scientific 
men, who have won all their triumphs, wrought their daily 
stupendous miracles, conquered matter, and made space and time 
their servants, by carrying the hypothesis of Mind victoriously into 
every corner of the universe ! Do any of them seriously contend 
that intellect will explain the details, but that there is no intel- 
lect in the whole ? What was known of nature two thousand 
years ago fills, in mere outline, the volumes of that penetrating 
genius whom I have quoted above. In our day no single mind 
is capacious enough to hold the knowledge pouring in upon us, 
The intelligible bounds of the world have been put back and are 
hourly receding. New sciences spring up, methods of greater 
subtlety and power are devised from year to year. What other 
inference can we draw from all this, astounding as it seems, ex- 
cept that Nature reveals thought in larger and more wonderful 
measure the more we lay our minds to it ? Not chance nor 
chaos; not the haphazard jostlings and crossings of Lucretian 
atoms, but wheels within wheels, purpose, subservient to purpose, 
organisms uniting in systems which they carry on and which 
reciprocally lead them to perfection. Such are the facts to which 
science bears witness. The assumption of Mind as directing and 
orc^ining these million- fold correspondences is altogether reason- 



380 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [June, 

able. It offers no internal contradiction in itself. It is founded 
on absolute fact, since, as I showed at the beginning of this 
article, I know with certainty of the correspondence between my 
own intention and the results which my hand and mind achieve 
together. The existence of one single organism or piece of com- 
plex contrivance in the world outside us would prove it to a 
demonstration, simply because the probabilities against definite 
orderly results accruing by mere accident amid indefinite varia- 
tions are beyond measure great. But instead of a single organ- 
ism, myriads past all human counting live and move in earth" an 1 
sky and sea, and have done so during ages upon ages. There 
is no calculus by which we could represent the improbability of 
the supposition that all these things have come to pass without 
a Mind. The dicer's fancy that, if the letters composing Virgil's 
Eneid were thrown from a tower they would fall into the 
identical words, lines, and fable which the poet has written, is 
sense and reason compared with the Agnosticism which hints 
that perhaps the whole system of the fixed stars and nebulae, of 
suns, and planets with their satellites, and of organic life from its 
commencement in the Laurentian rocks till to-day, may have 
leaped out of a storm of molecules, whirling in all directions, and 
bent towards no definite end. But this mad supposition is involved 
in the denial of a guiding intellect. For what guidance could there 
be in its absence ? 

As I view the great orders of Being one above another, appearing 
by successive stages in the world's history, what strikes me more 
than anything else is the adaptation of matter to life, of life to 
mind, and of mind to the general system of things. So clear, 
so overwhelming is the presence of intellect in the combinations 
I perceive, from the laws of light and chemistry in the remotest 
nebula to the microscopic building up of organisms, that nowhere 
can I discern a break or a gap into which hazard might enter. 
I cannot deny the universal nexus of finality. I grant that life 
does not spring from dead matter, any more than spirit can be 
drawn out of sense by skilful handling of its constituents. All the 
more wonderful, then, is that increasing purpose which, as Tenny- 
son declares, has run through the ages, binding them in a drama 
every incident of which must have been foreseen and provided 
against. It is obvious, nay, inevitable, to attribute these multitu- 
dinous, ever-renewed adaptations to a cause with which we are 
already acquainted, and which, if conceived on such a scale as the 
phenomena warrant, will account for them adequately. We know 
of one such cause, and one only intelligent Design. There ; 



i 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 381 

simply no other hypothesis to which we can resort, if this be not 
accepted. For Chance is but a word to denote our ignorance ; 
and Necessity, which some have invoked, must be either blind or 
seeing. Is it seeing? Then that is what I mean by Intelligence. 
Or blind ? So far as it is blind, the guidance of things must be 
to it impossible, and Chance returns under a different name 
Whatever is false, this is true, that we cannot omit Intellect from 
the nature of things, and still hope to understand them. 

Agnosticism, I do not doubt, is on the increase. Many other- 
wise thoughtful minds take refuge in it as a sanctuary from the 
storms of speculation, the wrangling which too often passes under 
the title of metaphysics, and the mysteries which they seem una- 
ble to face. I have not attempted to dtny that we are surround- 
ed on every side with mysteries I feel, in the words of Goethe, 
that " man is a dark being," inscrutable in many ways to himself 
and mostly unexplored. I am sure that the wisest among us would 
fail to explain the nature of any process, within him or without 
him, which goes beyond simple addition or subtraction. But 
I am just as certain that there are no contradictions in the things 
themselves, else they would not exist ; and, if this be so, it is our 
powers of understanding that fail, not the intelligibility of the 
facts. None, perhaps, have grasped so firmly as mathematicians 
the suggestive truth, that, as our methods of investigation improve, 
so do fresh prospects open into Nature. The problems we have 
solved may be considered elementary and few in comparison with 
those which remain. But the facts are given, and our reason 
affirms with absolute certitude that some explanation of them must 
be as possible as they are real. Agnosticism here interposes, not 
without effect, to declare that the hypothesis of blind and dead 
matter is evidently no explanation at all. If we are to set up Matter 
as the First Cause, it goes on to say, we must define it after a new 
fashion, perchance as "the mysterious Something," by which all 
other things have come to be. Now my argument is that we 
cannot stop short in this way, even if we would, at the cate- 
gory of mere and bare existence. The same mental necessity 
which compels us to affirm that " Something is and has been from 
everlasting," drives us on to the assertion that without Mind nothing 
whatever could have existed at any time. And when I say men- 
tal necessity, while, on the one hand, I recognize that it is due 
to the nature of my intellect, or is, in this sense, prior to expe- 
rience, on the other J can point to the conquests of science as 
my warrant for declining to believe that the certitudes of reason 
are only subjective. 



382 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [June. 

I do not claim for the human faculties immunity from error, 
except when they claim it themselves. I can imagine other and 
more richly endowed senses, and an experience of worlds to us 
unseen and consequently incomprehensible, by the side of which 
our sphere of intuitive knowledge would seem little more than a 
child's in comparison with an angel's. But the first truths, ele- 
mentary though they be, are still the mainstay of the largest wis- 
dom. It may sound trifling to enunciate the equal validity of 
religion and science, because they are both products of the same 
human intellect. Yet it is the ground on which we shall find our 
arguments resting in the last analysis. And if the world has 
gone after its scientific teachers, relying on their word, making 
use of the inventions they have hit upon, and persuaded thereby 
that they have been all along in touch with reality, what reason 
can it allege for doubting the evidence of inductive theology, 
which, I say,, does but apply to the whole those very methods 
whereby physical science has mastered the parts and the details ? 
Even a mechanical order of things is impossible unless mind has 
designed it. How much more the organic world, the instincts of 
animals, and man himself the microcosm ? Shall we grant the valid- 
ity of an idea so low in the scale as " invariable succession," 
and turn from purpose and design as anthropomorphic ? Are not 
all our primary notions anthropomorphic ? 

But I think the reason is not far to seek. Power and suc- 
cession, which are ideas on a level, as it were, with energy in 
space and movement in time, seem to have nothing of the per- 
sonal in them.' They may amaze and terrify, but they cannot 
properly be said to demand admiration or worship. They leave 
us lords of ourselves, owning no master, though liable to be shat- 
tered by a turn of the great wheels. -It is otherwise with the 
admission of a true Final Cause. If we live and move in the 
presence, in the all-encompassing sphere, of a Conscious Mind, 
which called us into being and controls our steps, it is manifest 
that we owe Him positive duties. Although Mind, considered in 
the abstract, is not immediately equivalent to a Moral Order, yet 
the line of argument, once we have broken with agnostics and 
materialists, cannot but lead on to it. The first step is decisive. 
In affirming an Objective Intellect we lay down one- parallel 
over against which, by equally valid methods, we may proceed to 
drawn a second, and affirm an Objective Conscience. The pur- 
pose of the Supreme, to which all other purposes converge, must 
be good, cannot conceivably be evil. And of this, too, induction 
furnishes proofs and tokens. The noblest achievement of a mind 






1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 383 

conversant with laws is to have established the Moral Law on 
adamantine foundations. Hence it is that men to whom life 
seems, ethically, mere disorder, without aim or purpose which 
they can discern, or even a struggle for existence in which good 
succumbs to ill, and the vilest sit in high places by reason of 
their wickedness, deny that First and Fairest to which idealists 
look up. A beautiful theory, they admit, were not experience 
against it. Facts are what they are ; and the test of experience, 
to which I have myself appealed, they tell me contradicts my 
supposition of an overruling Providence. It is a real, not an idle 
speculative objection. It has been urged by serious thinkers, and 
deserves such answer as I can give with the aid of inductive 
knowledge. I will consider it, therefore, in my next article. Mean- 
while, let us meditate on the grave and exquisite lines in which 
Wordsworth has sung of the essential harmony between Science 
and the Ideal of Righteousness by which, indeed, the world is 
governed : 

" Stern Lawgiver! .yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face. 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 
And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 
And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong." 

WILLIAM BARRY. 



VOT. LIII. 25 



384 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [June, 



A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 

p 

A WELL-BRED looking woman in a close-fitting dress of some 
soft black stuff, and with her hand outstretched toward him 
this was what he saw standing before him ; what he heard, to 
his dismay, was a clear voice saying : 

44 You and I were introduced long ago, weren't we, Mr. 
Nicholson ? " 

" Oh ! yes indeed, long ago," he declared, taking the offered 
hand and striving to echo the cordiality of the greeting, while he 
inwardly cursed his luck that the meeting had taken place so 
far in the dim past that he could recall nothing of it. 

The shade that fell over the lady's face when she perceived 
herself forgotten was but momentary, and gave place to a smile 
as she hastened to his relief by saying, in the same clear, 
cheerful tones: " How stupid of me to have lost sight of the 
years that have passed since then ! Perhaps you would know 
Margaret Somerville, though Margaret Tyler seems almost a new 
acquaintance." 

"How could I have hesitated?" he exclaimed, possessing himself 
of her hand once more in renewed greeting. " And I remem- 
ber Margaret Somerville so tenderly, too." 

" So do I," answered the lady laughingly. " She is, indeed, 
one of the tenderest memories of my life." 

" Have you any kindly recollections of Fred Nicholson ? " 
he queried, regarding her closely and striving to trace in this 
self-poised woman, with the friendly, good- comrade glance that 
met his directly, the resemblance to the shy girl whose blue 
eyes always reminded him of dewy violets half- hidden. 

." The way I greeted his evolution a moment ago answers 
that. I wonder if you represent the ' survival of the fittest ' in 
Fred Nicholson," she added with a touch of what might have 
been coquetry in her tone. 

" It is very warm. Shall we walk on the piazza awhile, and 
give you a chance to find out? " he suggested. " Margaret and 
Fred used to be partial to the piazza, do you remember ? 
can smell the honeysuckles now." 

" And hear Lew Hamilton strumming on that old guitar 
while he and Flora Monroe quarreled about his discords ! 






1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 385 

Weren't they a happy set of young folks that summer ? though 
Fred insisted on posing as a cynic." 

" And Margaret preached to him," he continued. "She was 
a capital preacher and he was a good listener. Do you recol- 
lect that he always went to see her when the rest of the boys 
were at church ? " 

Thus these two, met by chance in this Asheville board- 
ing-house, where all sorts and conditions of men and women 
gathered, fell to discussing the days, more than ten years past, 
when Margaret Somerville had returned to the primitive village, 
with the shy convent ways and the elaborate convent politeness 
about her, and had met handsome Fred Nicholson, who seemed 
to her a blase man of the world and a great sinner whom she 
must strive to save, albeit he was but twenty-five and ranted at 
woman's faith and the world's treachery and religion's insuffi- 
ciency with the fluency of a provincial who had read Bulwer and 
Byron and had gotten himself jilted by a country girl. Curious- 
ly enough they spoke of their old selves in a sort of indefinite, 
impersonal way, so conscious were they both of the gulf which 
lay between that past and their present. But Mrs. Tyler laugh- 
ed outright after awhile ; which made her companion exclaim : 
" That was Margaret Somerville's laugh, that was like your old 
self; and now tell me about your new self." 

He was sorry that he had asked the question when he saw 
her face grow grave on the instant. 

"There, is little to tell," she said quietly. "You heard, of 
course, of my husband's death two years ago. Since then I have 
been living here because I am stronger in this climate, and so 
can work better ; for I must work ; I am too poor to live with- 
out it even if I would. And you what brought you 
here ? " 

" The restlessness of the times I suppose," he said. " I am 
tired staying on the farm and making just a thousand or two a 
year raising bright tobacco. I want to turn my money over 
and add to it faster, so I am looking for a booming town ; if I 
could find the boom here I should be glad, for my lungs are 
not strong." 

She regarded him critically. 

"You have the boom fever, and I am sorry; but nothing will 
cure you as soon as losing some of those thousands you have 
made so safely. I will help you to-morrow by introducing some 
real-estate men. They will convince you that this is the town, 
beyond peradventure or mistake. I don't like that about the 



386 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [June, 

weak lungs, though," she added. " Have you still the cough 
which used to trouble Fred and Margaret ? " 

It was very sweet to the lonely man to catch the cadence of 
interest in the last words; he had heard nothing like it since his 
mother's death. 

" Did the cough trouble TVIargaret ? " he asked, lingering a 
little on the name; he remembered that he never called her by 
it in those old days and he wondered now why he had not. " I 
didn't know she thought much about it." 

"It is a pity you did not," said Mrs. Tyler lightly; "it 
might have resulted in your conversion. Margaret used to pray 
for that those were ages of faith, you know." 

Some inflection of bitterness, some emphasis on the word 
faith made him ask : 

" Are these ages of unfaith ? " 

" No," she answered, noticing the resentment in his tone, 
"but they are days of knowledge." 

" And faith is lovelier than knowledge." If he meant to 
pique her by that, he failed, for she replied calmly as ever : 

" Yes, it is far lovelier ; and yet knowledge is faith lost in 
certainty. A girl believes all things and hopes all things ; a 
woman recognizes her own and other people's limitations, and so 
hopes but little." 

" Margaret Somerville was not given to philosophizing," he 
said. 

" Margaret Tyler does philosophize," she replied ; " and per- 
haps that marks the difference between simple faith and half 
knowledge. But have you learned to play whist in all these 
years ? I have, and my partner is beckoning to me now. Come 
and let me find a partner for you, won't you ?" 

" No, I think not. I prefer sitting here to smoke and dream 
about Margaret and Fred." 

"I wouldn't, if I were you," she admonished him. "Fred 
and Margaret are dead; leave them in their graves." 

" Are they past resurrecting ? " he asked, letting his voice fall 
half-unconsciousiy into the tender tones which had once seemed 
music to the convent girl's unworldly ears. Perhaps it was the 
memory of that which made the ring of sadness in Mrs. Tyler's 
answer. 

" Why should we wish to resurrect them ? They played their 
parts." 

" But did they play them to the end ? " he asked, still 
tenderly. 




1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 387 

She looked at him in that frank, good -comrade fashion again. 
" It seems to me they did," she said simply ; " and they 
enjoyed it very much while it lasted " 

Then she left him to his cigar and to the memories 
which seeing her had awakened. He saw again the old-fash- 
ioned, dilapidated North Carolina village, where Fred Nicholson 
had gone to make some extra money during the summer by 
writing for the clerk of the court. A very heart-sore and dis- 
appointed young fellow he was, for had not the cotton crop 
failed the year before, and had not Helen Hunter jilted him for 
a richer man ? He recalled the day when, as he, along with 
other villagers, lounged around the red warehouse at the railroad 
station to see the one daily train come and pass, Margaret Somer- 
ville alighted from it and entered her father's carriage. 

To night so vivid were those old days that he could hear 
again his own sneer as he remarked, when he saw her new and 
glittering gold medal : 

" There goes another sweet girl graduate, ready to set the 
river on fire with her brilliancy." 

And the loyal way that Edgar Hartley answered : 
" She is mighty sweet, and a lot too smart for most of us 
fellows ; but you can talk to her, Nicholson. Let me take you 
to see her Sunday." 

And their Sunday call, when they sat out on the long 
veranda, festooned in climbing vines, and his verdict that she 
was not pretty, with his later decision that she was unusual. 

It seemed but the evening before that he had gone to the 
hop expecting to find her, and was told by Flora Monroe that 
she would not be there, when suddenly the music and the girls 
and the dancing lost charms for him, and a few moments later he 
was standing before Margaret, as she sat in the moonlight on the 
honeysuckle-porch. He could see her surprise at his coming, and 
her swift blush when he told her she was not there, so he left ; 
and then the holy sort of light which came into her face as she 
endeavored to explain to him some incomprehensible thing about 
Father G.'s having come unexpectedly that day, and her not 
liking to go to a dance the night before receiving Holy Com- 
munion. He felt again the influence of the subdued gentleness 
of her manner that night, which accorded with the moonlight and 
the flowers, and which made him say to her at parting: 

"Pray for me to-morrow. I feel as if I had been in church." 

After that he went oftener and oftener to the house, and fell 

to saying tender words when hj got there, always uncertain of 



388 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [June, 

his own meaning, and even more uncertain of what she thought 
he meant. 

Some one of the self-appointed curators of other people's 
affairs, of which every village has one or two, had told her 
about his flirtations, and she, -being distrustful of him and igno- 
rant of herself, elected to treat him as if he were flirting with 
her, and stood constantly upon the defensive, piquing him some- 
times, puzzling him sometimes, pleasing him ever. 

It was a wonderfully pleasant summer, and looking back upon 
it now he perceived that it was Margaret Somerville who made 
it so ; but he was not particularly conscious of this at the time. 
Perhaps if she had accepted his love-making in good faith, as one 
might suppose a motherless, convent-bred girl would have done, 
it might have become serious ; but she had taken him lightly, or 
seemed to do so, and he had been content that she should. 

When his work was done he had gone back to his home, 
had written to her once or twice, and had abused those nuns for 
making a prude of her when she refused to keep up a cor- 
respondence. Then he discovered that his farm would pro- 
duce bright tobacco, and that Helen Hunter had a young sis- 
ter far prettier than Margaret or than Helen herself. He 
heard of Margaret's marriage with a degree of resentment, but 
in the end he accepted it, and thought more and more vaguely 
and infrequently of her and the summer they spent together 
until her unexpected presence in this Asheville boarding house 
called up the past with sudden vivid distinctness. His cigar 
burnt his fingers at this point and awoke him to realities. " Hang- 
it all !" he exclaimed as he threw away the stump, " I must have 
been a fool. Why couldn't I see that girl liked me throughout ? 
If I had" 

If he had ah! well, who can tell what the outcome of an 
"if" would have been? 

Mrs. Tyler did not play whist to her partner's edification that 
evening. There was a far-away look in her eyes and a smile on 
herjips. Was she, too, seeing the honeysuckle-porch? 

Whatever she saw, she did an unusual thing when she got to 
her room for a woman as devoid as she was of personal vanity. 
She walked straight to the mirror and studied the reflection there 
closely. " Men forget," she said as she turned away. " To think 
of his failing to recognize me ! But somehow he disappoints me. 
I wonder if I have outgrown him, or he me ? " 

Then she became absorbed in a book on her table, and to a 
degree forgot the incident of the evening. She was a very busy 






1 89 1.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 389 

woman, having long ago decided that to live out of one's self is 
the only way worth living. And yet she dreamed that night 
that she was a girl again, and that as she stood on the river's 
bank she blew a thistle, saying the while the magic words : " He 
loves me, he loves me not " ; and she awoke before the thistle 
was blown away. 

II. 

There comes in the month of February a week or two that 
seems a foretaste of the spring, when the sunlight shines with 
delicate suggestion of vernal warmth, and the gardens send their 
hints in the shape of hyacinths and crocuses, and the woods whis- 
per of coming joys through the trailing arbutus, which graciously 
smiles from its bed of moss or its shelter of red colt's- foot. 

Nicholson had chanced to reach Asheville just at this en- 
chanted time, and it seemed to him as if he, too, were awaken- 
ing. The world within doors and without appeared full of reve- 
lations to him. He had lived on his farm and read the newspa- 
pers and an occasional novel, varying the monotony by a yearly 
two weeks' trip to New York or some other city, where he usu- 
ally took in whatever theatrical performances were on the boards 
during his stay, and was lunched and dined and shown "the sights 
of the town " by the crowd of good fellows from his section of 
North Carolina and Virginia (his farm was near the line) who 
had drifted to the great centres to better or to worsen their for- 
tunes. 

His county people respected him and looked up to him the 
older ones remembered his father and grandfather; the working 
men of all classes admired a man whose farm was made to be 
so productive ; the young men envied his clothes was he not 
known to have them made by a Baltimore tailor, and did he not 
possess a full dress suit ? and the girls felt themselves honored 
when noticed by a man who usually treated young women with 
a most attractively polite indifference ? Who is it that has de- 
clared a man to be the result of his surroundings ? Fred Nichol- 
son had, if the truth must be told, grown to accept this universal 
good opinion as his due, and enjoyed, though but half-consciously, 
the pleasing certainty that he was not as other men, inasmuch as 
birth and breeding had lifted him a degree above them. But 
here in Asheville he found himself in close daily contact with 
men and women from everywhere, with all degrees of culture, 
and he was startled to discover how little he knew of the world's 
thought on any of the thousand " isms " in which much of it 
had crystallized. 



390 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [June, 

Yet the greatest revelation to him was Margaret Tyler. He 
saw her easily and quietly fall into whatever discussion arose 
around her, holding her positions with a firmness which seldom 
became insistence; ready to turn from these graver talks to lend 
a hand in whatever scheme might be devised for the amusement 
of the house ; and displaying a many-sidedness of information 
and of sympathies which amazed him in her whom he remem- 
bered as being a self-conscious and scrupulous girl, whose woman- 
hood he would have predicted to be strong but straight-laced. 

There was a sort of self- ignoring about Mrs. Tyler which 
never became self-effacement ; her individuality displayed itself in 
her every action most of all, perhaps, in the way that she went 
to her daily work from among these people, who had no need to 
toil, ,and who regarded her pityingly because she was obliged to 
win her bread. 

Although he did not put it into words, she affected him much 
as the weather of that Asheville February did, bright and genial, 
with a touch of cold in it, and with an occasional haze which ob- 
scured the landscape while it gave charms to it, and which might 
tell of past storms or future changes. There was in her, too, or 
he began to think there was, the same subtle suggestion of unex- 
hausted warmth and promise of a spring. 

The comparison took shape with him when one day, as they 
were walking together, a little child ran toward them with hand- 
fuls of white hyacinths and yellow jonquils, plucked from one of 
the good old-fashioned gardens in the town. 

"Please, Mrs. Tyler, pin 'em on," pleaded the child; "they'se 
pretty, just like you.'' 

"Do you think she is pretty?" asked Nicholson with a smile 
which emboldened the little one to answer : 

" Yes ; don't you.'' 

Margaret glanced at him with a laughing challenge in her eye; 
he had often bemoaned Margaret Somerville's lack of beauty. 

" No," he said, looking down at the child; " I don't think she 
is a bit pretty." 

" That's all you know," was the small champion's contemptu- 
ous response. " I guess if she teached you Sundays and told you 
'bout the child Jesus/ and the way he used to work like us chil- 
dren have to do, you'd think she was. An't you pretty, Mrs. 
Tyler?" And the questioner's upturned face was full of simple 
confidence. Mrs Tyler knew everything, of course. 

Margaret stooped and kissed the child. 

" I am pretty to you, little one, because you love me." 




1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 391 

" Now pin on the flowers ; then he'll be bound to call you 
pretty, too," suggested the young diplomat. 

" Let me pin 'em on, won't you ? " Saying which she climbed 
up on the fence and covered the bosom of the black dress with 
the delicate blossoms, leaning back against the arm which Mar- 
garet had thrown around her to admire her work and to glance 
up at the eyes which regarded her tenderly. 

" She was right," said Nicholson as they walked away. " You 
are pretty when you look like that. Your face was a study when 
you were holding that child." 

" I think most childless women have that sort of yearning 
love for children," she answered with a sigh. " The hours I spend 
with them are my best. Their love fills my life's void." 

" I don't like to hear you speak of your life's void," he re- 
monstrated. " I never saw a fuller life than yours seems to be, 
and you are always so cheerful and bright. '' 

Somehow the words were discordant to her ; and yet she had 
no right to expect him to understand. Why should he ? 

" Did you ever, as a child, watch the negro weavers putting 
the cloth in the loom?" she asked irrelevantly. "I remember 
how careful they were to get the warp right, and then how 
easily they would shuttle the filling back and forth, as if it 
were nothing much. Well, that is just what I am in the world 
only a part of the filling. If I can brighten the warp 
here and there my mission is accomplished." 

" If you were any one but you," said Nicholson indignantly, 
" I should call that speech a barefaced ' fishing for a compli- 
ment.' But it is just like you to make it. You have always 
undervalued yourself; it has led you to make mistakes in the 
past and will do so again. I live in dread of hearing you say 
that you have decided to take the veil a woman like you go- 
ing and shutting herself up in a convent to teach ragged chil- 
dren! But I should not be a bit surprised at it it would be 
of a piece with that ' filling ' speech." 

Such a masculine tirade as this is calculated to please a 
woman ; somehow it makes her conscious of her own superior 
reasonableness. 

" It is a pity for me to disappoint you," said Mrs. Tyler, 
more brightly, " but I am afraid I shall have to I have no 
vocation for a convent life, unfortunately ; though why unfortu- 
nately ? " she continued more to herself than to him. " God's 
work needs many hands ; if my part of it lies in the world 
then 1 should be satisfied and I am; I am generally well content." 



392 A QUESTION OF GROWTH, "[June, 

They had stopped and were facing one of those vistas of 
mountains and forest that constantly break on the vision 
through, the streets of this mountain town. 

" Do you know," said Nicholson, " sometimes you make 
me have a sensation of standing on tip-toe to reach you or 
better, perhaps, to say you seem to be away up on a mountain 
and I am trying to climb to you ? " 

" How very fatiguing my society must be ! " exclaimed Mrs. 
Tyler with the unction of one who had experienced a mountain 
climb. '* Let us turn back and talk about something else Miss 
Cunningham, for instance. She has half a million in her own right." 

" I would rather talk real estate just now," said Nicholson, 
" if you can tell me the probable price of such a lot as that 
one there." 

She could and did; and discussed values and investments, and 
profits and losses with such practical comprehension of the sub- 
ject that, as they reached home, he complimented her by saying : 

" You would have made a fortune if you had been a man." 

" Heaven forbid ! " she ejaculated. " It would be the last thing 
I would think of." 

" Yet you spoke appreciatively of Miss Cunningham's half- 
million," he reminded her. 

" Did I say anything against marrying a fortune?" she queried. 

"Who said anything of marrying at all?" he asked with 
significant obtuseness. 

She made no reply and started up the stairs, when he 
stopped her. 

" Won't you do something for me ? " he asked. " Won't you 
wear those flowers this evening. I hate to see you always 
wrapped in black." 

She hesitated and a bright blush suffused her face ; it was as 
if Margaret Somerville had been resurrected, Nicholson thought. 

" Please do," he pleaded ; " they make you look young again." 

" Which means that I usually look weighed down by age," 
she said laughing. 

" Let it mean anything you choose," he replied with the 
daring frankness he had with women, " only wear the flowers." 

That evening at tea some one remarked that Mrs. Tyler had' 
lightened her mourning and pointed to the bouquet of white hy- 
acinths on her breast ; but Nicholson noticed that Miss Cunning- 
ham wore the jonquils. 

, N. c. F. C. FARINHOLT. 

(TO .BE CONCLUDED IN THE JULY NUMBER.) 




i89 r .] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 393 

THE WARFARE: OF SCIENCE.* 
i. 

FOR some fifteen years, Dr. White, ex-President of Cornell 
University, has been engaged in describing what he calls " the 
great sacred struggle for the liberty of science," and combating 
for this liberty. What is the hostile power with which Dr. 
White, in the name of science, is engaged in warfare ? It is 
" interference with science in the supposed interest of religion." 

I do not propose to contend against science, the liberty of 
science, or against the entire plea of Dr. White as the advocate 
of this liberty. All I wish to do is to offer a little aid to those 
who are interested in the subject, in clearing away misapprehen- 
sions and perplexities concerning the attitude of the Catholic 
religion and Catholic authority toward science in its present com- 
mon acceptation, and toward scientific investigation. 

At the outset, some general considerations having a wider 
scope than .our immediate topic may be allowed. 

What is science in the most general sense ? Subjectively, it 
is the reflective, intellectual, and certain knowledge which the 
mind has of the objects of knowledge. Objectively, it is all the 
knowable ; being and truth in all their latitude as the adequate 
object of the intellect; in so far as. this object has been actually 
brought within the domain of subjective cognition. 

Philosophy and History are included in this general defini- 
tion, as well as Physics. No matter what the source of know- 
ledge, whether sense or intellect, intuition, deductive or inductive 
reasoning, experience or testimony, whatever is really known is 
an object of science. There may be controversy respecting 
objects or modes of thought, as to whether mental apprehensions 
and judgments are valid, and true; but when once the adequa- 
tion between the intellect and some real object is admitted, there 
can be no reasonable dispute of the right of admission into the 
circle of science. 

In the case of a divine revelation of truths and facts, all that 
is certainly known in this way must also be included within the 
circle of science. If the fact of revelation is certainly known, it 

* The Warfare of Science. By Andrew Dickson White, LL.D., President of Cornell 
University. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1890. Articles in The Popular Science Monthly, 
Ijy the same author. 



394 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [June, 

is ipso facto an object of science. If the contents of the revela- 
tion are known with certitude, they are, so far forth, objects of 
science^ The testimony of God is the surest and most rational 
ground for an intellectual judgment that whatever is disclosed by 
a divine revelation, or attested as true, even although knowable 
or known in a purely human' way, is certainly true, and cannot 
be doubted without doing violence to reason. 

All science is from God, and is a rethinking of his thoughts 
" Alle Klarheit im Menschen ist ein Nachdenken der Gedanken 
Gottes " (Leo). The intellect is from God, and understands and 
reasons by principles which have their foundation in His essence. 
All nature, corporeal and spiritual, is a manifestation of the 
thoughts of God. The book of nature and the book of revela- 
tion are both alike from God, and are opened before men, that 
they may read therein and understand, as far as they are able to 
do so. 

It is self-evident that there can be no contradictions between 
any leaves of the divine book. There can be no opposition 
between any one part of science and any other. All are really 
and intrinsically in harmony. All are scintillations from the same 
light Science has no warfare except with ignorance. One kind 
of truth cannot be in conflict with any other kind. Every 
branch of science must recognize every other. Every investiga- 
tion is bound to recognize every fact and every truth which can 
justify its claim to be accepted, from whatever source the 
knowledge of it is derived. Metaphysics and Mathematics, 
Astronomy and Geology, Biology and Mechanics, Cosmology 
and Chemistry, Psychology and Physiology, Theology and Cos- 
mogony, Philosophy and all branches of Physics must admit of 
mutual control in their just limits, must not ignore e'ach other, 
and must take due cognizance of historical facts, so far as these 
have a bearing upon any theories which run upon historical ground. 

Scientific civil war is not conflict of science with science, but 
of science with unscientific theories pretending to be scientific, or 
of theories which may or may not have some real or apparent 
probability with each other. The struggle is caused by nescience 
on one or both sides. 

As to the attitude of Christian Theology toward rational phi- 
losophy and all the sciences subordinate to it, the same reason 
runs for determining the question, as in the case of the relation 
between the purely natural sciences. In so far as there is truth 
in both, they must be in harmony and cannot be in opposition. 
Neither can they ignore each other. Discord and struggle a:nong 



1891.} THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 395 

those who contend in the name of religion and in the name of 
science, arise from mistakes and misunderstandings on one side or 
on both sides, concerning that which pertains, to revealed truth, 
or that which pertains to natural science, or concerning both ob- 
jects at once. 

Concord and unity are promoted by progress and increase of 
knowledge in all directions, on all sides. Real progress is an 
advance from partial science toward more complete science, 
toward objective truth, by investigation which tends to eliminate 
the nescience from which imperfections and errors in theories and 
systems proceed. It is an approximation toward absolute, uni- 
versal truth. Science, in the strict and proper sense, is a knowl- 
edge of entities in their causes, which is perfected in proportion 
to its approach to a comprehension of the deepest causes, both 
efficient and final. The lines of progress from all points of de- 
parture must therefore converge toward the same object. Retro- 
grade and deviating movements are not progressive, although 
the mere change of place and the velocity of transition over dis- 
tance may present an illusive appearance of progression. All in- 
terference from any cause whatever which hinders movement on 
the true lines is an evil, and all interference which hinders or 
counteracts retrogression or deviation, if it is legitimate, is a bene- 
fit to the cause of science, and a favorable influence upon inves- 
tigation. 

Interference is of two kinds : a moral interference, by an op- 
position which endeavors to bring some professedly scientific 
movement into discredit as essentially bad and dangerous, or at 
least futile and irrational ; and an interference by the exercise of 
authority. It is legitimate, if it is the exercise of a just and right- 
ful influence or authority, without infringement of other rights, 
employed in a reasonable manner. 

The particular contention with which we are at present con- 
cerned relates to both kinds of interference, on the part of per- 
sons possessing influence or authority, which they are charged 
with using against "science" "in the supposed interest of re- 
ligion." Of course, the term " science " is used in that restricted 
sense to which it is confined in common parlance, and therefore 
placed in logical opposition to " religion " and all that is regarded 
;is included under that term. This will be well understood by all 
without any formal definition. The contention is chiefly directed 
against the exercise of authority and influence, ecclesiastical and 
theological, by rulers and doctors in the Catholic Church, and it 
is this alone of which I shall take any notice. 



396 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [June, 

Let us first inquire what it is which makes trie struggle of 
science for liberty especially " sacred," and what is the good to 
be attained by its untrammeled development. The desire for 
knowledge is innate in rational nature. Its object is truth ; and 
liberty to seek for truth, to imbibe it freely, to keep and profess 
it, is good, and a -divinely-given right ; because it gives freedom 
to the rational part of man to develop itself and advance toward 
intellectual perfection. The chief reason and end of life is, how- 
ever, ethical, and intellectual improvement is subordinate, in in- 
dividual men and in the race, to the ultimate end for which man 
was created. 

The warfare of science is " sacred '' only in so far as it is 
elevated and ennobled by an ethical character, and is waged 
in view of ennobling the complete rational nature of man in 
all its relations ; and that not merely for certain proximate ends, 
but for an ultimate end. " Alle Entwicklung menschlicher Dinge 
hat die Aufgabe einer Verklarung zur Freiheit in Gott, zu welcher 
der Mensch urspriinglich erschaffen ward" (Leo). Intellectually, this 
freedom is liberation from ignorance and error by enlightenment 
from the true, the beautiful, and the good, which have their source 
in the divine essence ; by the adequation of the intellect to the 
reality of being, its connatural object. The warfare of science is 
against ignorance, error, falsehood, which are a privation of this 
equality and of the liberty which springs from it. In this war- 
fare no particular species of science stands alone. In the purely 
natural domain, philosophy, literature, art, and all special sciences 
are allies. Morally, this freedom is liberation from all that which 
is degrading to man and mankind, in the ethical order. In this 
order rational ethics cannot be separated from religion, although 
it is to a certain degree distinct from formal and explicit theology. 
Religion takes precedence of all causes and factors in civilization 
taken in its entire comprehension, in the complete development of 
humanity into freedom in God. All the elements and instruments 
of intellectual and moral perfection must be measured by this cri- 
terion and judged by reference to this standard. Whence and 
wherefore is the world, what is the origin and the end of man, 
what is his highest good, and in what way can his interior and 
exterior relations be reduced to order in view of his perfectibility 
as a rational being ? These are the great questions which the mind 
of man wants to have answered. The knowledge of the truth in 
regard to these objects of spontaneous and inevitable inquiry is the 
highest science, the only science of supreme and indispensable 
importance. 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 397 

All that human intelligence and effort have been able to ac- 
complish in this line by the cultivation of the purely rational and 
natural faculties of man, and by their exercise with the aid of all 
means and instruments at their command, has been proved by 
long and wide experience, not, indeed, to be a total failure, but 
to be a shortcoming. The evidence of the moral necessity cf a 
divine revelation to supply the inadequacy of rational philosophy, 
ethics, and the regulating principles of civilization, is abundant and 
conclusive. And beyond this the perpetual, irrepressible haunt- 
ing of the idea and aspiration, the reminiscence and the expec- 
tation of a supernatural end and destiny for mankind, bear wit- 
ness to the absolute necessity of a revelation of truths and pre- 
cepts above the scope of reason. This divine icvelation, begun 
at the creation of man, completed in Jesus Christ, is accredited 
as a fact by overwhelming evidence. The being and veracity of 
God are evident by a metaphysical demonstration. The truth of the 
Christian revelation is evident by a demonstration which is di- 
rectly moral, but reductively metaphysical. It is irrational to deny 
or even to doubt the truth of either Theism or Christianity. It 
is an imperative demand of reason and conscience to give assent 
to whatever has been revealed, without the need of any other 
motive than absolute trust in the veracity of God, who is the ab- 
solute truth in being, knowing, and revealing. This revelation 
must take precedence of all rational science, but it cannot con- 
tradict it, and does not dispense with it and set it aside. Science, 
literature, and art must be ancillary to religion ; but it is a greater 
dignity and splendor which are given to them when they are 
appointed maids of honor to their queen, than those which they 
possess by their native nobility. 

Christianity inaugurated an intellectual; moral, and social re- 
generation of mankind, not yet more than partially consummat- 
ed. Christ took the religious tradition entrusted to the Jews, the 
Greek philosophy, and the organizing genius of Rome, entwined 
these silver strands with the golden strand of his own doctrine 
into the fourfold cord of his New Law, to bind around all na- 
tions and peoples, and draw them to himself. This achievement, 
which he accomplished from the cross, suffices by itself to prove 
his claim to be the divine Creator, Redeemer, and Sovereign Lord 
'of the world. " I came into the world to bear witness to the 
Truth." " What is Truth ? " asked anxious, bewildered, doubt- 
ing Pilate, as the mouthpiece of perplexed humanity seeking for 
truth. Historical Christianity answers the question : " I am the 
Truth : this is Life, to know Thee, the true God and Jesus 
Christ, whom Thou hast sent.'' 



398 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [June, 

Christianity adopted and baptized the entire family of the 
sciences, arts, political and social institutions of heathen descent. 
They reflourished in the new civilization of the new world of 
Christendom, as the earth entered into a new stage of develop- 
ment out of the foregoing conditions of the Tertiary period. 
The great work began during the early age of struggle with 
heathenism and persecution by pagan Roman emperors. 

And here I will let Monsignor Audisio speak for me in his 
beautiful language : 

" We find in Christianity two very remarkable prerogatives. 
The first is, that it began by the reformation of morals. No 
subtle and sonorous disputes at the beginning, but the grand 
and magnanimous virtues which denote souls reintegrated in the 
ways of righteousness. The second prerogative is, that while the 
doctrines of all the philosophical and religious sects descended 
from sages to the people, as a work or product of human in- 
telligence, Christianity, on the contrary, arose from the bosom 
of the people, which was incapable of inventing it, and seized 
on the intelligence of sages, not to perfect itself, but to perfect 
them. We believe in Jesus Christ, we believe in his apostle 's, we 
believe in his ministers. Such was the cry of the first Chris- 
tians, the cry of the martyrs, the cry not of academies but of 
faith ; a faith inspired from on high, supported by public, manifest, 
invincible monuments. It was not academies which defined and 
perpetuated this faith, but a moral tradition remounting to its 
source, propagated and guarded by all the churches, under the 
magistracy of the bishops and the general presidency of the suc- 
cessor of Peter. The learned as well as the ignorant bowed the 
head under the yoke of this faith, which was proportioned to all 
minds and independent of all. This was the first age; faith pre- 
ceded science. 

" In the second, the faith had already profoundly shaken and 
triumphantly occupied the schools, the army, the senate, the 
court of the Caesars. Then reason, the natural revelation of God, 
reflecting upon the supernatural, unchangeable truths of the faith, 
and making them the object of its meditations, began to trace 
the first lineaments of Christian science, and the erudite voice of 
the apologists was heard. To refute calumnies, to demonstrate 
with invincible logic the truth of prophecies, the certainty of 
miracles, and consequently the divinity of the new religion ; 
moreover, to attack and mortally wound the divinities of pagan- 
ism and their adorers, with their iniquities and infamies ; such 
were the enterprises of reason become Christian, enterprises so 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 399 

grand that they show admirably what a vast and sublime career 
the Gospel opened to intelligent minds. The pagans were stupe- 
fied, and the emperors returned no answer except silence and 
the sword. 

" At the end of the second century, and at the beginning of 
the third, we see able hands applied to gather up these separat- 
ed threads, to co-ordinate and construct the science of the faith. 
This phenomenon appeared with special eclat in the Christian 
school of Alexandria. This city being, so to speak, the entrepot 
of all the philosophies, Divine Providence wisely made it the seat 
of a flourishing and solid Christian philosophy. There, in the 
midst of the degradation of pagan sciences, arose the Model of 
future Universities, and Academies. There the Catholic idea, with 
the noble cortege of profane sciences and letters, expanded it- 
self and formed an admirable system firmly linked together. 
The Holy Scriptures, studied in their ancient, original languages, 
were explained, commented, vindicated in an orderly manner ; 
the foundations of philosophy and theology were cleared up, dis- 
cussed, and mutually bound together. Apologetics and contro- 
versy were elevated to such a point as to confute in a peremptory 
manner the plagiarizing philosophers of the eighteenth century. 

"This marvellous transformation of pagan into Christian philos- 
ophy, and of the simple faith which adores into a scientific and 
doctrinal faith, which, while respecting the impenetrable sanctuary 
of revealed, truths, exposes their foundations, develops their con- 
clusions, applies their consequences this magnificent work re- 
ceived its principal augmentation under the pontificate of St. 
Pontianus (A.D. 232-237) and through the genius of Origen."* 

This was, indeed, a sacred warfare of faith, science, and heroic 
virtue, carried on at Rome in the catacombs and at Alexandria 
in the schools, against ignorance, error, vice, and all that degrades 
the rational nature of man, and which the Catholic Church wages 
unceasingly against all the evil powers which seek to bring man- 
kind into intellectual and moral servitude. 

The necessity of sending this paper to the press obliges me 
to cut it short, and await a future occasion for bringing my re- 
marks closer to the point at issue. 

AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT. 

* Histoire des Papes sous les Empereurs patens. Par G. Audisio, Chanoine de S. Pierre et 
^scur a la Sapience. Traduite de 1'Italien, p. 303. 



VOL. LIII. 26 




THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 



[June, 



V'.* -qi'HE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER.* 

it a rio 

CHAPTER XXV. 

BEGINNINGS OF THE PAULIST COMMUNITY. 

DURING the seven months of Father Hecker's stay in Rome 
the band of American missionaries were busily occupied. Mis- 
sions were given in the following order : Newark, N. J.; Pough- 
keepsie, Cold Spring on the Hudson, and Utica, N. Y.; Brandy- 
wine, Del.; Trenton, N. J.; Burlington, Brandon, East and West 
Rutland, Vt, and Plattsbu'rgh, Saratoga, and Little Falls, N. Y. 
All these labors were undertaken subject to the authority of the 
Redemptorist Provincial and in a spirit of entire obedience. The 
mission at Little Falls closed on Palm Sunday, March 28, and 
the missionaries, with the exception of Father Baker, who was 
sent to Annapolis, Md., returned to the Redemptorist house in 
Third Street, New York. On the Tuesday after Easter, April 
6, 1858, the official copy of the Pope's decision reached them, 
and they bade farewell to their Redemptorist brethren and to 
the community in which they had spent so many happy years, 
and witnessed, as Father Hewit has written, " so many edifying 
examples of high virtue and devoted zeal, to enter upon a new 
and untried undertaking." 

Archbishop Kenrick, as soon as he heard of this, made a d 
termined effort to secure Father Baker for the diocese of Balti- 
more, but the latter never for a moment faltered in his purpose 
to cast his lot with his brethren, and the archbishop gave up 
his claim upon him at the request of Cardinal Barnabo. 

Their engagements called for two more missions before the 
season ended one at Watertown, N. Y., and the other at St. 
Bridget's Church, New York City. The first of these opened on 
the 1 8th of April, and while waiting for that date the Fathers 
lived with Mr. George Hecker in Rutger's Place, saying Mass in 
his private chapel and following their religious rule as far as cir- 
cumstances allowed, continuing meantime to obey Father Wai- 
worth, their former superior of the missions. They journeyed to 
Watertown, fearful lest the faculties for giving the Papal blessing 
and the mission indulgences should not arrive there in time. 
But late on Saturday night, April 17, they were received, much 
to the joy of the Fathers. 

* Copyright, 1890, Rev. A. F. Hewit. All rights reserved. 



1891.] THE LIPE OF FATHER HECKER. 401 

Here occurred a noteworthy coincidence. Wate'rtown was at 
that time in the diocese of Albany, of which Bishop McCloskey 
was then the ordinary. He had received Father Hecker into 
the Church and had been his first guide in the spiritual life, and 
now he was the first to publicly welcome his brethren at the be- 
ginning of their new career. The following is from a letter of 
his to Father Walworth in answer to one announcing the recent 
changes : 

" I am happy to hear that your difficulties have at length re- 
ceived their solution, and in a manner, I presume, as satisfactory 
as you could well expect. The future must now in great meas- 
ure depend upon yourselves. You will, of course, have difficulties 
to surmount and prejudices to encounter, but I trust that with 
God's blessing your new community when once organized will 
continue from day to day to gain increased stability and strength, 
and be enabled to carry out successfully all its laudable aims for 
the good of our holy religion. The faculties already given you 
in this diocese you will not consider as being withdrawn by the 
act of your separation from the Redemptorist order, and there is 
nothing that I know of to interfere with your proposed mission 
in Watertown." 

During the mission at St. Bridget's that is, in the first half 
of the month of May Father Hecker arrived in New York and 
measures were at once taken for the practical organization of the 
new community. Nothing was done hurriedly; a fair and -full 
consideration of all questions from every point of view, which lasted 
until early in the month of July, enabled each one clearly to un- 
derstand his new relation in its every aspect. Father Walworth 
not being entirely in agreement with the others, withdrew to the 
diocese of Albany and took charge of a parish ; he returned again 
in 1 86 1, remaining with the community till 1865, when his health 
becoming quite shattered, he reluctantly decided to withdraw al- 
together. It need hardly be said that the relations between him 
and the community have always been most cordial. Meantime 
the others, Fathers Hecker, Hewit, Deshon, and Baker, organized 
by electing the first- named the Superior, and drew up and signed 
what was termed a Programme of Rule. This was submitted to 
Archbishop Hughes and by him approved and signed on July 7, 
1858. The Apostle of the Gentiles was chosen as patron, and the 
name selected was, The Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apos- 
tle, which has been popularized into PauHsts. The habit agreed 
upon was in form somewhat like that of the students of the 
Propaganda in Rome, black throughout, with a narrow linen 



4O2 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [June, 

collar and buttoned across the breast, being held at the waist by 
a cincture. 

The Programme of Rule adopts an order of spiritual exer- 
cises similar to that observed by the Fathers while Redemptor- 
ists. A perpetual voluntary agreement takes the place of the vows 
as the security of stability, ''the members affirming that they 
are fully determined to promote their sanctification by leading 
a life in all essential respects similar to that led in the religious 
orders. Besides the chastity imposed upon them by the priesthood 
the other evangelical counsels of obedience and poverty are adopted 
and their observance enjoined upon the members, together with 
the daily and periodical exercises of community life. As to the 
external vocation, the missions are named as the basis of gen- 
eral apostolic labors, and parish work also, though in a subor- 
dinate degree. The entire document looks forward to a com- 
plete Rule to be drawn up and submitted to the Holy See 
at a future day, for which it actually furnished the outlines 
some twenty years afterwards. The approval *of the Programme 
of a Rule by the Archbishop of New York gave the Fathers the 
canonical status anticipated by the decree Nuper nonnulli. This 
was confirmed by an official permission of the Holy See to the 
Archbishop of New York to establish the Paulist Institute in his 
diocese, with the consent of his suffragans, which was asked for 
and obtained. 

A little more than a Tortnight after these events Father 
Hecker wrote as follows to a friend : 

" Before leaving Rome our Holy Father Pius IX. gave us 
his special blessing for the commencement of our new organiza- 
tion, promised us any privileges we might need to carry on our 
missionary labors, and held out the hope of his sanction, in 
proper time, of the rules which we might make. In my last 
visit to his Eminence Cardinal Barnabo he gave me. advice how 
to organize, what steps were to be taken from time to time, 
and expressed a most lively interest in our undertaking. The 
same did Monsignor Bedini. On my return we organized as 
advised, wrote out an outline of our new institution and sub- 
mitted it to the ordinary of this diocese, the initiatory step of 
all such undertakings. He gave it his cordial approbation, and 
said that he found no word to alter, to add, or improve. Thus 
we are so far regularly canonically instituted. 

" Our aim is to lead a strict religious life in community, 
starting with the voluntary principle ; leaving the question of 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 403 

vows to further experience, counsel, and indications of Divine 
Providence. Our principal work is the missions, such as we 
have hitherto given, but we are not excluded from other apos- 
tolic labors as the wants of the Church may demand or develop. 
. . . We begin early this fall our campaign of missions, and 
we never had before us so fine a list. One thing I may say, 
and I trust without boasting, we are of one mind and heart, 
resolved to labor and die for Jesus Christ, for the good of His 
holy Church, for the advancement of the Catholic faith. We 
have the encouragement of a number of bishops, and also, we 
trust, the prayers, sympathy, and assistance of the . faithful. We 
shall have to face obstacles, opposition from friends and foes ; 
but if we are the right kind of men and have the virtues which 
such a position as ours demands, our trials will only strengthen 
us and make, us the better Christians. Every good work must 
expect opposition from pious men, and our minds are made up 
to that." 

After St. Bridget's mission the little community found itself 
homeless, and it remained so till the spring of the year 1859. 
But during part of this period Mr. George Hecker, taking his 
family to the country, gave up his whole house to the Fathers, 
servants and all, making provision for the supply of every want 
in the most generous manner. For the greater portion of the 
time, however, especially between missions in the winter and 
spring of 1858-9, the Fathers depended for temporary shelter 
upon the hospitality of friends among the clergy and laity, even 
lodging for a short while in a respectable boarding-house in 
Thirteenth street, at a convenient distance from several churches 
and chapels where Mass could be said daily. 

But in the spring of 1858 arrangements had been made with 
Archbishop Hughes for establishing a house and parish in New 
York. The present site of St. Paul's Church and convent, then 
in the midst of a -suburban wilderness, was chosen, and, by dint 
of hasty collections from private friends and with the help of a 
very large gift from Mr. George Hecker, money enough was 
paid down to obtain the deeds. Sixtieth Street was not quite 
opened at the time, and this part of Ninth Avenue existed only 
on paper; but by energetic efforts made by all the Fathers and 
their friends, and by personal appeals in every direction, espe- 
cially in the down- town parishes in which they had given mis- 
sions, sufficient funds were raised to clear the ground and lay 
the foundations of a building which was to include both con- 



404 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [June, 

vent and church. Early in the summer of 1858 circulars asking 
assistance had been sent out to the clergy of the United States, 
and by this means also a considerable amount was secured, the 
very first answer with a handsome donation coming from Father 
Early, President of Georgetown College. In the spring of 1859 
the Fathers rented a frame h6use on Sixtieth street, just west of 
Broadway, fitted up a little chapel in it, and lived there in 
community till the new house was finished. 

The corner-stone of the new structure was laid by Archbishop 
Hughes on Trinity Sunday, June 19, 1859, in the presence of 
an immense concourse of people. During that summer and fall 
every effort was made to keep the builders at work. The task 
was no easy one. The times were hard, the country still suffer- 
ing from the effects of the financial crisis of 1857, an ^ financial 
depression being aggravated by the ominous outlook in the poli- 
tical world. But the house was finally completed, and was blessed 
by Father Hecker on the 24th of November, the feast of St. 
John of the Cross, one of his very special patrons. This was 
within a few weeks of his fortieth birthday. On the 2/th of the 
same month, the first Sunday of Advent, the chapel was blessed 
and Solemn Mass was celebrated in it. Thereafter the Fathers 
had to act as parish priests as well as missionaries. A few 
weeks before this the first recruit joined the little band in the 
person of Father Robert Beverly Tillotson, a convert, who, 
though an American, had been for some time a member of Dr. 
Newman's Oratory. He was a charming preacher and a noble 
character, much beloved by all the fathers, and especially by 
Father Hecker. He died, deeply mourned, in the summer of 
1868, having given the community nine years of most valuable 
service. He came just in time to set free three of the Fathers 
for missionary duty, the other two remaining in care of the 
parish. This was at first small enough in numbers, though in 
territory it reached from Fifty-second Street to very near Man- 
hattanville. The accession of Father Alfred Young, of the diocese 
of Newark, and the return of Father Walworth considerably 
relieved the pressure, though the rapid growth of the parish and 
the widening scope of the community's labors kept every one 
busy enough. 

The newly-founded Paulist community was heartily welcomed 
by both clergy and people. Missions were given in various parts 
of the country, applications being often declined for want of time 
and missionaries. Several prelates, among whom were the Arch- 
bishops of Baltimore and Cincinnati, wrote to Father Hecker offer- 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 405 

ing to establish the community in their dioceses ; Bishop. Bayley, 
of Newark, also wished to secure the Fathers, and he was espe- 
cially urgent in his request. One has but to know the intensely 
conservative spirit of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy to appre- 
ciate how stainless must have been the record of the Fathers to 
elicit such testimonials of good-will just after they had fought a 
hard battle on the ground of authority and obedience. As to the 
Catholic laity, the following extract from a letter of the poet 
George H. Miles, whose early death some years after was so 
deeply lamented, shows how they regarded the new community. 
It was written from Baltimore under date of August 13, 1858: 

" MY VERY DEAR FATHER HECKER : ... Since we last 
parted you have been to me one of those grand, good memories we 
take to heart and cherish. I have loved you better than you could 
believe, for I felt that in the extremity of sorrow or temptation 
you were the man and the priest I would have recourse to, could 
my own wish be granted. You are not wrong in considering me a 
friend ; that is, if much love may atone for little power to befriend. 
. . . Providentially, it now appears, you men have always had 
an individual force that detached you completely from your con- 
freres. To me and to the multitudes you were never Redemp- 
torists, never Liguorians, but Hecker, Walvvorth, Hewit, Deshon, 
Baker. I mean to utter nothing disrespectful to the society which 
has blessed this nation in training and developing you and your 
new body of preachers, but I maintain that you stood so completely 
apart from that society, so absolutely individualized, that, etc." 

The three years following Father Hecker's return from Rome 
were exceedingly active ones. The missions were maintained, 
money collected for the purchase of the property and the build- 
ing of the convent at the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Ninth 
Avenue, and, after the opening of the new church in November, 
1859, the regular duties of a city parish were added. 

"I am hard at work," writes Father Hecker to a friend, in 
the very midst of these labors, " in soliciting subscriptions for 
our convent and temporary church. I have worked hard in my 
life, but this is about the hardest. However, it goes. I had, 
a couple of weeks ago, a donation of $200 from a Protestant. 
Yesterday a subscription of $50 from another. Sursum Corda 
and go ahead, is my cry ! " And, indeed, he was full of cour- 
age and confidence in the future, all his letters breathing a 
cheerful spirit. 

Before giving Father Hecker's principles for community life, 
which we will do in the next chapter, it may be well to say a 



4o6 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [June, 

few words more about the attitude in which he and his com- 
panions had been placed, by the action of the Holy See, toward 
the Catholic idea of authority. 

Just as he was about to sail for America he wrote to h's 
brother George: "I return from Rome with my enthusiasm un- 
ohilled and my resolution to' labor for the conversion of our 
people intensified and strengthened. I feel that, the knowledge 
and experience which I have acquired are most necessary for the 
American Fathers in their present delicate position." And in 
truth his stay in Rome had prepared him for the new respon- 
sibilities in store for him. His sufferings there had purified his 
motives, his humiliations and his anguish had taught him the 
need of reliance, total and loving, on Divine Providence. He 
had studied authority in its chief seat, and he had done so with 
the depth of impression which a man on trial for his life expe- 
riences of the power of the advocates and the dignity of the 
judges. The result of that trial was of infinite benefit. The test 
of genuine liberty is its consonance with lawful authority, and in 
Father Hecker's case the newest liberty had been roughly ar- 
raigned before the most venerable authority known among men, 
tried by fire, and sent forth with Rome's broad seal of ap- 
proval. 

Without doubt the chief endeavor of authority should be to 
win the allegiance of free and aspiring spirits ; but, on the other 
hand, no one should be so firmly convinced of- the rights of 
the external order of God as the man who is called to minister 
to the aspirations of human liberty. 

No man ought to be so vividly conscious of the prerogatives 
of authority as he who lays claim to a vocation to extol the 
worth of liberty. It was, therefore, fitting that Father Hecker 
should learn his lesson of the prerogatives of the visible Church 
from that teacher who has no master among men. At the same 
time Rome sent forth in the person of Father Hecker a living 
and powerful argument addressed to this Republic, that the 
Catholic Church is worthy of the heartiest allegiance of our 
citizens. 

This providential aspect of the case should not be forgotten. 
When Father Hecker had been expelled from the Redemptorists 
it might have been thought that he was done for, and that if he 
had ever had a mission it had suffered total shipwreck, whether 
deserved or not. But in reality the very reverse was the truth. 
The disgrace of expulsion, the sudden horror of being thus cast 
out, a calamity which set him forth to all Catholics as a ruined 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 407 

priest, had but served to bring him into the notice of the su- 
preme authority of the Church. And when in this God had 
wrought all His work His servant was purified within and mightily 
strengthened without. In his inmost soul he was conscious of 
his divine mission with a deeper certitude than ever before ; and 
as he began his apostolate he bore on his arm the buckler of 
Rome, against which all the darts of enemies, if any should arise, 
would strike harmless and fall to the ground. 

It was fitting that the Paulist community, appealing to the 
men and women of to-day with the credentials as well of their own 
individual independence as of the good will of the Pope and the 
Bishops, should be launched into existence from the very deck 
of Peter's bark, and furnished with all the testimonials of eccle- 
siastical authority short of canonical sanction. This was the more 
proper because, in a few years after the beginning of the com- 
munity, European revolutionists were to be scourged with the 
Syllabus, whose every word agonized the souls of unworthy ad- 
vocates of liberty. That Pontifical document has created a liter- 
ature of its own in comment and explanation, some tying more 
knots in every lash and others mitigating its severity or palliating 
the errors it smote with such pitiless rigor. But the best in- 
terpretation of the Syllabus is the Paulist community. It is a 
body of free men whose origin was the joint result of the per- 
sonal workings of the Holy Spirit in the soul of a man who 
loved civil and political freedom with a mighty love, and the 
decision of the highest court of Catholicity declaring him worthy 
of trust as an exponent of the Christian faith. If the Syllabus 
shows what the Church thinks of those who in the guise of free- 
men are conspirators against religion and public order, the 
approval of the Paulist community shows the Church's attitude 
towards men worthy to be free. 

Nor was Rome's course chosen without weighing the conse- 
quences, without a full estimate of the public significance of 
the act. Father Hecker's adversaries fixed upon him every 
stigma of radicalism and rebellion possible in a good but de- 
luded priest. For seven long months they poured into ears 
which instinctively feared revolt in the name of liberty, every ac- 
cusation his doings and sayings could be made to give color 
to, in order to prove that he and the American Fathers were 
tainted with false liberalism. And he seemed to lend himself to 
their purpose. His guileless tongue spoke to the cardinals, pre- 
lates, and professors of Rome about nothing so much as free- 
dom, and its kinship with Catholicity. He seemed to have no 



408 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [June, 

refuge but the disclosure of the very secrets of his soul. Dur- 
ing those months of incessant accusation and defence Father 
Hecker talked Rome's high dignitaries into full knowledge of 
himself, until they saw the cause mirrored in the man and gave 
approval to both. Some, like Barnabo, were actuated by the 
quick sympathy of free natures; others, like Pius IX., arrived at 
a decision by the slower processes of the removal of prejudice 
from an honest mind, and the careful comparing of Father 
Hecker's principles with the fundamental truths of religion. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 
FATHER HECKER'S IDEA OF A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY. 

The beginnings of the Paulist community having been 
sketched, it is now in order to state the principles with which 
Father Hecker, guided no less by supernatural intuition than by 
enlightened reason, intended it should be inspired; and this shall 
be done as nearly as possible in his own words. The following 
sentences, found in one of his diaries and quoted some chapters 
back, embody what may be deemed his ultimate principle: 

" It is for this we are created : that we may give a new 
and individual expression of the absolute in our own peculiar 
character. As soon as the new is but the re-expression of the 
old, God ceases to live. Ever the mystery is revealed in each 
new birth; so must it be to eternity. The Eternal- Absolute is 
ever creating new forms of expressing itself." 

What the new order of things was to be in the spiritual 
life could be learned, Father Hecker held, by observing men's 
strivings after natural good. The tendencies which shape men's 
efforts to secure happiness in this world, in so far as they are 
innocent, indicated to him what choice of means should be 
made to propagate the knowledge and love of God. According 
to this, the most successful worker for a people's sanctincation will 
be kindred to them by conviction and by sympathy in all that 
concerns their political and social life. Men's aspirations in the 
natural order point out the , highway of God's representatives. 
As these aspirations change from era to era, so do the main 
lines of religious effort change, .the highways of one age becom- 
ing the byways of another. It is true that no method for the 
elevation of human nature to divine union, which the Church 
has sanctioned, ever becomes quite obsolete, but the merest 
glance at the differences between the spiritual characteristics of the 
martyrs, the hermits, the monks, the friars, shows that one form 






1891 ] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 409 

of the Christian virtues succeeds another in general possession of 
men's souls. The new spirit, without crowding the old one off its 
beaten track, follows men to the new ways whither the provi- 
dence of God in the natural order has led them. " First the 
natural man," says St. Paul, " and then the spiritual." Different 
types of spirituality are brought forward by Almighty God to 
sanctify men in new conditions of life. Among the foremost of 
these are religious communities of men and women. Hence their 
duty to adjust themselves, as far as faith and discipline permit, 
to the circumstances of the times. The power of a religious 
community for good will be measured by its ability to elevate 
the natural to the supernatural without shocking it or thwart- 
ing it. 

Now, every one knows that this age differs materially from 
past ones. It differs by a wider spread of education and an 
uncontrollable longing after liberty, civil, political, and personal. 

Father Hecker was penetrated with the belief that the intel- 
ligence and liberty, whose well-ordered enjoyment he had wit- 
nessed in America, and which he loved so deeply himself, were 
divine invitations to the apostolate of the Holy Spirit. He was 
profoundly impressed with the certainty of the development, the 
extension, and the permanence of these- political and social 
changes ; and he knew that they demanded of men a personal 
independence of character far in advance of previous generations. 
And he knew, also, that for the sanctification of such men the 
aids of religion, though not changed in themselves, must be 
applied in a different spirit. Discipline and uniformity, though 
never to be dispensed with, must yield the first places to more 
interior virtues. The dominant influence must be docility to 
the guidance of the Holy Spirit dwelling within every re- 
generate soul. Applying this, towards the end of his life, to 
religious communities, Father Hecker wrote : " The controlling 
thought of my mind for many years has been that a body of 
free men who love God with all their might, and yet know how 
to cling together, could conquer this modern world of ours." The 
sentence may be taken as a brief description of the Paulist com- 
munity as he would have it. And it is easily seen why free men 
loving God with all their hearts are suited to conquer this 
modern world ; because men are determined to be free. 

The following extracts from notes, letters, and diaries more 
fully develop this idea: 

"A new religious order is an evidence and expression of an 



410 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [June, 

uncommon or special grace given to a certain number of souls, 
so that they may' be sanctified by the practice of particular vir- 
tues to meet the special needs of their epoch, and in this way 
to renew the spiritual life of the members of the Church and to 
extend her fold. A new community is this, or it has no reason 
for its existence. The means to accomplish its special work are 
both new and old. It should lay stress on the new, and not 
despise but also make use of the old. ' The wise householder 
bringeth forth from his treasury new things and old.' ' 

" The true Paulist is a religious man entirely dependent on 
God for his spiritual life ; he lives in community for the greater 
security of his own salvation and perfection, and to meet more 
efficiently the pressing needs of the Church and of humanity in 
his day." 

" The Church always finds in her wonderful fecundity where- 
with to supply the new wants which arise in every distinct epoch 
of society." 

" A new religious community, unless its activity is directed 
chiefly to supplying the special needs of its time, wears itself out 
at the expense of its true mission and will decline and fail." 

" We must realize the necessity of more explicitly bringing 
out our ideal if we would give a sufficient motive for our students 
and members, keep them in the community, bring about unity 
of action, and accomplish the good which the Holy Spirit demands 
at our hands. A Paulist, as a distinct species of a religious man, is 
one who is alive to the pressing needs of the Church at the present 
time, and feels called to labor specially with the means fitted to 
supply them. And what a member of another religious com- 
munity might do from that divine guidance which is external, the 
Paulist does from the promptings of the indwelling Holy Spirit." 

" A Paulist is a Christian man who aims at a Christian perfec- 
tion consistent with his natural characteristics and the type ot 
civilization of his country." 

" So far as it is compatible with faith and piety, I am for 
accepting the American civilization with its usages and customs ; 
leaving aside other reasons, it is the only way by which Catholicity 
can become the religion of our people. The character and spirit 
of our people, and their institutions, must find themselves at 
home in our Church in the way those of other nations have done ; 
and it is on this basis alone that the Catholic religion can make 
progress in our country." 

" What we need to-day is men whose spirit is that of the 
early martyrs. We shall get them in proportion as Catholics 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKEP. 411 

cultivate a spirit of independence and personal conviction. The 
highest development of religion in the soul is when it is assisted 
by free contemplation of the ultimate causes of things. Intelli- 
gence and liberty are the human environments most favorable 
to the deepening of personal conviction of religious truth, and 
obedience to the interior movements of an enlightened con- 
science. To a well-ordered mind the question of the hour is 
how the soul which aspires to the supernatural life shall utilize 
the advantages of liberty and intelligence." 

" The form of government of the United States is preferable 
to Catholics above other forms. It is more favorable than 
others to the practice of those- virtues which are the necessary 
conditions of the development of the religious life of man. This 
government leaves men a larger margin for liberty of action, 
and hence for co-operation with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
than any other government under the sun. With these popular 
institutions men enjoy greater liberty in working out their true 
destiny. The Catholic Church will, therefore, flourish all the 
more in this republican country in proportion as her representa- 
tives keep, in their civil life, to the lines of their republicanism." 
" The two poles of the Paulist character are : first, personal 
perfection. He must respond to the principles of perfection as 
laid down by spiritual writers. The backbone of a' religious 
community is the desire for personal perfection actuating its 
members. The desire for personal perfection is the foundation 
stone of a religious community ; when this fails, it crumbles to 
pieces ; when this ceases to be the dominant desire, the com- 
munity is tottering. Missionary works, parochial work, etc., are 
and must be made subordinate to personal perfection. These 
works must be done in view of personal perfection. The main 
purpose of each Paulist must be the attainment of personal per- 
fection by the practice of those virtues without which it cannot 
be secured mortification, self-denial, detachment, and the like. 
By the use of these means the grace of God makes the soul 
perfect. The perfect soul is one which is guided instinctively by 
the indwelling Holy Spirit. To attain to this is the end always 
to be aimed at in the practice of the virtues just named. 
Second, zeal for souls ; to labor for the conversion of the 
country to the Catholic faith by apostolic work. Parish work is 
a part, an integral part, of Paulist work, but not its principal or 
chief work and parish work should be done so as to form a 
part of the main aim, the conversion of the non-Catholic 
people of the country. In this manner we can labor to raise 



412 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER, [June, 

the standard of Catholic life here and throughout the world as a 
means of the general triumph of the Catholic faith." 

"I do not think that the principal characteristic of our 
Fathers and of our life should be poverty or obedience or any 
other special and secondary virtue, or even a cardinal virtue, 
but zeal for apostolic works. Oar vocation is apostolic conver- 
sion of souls to the faith, of sinners to repentance, giving mis- 
sions, defence of the Christian religion by conferences, lectures, 
sermons, the pen, the press, and the like works ; and in the 
interior, to propagate among men a higher and more spiritual 
life. To supply the special element the age and each, country 
demands, this is the peculiar work of religious communities : this 
heir field. It is a fatal mistake when religious attempt to do 
the ordinary work of the Church. Let religious practise prayer 
and study ; there will always be enough of the work to which 
they are called." 

" Are the Paulists Religious ? Yes, and no. Yes, of their 
age. No, of the past ; the words in neither case being taken in 
an exclusive meaning." 

" As regards the growth of the Paulist, he must develop in 
an apostolic vocation that is, in Apostolic works, Catholic, uni- 
versal ; not in works which confine his life's energies to a 
locality. He must do the work of the Church. The work of 
the Church, as Church, is to render her note of universality 
more and more conspicuous to render it sensible, palpable. 
This is the spirit of the Church in our country." 

The following refers to the second trait of the character 
above given : ' A Paulist is to emphasize individuality ; that is, 
to make individual liberty an essential element in every judg- 
ment that touches the life and welfare of the community and that 
of its members. Those who emphasize the community element 
are inclined to look upon this as a dangerous and impracticable 
experiment." 

" Individuality is an integral and conspicuous element in the 
life of the Paulist. This must be felt. One of the natural signs 
of the true Paulist is that he would prefer to suffer from the 
excesses of liberty rather than from the arbitrary actions of 
tyranny." 

" The individuality of a man cannot be too strong or his lib- 
erty too great when he is guided by the Spirit of God. But 
when one is easily influenced from below rather than from above, 
it is an evidence of the spirit of pride and that of the flesh, and 
not ' the liberty of the glory of the children of God.' ' 



1891..] THE LlFE OF FATHER HECKER. 413 

What follows touches the relation between the personal and 
common life : 

" Many other communities lay the main stress on community 
life as the chief element, giving it control as far as is consistent 
with fundamental individual right ; the Paulists, on the contrary, 
give the element of individuality the first place and put it in 
control as far as is consistent with the common life." 

".The spirit of the age has a tendency to run into extreme 
individuality, into eccentricity, license, revolution. But the typical 
life shows how individuality is consistent with community life. 
This is the aim of the United States in the political order, an 
aim and tendency which we have to guide, and not to check or 
sacrifice." 

"The element of individuality is taken into account in the 
Paulist essentially, integrally, practically. But when it comes into 
conflict with the common right, the individual must yield to the 
community: the common life outranks the individual life in case 
of conflict. But the individual life should be regarded as sacred 
and never be effaced. How this is to operate in particular cases 
belongs, where it is not a matter of rule, to the virtue of pru- 
dence to decide." 

" When the personality of the individual comes into conflict 
with the life of the community, the personal side must not be 
sacrificed, but made to yield to the common. In case of con-, 
flict, as before said, common life and interests outrank personal 
life and interests. It may be asked how, in the ordinary regu- 
lation and government of a community of this kind, the individ- 
ual and common elements are to be made to harmonize ? The 
answer is, that the one at the head of affairs must be a true 
Paulist that is to say, keenly sensitive of personal rights as well 
as appreciative of such as are common : where the question is 
not a point of rule, its decision is dependent on the practical 
sagacity and prudence of the superior more than on any minute 
regulations which can be given. He who interprets the acts of 
legitimate authority as an attack on his personal liberty, is as far 
out of the way as he who looks upon the exercise of reason as 
an attack on authority." 

11 How about persons of dull minds or of little spiritual am- 
bition coming into the use of this freedom ? First, no such per- 
son should be allowed to enter into the community : such persons 
should be exclqded. Second, a full-fledged Paulist should have 
passed a long enough novitiate to have acquired the special vir- 



4 14 THE LlFE OF FATHER HECKER. '[June,' 

tues which are necessary for his vocation. Absence of superna- 
tural light is the cause why a man is not fit to be a Paulist, 
for he cannot understand rightly or appreciate the value of the 
liberties he enjoys. He either is or he becomes a turbulent element 
in the community." 

" A Paulist, seeing that he, has so much individuality, should 
have a strong, nay, a very strong attrait for community life ; he 
should be fond of the Fathers' company, prefer them and their 
society when seeking proper recreation, feel the house to be 
his home and the community and its surroundings very dear to 
him ; in the routine of the day all the community exercises and 
labors are, in his judgment, of paramount obligation and im- 
portance. 

" The civil and political state of things of our age, particularly 
in the United States, fosters the individual life. But it should 
do so without weakening the community life : this is true indi- 
vidualism. The problem is to make the synthesis. The joint 
product is the Paulist." 

" A Paulist should cultivate personal freedom without detri- 
ment to the community spirit ; and, vice versa, the community 
spirit should not be allowed to be detrimental to personal free- 
dom. But when the individual life runs into eccentricity, license, 
and revolution, that is a violation and. sacrifice of the commu- 
nity life." 

" The duty of the Paulist Superior is to elicit the spontaneous 
zeal of the Fathers and to further it with his authority. For lack 
of one's own initiative that of another may be used, and herein 
the Suiperior ofters a constant help. But the centre of action is 
individual, is in the soul moved by the Holy Ghost; not in the 
Superior of the community or in the authorities of the Church. 
And if he be moved by the Holy Spirit, he will be most obedient 
to his superior ; and he will not only be submissive to the authority 
of the Church, but careful to follow out her spirit." 

In explaining the routine of daily life Father Hecker said : 
" The member pf a community who does not make the common 
exercises [of religion] his first care is derelict of his duty. A 
common exercise should be preferred to all other devotional prac- 
tices or occupations whatever; as far as possible all other ex- 
ercises ought to be made subordinate to common ones, which 
should never be omitted without permission of the superior." 

Father Hecker was once asked : " Which would you prefer : to 
have a rule and manner of life adapted to a large number of men, 
embracing many of a uniform type, men good enough for average 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHRR HECKEP. 415 

work, intended to include and seeking to retain persons of medi- 
ocre spirit, and having a dim understanding of our peculiar insti- 
tute ? or would you prefer the rule to be made only for a select 

body, composed of such men as and , and the like ? ' ' 

[Answer:) "I should prefer the rule to be made for the smaller 
and more select body of men. Religious vocations are not com- 
mon, but special. It is a fatal mistake for religious to take the 
place of secular priests." 

No one can be misled by what he has read in the foregoing 
pages into the notion that Father Hecker had any other aim than 
the entire consecration of liberty and intelligence to the influence 
of the Holy Spirit. To know Father Hecker well was to be more 
deeply impressed with his longing for the reign of the Spirit of God 
in men's souls than even with his love of human liberty. In his 
esteem the worth of the latter was altogether in proportion to its 
aptitude for the former. His love of liberty was that of a means 
to an end the perfect oblation of the inner man to God. He 
aimed at individuality because of his belief in the action of the 
Holy Ghost in the individual soul. Such action, he was quick to 
maintain, is given to every Christian, but it is to be looked for in 
a high degree in those who are called by a special vocation to 
assist independent characters to find the spirit of God within 
them ; or, if already known, to obey His direction implicitly. 
Paulists -after Father Hecker's heart would be men whom experi- 
ence and study had rendered fit instruments for disseminating the 
knowledge of the ways of God the Holy Ghost in men's hearts ; 
for instructing the faithful how to distinguish the voice of God 
in the soul from the vagaries of the imagination or the emotions 
of passion, and able to stimulate a ready and generous response 
to every call of God from within. 

It is because of this indwelling of the Holy Spirit in every 
regenerate soul that Father Hecker so vigorously maintained that 
the freedom of the individual is a golden opportunity for the 
Catholic apostolate, according to the text " Where the Spirit of 
the Lord is, there is liberty." Freedom, he affirmed, was in ab- 
solute consonance with Catholic doctrine. But he furthermore 
insisted that it has become the world-wide aspiration of men by 
interposition of Divine Providence and with a view to their higher 
sanctification ; and however grossly abused, it is yet a direct 
suggestion to an apostolate whose prospects are in the highest 
degree promising. And this* is the answer to the question 
which reasonable persons may well ask, namely: Why should 
VOL. LIU. 27 



4i 6 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [June, 

the new institution differ so radically from the old ones, which 
were certainly works of God ? Because the change of men's 
lives in the entire secular and natural order is in the direction 
of personal liberty and independence, and this change is a radi- 
cal one. " The Eternal-Absolute is ever creating new forms of 
expressing itself." If, indeed, *rnen's aspirations for liberty and 
intelligence be all from the powers of darkness, then let every 
longing for freedom be repressed and condemned, crushed by 
authority in the state, anathematized by the Church. But if 
men are yearning to be free, however blindly, because God 
by their freedom would make them holier, then let us hail 
the new order as . a blessing; and let those who love freedom 
and, src worthy of it use its privileges to advance themselves 
and their brethren nearer to immediate union with the Holy 
Spirit. 

It has been seen that the important question whether the 
end of the new community would be better attained with the 
usual religious vows or without them was decided in the nega- 
tive. They were not definitely rejected in the beginning ; but 
starting without them, the Fathers were willing to allow expe- 
rience to show whether or not they should be resumed. The 
lapse of time but confirmed the view that the voluntary agree- 
ment and the bjnd of fraternal charity were, under the circum- 
stances, preferab'e as securities for stability and incentives to 
holiness. 

There can be little doubt that Father Hecker's ideas on 
this feature of the religious state had been greatly modified be- 
tween the writing of the Questions of the Soul and the end of 
the struggle in Rome. Much is said in that book of commun- 
ity life in the Catholic Church, and generally as rendered stable 
and its spirit of sacrifice made complete by the vows; and in 
the statement given in Rome to his five chosen advisers, he 
says that one reason for writing the volume named was to in- 
duce young men to enter the religious orders as the only means 
of perfection meaning orders under vows. But when he was 
released from his cwn obligations and was confronted with the 
choice of means for following his vocation, the horizon broaden- 
ed away until he could see beyond the institutions and tra- 
ditions in which he had lived since entering the novitiate at St. 
Trond. His ideas of perfection in its relation to states of life 
undciwent a change. Therefore he said, Let us wait for the 
unmistakable will of God before we bind ourselves with vows 
amidst a free people. He never depreciated the evident value 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 417 

of these obligations ; indeed, he seldom was heard to speak of 
them. But he knew from close observation the- truth of the 
words of the Jesuit Avancinus : 

" The net (St. Matthew xiii. 44) is the Catholic Church, 
or, to take a narrower view, it means the station in which you 
are placed As in a net all kinds of fish are to be found, so in 
your position, as in all others, there are good and bad Chris- 
tians. . . . Should yours be a sacred calling, you are not, on 
that account, either the better or the more secure ; your sanctity 
and your salvation depend on yourself, not on your calling." 
(Meditations, Fourteenth Friday after Pentecost.) 

It never entered into the minds of the Fathers to question 
the doctrine and practice of the Church concerning vows. But 
personal experience proves the lesson of history, that what re- 
ligion needs is not so much holy states of life as holy men and 
women. 

Looking back into the past, Father Hecker saw St. Philip 
Neri, to whom he had a great devotion and for whose spiritual 
doctrine he had a high admiration. The following is from an 
exponent of that doctrine, and is much in point: 

" Although our Fathers and lay brothers [Oratorians] make 
no vow of obedience, as do religious, they are, nevertheless, no 
way inferior in the perfection of this virtue to those who profess 
it in the cloister with solemn vows. They supply the want of 
vows with love, with voluntary promptitude, and perfection in 
obeying ' every wish of the superior. And it is a thing for 
which we must indeed thank God, that without the obligation 
of obeying under pain of sin, without fear of restraint or other 
punishment (except that of expulsion in case of contumacy),, all 
the subjects are prompt in this obedience, even in things most 
humiliating and severe, according to the terms of the rule. AH 
take pleasure in meeting the wishes of the superior, etc." (The 
Excellences of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London : Burns 
& Gates, p. 136.) 

Father Hecker did not dream that by relinquishing the vows 
he and his companions in the Paulist community had cast away 
a single incentive to virtue capable of moving such men as they, 
or had even failed to secure any of the insignia adorning the 
great host of men and women in the Catholic Church whose 
entire being has been given up to the divine service. " The true 
Paulist," said he once, ''should be fit and ready to take the 



4i 8 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [June, 

solemn vows at any moment." He felt strongly the truth of the 
following words of the Jesuit Lallemant : 

"A desire and hunger after our perfection, a determined will 
to be constantly tending towards it with all our strength let this 
be always our chief object and aur greatest care. Let us bear in 
mind that this care is more of the essence of religion \_i.e., of a 
religious order] than vows themselves ; for it is on this that our 
whole spiritual progress depends. Herein consists the difference 
between true religious and those who are so only in appearance 
and in the sight of men. Without this care to advance in per- 
fection the religious state does not secure our salvation ; but 
nothing is more common than to deceive ourselves on this point." 
(The Spiritual Doctrine of 'Father Louis Lallemant, S.J. New 
York: Sadlier & Co., p. in.) 

With regard to stability, men of stable character need no 
vow to guarantee adherence to a divine vocation, and men of 
feeble character may indeed vow themselves into an outward 
stability, but it is of little fruit to themselves personally, and 
their irremovability is often of infinite distress to their superi- 
ors and brethren. The episcopate is the one religious order 
founded by Our Lord, and its members are in the highest state 
of evangelical perfection ; yet they are neither required nor advised 
to take the oaths or vows of religious orders. 

Neither Father Hecker nor any of his associates had the least 
aversion to the vows. On the contrary, they had lived con- 
tentedly under them for many of their most active years, and it 
will be remembered of Father Hecker that he never found them 
irksome, had never known a temptation against them. 

The question which arose was a choice between two kinds 
of community, the one fast bound by external obligations to the 
Church in the form of vows, placing the members in a relation of 
peculiar strictness to the Canon Law; or another kind, in which 
the members trusted wholly to the strength of Divine grace, and 
their own conscious purpose never to give up the fight for per- 
fection ; which of these states would better facilitate the action 
of the Holy Spirit in the present Providence of God; and 
which of them would tend to produce a type of character 
fitted to evangelize a nation of independent and self-reliant men 
and women? The free community *was chosen. 

No doubt this involved some risk of criticism, particularly in 
the beginning, for it was a wonder to many that men should 
organize for a life -long endeavor after perfection and not 
swear to it, especially as none of the free communities existing 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 419 

in Europe had houses in America, for the Sulpitians belong to 
the secular clergy. And there was also danger of unworthy 
subjects creeping in under favor of a freedom they were unfit 
to enjoy. For it may be reproached against us that we are 
apt to be victimized by men ruled by caprice, indulging in 
extravagant schemes or deluded by wandering fancies ; and also 
by superiors who would let everybody do as he pleased. No 
doubt such dangers are to be guarded against. But vowed 
communities do not claim to be free from difficulties. No state 
of life and no organization claims to be so perfect as totally to 
prevent abuse of power on the part of superiors or caprice and 
sloth on the part of members. 

Both kinds of organized religious life have their difficulties : 
the one, the martinet superior and the routine subject ; the other, 
the capricious subject and the lax superior. In one kind the 
bond of union as well as the stimulus of endeavor is mainly obe- 
dience, fraternal charity assisting ; in the other it is mainly fra- 
ternal charity, obedience assisting ; each has to overcome obsta- 
cles peculiar to itself. 

What has been said in this chapter, besides serving to exhibit 
Father Hecker's principles as a founder, will be, we trust, a suffi- 
cient answer to the silly delusion which the Paulists have encoun- 
tered in some quarters, that their society tolerates a soft life and 
supposes in its members no high vocation to perfection ; or that 
the voluntary principle allows them a personal choice in regard to 
the devotional exercises, permitting them to attend or not attend 
this or that meditation or devotion laid down in the rule, as " the 
spirit moves them." This is as plain an error as another one 
which had much currency for years and which is not yet every- 
where corrected : that the Paulist community was open to con- 
verts alone and received none others. 



42O A CONVERT FROM JUDAISM. [June, 



A CONVERT FROM JUDAISM. 

THE subject of this sketch Avas born over fifty years ago in 
London (West End), England. Her parents were Jews, who 
adhered strictly to the precepts of their religion, and possessed 
an abundance of the goods of this world. She received a good 
Scriptural name, and her surname was that of a near friend of 
our Lord of whom frequent mention is made in the New Testa- 
ment. She was the seventeenth child in a family of eighteen, and 
was born blind. Under the care of an able surgeon, after nine 
operations, she could see imperfectly, with the aid of glasses of 
extraordinary power. She was taught to read and write and sew, 
but was never skilful in these accomplishments. During her child- 
hood her father moved with his family to the Island of Jamaica, 
giving her at this time a house and land, that on account of her 
affliction she might be well provided for. This property was taken 
from her when, a few years later, her father settled in New York 
and met with financial reverses. 

Books were her chief diversion, and she read all that she could 
find, even borrowing of the servants, who were often of Catholic 
faith. These books, being mostly devotional, aroused her interest 
to such a degree that she sought a Catholic church and attended 
the services day after day, hoping to learn more of this religion, 
to which she was so strangely attracted. She literally haunted 
the churches, stealing away from her home and returning at all 
hours. Finally, approaching a priest, the Rev. Dr. Cummings, 
pastor of St. Stephen's Church, and confiding her difficulties to 
him, she asked for instruction in the Catholic faith. Dr. Cum- 
mings very kindly placed her in charge of his sister, a saintly 
woman, who gave her all possible aid in her search after truth ; 
ministering also to her temporal needs, of which she was quite 
unmindful. 

With characteristic impatience she asked to be received into 
the church without delay, which Dr. Cummings promised on con- 
dition that she would first inform her parents of her intention a 
most difficult task, as she well knew the bitter opposition that 
would follow. After earnest deliberation she decided upon the 
following plan. One morning, before starting for Mass, she told 
one of her sisters that she was about to become a Catholic, ob- 
taining her promise that she would communicate the fact to her 



1891.] A CONVERT FROM JUDAISM. 421 

father and mother. Having thus satisfied her conscience, she 
returned with a light heart, informing Dr. C. that she had done 
as he required. He therefore at once baptized her, and she be- 
came a happy Christian, filled with faith and zeal for the church. 
Making no effort to conceal her joy, when at home she sang hymns 
to the Blessed Virgin and practised devotions most unacceptable 
to a Jewish household. But she bore the sign of the cross, and 
each day brought new trials. She cheerfully fasted all day in 
order to receive Holy Communion, leaving her home before the 
family were up and returning when she would be unobserved at 
evening. One comfort after another was taken from her, until 
at last she was forced to seek temporary refuge elsewhere. 
Through Dr. Cummings's kindness she was sent to a convent 
in Canada, where a home had been offered her, but after 
a few months her father asked for her return to his home, 
promising to care for her and allow her the privileges of her 
religion. He was extremely urgent, and she journeyed home 
again, only to find a renewal of the experience of the past 

She was again deprived of religious liberty, and again left her 
father's house, this time never to return, excepting occasionally to 
see her mother and at her father's death. She was evidently unwel- 
come, and became as a stranger to her brothers and sisters. She 
was unwilling to receive the shelter of any institution, public or 
private, and tried in various ways to earn a living, working hard 
but seldom with success. A voice of rare power and sweetness 
was her one gift, but, without the means of cultivating it, was of 
no practical use to her. Among her business enterprises was a 
newspaper stand, but being oblivious to all that did not appear 
to her in the direct line of vision through her extraordinary 
glasses, her box was often emptied of her earnings by mischievous 
boys while she was receiving money from her customers. She 
was for several years nursery governess in a Catholic family, 
where the children were greatly attached to hen She had for a 
while the c;>re of infants from the foundling asylum. She was 
one of Dr. Warner's first agents for corsets. She kept a small 
store, selling books and various useful articles, but owed more 
in the end than she ever received. Always working, always 
poor, and always active in charities, she served our Lord in 
those less fortunate than herself, and received from her religion the 
great consolations usually accorded to so zealous a Christian, 
When apparently without resources of any kind, I learned one 
day that she was paying the rent for a woman in destitute cir- 
cumstances who had several small children and a husband who 



422 A CONVERT FROM JUDAISM. [June, 

was numbered among the " unworthy poor," for whom she 
probably begged. 

All her life she would give of the little she possessed, ex- 
cepting fine wearing apparel ; when this fell to her lot she 
accepted it as her natural inheritance. She never begged for 
herself, but sometimes borrowed' small sums when she had fasted 
for several days and hunger compelled her. Those of other 
creeds asked: "Why does not the church take care of her?" 
But she would be cared for in her own way, and kind Catho- 
lic friends assisted her, one lady paying her rent for many years 
that she might enjoy her own little home, humble though it 
was Others helped her in various ways, most unexpected as- 
sistance arriving in times of her greatest need from people far 
away whom she had not seen for years. One day, wishing to 
visit a friend who lived at a distance, and having no money, she 
went to the station and sat among the waiting crowd. I do not 
know why she did this, as it is quite contrary to the usual custom 
of people under the circumstances. After a while, to her surprise, 
she saw beside her on the seat a small roll of bills, and, seeking 
an owner for it among those who sat near her, she was as- 
sured by all that it did not belong to them and that she had 
probably dropped it. The sum was just what she needed, and as 
no one claimed it she joyfully purchased a ticket and took the 
train for the desired destination. Her Jewish traits were always 
predominant, tempered and softened by her frequent reception of 
the sacraments of the church. During the latter years of her life 
she was afflicted with a painful and incurable disease. Her 
strength gradually failing, she was confined to her bed and de- 
pendent entirely upon the charity of friends ; this occasionally 
disappointing, she informed me that she was sometimes deprived 
of the only article of food she could eat, even on one occasion 
being obliged to return it to the grocer because she could not 
pay for it. At this juncture her brothers and sisters came to her 
relief, and aided her to procure the comforts she needed. Her 
brother selected a room at the Astor Hospital, it being considered 
best to remove her to that place, she reluctantly consenting to 
the change under the impression that it was a Catholic institution. 
She was greatly distressed on discovering her mistake, and begged to 
be taken to her brother's house. But her stay was brief, as she died 
within a week. 

Two days before her death one of her former pupils was 
impelled to go to her, a distance of many miles, without know- 
ing of her extreme illness nor of her removal to a hospital. 



1891.] A CON VER T FR OM J UDA ISM. 423 

She was overjoyed to see her young friend, who, finding her 
so near her end, informed her old confessor, Father Freeman, 
S.J., who hastened to her bedside, hearing her confession and 
sending the parish priest to give her the last sacraments. In 
order to reconcile her to her new surroundings, her sister had been 
advised not to visit her for a day or two, so she died as she had 
lived, away from kindred and friends, but strengthened and consoled 
by the church she had loved so well and for which she had for- 
saken father and mother and all who had been dear to her in early 
life. She had been cared for as the lilies of the field, though she 
had tried to "toil and spin," and I trust she is now enjoying 
an eternal home, " not made with hands," such as " eye hath not 
seen nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to 
conceive," and rest such as God gives to those who suffer patiently 
for him and serve him faithfully on earth. The funeral of this poor 
girl took place at the church in Ninety- seventh Street Two men 
bore the coffin within the door, where it was met by the white-robed 
priest and an acolyte bearing a censer, who proceeded up the aisle, 
and following the coffin were the Jewish relatives of the deceased, 
also two Protestant and two Catholic friends a most remarkable 
procession, and one never to be forgotten. It occurred to me that 
^ur Lord could not but be pleased to see so many children of 
Israel, his chosen people, assembled in his church to show respect 
and affection for one of their own who had left them to become 
his disciple. These relatives, with one exception, followed her to 
her grave in a Catholic cemetery, having everything done accord- 
ing to the ritual of the church, her brother paying the expenses of 
her funeral. May our dear Lord reward them with the greatest 
of all gifts the gift of faith. C. S. H. 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [June, 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 

A VALUABLE article on " Tfie Church and the Workman" has 
been written by the Archbfshop of Capua, Cardinal Capecelatro, 
for Merry England. The importance which the distinguished author 
attaches to the subject may be seen from his concluding words : 
" God Almighty, I hold, has so constituted the Christian life that 
in every age, or rather every series of ages, it appears with a 
new apologia, due to the new conditions of the race. Now, in our 
day, if I am not deceived, this new apologia will be the product 
of the Social Question. That question, formidable in the eyes of 
all, will surely make a great stride, a giant's stride, possibly before 
the old century dies and the new century dawns. And that pro- 
gress will most certainly be made in the name of Jesus Christ 
living in his church. To many an old apologia . . . will be 
added the fresh apologia, derived from a Social Question solved by 
Catholicism and by the science it inspires." This extract indi- 
cates the spirit of the cardinal's utterances, a spirit similar to that 
which animates our own cardinal and the Archbishop of West- 
minster, to both of whom he refers, as well as to a prelate less 
well known to our readers, Monsignor Kopp, who took a leading 
part, in his own name and that of the Pope, in the Berlin Labor 
Conference. For Cardinal Manning he has the warmest words 
of praise, because he has not hesitated to put himself at the head 
of Christian Socialism, and for " going in advance of contempor- 
ary philanthropists, economists, philosophers, in his study of the 
possible means for restoring the dignity and amending the condi- 
tion of the poor." 

# # * 

The quotations which we have made show clearly the attitude 
of Cardinal Capecelatro towards the Social Question of our time. 
While recognizing the. fact that men are unequal in natural capacity 
and ability, and that as a consequence their respective shares of 
worldly goods will also be unequal, he maintains that the ten- 
dency of the church and of the doctrine which she teaches is to 
lessen, and in the end to remove that inequality ; to what degree, 
however, this inequality will be removed no human intellect, the 
cardinal thinks, can pronounce ; the more fully, however, the 
doctrines of the church are embraced, acted upon, and realized 
the greater will be the union that will exist between different 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 425 

classes and the less the distance between them. The present 
evils are due to the imperfect recognition of the church's doc- 
trines on human equality, all men being- of the same nature, hav- 
ing the same destiny, and being given the same means to arrive 
at it. But a clearer understanding of these doctrines and a more 
practical realization of them are to be looked for, and signs of it 
already appear ; so much, in fact, has already been done that the 
cardinal concludes with the hope expressed, in the words already 
quoted, that we may see the church working out a complete 
solution of the social problem. The cardinal, of course, condemns 
any doctrine which denies that man is with respect to other men 
the true owner of the things he possesses justly, but maintains in 
the clearest language that it is absolutely false and anti- Christian 
to assert that the rich man is free to spend according to his whim 
the things he calls his own. After providing for his own 
necessities in his own condition, he owes, by the express com- 
mand of Jesus Christ, what remains to the poor. There are other 
points of interest in this article, but enough has jbeen said to 
show that the cardinal is in full accord with his English and Amer- 
ican colleagues in the Sacred College, and that although the social 
and industrial conditions of the countries are very different, yet 
there is an equal recognition of the importance of the labor ques- 
tion and of the proper attitude of the church towards it. Mean- 
time, the Pope's long-expected encyclical on the social question 
will very soon be published, and we have no doubt that it will 
confirm and develop with the highest authority the general posi- 
tions of Cardinal Capecelatro. 

* * * 

No event of importance in the conflict between capital and 
labor has taken place in Great Britain since our last. There 
have been strikes, not for principle, however, but for increase of 
wages. Riots have occurred at Bradford, but the strike was 
rather the occasion than the cause of them the right of public 
meeting being the real point in dispute. For the present there 
is a lull of expectancy a looking forward to the report of the 
Royal Commission and to the evidence to be laid before it. 
The new unionists have recognized their inability to cope with 
their antagonists, and are devoting their energies to the perfect- 
ing of the organization and the federation of skilled and un- 
skilled labor. On the other side, their successful antagonists in 
the recent battle the Shipping Federation are seeking to se- 
cure the fruits of victory by the bestowal of benefits upon the 
men in their employment bribing them with paltry bribes, the 



426 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [June, 

Unionists say. Every seaman or fireman who takes a Feder- 
ation ticket (for which he pays one shilling for registration) will 
by virtue of that ticket, without any further payment, effect an 
insurance to the amount of 2$ should he be killed or lost at 
sea while serving on a Federation ship. To obtain a larger sum 
payment will be necessary. It is hoped, too, that by means of 
further arrangements, insurance against partial disablement may 

be effected. 

# * * 

Although greater quiet reigns, the interest in industrial ques- 
tions has by no means abated. The Labor Commission is just 
beginning to examine witnesses, and several committees of Par- 
liament are engaged upon particular branches of the question 
such as the hours of railway servants, the age of juvenile em- 
ployment Politicians of both parties are busy in imparting to the 
public, and especially to the electors, their ideas of the remedies 
called for. We have already referred to the plan proposed by the 
Conservative Under- Secretary for India, Sir John Gorst. A former 
member of Mr. Gladstone's last ministry, Mr. Mundella, has 
come forward to speak for official Liberals. His proposals in- 
clude not merely the free education, but the feeding of poor 
children. For it is one of the strange phenomena of the pres- 
ent social system that thousands of children who come to school 
under compulsion of law come without breakfast and dependent 
upon charity for their dinner. Charitable organizations have 
taken the matter in hand ; but in defect of these Mr. Mundella 
would have the state supply the meals a long step indeed on 
the socialistic road. With reference to the legal eight-hour day 
Mr. Mundella speaks with befitting caution, but a proposal 
which he makes with reference to strikes seems worthy of great- 
er attention than it has received. As into railroad accidents 
and wrecks inquiries are held by commissioners appointed by 
the Board of Trade, so Mr. Mundella would have the powers 
of the board extended so that it should hold similar inquiries 
with reference to every great strike or lockout, in order to learn 
the exact facts and to make them public. Free land and tem- 
perance reform form parts of Mr. Mundella's programme ; the most 
startling recommendation, however, is the last that the pro- 
gressive income-tax which has been adopted in Switzerland 
should be tried in England, so that the richer a man is the 
more should he pay in proportion to his wealth, not merely for 
the old and well-recognized objects of state care and solicitude, 
but for the educating, feeding, and housing of the poorer citi- 
zens and their children. 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 427 

A Conservative and a Gladstonian having spoken, the Lib- 
eral-Unionists could not be silent. Mr. Chamberlain's proposals 
deal with another aspect of the question. He is struck with the 
hard and painful lot which awaits the poor laborer after a life 
of toil and poverty. Of the old people in the United King- 
dom above the age of sixty, one in seven is in receipt of parish 
relief, either in the workhouse or as an out- door pauper. That 
this should be the only outcome of the toilsome days of so 
many poor creatures Mr. Chamberlain considers to be a public 
calamity, and therefore it becomes a part of the state's care that, 
if possible, means should be taken to prevent it. He therefore 
proposes a plan the details of which we have not space to 
give which, if carried out, would enable each individual to re- 
ceive at the age of sixty-five a fixed annual annuity sufficient for 
decent support for the remainder of his days. The state's share 
in this would be that it should pay upon each individual's de- 
posits a higher rate of interest than the state itself could earn ; 
for this course the justification is, in addition to that already 
mentioned, the saving which would be effected in the poor-rates. 
This proposal is similar in general outline to the German 
method of state insurance, but differs in the fact that it is not 
to be compulsory. 

* * * 

The most important event affecting the labor movement is 
setting aside the May-day demonstration, of which it is difficult to 
appraise the correct value the International Congress of Miners, 
which has been held at Paris. This is the second meeting- of 

o 

this body, the first having been held at Jolimont, in Belgium, 
last year. The object in view is to extend the sphere of organi- 
zation so that it shall not merely comprise all the miners of 
a single nation, but those of all other competing nations. The 
importance of this it is, perhaps, somewhat difficult for Americans 
to realize, we being out of the reach, under existing circumstan- 
ces, of external competition. But it seems to be clear that the 
legal eight-hour day depends for its success on an interna- 
tional agreement. For how can England, for example, compete 
with Belgium if the miners in the one country work twelve hours 
a day and in the other only eight ? The necessity of this being 
recognized, an earnest effort is b^ing made to bring about so 

desirable an end. 

* # # 

Those efforts, however, were crowned with but moderate suc- 
cess. The first object was to form a permanent federation of all 



428 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW, [June, 

the miners of Europe. But, to begin with, there were only five 
countries represented : France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and 
England. A more serious difficulty arose as to the system of 
voting. The English delegates represented nearly one-half of 
the total numbers who had sent delegates to the congress, and 
consequently if the power of voting on any permanent commit- 
tee were to be regulated by the number of the miners the voting 
power of the English delegates would be very great. To this 
the other nations were opposed, and wished that the voting should 
be by nationalities, each nation having one vote. As no agree- 
ment could be reached on this point, the permanent federation 
remains unaccomplished. A committee, however, has been ap- 
pointed to devise a settlement of this question. That such a 
difficulty should have arisen in these preliminary stages shows 
that, however desirable international federation may be, the obsta- 
cles to its attainment are many, and that, if they are to be re- 
moved, no small degree of tact, wisdom, and self-sacrifice will 
be required. 

;,..# 

But although unsuccessful in this, on other points good work 
was done, or, at all events, bad work was prevented. The move- 
ment on foot for an international strike of miners, in order to 
attain an eight-hour day, was brought before the congress by 
the Belgian delegates. The proposal was discussed at length : 
and in the end it was decided that while an eight-hour day 
was desirable, it would be unwise and inexpedient for its attain- 
ment to take such a violent measure as an international strike, 
for such a strike would involve the whole community ; would 
bring about in a short time the total cessation of all business : 
and in this way the sympathy of all classes would be alienated. 
It was recognized that no strike can be successful unless it enlists 
the active sympathy of the public at large. Accordingly it was 
decided that the question should be pressed upon the govern- 
ments of each country by all legal and constitutional means,- and 
that it should only be after the failure of these that so drastic a 
proposal as a universal strike should be entertained. 
* * * 

A more positive result of the Congress was the decision to af- 
ford pecuniary assistance to the Belgian miners in their endeav- 
ors to secure an amelioration of their lot. And truly there is a 
rn'ost urgent call for such amelioration. One fact alone will 
show this. A miner in England for a shorter day's work gets 
six shillings ; a miner in Belgium gets two shillings. The cost 



1891 ] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 429 

of living, indeed, is less, but by no means in the proportion of 
three to one ; and as a consequence the means of support of a 
Belgian miner are barely sufficient to enable him to prolong a 
miserable existence. The congress recognized that the Belgians 
were entitled to the fullest assistance in the strike which they 
were contemplating, especially as the means of seeking redress 
are not open to them on account of the restricted franchise ex- 
isting in Belgium. Whether this promise has been kept seems 
doubtful in the light of recent intelligence. 

* * * 

The Berlin Labor Conference summoned by the German 
Emperor formed an epoch, it was thought, in the labor move- 
ment, and it may be interesting to put on record the results of 
that conference up to the present time, so far as it has had- re- 
sults. For it would appear that in Austria, Belgium, France, 
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain no special 
legislative action has yet been taken to carry out the recom- 
mendations of the conference. In Hungary the Sunday Rest 
Act and an act for the relief of workmen incapacitated by ill- 
ness have been passed. In Denmark a law stopping unneces- 
sary and regulating necessary Sunday labor has been recently 
passed. In Switzerland there has been legislation limiting the 
working hours of railway servants. In Belgium and Switzerland 
laws are already in force in harmony with the principal recom- 
mendations of the conference. In India an approximation has 
been made to some of the regulations suggested, while in 
England the question of the age of juvenile labor is under dis- 
cussion. As- is well known, the English Factory Act passed 
many years ago had embodied most of the results at which the 
conference arrived. 

* * * 

The second reading of the Intoxicating Liquors (Ireland) 
Bill, which reading has been carried by a majority of 248 to 94, 
forms the chief feature in the Temperance movement during the 
past month. This bill provides for permanent enforcement of 
the Irish Sunday Closing Act of 1878, an act which was orig- 
inally passed for four years as an experiment, and which, on 
account of its good results, has been renewed year by year 
since that time. By the present bill, moreover, the five cities 
of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and Waterford, which were 
not included in the former bill, are now brought within the 
scope of its provisions., so that for the whole of Ireland the 
public- houses will be closed throughout Sunday. In addition to 



430 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [June. 

this the bill provides for their closing on Saturdays at 9 o'clock 
P.M., and also that a person shall not be considered to be a 
bona-fide traveller unless he has travelled a distance of at least 
six miles instead of three, which the law fixed as sufficient hith- 
erto. Such are the main provisions of this bill, which will place 
Ireland as well as Scotland and Wales in advance of England in 
this respect. For nowhere in England are the public-houses 
closed during the whole of Sunday; in fact, it is said that the 
attempt to do so for London would bring the strongest ministry 

to utter ruin. 

* # * 

Not merely is the actual success of the measure in the 
House of Commons a matter of importance and interest, but also 
the. course of events which has led up to that success. As 
we have said, the bill has now been in force in a mitigated 
form for thirteen years, and the experience thus gaine'd has formed 
the ground for the strengthening and extending its operation 
and rendering its provisions permanent. The genuine character 
of this experience has been ascertained by evidence elicited by 
a Select Committee appointed for the purpose of inquiry into 
the matter. Before this committee priests and ministers of all 
denominations, coroners, police officers, magistrates (with the 
exception of one or two of the police magistrates in Dublin), unan- 
imously testified that Sunday closing had succeeded in Ire- 
land and that it ought to be continued. So evident has been 
this success that the government announced that, provided cer- 
tain amendments were made in committee, they would give their 
assistance in order to carry it through the remaining stages ; 
and this is a matter of moment, for a private member has to 
encounter so many difficulties that the assistance of the govern- 
ment becomes almost necessary. 

# # * 

We do not wish to trench upon politics, yet we think it well 
that the attitude of the present representatives of Ireland towards 
this question should be known. Last year when the question 
came before the House, of 42 Irish members who voted (and there 
are 105 in all) 28 voted for the bill and 14 against. Of the select 
committee to which we have referred, which took evidence and 
reported in favor of the bill, eight of the members were Irish. 
This year the rejection of the bill was moved by an anti-Par- 
nellite and seconded by a Parnellite. Mr. Sexton made, to use 
Mr. Parnell's words, " an eloquent protest " against the bill, which 
protest Mr. Parnell himself emphasized and amplified. Three Irish 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 431 

members spoke in favor of the bill and ten against it, and it was 
due to Mr. Parnell's taking advantage of the forms of the House 
that it was not at once referred to the Standing Committee on 
Law, and its progress was thereby delayed. When it came to 
the vote the members were divided, but as the division list has 
not been published we cannot say on which side the larger num- 
ber voted. The opposition is being continued, and a week later 
the bill would have been advanced a further step had it not been 
for the objections of two anti-Parnellite members. Mr. Sexton 
promises to further the progress of the measure on condition 
that it is so modified that in the five exempted cities the public- 
houses may be allowed to be open from 3 to 5 on Sunday 
afternoon and until 10 on Saturday night. 



Although the friends of temperance will rejoice at the pro- 
gress of their principles, as evidenced by the legislative acts, the 
testimony of statistics will be far from satisfactory to them. Dur- 
ing the past year in Great Britain there has been much increase 
in the consumption of alcohol, and, worst of all, in the con- 
sumption of spirits. In England there was an increase of 9 per 
cent, over the high figures of last year. In Scotland and in Ire- 
land the increase was only 7^ per cent. Never before in England 
has the consumption reached so high a level, whereas for Ireland, as 
well as Scotland, it has frequently been reached before and some- 
times passed. In France also there has been a great increase, 
the tax on alcohol having produced nearly five million dollars 
more than it did last year. In some of the French towns this 
increase is quite startling. For example, at Nimes it has been as 
much as 31 per cent., at Lille 24 per cent, at Rennes 14 per 
cent., at Caen 10 per cent. Looking at these figures the friends 
of sobriety must not allow apparent success to lead them to any 
relaxation of their efforts for the good of their fellow-man. 



In announcing its intention to make education in the elemen- 
tary schools -completely free, the government has taken the step 
which was rendered necessary by the establishment in 1876 of 
compulsory education. Mr. Forster's Elementary Education Act 
of 1870 forms the basis of the present system. Under it voluntary 
schools and Board schools divide the ground between them, the 
Board schools representing the secular system of education, while 
VOL. LIU. 28 



432 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [June, 

the voluntary schools insist upon religious training and instruction, 
the "rights" of those who object to this being safeguarded by 
the Conscience Clause. By arranging their schools in accordance 
with the act of 1870, the Catholic bishops of England, Ireland, 
and Scotland agreed to accept state aid and state inspection for 
the secular branches of study? Cardinal Manning in his little 
work on National Education has expressed this attitude of 
the Bishops : " Where public money is received there must be 
public audit, inspection, and a share in management ; this is 
already exercised by the Department of the Committee of Privy 
Council in virtue of government grants." He further says that 
"some such defined or proportionate scheme of management 
under similar conditions by local authority would in no way 
diminish the independence of voluntary schools in matters ot 
religion and morals.'' The official examinations have given 
public testimony in favor of the Catholic schools. Each 
school, as the law now stands, whether a Board or a voluntary 
school, derived its support from three sources, the Board school 
from the local rates, the contribution of the imperial government, 
and the children's pence ; the voluntary school, instead of the 
local rates, has to rely upon voluntary subscriptions, but has 
equally with the Board school a contribution from the imperial 
government and the children's pence. What the government 
proposes to do now is itself to pay the children's pence in Board 
and voluntary schools alike, and thus to relieve the parents of the 
entire burden, except in so far as they are tax or rate payers. 



The Board schools have had a great advantage over the vol- 
untary schools, and, it would appear, will retain that advantage, 
because they can make up any deficiency by the power of levy- 
ing rates, whereas the voluntary school has to solicit the free- 
will offerings of the charitably disposed. As we have said, the 
Board schools are the result of the efforts of those who wish to 
have the education imparted by the state made entirely secular. 
They made, in 1870, a fierce onslaught upon religious education, 
but the friends of the latter were strong enough to secure a 
place for religious schools in the national system. The act 
of 1870 was consequently a compromise upon this point; but 
although to a certain extent successful the advocates of de- 
nominational schools looked forward to the future with a certain 
fear and dread. The experience of the last twenty years, how- 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 433 

ever, has given them greater confidence. They have, in fact, 
gained over some of their greatest adversaries. The Bir- 
mingham League was the main agency in the contest in favor of 
purely secular education, and of this League Mr. Joseph Cham- 
berlain was the animating spirit But time, and perhaps his po- 
litical alliance with his former foes, the Tories, on the Home- 
Rule question, have changed him, if not into a friend, at least 
into a non-combatant. Since the announcement made by the gov- 
ernment he has made a speech in which he declares that the 
greatest boon they had known in their generation had been con- 
ferred by the government on the working classes. He admits that 
he had thought that denominational schools would die out with the 
establishment of Board schools, but that Ije had been mistaken ; 
for during the twenty-one years which had elapsed they had 
doubled their accommodation and more than doubled their sub- 
scription list. At the present time they supplied accommoda- 
tions for more than two- thirds of the children of England and 
Wales. To destroy voluntary schools, to supply their places 
with Board schools, would be to involve a capital expenditure of 
fifty millions sterling and five millions yearly extra in the rates. 
And so Mr. Chamberlain is warmly in favor of the acceptance 
of the government plan. 



And we have no doubt but that it will be accepted, although 
some opposition will be offered to it by the extremists of both 
parties: extreme Tories, who object to free education as social- 
istic; extreme Liberals, who will insist on the grant of money 
being accompanied by a share in the management. But the 
masses of the people care for none of these things and will 
readily accept relief, however illogical may be the principles 
upon which it is given. The present government is friendly to 
the cause of religious education, and should it succeed in settling 
this matter it will be a subject of satisfaction to all who have 
that cause at heart. 



No event of real importance has occurred to affect the poli- 
tical situation in Europe. The leading question is whether or 
not the Triple Alliance will be renewed. There seems to be no 
doubt that its non-renewal is, to say the very least, possi- 
ble. Italy is groaning under the burden of taxation involved 



434 T HE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [June, 

in the maintenance of its place in the Alliance, and the present pre- 
mier has openly declared that he is by no means enthusiastic for it ; 
and while he is showing towards France a more friendly atti- 
tude, he has publicly stated that Italy's chief interest " lies in a 
constant and steadfast agreement with England." Strange to say, 
it is thought that the approaching general election in England 
will decide the question as to whether there will be peace or 
war in Europe. It is well known that Lord Salisbury's sympa- 
thies are with the Triple Alliance, and it is shrewdly suspected 
that, if war were to break out, and British interests be at all af- 
fected, England would afford assistance to the Three Allied Powers. 
This assistance would not be of any great value from a military 
point of view, the English army being so small ; but the English 
navy could protect the coast of Italy, and by doing so could 
free the larger part of Italy's half-million of men for active ser- 
vice in the field. This consideration has not been without its 
weight in making Russia loath to attack her opponents. Mr. 
Gladstone, on the other hand, is known to have French sympa- 
thies and to favor an alliance with France, but his unwillingness 
to act at -all is counted upon, and those interested would take 
their measures accordingly. Which party, and therefore which 
tendency, is to be in power, a general election will decide, and 
in this way upon it the peace of Europe may depend. 



The election of Prince Bismarck to the Reichstag may lead to 
important consequences in Germany. It seems to have alarmed 
the youthful sovereign of the German Empire. The circumstances 
of the election are perhaps of greater interest than the election 
itself. Of the four - candidates he, indeed, received the largest 
number of votes, but a second ballot was necessary. The strangest 
thing was that so little interest was taken that 45 per cent, of 
the electors did not vote at all, and that the candidate who ran 
the prince closest was a humble cigar-maker of the Social Demo- 
cratic party. The death of Count von Moltke will scarcely have 
any effect on the future, for his work had been finished some 
years ago. In France the most notable event has been the harsh 
manner in which the May-day demonstrations were treated. It 
seems as if either the Republic took less account of the working 
class than the neighboring monarchies, or that that class were less 
favorably affected to the Republic. In Austria Count Taaffe is said 
to have secured a permanent coalition of a sufficient number of 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 435 

the political parties in the Austrian Parliament to enable him to 
retain power. Servia has got rid of the unwelcome presence of 
the. ex king Milan by paying a large sum of money down, with 
the promise of an annual pension. It is to be hoped that the 
ex-queen may be prevailed upon to depart. Spain, having organ- 
ized her Cortes, is promised by the Conservative ministry measures 
to improve the position of the working classes. Strange to say 
the leader of the Republicans, Senor Castelar, condemns them as 
socialistic. Portugal, long tremb'ing upon the brink of bankruptcy, 
seems to have arrived at a crisis in financial matters. Her troubles 
are complicated and enhanced by her disputes with England, and 
by a strong Republican party. We may in a short time see stir- 
ring events in this little kingdom. 



In order to make as clear as possible the present position of the 
temperance movement in Great Britain we append the following notes. 
With respect to the question whether compensation is legally due to 
the owner of a public-house on account of the non-renewal of 
the license, when such non renewal is refused on public grounds, 
the decision of the highest court, as we have said before, has set- 
tled that no legal claim exists. But it is worth mentioning that 
this applies only to what are called fully licensed houses. There 
is, however, a very large number of licensed houses which have 
a statutory right of renewal conferred by act of Parliament. In 
1870 this class formed forty-four per cent, of the whole number 
of licensed houses in the country and nearly sixty per cent, of 
the houses in London. This large proportion possess an absolute 
vested right to compensation in case of the non-renewal of the 
license, provided the owner of the premises has properly conducted 
the business, and consequently the existence of this class cannot 
but prove a difficulty in the way of the diminution of the 

trade. 

* * * 

And notwithstanding the decision of the courts, the defenders 
of the necessity of compensation have not abandoned their posi- 
tion. They maintain that a man who has invested a large amount 
of capital and who has conducted his house properly has an equi- 
table claim to compensation if he is displaced. The equity of 
this claim was formerly recognized by Mr. John'Morley and even 
by Sir Wilfrid Lawson. But the last-named gentleman now 
maintains that, since the decision of the courts and since the 



436 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [June, 

condemnation of the liquor-traffic has manifested itself so plainly 
as it has done of late, every one in the trade has had sufficient 
notice, and that if he enters or continues in it he does so at 
his own risk. And now it may be taken as certain that all offi- 
cial Liberals, as well as avowed temperance advocates, are agreed 
in refusing money compensation. In short, all parties are agreed 
that there are too many public-houses and that the number ought 
to be diminished. But this is the extent of agreement : differen- 
ces spring upas to the manner of accomplishing the agreed -upon 
diminution. Even the temperance advocates are not agreed as to 
what should constitute the licensing authority. At present the 
magistrates form this authority, and that it should be taken from 
them is admitted ; but whether the power of licensing should be 
conferred upon the municipal and county councils, or whether a 
body should be formed ad hoc, like school boards are elected for 
control of elementary education, is a point in dispute. Meanwhile 
the House of Commons, by a recent vote, has affirmed the desira- 
bility of diminishing the number of liquor-stores and of giving to 
local authorities the control, provided that equitable compensation 
be made fo those who hold licenses. To the necessity of giving 
equitable compensation the present government still adheres. 
There is, however, but little reason to think that on this point 
their policy will commend itself to the country. 






i89r.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 437 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 

THE final volume* of the series in which M. Imbert Saint- Amand 
treats of the Empress Marie- Louise accents more sharply than ever, 
though not, as we suppose, by deliberate intention on the part 
of its author, the insignificance of their heroine. Perhaps no 
woman could have shone at the side of Napoleon as Marie- 
Antoinette, for instance, does at the side of -Louis XVI. In 
fact, the cases are almost reversed if these two examples are 
chosen for the terms of comparison, since in one of them the 
woman eclipses and dwarfs the man almost as profoundly as her 
sisters are extinguished in the other Even Josephine, charm- 
ing, amiable, and gracious figure as she is, was hardly more than 
an episode intrinsically an episode, one hastens to add, not 
made so merely by the fact of the divorce in the great career, 
into which she entered. As for Marie-Louise, she was a nonen- 
tity from first to last. As a dairy- maid she would probably 
have done her duty in an inconspicuously faithful manner. But 
the strain of her actual circumstances was too great for the 
material she was made of. Her attitude toward Napoleon is 
neither difficult to understand nor hard to forgive. Tt might 
easily have been more heroic, but in that case it would not 
have been so true. Saint- Amand lays his hand on the secret 
of it in the final paragraph of this volume, when he is compar- 
ing her with Catherine of Wurtemberg, a woman who occupied 
toward Jerome Bonaparte a position precisely analogous to that 
in which Marie-Louise stood toward Napoleon. Neither woman 
was, in any but a purely legal sense, the wife of the man whom 
she called husband, since each of these brothers had been already 
united in Christian marriage to a woman still living when the sec- 
ond union was contracted. But one of them is quoted as an 
example of fidelity, and the other of faithlessness. " The differ- 
ence," says Saint-Amand, 

" between the conduct of Catherine of Wurtemberg and that of 
Marie- Louise is easily explained. It must be admitted, women 
never push devotion and charity to heroism except when they 
have love for a motive love human or divine, the love of the 
lover for her well beloved, of the wife for her husband, of the 
mother for her child, of the Christian for her God. Then the 

* Marie-Loui<e, The Island of Elba, and The Hundred Days. By Imbert Saint- \mand. 
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 



438 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

feeble sex becomes strong. Then are realized those grand words 
of the Imitation of Jesus Christ : ' Love is capable of all ; it ac- 
complishes many things which exhaust those who do not love. 
Love watches always, and even in slumber does not sleep. No 
fatigue wearies it ; no fear troubles it ; but, like a living and ar- 
dent flame, it always ascends on high and opens a sure passage 
through every obstacle.' Why' was one of these princesses sub- 
lime, and the other vulgar ? * For a very simple reason : Cather- 
ine of Wiirtemberg was in love with Jerome; Marie- Louise was 
not in love with Napoleon. " 

But to that summary something yet remains to be added. 
It was not so much that Marie-Louise was not in love with 
the man whom of her own free will she would never have mar- 
ried at all, so deeply were her race prejudices and her religious 
training enlisted against him. But she did not rise even to the 
dignity of motherhood, let alone that of the Christian woman. 
Her chief accuser is not the prisoner of St. Helena, but the un- 
fortunate captive of Vienna, the Duke of Reichstadt. She de- 
served still less that her name should have been the last upon 
his lips than that Napoleon should have lauded her fidelity and 
attested his satisfaction with her conduct in his will. Perhaps 
his praise of her was also a bit of acting. Taken as a whole, 
this volume is one of the most interesting of a highly interest- 
ing series. Waterloo and St. Helena are. names to conjure with 
even when the magician is less cunning than Saint-Amand. 

The Scribners also bring out a neat little volume* containing 
ten tales of New York life by that unusually clever story-teller, 
Mr. Richard Harding Davis. His talent is hereditary if, as we 
suppose, the " mother" to whom his book is dedicated is Mrs. 
Rebecca Harding Davis. But if so, it has lost, in process of 
transmission, that over-tense and somewhat hysterical insistence 
on large morals and small moralities which made " Life in the 
Iron Mills " and some other studies by that lady so unnecessar- 
ily trying to the sensibilities of the general reader. Mr. Davis 
is very free from any blunder of that sort. And yet the best 
and most suggestive of these stories, " The Other Woman," is 
of sound psychology, and hence of sound morality, " all com- 
pact.' 7 The "Van Bibber" sketches are particularly amusing 
better than that, they present their hero's personality with an 
almost startling vividness and particularity, and apparently with- 
out an effort. Mr, Davis has made an extraordinarily good start 
on a road considered very hard to travel that of the short story. 

* Gallegher, and other Stories. By Richard Harding Davis. New York : Charles Scribner's 
Sons. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 439 

The same house publishes, in paper covers, a collection of 
Mr. H. C. Bunner's stories.* They are all very good very 
clever, too, though with a cleverness that is somewhat domesti- 
cated and familiar when compared with Mr. Davis's work. 
They have the touch of middle age, as it were, upon them, and 
the expertness of the handicraftsman whose art is also his busi- 
ness. " Mrs. Tom's Spree " is perhaps the best and freshest of 
them, but they are without exception wholesome in sentiment 
and pleasant to read. 

The most satisfactory, however, of recent American accessions 
to the ranks of the short-story tellers, is, without any doubt in 
the mind of the present writer, Father John Talbot Smith, 
whose abominably illustrated but extraordinarily well- conceiv- 
ed, well- managed, and well -written volume, His Honor the 
Mayor, ,f is capable of giving a genuine sensation to even a hack- 
neyed reader. Some of its contents were not new to us three 
of the eight stories having appeared in this magazine, though 
under different titles, within the last half-dozen years. They 
stand the test of a second reading better than well. Never- 
theless, the least to our taste of the whole collection is one 
of these old acquaintances, now called " One of Many " in place 
of its first title, " A Boy from Garryowen." Father Smith is 
more obviously didactic here than elsewhere less happy, too, in the 
scenes where the ladies of Algernon's family and acquaintance 
figure than is apt to be the case with him. As a rule, his moral 
is like the backbone of a well-made and perfectly well-dressed 
man, the stay and support of all that meets the eye, but not a 
thing that one is apt to think of. What gives pleasure in these ex- 
amples of his work, is the sense of his easy mastery of his ma- 
terial, his close observation and wonderfully vivid reproduction of 
what he has been observing, the candor and openness of mind 
evinced in such portraits as that of the " Baron of Cherubusco," 
Deacon Lounsberry, Silas and Lyddy Bump, and the M'Guinness 
family. The style, too, is excellent; strong, individual, without a 
trace of mannerism, flexible and lucid, and in the matter of dia- 
lect, whether Irish, Canadian-French, or down-east Yankee, giv- 
ing abundant testimony to the sensitiveness of the author's ear. 
Some of the character studies are inimitable the comprehension, 
for example, of the pathos of Cyriac Dupuy's mental and moral 
attitude between the " Baron," on the one hand, who has long bought 

* Zadoc Pine, and other Stones. By H. C. Banner. New York: Charles Scribner's 
Sons. 

t His Honor the Mayor, and other Tales. By John Talbot Smith. New York : The Va- 
tican Library Co, 



440 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

and wants to continue buying a vote which Cyriac cannot under- 
stand it to be a crime to sell, and Father O'Shaughnessy on 
the other, whose influence as the exponent of the faith which is 
ingrained in the poor fellow's otherwise unenlightened soul, is 
irresistible when he tells him that he must never sell it again, let 
the forfeit be what it may. Cyriac Dupuy is a masterpiece of 
portraiture. And we recall nothing more true to reality we had 
almost said to nature, but the matter is on a level beyond nature 
than the death-bed scene in " A Novel Experiment," where Mary 
Jansen's faith unconsciously reveals itself as the living root and 
substance of her soul. Good too, but in a totally different vein, is 
the " Four Sons of Jael," a study which rends the heart and 
leaves it bleeding. It is evidently in the short story that Father 
Smith is most at home. His novels hardly gave promise of such 
very good work as he. has put together in this volume. 

Mr. Henry Harland's new novel * may not be autobiographic, 
but it has immensely that air. The fortunes and misfortunes of 
his pair of married turtle-doves, shipwrecked by a faithless guardian, 
and finding a safe harbor over on the East Side with a most charm- 
ing family of " Chairman Chews " until Thomas Gardiner, alias 
Grandison Mather, makes such an astounding success of his first 
novel that he can quit his distasteful desk " down town," and go to 
live in Europe, make very pleasant reading in any case. 

A more pretentious but less successful novel, f from the same 
publishers, is At Loves Extremes. Neither extreme, as portrayed 
by Mr. Thompson, is captivating, though either seems to have been 
more than the hero of the tale deserves. Have we not found Mr. 
Thompson preaching some rather severe doctrine lately, with a di- 
rect and adverse bearing on Mr. Kipling's popularity, on the ground 
that his "virile" Heroes are apparently so-called only because they 
are really brutal, base, and very " low-down " ? Yet is it not true 
that any one of -them, even the ex-Corporal Mulvaney, " now re- 
juced," and repenting the Annie Bragin episode, would show up 
in shining contrast to Colonel Reynolds in his relations with Milly 
White, as Mr. Thompson has portrayed them ? There is a. sugges- 
tion of Miss Murfree's way of looking at nature and the " poor 
white trash" in Mr. Thompson's treatment of the White family and 
their surroundings. 

The three new volumes f of Cassell's "Unknown Library," 

* Grandison Mather. By Henry Harland. New York : Cassell Publishing Company. 

t At Loves Extremes. By Maurice Thompson. New York : Cassell Publishing Company. 

\ The Story of Eleanor Limb ert. By M igdalen Brooke. A Mystery of the Campagtia, and 
A Shadow on a Wave. By Von Degen. The Friend of Death :' A Fantastic Tale. Adapted 
from the Spanish by Mary J. Serrano. New York : Cassell Publishing Company. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 441 

which have been sent us, are all very entertaining after a some- 
what unusual fashion. The English tale, Eleanor Lambert, describes 
two very good women in a clever and unpretentious way. The 
Von Degen stories are rather blood-curdling, but extremely well 
told. As for the Spanish one, the title describes it exactly. It 
is fantastic, but harmlessly so. After reading all the numbers of this 
series, the mystery of the title selected for it grows increasingly 
dense to our understanding. The books are none the less pleasant 
on that account, and their peculiar form should recommend them 
to those who have, like Mr. Wegg, a liking for " portable 
property." Perhaps it would recommend them to nobody else. 

Carmela* is a very charming Mexican story or, rather, the 
scene is laid in Mexico, and the characters are a half-Mexican 
heroine and some of her American relatives. To tell the truth, 
there is a good deal of the guide-book in its construction. 
What Mrs. Blake and Mrs. Sullivan, Mr. Janvier, and even Mr. 
Ballou, have had to say within the last few years in praise of that 
wonderfully beautiful land, is recalled to their readers by many a 
page of description or of history in this little story. It is none 
the worse on that account. But if Christian Reid has by no 
means neglected description and instruction, she has still less 
omitted to leaven them with entertainment and spiritual beauty. 
Devotion is quickened by her little tale. Carmela is a most 
charming heroine, and the story of her self-conquest and its re- 
ward is one to be heartily commended. The volume is got up 
in better taste than premium books are apt to be by most of 
our Catholic publishers. With more careful proof-reading it would 
have left little to desire. Remediable defects are not easily pardoned 
in any case ; but when they detract from the agreeable effect of 
such noticeably good work as Christian Reid produces when she 
is writing simply as a Catholic for Catholics, they are more offen- 
sive than ever. 

Several other nicely- bound little volumes accompany Carmela, 
all of them intended to serve the purposes of the approaching 
premium season. We could wish them better adapted to that 
end. Most of them are translated from the French by nameless 
and irresponsible translators, and brought out with little heed on 
the part of the publishers to the more than common need of care- 
ful type and presswork in books made for the use of young 
folks. It is a special pity that the author of Edith, f who has 

* Carmela. By Christian Reid. Philadelphia : H. L. Kilner & Co. 

t Edith : A Tale of the Present Day. By Lady Herbert. Philadelphia : H. L Kilner & 
Co. 



442 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

done so much good work in her time, should ever have blun- 
dered into the production of a tale like this. Can any reason 
be sufficient to justify telling a story of actual adultery in one 
generation and attempted adultery in a succeeding one, to girls 
just coming out of schools in which the great aim has been to 
guard them from the knowledge of evil ? This story has nothing 
to recommend it. Its manner is as unattractive as its matter is 
objectionable. 

Mr. Besant writes always like an artist ; that is to say, like a man 
who thoroughly enjoys his own work, and does it quite as much for 
the pleasure the doing gives him as for the sake of the substan- 
tial addition it may make to his bank account. That is one rea- 
son, doubtless, why his stories are invariably such agreeable com- 
panions for one's leisure hours. He is quite up to his own level 
in Armorel of Lyonesse* which, though several months old, is, 
we believe, the latest of his novels. The famous Belt case, which 
was one of the sensations of London some eight or nine years 
ago, seems to have given him the hint on which he constructed 
Alec Fielding, the jack-of- all- trades of all arts, rather. The first 
part of the novel is the most delightful, the description of Sam- 
son, Armorel's ancestral possession in the Scilly Isles, and the 
life she led there, having a charm of a sort quite new to us in 
Mr. Besant's work. Here he invades, so to say, a domain which 
Mr. William Black long since seemed to have pre-empted, and 
if he does not altogether wrest it from him, at least maintains 
his right to co-dominion. 

Mr. Black, on the other hand, although he is still faithful 
enough to his old traditions to give his young people an ex- 
cursion together in a house-boat, has laid the scene of his 
own latest novelf in London, Mr. Besant's most familiar ground. 
It is a very good novel, too. Old George Bethune is a clever 
but painful study of self-deception carried to a point which Mr. 
Black seems to think not altogether beyond nature and reason. 
Perhaps, if he had left out certain little touches, such as the 
dropping of the Scotch accent and the removal of the Scotch 
plaid after the visit to Lord Musselburgh which is described 
in the first chapter, Mr. Black might have succeeded more fully 
in persuading his readers to be of the "same mind with him. 
Another feature which he has in common with Mr. Besant, that of 
choosing lofty, high-spirited, and pure-minded girls for his hero- 

* Armorel of Lyonesse : A Romance of To-day. By Walter Besant. New York: Harper 
& Brothers. 

t Stand Fast, Craig-Roy ston ! By William Black. New York : Harper & Brothers. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 443 

ines, and making them ennobling influences on the men who love 
them, was never more prominent than in the present story. It 
can hardly fail to please any one in search of a good novel for 
the summer vacation. 

The scene of Mrs. Barr's new story* is laid in the New York 
of nearly sixty years since. Andrew Jackson is President, and 
making war upon the United States Bank. It is the period of 
the riots between the Whigs and the Jackson Democrats in 1834, 
when for the first time the city elected its own mayor, an office 
up till then in the gift of the governor and the council. It is the 
period also of the abolition movement under the leadership ot 
Arthur Tappan. The story, when dealing with the causes, occa- 
sions, and circumstances of the Bank difficulty, inclines to drag. 
Even Mrs. Barr's most convinced admirers and she must have 
a good many of them by this time will be apt to find the dis- 
cussions on the merits and demerits of Jackson between Major 
Mason and his friend John Paul Keteltas, as well as the lectures 
on politics given to his daughter by the major, to border too 
closely on padding for the purposes of a novel. Even the love 
stories of the two girls, Virginia Mason and Jane Keteltas, are 
not specially interesting, The book, nevertheless, is good as a 
whole, and increases one's respect for its author's talent. She 
has some unfounded prejudices which in her own interest one 
would be glad to see her free from but it is hardly a question 
whether, without them, she would be as acceptable as she is at 
present to the public for which she ordinarily caters and by 
which she must be supposed to live. One of her books, as we 
happen to know, turned out, when finished, to be too favorable 
to Catholics to prove acceptable to the publishers of her pres- 
ent tale and of a good many others of her writing. It has 
since been brought out by a house less narrow in its views. In 
Mrs. Barr's own interest, as we said just now, and for the sake 
of the keen spiritual insight and high aspiration which her 
work betrays, we can but hope that she will not let her light 
be permanently darkened by a too canny way of considering 
the available qualities of her talent. The most interesting part 
of this novel deals with life on a Southern plantation, and the 
struggle in Jane Forfar's heart and conscience between her 
love for a bad husband and the plain duty laid upon her 
of preventing some of his basest and most cruel actions. In 
such a predicament it is easy to divine what will be done by 
any heroine whom Mrs. Barr thinks it worth her while to 

* She Loved a Sailor. By Amelia E. Barr. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 



444 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

delineate. Mrs. Barr, by the way, if she were as just as we 
should like to see her, would have used the invective of 
which she has such command more freely upon the " native- 
born Americans " who bought votes in the election she de- 
scribes, and who have continued to buy them ever since, and 
less freely upon the " Irish peasants, who could neither read 
nor write, and who knew nothing whatever of civil liberty." 
No man was ever able to sell what some other man did not 
want to buy, and the parties then in power, and for the most 
part now in power, who practised bribery and corruption, were 
the real tempters and the real culprits. But they, poor innocents, 
the " Jackson party who condescended to use the votes of 
such men," are let off by Mrs. Barr with the naive remark that 
the Irish " in their rags and bluster were so evidently in the 
market that the temptation to buy them was irresistible " / 
Nowadays, we believe, it is the -native American of the rural 
districts, neither ragged nor blustering, but with a keen eye 
to the money value of his vote, who chiefly supplies the 
market where vote-buyers congregate at election time. 

There is a good deal of clap-trap in the singular title of 
Jokai's romance,* but the story itself is interesting and almost 
powerful. It is put into excellent English moreover. There is 
a painfully vivid description of a railway accident in one of the 
early chapters, the memory of which is as hard as a nightmare 
to be shaken off. The point of the story, so far as it bears on 
the title, is that human selfishness and malice are quite suffi- 
cient to explain the injuries inflicted by men upon each other, 
without seeking for an extra-human principle of evil. " The 
so-called hellish passions in men," says the hero, once a Hun- 
garian doctor, afterwards a so-called " American Silver- king," 
" are created by that which is beneath him, the animal, the 
material element, and it is superfluous to look to that which 
is above him, a spirit, for a motive. . . . Human I am and 
have been, and human have been the temptations and trials 
that beset me. The only devil to whom, for a time, I sold 
myself, was the demon in my own breast ; a poor, feeble spirit, 
and long ago subdued by the more potent angel of love and 
peace." Jokai's story would have stood very plumply on its 
feet without leaning against any special thesis whatsoever. 
But since he elected to demonstrate one, it becomes imperative 
to say that while the narrowly personal conclusion quoted 

* " Tkere is no Devil." A Romance by Maurus Jokai. Translated from the Hung: r ian 
by F. Steinitz. New York : Cassell Publishing Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 445 

above is justifiable from the premises supplied by his story, those 
premises are absurdly inadequate to cover the wider ground 
taken in the subsequent and concluding sentences of the story : 
" All beings existing, good or bad, are human and material, and 
only such. There is no Devil ! " " You don't tole me so ! " 
responds the reader, rinding conventional English unequal to his 
gratified surprise at such an unexpected display of omniscience. 

Ten of Sainte-Beuve's famous " Portraits of Men " have been 
very well translated by Forsyth Edeveain, and brought out in 
convenient form by the Chicago publishing house of A. C. 
M'Clurg. They are prefaced by an interesting and appreciative 
critical memoir of their author by Mr. William Sharp. Pending 
such an adequate translation, if not of the Causeries entire, at 
least of all that is best and most characteristic in them, as one 
would like to see undertaken and brought to completion, this 
volume is very welcome. The essays of which it is composed 
show Sainte-Beuve to excellent advantage. His sensitiveness 
to impressions, his austere delicacy of sentiment, his willing- 
ness to praise, his openness and flexibility of mind, his faculty 
of selection, everything, perhaps, except that charm of expres- 
sion whose aroma inevitably loses something in the best trans- 
lation and much in any that is appreciably less than the best, 
may be studied in it. One would have been glad, for the sake 
of that sharper- edged weapon which he sometimes employed, 
to have found the Causerie on Lamartine included, or if space 
did * not allow, to have bartered for it one of those selected 
that on Camille Desmoulins, say. The contents include papers 
on " Goethe and Bettina," " Alfred de Musset," " Letters of Lord 
Chesterfield to his Son," " De Balzac," " The Memoirs of Saint- 
Simon," "Camille Desmoulins," "Diderot," "La Bruyere," 
" L'Abbe de Choisy," and " Fontenelle." Every one of them 
is- entertaining and suggestive as well as instructive. To read 
Sainte-Beuve with appreciation is to get a higher sense of the 
value of literature pure and simple, and of criticism as in itself 
a fine art, for the pursuit of which native predisposition and 
aptitude are as essential prerequisites to anything deserving the 
name of success as they are in poetry, dr music, or the plastic 
arts. More than any critic whom we know, Sainte-Beuve is 
stimulating. He discourages sloth ; he excites to emulation ; he 
awakens sympathy with that chosen pursuit of his which he 
has felicitously characterized in saying of himself : " I analyze, 
1 botanize, I am a naturalist of minds. What I would fain 
create is Literary Natural History." We commend this little 



446 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

volume as an excellent primer of that ever-fertile, inexhaustible 
department of study, which is rarely, indeed, a source of un- 
mingled pleasure, but which is never devoid of interest and 
charm. 

A new translation and a very excellent one, by Jessie P. 
Frothingham from the twentieth French edition of Maurice de 
Guerin's Journal has just been issued by Dodd, Mead & Co. 
It is prefaced by Sainte-Beuve's well-known biographical and 
literary memoir of the young poet. It needs no comment. 
Guerin's soul, passionless and calm, except when disturbed by 
the melancholy which belonged to his physical weakness, was 
like a clear lake in which external nature mirrored itself. His 
expression of what he saw and felt is as naive and involuntary 
as the sounds evoked by sunrise from the great statue on the 
Theban plain. When Sainte-Beuve writes of him it seems to us 
that his pen slips he fails to appreciate how great a truth Guerin 
saw, if only by a fleeting glimpse, when he wrote the beautiful 
lines we are about to quote. Concerning them, Sainte-Beuve re- 
marks that Guerin was attempting the impossible when he sought 
to reconcile Christianity with Nature : " For there is no middle 
course," says the critic, who, like Guerin himself at a later pe- 
riod, had an inadequate and too natural a view of Christianity; 
" the Cross obstructs more or less the free view of Nature ; the 
great Pan has nothing to do with the Divine Crucified " What 
Guerin had written to call forth this only half-true criticism if, 
indeed, it be in any profound sense true at all was this : 

*' Oh ! cest un beau spectacle a ravir la pensee this immense 
circulation of life within the broad bosom of Nature, this life 
which springs from an invisible fountain and swells the veins of 
the universe ; obeying its upward impulse, it rises from kingdom 
to kingdom, ever becoming purer and nobler, to beat at last jn 
the heart of man, the centre into which flow from all sides its 
thousand currents. There it meets the Divinity ; there, as on 
the altar where incense is burned, it evaporates, through an inef- 
fable sacrifice, into the bosom of God. / feel as if deep and 
marvellous things could be said on the sacrifice of Nature in the 
heart of man and on the Eucharistic immolation in this same 
heart. The simultaneousness of these two sacrifices and the ab- 
sorption of the one into the other on the same altar, this meeting 
of God and of all creation in humanity, would, it seems to me, 
open up deep and lofty vistas: sublimitas et profundum" 

No, Sainte-Beuve ! That was not a mistake of Guerin's. The 
core of Christianity is there. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 447 

i. PROFESSOR LADD'S PHILOSOPHY.* 

This treatise is not the first part of a text-book of systematic 
instruction in philosophy. Its purpose is rather to make a plea 
for philosophy, and to call the attention of the more advanced 
students in colleges, and of thoughtful, studious persons at large, 
to its dignity and importance. The author has not attempted 
to popularize his manner of treatment and his style ; his readers 
will therefore find that very considerable previous knowledge 
and mental discipline, together with close attention and careful 
study, are necessary in order to understand and enjoy what is 
the product of original thought and much learning, and deals 
with very abstruse subjects. We fancy that Professor Ladd will 
find comparatively few readers of this kind, but they will be 
those who are best worth having. 

The plea for philosophy is chiefly against Agnosticism, and it 
very ably and successfully shows the nature of this " metaphysical 
boomerang," as a weapon which comes back and kills the thrower. 

But besides the general plea for the reality and importance 
of philosophy as against sceptics and despisers, the author tells 
us plainly, and gives us credit for being able to see for our- 
selves, that a positive system of philosophy is suggested and 
sketched in his pages. 

We have looked with much interest to find these indications 
of fundamental principles of philosophy, and we can express 
considerable satisfaction with some which we think we have 
found. The reality of the subject and the object of sensible and 
intellectual cognition, and of the relation between them, is pre- 
sented very clearly and distinctly. So, also, the convergence of 
all lines of thought toward their final meeting-point and the 
apex of all knowledge in the ultimate reality, the ground of all 
being and knowing. The course of reasoning proceeds steadily 
forward toward his Monistic conclusion, which we understand 
as implying, not merely a rejection of all dualism, but also of 
every form of pantheistic identification of God and Nature, and 
as an expression in other terms of the primary dogma of 
Theism, that God is First and Final cause, intimately and essen- 
tially present in all derived and dependent beings, distinct in 
their essences and actual existence from their creator and from 
each other, severally, but having all one origin, one archetype, 
and one reason and continuous ground of being in God. 

* Introduction to Philosophy . An Inquiry after a Rational System of Scientific Principles 
in their Relation to Ultimate Reality. i3y George Trunujull Ladd, Professor of Philosophy 
in Yale University. New York; Charles Scribner's Sons. 
VOL. LIII. 29 



448 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

The author's treatment of Realism and Idealism is suggestive 
and interesting. We quote with pleasure a passage which oc- 
curs near the end of the book, expressive of a hopeful view of 
the prospects of philosophy, which we think is fully justified. 
4< We find, then, a proof of the substantial truthfulness of the con- 
clusions reached by our examination in the continued recurrence 
and constant but gradually softening antagonisms of the main 
philosophical schools and tendencies. We have italicized the 
words which are to our mind the most significant, and which 
we fully adopt in a very wide extension as an expression of 
the confident hope we entertain of a movement toward har- 
mony and unity in the sciences, philosophy and religion, to 
which we look forward as the grand achievement of the twen- 
tieth century. 

Professor Ladd mentions only to scout the notion that we 
want an " American Philosophy." It is, really, an unmeaning 
phrase. We might as well talk of an " American Bible " or an 
" American Algebra." George Eliot describes a certain Lentu- 
lus who possessed a " consciousness of corrective illumination on 
the philosophic thinking of our race ; and his tone in assuring 
me that everything which had been done in that way was wrong 
gave my superstitious nature a thrill of anxiety." Doubtless it 
is such persons among us who raise the cry for an " American 
Philosophy." It is, however, to be desired and hoped for that, 
as we have eminent biblical scholars, mathematicians, and geolo- 
gists in America, we should have an increasing number of able 
teachers and diligent students of philosophy in our republic. 

The purpose of Professor Ladd in preparing his Introduction 
to Philosophy is a noble and useful one. His volume is fit to 
exert a salutary influence on those who undervalue or disregard 
philosophy, who have become bewildered by wandering among 
the mazes of German Transcendentalism, or who have absorbed 
more or less of the poison of Agnosticism. 

We do not say that he will conduct them to the ultimate 
goal which pure thought and rational philosophy can reach, but 
he will put them on the right road, and lead them far on the 
way. 

There remains the author's view of the relation of phil- 
osophy to theology, He rejects the scholastic doctrine that phil- 
osophy is the handmaid of theology, and yet affirms that it can 
be rendered ancillary to theology in another way. The exposi- 
tion of the. topic is not clear and definite enough to furnish a 
sufficient ground, for criticism. Moreover, this would have to be 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 449 

formulated on theological principles, and we have no desire to 
enter upon the field of polemics at present 

Philosophy, as a science, is assuredly not subaltern to theo- 
logy. Its principles are data of pure reason, and its methods 
are rational. We have no fear that its prosecution to the ut- 
most limits of the capacity of thought will be dangerous to 
Christianity, or that there is any analogous reason of appre- 
hension from the prosecution of any of the sciences. On the 
contrary, it is the neglect of philosophy and nescience which 
are dangerous. 

In conclusion, we venture to recommend to all teachers of 
philosophy a careful perusal of Professor Ladd's Introduction. 



2. DEAN CHURCH AND CARDINAL NEWMAN.* 

" What the Church of England would have become without 
the Tractarian movement we can faintly guess, and of the 
Tractarian movement Newman was the living soul and the in- 
spiring genius. Great as his services have been to the com- 
munion in which he died, the> are as nothing by the side of 
those he rendered to the communion in which the most eventful 
years of his life were spent All that was best in Tractarianism 
came from him its reality, its depth, its low estimate of ex- 
ternals, its keen sense of the importance of religion to the indi- 
vidual soul. ... Whatever solid success the High Church 
party has attained since Cardinal Newman's departure has been 
due to its fidelity to his method and spirit. He will be mourned 
by many in the Roman Church, but their sorrow will be less 
than ours, because they have not the same paramount reason to 
be grateful to him." 

It was in these terms that the author of this book wrote in 
the Guardian immediately after Cardinal Newman's death. His 
own death followed closely upon that of his life-long friend and 
master. Of the movement of which he speaks, and in which he 
took not a prominent part indeed, but a by no means unim- 
portant one, he had prepared this account several years ago, the 
greater part of it having been printed at the time for pri- 
vate circulation. His last days were employed in the revision 
of these papers. Those who are acquainted with Dean Church's 
writings will welcome any work which proceeds from so fine a 
scholar, from a thinker so refined and so religious as those writ- 



Oxford Movement : Twelve Years, 1833-1845. By R. W. Church, M.A., D.C.L , 
some time Dean of St. Paul's. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 



450 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

ings have shown him to be ; while the larger number who are 
interested in that great Oxford movement, which has already had 
so powerful an influence, will be glad to read this memorial of 
it by the one man who, after Newman, was best fitted for the 
work. Unfortunately he did not follow the master he so much 
revered into the .Catholic Church, and the point of primary in- 
terest to Catholics is, What was the- reason which kept him back ? 
This he sums up in the words : " The English Church was, after 
all its defects, as well worth living in and fighting for as any 
other. . . . We had our Sparta, a noble if a rough and in- 
complete one." He would perhaps not have been unwilling to 
use Cardinal Newman's description of the Anglican communion 
as " a palace of ice, hard and cold." But this view of the 
church shows how far the dean was from having grasped the 
idea of the church as not a human but a divine institution ; in 
our Lord's own words, " My Church." 

It was not the author's intention, he tells us, " to write 
a history of the movement, or to account for it, or adequately 
to judge it and put it in its due place in relation to the religious 
and the philosophical history of the time, but simply to preserve 
a contemporary memorial of what seems to me to have been a 
true and noble effort which passed before my eyes." The 
accounts of this movement which have already been written are 
now so numerous that for one who is acquainted with them there 
may not be much which is strictly novel in this volume, but for 
the reasons already given it is a work of deep and lasting interest. 



3. A HISTORY OF A GREAT FESTIVAL.* 

An interesting history not only of the institution of the feast 
of Corpus Christi, but of St. Julienne of Cornillon, and of the 
city of Liege itself in the thirteenth century. The translator is 
but right, we fear, in thinking that comparatively few Catholics 
in our country know the history of the origin and establish- 
ment of the Feast of Corpus Christi. And still less is known 
of that of St. Julienne, who was the instrument of Divine Provi- 
dence in the establishment of the great festival. No literature 
is more beautiful than the literature of the lives of the saints, 
and Dean Cruls' life of St. Julienne in this worthy translation 
is a welcome addition to the library of the world's true heroes 
and heroines. 

* The Blessed Sacrament, and the Church, of St. Martin at Liege. From the French of Dean 
Cr.uls. By Wi'liam Preston. New York : Catholic Publication Society Co. ; London : Burns 
& Gates. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 451 

This and the before-mentioned work are as fine specimens 
of the bookbinder's and printer's art as any that we have seen 
from American firms. 



4. MARY IN THE EPISTLES.* 

It would be a mistake to infer from the title given to this 
excellent volume that everything that has been applied in it to 
the Blessed Virgin is held to be actually contained in the apos- 
tolic epistles. But after making all necessary deductions enough 
remains fully to sustain the thesis of the author, viz. : that there 
is a considerable amount of teaching on our Lady implicitly 
contained in the Epistles. This view is borne out by abundant 
quotations from the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers. 

The aim of the work is positive rather than controversial ; 
its treatment devotional rather than scientific. It is an admir- 
able book for all seasons, but more particularly for May, the 
month of our Blessed Mother herself. 



5. KINDNESS.f 

A selection from the conferences of a great spiritual writer 
treating of kindness. It is divided into four parts : the first 
treating of kindness in general ; the second, of kind thoughts -, 
the third, of kind words, and the fourth, of kind actions. All is 
treated in the inimitable way of the saintly Oratorian. It is late 
in the day to speak of Father Faber's literary work. It is 
known not alone to Catholics but to those outside the church. 
Never had the church a more devoted child than this holy 
man, and we wish heartily that this little compendium may have 
a wide circulation, for his words always draw one closer and 
closer to the love of our Divine Lord. 



6. MEDIEVAL AND MODERN COSMOLOGY. if 

This is a severe criticism of the mediaeval cosmology, and of 
the doctrine of the text-books of philosophy which follow the 

* Mary in the Epistles. By the Rev. Thomas Livius, C.SS.R. London: Burns & 
Gates ; New York : Catholic Publication Society Co. 

t Spiritual Conferences. By the Rev. Frederick W. Faber, D.D. New York: James 
Potts & Co. 

\ .Mediaeval and .Modern Cosmology. By Rev. John Gmeiner, St. Paul, Minn. Milwaukee : 
Hoffman Brothers Co. 



452 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

scholastic system. An argument is derived from chemistry 
against the theory of substantial form and first matter, and 
the connected theory of substantial generations. In the chapter 
on the vital force of plants the vegetative soul is denied, 
and the vital force explained as a resultant form which 
is merely a harmony of chemical and mechanical forces in the 
organic molecules. In the chapter on the animal soul the prin- 
ciple of sensitive life is represented as not merely a substantial 
form, educed from the potentiality of matter, and dependent on the 
body both for action and existence, but as a substantial entity 
immediately created by God. Consequently, it is denied that it 
ceases to exist, ipso facto, with the dissolution of the body, and 
two conjectures are proposed : one that it is annihilated when 
the animal dies ; the other, that it continues to exist in some 
unknown state, for some unknown purpose. In the chapter on 
the human soul, the opinion that the soul gives first being to the 
organism and all its parts as the substantial form of the first 
matter which underlies the whole complex structure, is combat- 
ed. Father Gmeiner quotes Secchi, Tongiorgi, and Palmier! , 
besides several eminent scientists, in support of his several 
theses. 

Cosmology is the one branch of metaphysics which is the 
most beset with difficulties, and there are more controversies 
among those modern philosophers who profess to be substantially 
scholastics and Thomists, in regard to the questions raised by 
Father Gmeiner, than in respect to all the rest of the scholastic 
system. Therefore, we wish to see a more thorough discussion 
and a more elaborate treatment of all these matters than we 
have yet found in our text-books. We hope Father Gmeiner's 
brochure will help to stir up this discussion. 



7. SOME EXCELLENT SERMONS.* 

Among English-speaking people preaching is probably more 
valued and consequently of greater utility than among the Latin 
races. It is, therefore, the fulness of joy for one of our Catholic 
congregations to have a good preacher as its pastor. The pa- 
rochial relation is perfected by truth, zeal, patience, kindliness, 
sympathy, learning, the treasure of the priest's soul borne to his 
people's hearts by words of paternal love. 

* Selected Sermons. By Rev. Christopher Hughes, Pastor of St. Mary's Church, Fall 
River, Mass. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 453 

The priest who publishes sermons stimulates preaching, and 
this is one, if not the chief reason why such a volume as this is 
so welcomed by the public ; and it is to aid Catholic pastors in 
performing rightly their high function of the ministry of the word 
of God that Father Hughes has published this volume of ser- 
mons, and we, having carefully read every one of ' the sermons, 
are of the opinion that he has done his work well. The test of 
excellence in a sermon, no less than in a preacher, is experi- 
ment. Himself a good preacher, the author publishes but a com- 
paratively small number of sermons out of very many actually 
preached by him, some of them more than once. The clergy are 
here invited to examine these sermons chosen from a multitude 
of others, really preached to an average city congregation, and 
preached over again, and now offered after careful revision. The 
style, though not unrhetorical, is good, clear, forcible English, the 
sentences short, the matter cleared of all extraneous thought, 
and the manner of all verbiage. 

The sermons are all of them brief, so that they may b^ reai- 
ily committed to memory by beginners, or serve as outlines for 
the more practised ; dealing each with one idea of strictly re- 
ligious value, simply viewed, well illustrated, powerfully advocated 
and enforced. The tone is at once earnest and priestly, adapted 
to the altar and the pulpit. Holy Scripture is happily and abun- 
dantly quoted. The range of subjects does not expressly corre- 
spond with the routine of the ecclesiastical year, though the topics 
chosen are such as to serve practically the same purpose. Some 
of the sermons are on the critical points of controversy of our 
times, touching the relation of the religious and the civil states of 
men, and the bearings of our civilization on the spiritual life. 
Others of them are such as are not to be found, as far as our 
knowledge goes, anywhere printed in Catholic publications of this 
sort that is to say, those which give utterance to the voice of 
religion on patriotic occasions, such as Decoration Day; and oth- 
ers, again, arouse tender memories of the cradle-land of our Irish- 
American congregations. 

Education viewed from a stand-point at once Catholic and 
American is fully represented in the choice of subjects made by 
the author. There is a fine sermon on Religious* IndifTerentism 
and an inspiring one on Intemperance, preached at the opening cf 
the Convention of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union in 1876. 
Prayer, confession, the Eucharist, sanctifying grace and its effects, 
are treated of with much power, the supernatural gifts of the 
Christian state being fully displayed. A beautiful sermon for- 



454 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

Advent entitled The King's Return, a very moving and yet very 
practical charity sermon entitled Almsgiving, one on the Uncan- 
onized Saints of Ireland, one preached at the funeral of a priest ; 
others on the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, and St. Patrick these 
have impressed us as of particular use for the great body of Ca- 
tholic preachers. Finally, these sermons, so brief, and so plain 
and yet so full of instruction and so earnest in tone, are well 
adapted for the private use of persons who are hindered from 
attending Sunday Mass or who desire devotional reading. 



8. MANUAL OF CHURCH HISTORY.* 

In the book before us we have the first volume of an eccle- 
siastical history which, in our belief, will be found of no little 
service to students. The author's object has been to give a class- 
book to young men who have but a comparatively short time 
to devote to this particular department of history. And while 
he has of necessity been forced to omit details and to abbreviate 
the treatment of some important questions in order to keep 
within the scope of his work, he has nevertheless presented his 
readers with an excellent narration of the events of church his- 
tory down to the pontificate of Gregory VII. 

In his treatment of his subjects he has adopted the synthetic 
method. His style is clear, simple, and orderly, and he has be- 
stowed especial attention upon those topics concerning which 
controversy has aroused particular interest. In handling objec- 
tions, based on history, against the church's teachings, he has 
given the facts necessary for solution. 

9. PERCY WYNN.f 

A book about boys and for boys, by one who knows and 
believes in the innate goodness of boys. This last is a conse- 
quence of the first, for he who does not believe in the innate 
goodness of boys has not yet begun to know them. Not that 
all the boys who play their parts in this story are saints. By 
no means; a number of them are bad, very bad, real villains. 
But the author proves that even in such characters there is 
downright good ; and this he does without sermonizing. Knovv- 

* Manual of Church History, By the Rev. T. Gilmartin, Professor of Ecclesiastical 
History, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth. Vol. I. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son; London: 
Burns & Gates; New York: Catholic Publication Society Co. 

t Percy Wynn ; or, Making a Boy of Him. By Francis J. Finn, S.J. Second edition. 
New York, Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Brothers. 






1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 455 

ing boys, he is always conscious of the fact that, if there is one 
thing a spirited, generous, warm-hearted, and frank youth will not 
give ear to, it is u goody goodiness." 

Percy Winn is a story of boy-life at a Catholic boarding- 
school, and, as far as we know, it is the only one of its kind in 
the English language. We heartily wish there were a hundred 
like it. 

It is evident that Mr. Finn believes in the truth of what St. 
Ignatius wrote to St. Francis Borgia: "A sound mind in a 
sound body is the most useful instrument wherewith to serve 
God." Playfair, Quip, Donnel, and Keenan have healthy minds, 
stout hearts, and muscular bodies. And that they can box with 
great effect when necessary every true boy will be glad to 
know. The defence of Percy from the attack of the two roughs, 
Buck and Dick, is a fine piece of writing, and exhilarating, 
wholesome reading. Sceptical Frank Burdock is well done, and 
we can vouch for the truth of Mr. Middleton. We have known 
many Mr. Middletons. 

Percy Winn is not a sensational story, although full of stir- 
ring scenes that in less skilful hands would have degenerated 
into melodrama. The scene which depicts the death, by a rail- 
way track, of the anarchist who has tried to rob Percy exhibits 
decided power and a strong, beautiful reticence. From this 
scene, or rather from what follows it, we quote what is almost 
the only comment the author makes in what is strictly a book of 
action: "Let men call him socialist, anarchist, a creature worthy 
of the halter. Yes, let us punish our anarchists when they 
violate our most sacred laws. But we shall save prison fare, and 
more, if we treat the poor and the oppressed as true children of 
the One Father, who is in heaven." 

The author has given us what has been desired so long that 
we had despaired of it a real book for boys about genuine 
boys, by a Catholic who thoroughly understands boys ; and we 
are more than glad that he promises a sequel to Percy Wynn. 
Nor will we be satisfied with one more. There should be a 
series as unending as those of Optic. Thus much we have said 
of a second edition, contrary to our custom, on account of the 
exceptional merit of the story. 

10. SOME PREMIUM BOOKS. 

Premium books are usually new editions of old stories, not 
seldom of small literary value. Here, however, are five new books 



456 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

all above the average of such publications as we are now con- 
sidering. 

Jacques- Cceur * and The Moor of Granada f are two historical 
novels from the French : the first from the pen of Delanoue, the 
second from that of Guenot They are both interesting and in- 
structive, and are fairly well translated. Laid as the scenes are 
in stirring times, both books are full of incident, and The Moor of 
Granada is not without pathos. 

The stories contained in the series entitled The Knight of 
Bloemendale \ are of very unequal merit. One of these stories, 
"The Mirror of Mary," is from the Japanese, and is a beautiful little 
gem. While this volume cannot at all be classed with the two 
aforementioned, it affords much pleasant reading for the children's 
" tired hour," when the sun beats too fiercely for play, or when 
the long winter evenings have come. 

A History of Robert Bruce ^ is more than a history of that 
hero. It is the story of the Scottish people down to the reign 
of James VI. Strictly speaking, it is not a history, but an histor- 
ical novel. Historical accuracy is attempted, and we think has 
been attained. The author's name is not given. Whoever he be, 
he tells a sprightly story with a' considerable degree of vigor, 
and the attention of the reader is not allowed to flag. The 
lesson that he who is truest to God is the truest patriot is to be 
read between the lines of this excellent little work.' 

The History of the Last Ccesars of Byzantium || is a literary 
work of very considerable importance. At the time of its first 
appearance in French, during the Russian-Turkish war, it at- 
tracted wide and well-deserved attention. The author traces the 
rapid progress of the Turks, the decline of the Greeks whilst 
province after province was subjugated, until at last the fall of 
Constantinople dealt the fatal blow to that power which had 
ruled the East for so many centuries. 

Todiere has been scrupulously careful in collecting reliable ac- 
counts of the events connected with the period of which he 
writes, and we trust that this Englished edition may be as favor- 
ably received and as widely read as were those in French. 

* Jacques-Caaur. By M. Cordellier-Delanoue. Philadelphia: Kilner & Co. 
t The Moor of 'Granada. By Henri Guenot. Philadelphia: Kilner & Co. 
\ The Knight of Bloemendale and other stories. Philadelphia : Kilner & Co. 
$ A History of Robert Bruce, Kin* of Scotland. Philadelphia : Kilner & Co. 
|| The History of the Last Ccesars of Byzantium. From the French of L. Todiere, Phila- 
delphia: Kilner & Co, 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 457 

II. HOW THE UPPER HALF LIVES.* 

Life in a tenement-house is not the most pleasant or the most 
desirable in the world, nor is it one which we would voluntarily 
choose ; but if a choice had to be made between it and Society Life 
as Mr. Ward McAllister has found it, without any hesitancy should 
we give the preference to a fairly decent tenement and its society. 
Doubtless there would be a certain amount of dirt and plenty of bad 
smells, a good deal of coarse and vulgar language and noise, 
but the utter vacuity and selfishness, silliness and vanity of Mr. 
Ward McAllister's society, culminating, as it does, in elaborated 
and cultivated gluttony, could not be found among men and 
women who earn honest bread and butter by the sweat of their 
brow. If this book should reveal the real character of what is called 
society to any one who may be casting longing eyes on this most 
fatuous sphere of human life, it will have served a useful purpose. 
Of what other use it can be it is hard to see. In Mr. Riis's 
most valuable and important work, How the Other Half Lives, 
noticed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for February, the reverse of 
the medal may be seen. 



12. THE SOUL OF MAN.f 

This work, like all others from the press of the Open Court 
Publishing Co., represents the Monistic or Haeckelian Positivism. 
Although denying the existence not only of a personal God, but 
even of the " Infinite and Eternal Energy whence all things pro- 
ceed," to which Herbert Spencer pays willing and frequent tribute, 
Dr. Paul Carus, the leading exponent of the system in the United 
States, and the author of the book before us, resents the appella- 
tion to his system of the word "atheistic." He retains the terms 
" God " and " soul," he even speaks of the all- importance of the 
soul's salvation; but he understands by " God" the principle of 
order in the material universe, and by "soul " the sum-total of 
the abstract ideas and lofty sentiments which man possesses. 
Animals are not capable of thought, he concedes, in the narrower 
sense of the word ; man alone, therefore, has a soul, and this soul 
is immortal, enduring after the death of the body, and passing on 
from generation to generation. 

There is but one substance in the universe, and every atom 
of it contains the elements of the consciousness which becomes 

* Society as I Have Found It. By Ward McAllister. New York : Cassell Publishing Co. 
t The Soul of Man. An Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental 
Psychology. By Dr. Paul Carus. Chicago, 111. : The Open Court Publishing Co. 



458 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [June, 

manifest in animals, and of the mind which is at last developed 
in man. Form is more important than substance; substance 
changes, but form endures. Everything which exists is know- 
able : Spencer's antinomies resulted from his own confusion of 
thought. But the materialist who repudiates religion, who despises 
the past, who looks upon life 'as merely the evanescent product 
of a fortuitous aggregation of atoms, is in the eyes of the Monistic 
Positivist a false and evil teacher, and it was the d'Holbachs and 
the Diderots who by. their dangerous teaching and evil living 
brought about the catastrophe of the French Revolution, in which 
the innocent suffered with the guilty. 

Dr. Carus no more spares the Comtian Positivism than he 
does Agnosticism and Encyclopedism. 

The Christian reader will be pleased not only with his 
numerous admissions, which are available ' as weapons against 
other forms of rationalism, but with his unconditional adhesion to 
the ethics of Christianity, and the reverential attitude which . all 
his work reveals towards religion in general, and even towards 
those who have formulated ancj defended the special religious and 
psychological doctrines to which he is opposed. 

The book is also a valuable repository of the latest and most 
authenticated data which modern science has contributed towards 
the solution of the problems of life and mind, particularly in the 
domain of physiological psychology. It is well printed, and abounds 
in plates and references which make the work invaluable to the 
student of these subjects. 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 459 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

ALL COMMUNICATIONS RELATING TO READING CIRCLES, LISTS OF BOOKS, 
ETC., SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION, NO. 
415 WEST FIFTY-NINTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. 

AN English friend, deeply interested in our movement, has 
sent us the circulars of the National Home Reading Union, which 
was recently established in an office at the Surrey House, Victoria 
Embankment, London, W. C. It aims at helping all persons 
who are conscious of intellectual interests to obtain the maximum 
of educational benefit from their reading. Those who have but 
little time for self-improvement are to be assisted in getting the 
books most suitable for studying the particular subjects in which 
they are interested. It is hoped that by directing home-study 
to definite ends a taste for recreative and instructive reading 
may be developed among all classes of the community. Many 
prominent names appear on the list of vice-presidents, including 
the head- master of Rugby School, the master of Downing College, 
Cambridge, the Marquis of Ripon, Sir John Lubbock, Justin Mac- 
Carthy, Frederic Harrison, and Henry Drummond. The meth- 
ods proposed are : 

" (a.) Courses of reading are drawn up by competent authori- 
ties which are adapted to different tastes and requirements and 
include the best books available in each subject. 

" (b.) A monthly magazine is published for each of the two 
classes of readers, viz., general readers and young people, contain- 
ing articles by writers of known ability in their subjects upon 
the books included in the courses, and is forwarded to every 
member of the Union. The articles prescribe the portions of the 
books which it is advisable to study during the month, point out 
and elucidate difficulties, and give directions for reading and con- 
necting links between the books. 

"(<:.) Memoranda sheets, on which difficulties may be noted, are 
issued with the magazines. These may be returned to the cen- 
tral office, and answers appear in the magazine or are forwarded 
to the members. 

"(d.) Members may join the Union individually, but the coun- 
cil encourage the formatign of Reading Circles, that is, groups of 
not less than five members, who meet at intervals for the discus- 
sion of. reading done at home under the guidance of the maga- 
zine. 

44 (cJ) The council also promote the establishment of local com- 
mittees, in order that the Union may be brought to the notice of 



460 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [June, 

all local organizations, as, for instance, religious denominations, 
literary and scientific institutions, co-operative societies, clubs, 
school-boards, and other educational bodies. Such local com- 
mittees may organize lectures and excursions, secure the plac- 
ing of the Union books in the various libraries, public and 
private." 

The members of the National Home Reading Union are 
urged to render assistance by personal work among their friends 
and by the formation of Reading Circles. They are requested to 
send to the office information as to possible helpers in various 
parts of the country, favorable localities for the establishment 
of local committees, and methods by which the Union may be 
made known to public and private bodies. To make the pro- 
ject self-supporting it has been calculated that a membership of 
twelve thousand is needed. In the young people's section indi- 
vidual members pay annually one shilling and sixpence, mem- 
bers of circles one shilling. In the section for general readers, 
the individual members pay the annual sum of three shillings and 
sixpence, members of circles three shillings. The Union maga- 
zine and publications are sent regularly to the members. It is 
urgently desired by the managers " that large numbers of those 
who sympathize with the scheme will go further, and become 
members of both sections at a fee of five shillings, or subscribers, for 
one or more years at ten shillings and sixpence, one guinea, or 
higher sums. Donations will be welcomed for the purpose of pay- 
ing off the deficit on the first year's working, and placing the 
Union finances on a completely satisfactory footing." 

The formation of this English Reading Union is a hopeful 
sign that the movement which it represents is needed every- 
where. We shall watch its development with a view to any pro- 
fitable suggestions for the members of the Columbian Reading 

Union. 

* * * 

An ex-member of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Cir- 
cle has written an account of the work appointed to be done 
during the time that she followed the course of reading sanction- 
ed by that organization. She has also favored us with some 
copies of the Ckautauguan, a monthly magazine devoted to the 
promotion of true culture. We are pleased to notice that the 
Chancellor, J. H. Vincent, D.D., does not teach that true culture 
consists in the possession of a framed diploma to be displayed at 
hom'e with seals that *' flash out upon it as stars in the evening 
sky." He says : 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 461 

" Our only aim is to promote reading. If we enlist people 
in the reading of good books on a wide range of subjects we 
shall at some point strike their taste, and thus promote the cul- 
ture that comes from the use of one's faculties in the line of his 
inclination and opportunity. 

" This being the modest standard of the circle, we have a 
right to expect that every member will honorably discharge his 
duty, reporting the books he has read and none else, filling out 
his memoranda (when he undertakes to do it at all) by his own 
hand, or by dictation, not by proxy, winning the honors he seeks 
in our circle by the honesty which will render his recognition a 
pleasure to himself and a credit to the management. If any 
member feels that his conscience would be quieted by re-reading 
portions of the required books, let him do it. If any member 
expects to gain distinction or place among us by unfairness, let 
him remember that self- contempt is the severest penalty we care 
to predict. Let us live honestly." 

* * * 

The ex-member of Chautauqua, who is now doing very sat- 
isfactory work in a Catholic Reading Circle, had no desire for 
diplomas of doubtful value. Her only anxiety now is to ascer- 
tain whether the Chautauqua readings furnished reliable informa- 
tion on the various subjects required by the course. The members 
of our Reading Union who have requested information on this 
matter will find many of their questions answered in this statement : 

" My interest in Chautauqua work dates from the early autumn 
of 1884, when a Chautauquan was handed me and I read as fol- 
lows : ' The Chautauqua literary and scientific circle is a school at 
home a school after school, a college for one's house. It is for 
high- school and college graduates, for people who never entered 
college, for merchants, busy housekeepers, and for people of leisure 
and wealth who do not know what to do with their time.' 

11 Having read the announcement I glanced at the prescribed 
course of reading and decided that here was an answer to a ques- 
tion that had puzzled me. I was but recently graduated, had 
sipped a little at the Pierian spring, and longed for a deeper 
draught. To procure this at one of the higher colleges for ladies 
was my ambition and hope ; but for the realization of this hope I 
was obliged to wait a few years, and in the meantime I was anx- 
ious to keep up my studies by a systematic course of reading. 
A local Chautauqua circle had just been organized in our village, 
and within a week after reading the announcement my name was 
added to its roll. Of the thirty members of the circle teachers, 
professional and business men, housekeepers and students I shall 
say but little, except that, notwithstanding the fact that we re- 
presented many and widely different religious denominations, we 
worked together in harmony, with enthusiasm. I think that in 



462 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [June, 

the history of this little circle there is no record of any one who 
ever failed to perform an allotted task. Much of the benefit we 
derived from the work was due to this spirit of earnest endeavor 
that animated each one for the improvement of self and others. 
Every member felt that part of the success of the meetings de- 
pended on personal efforts. 

t 

" We did not have an elaborate constitution ; just a few 
rules to regulate the election of members and officers,- the place 
and frequency of our meetings. We had a president, vice- 
president, secretary, and programme committee ; each elected for 
six months. While we realized the necessity of having a 
capable leader, we also appreciated the fact that the work of the 
programme committee was of vital importance, and selected its 
members from our wisest and best. The full Chautauquan course 
of reading requires four years. We took the work two years, 
and then, as a circle, disbanded ; not that we had lost interest 
in what \ve were' doing, but in order that we might devote 
our time to other pursuits. 

" The course of study for 1884-85 was as follows: 
History and Literature. 

" Barnes's History of Greece ; Preparatory Greek Course in English, 
Wilkinson j College Greek Course in English, Wilkinson ; Cyrus and Alex- 
ander, Jacob Abbott ; The Art of Speech, Townsend ; Talks about Good 
English, Richard Grant White ; Glimpses of Ancient Greek Life, Mahaffy ; 
Greek Mythology. 

Science. 

" Chemistry, Appleton ; Huxley on Science ,- Animal Biology, Chautau- 
quan ; The Circle of the Sciences, Chautauquan. 

Religion. 

11 The Character of Jesus, Bushnell ; How to Help the Poor, Mrs. James 
T. Fields; History of the Reformation, bishop Hurst. 

The studies for 1885-86 were: 

History and Literature. 

" Barnes's History of Rome, Steele ; Preparatory Latin Course in English, 
Wilkinson ; College Latin Course in English, Wilkinson ; A Day in Ancient 
Rome, translated by Shumway ; Relations of Rome to Modern History, 
Wilkinson j Modern Italy, Wheeler ; Italian Biography. Chautauquan ; 
Roman and Italian Art, Chautauquan. 

Philosophy and Science. 

" Moral Philosophy, Chautauquan j Human Nature, Chautauquan ; Po- 
litical Economy, Steele ; International Law, Chautauquan ; Physical Geo- 
graphy, Chautauquan. 

General and Religious. 

" Pomegranates from an English Garden, R. Browning ; The Bible in 
the Nineteenth Century, Townsend ; In His Name, E. E. Hale. 

" Each member purchased a set of text-books and devoted 
about forty minutes a day to reading, in the order prescribed 
in the Chautauquan magazine, in which we found programmes 
for the weekly meetings. Sometimes we used them, sometimes 
took suggestions from them, but generally depended on our 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 463 

committee for an original programme. The following is a specimen 
of the programme we used the fourth week of November, 1885, 
when we were reading principally Roman history and literature : 

" i. Roll-call, with responses from Shakspere ; 2. Character Sketch.: 
Julius Caesar ; 3. Paper: Caesar's Foreign Wars and His Object in prosecuting 
Them ; 4. Table-Talk : The First Triumvirate j 5. Music ; 6. Essay : Com- 
parison of the Roman and American Republics ; 7. Recitation : The Pre- 
sent, Adelaide Procter ; 8. Book Review : Ben Hur j 9. Ten Questions on 
the Week's Reading ; 10. Critic's Report. 

" In taking up this course of reading we were not restricted 
to the use of the ' Chautauqua ' books. On the contrary there 
were as many different authors read on one subject as there were 
members in the circle, and at our weekly meetings we heard the 
best thoughts of many of the best writers on the subjects dis- 
cussed. Every one in the circle found time to do the prescribed 
amount of reading, and some of us did a great deal more. When 
I read the Preparatory Greek Course in English, which treats first 
of the land, the people and their writings in general, and then 
briefly of Xenophon's Anabasis, and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey ', 
I read also complete translations of the works just named. When 
I read the College Greek Course in English, which treats of the 
writings of Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, yEschylus, Sophocles, 
Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Theocritus, and Demosthenes, I 
read also good translations of their best- known works. This was 
my introduction to Plato's Dialogues, the Apology of Socrates, Crito 
and Phcedo, and to the dramatic poems ot ^Eschylus and Sopho- 
cles. Analytical and critical essays on such subjects then became 
intensely interesting to me, and I began to take from the library 
shelves with pleasure books that previous to this time would not 
have engaged my attention. 

"When we studied Roman and Italian Art we studied that 
of Greece, Egypt, and Assyria, and ^read a translation of Winckel- 
mann's History of Sacred Art, and then gathered some information 
about mediaeval and modern art. I think it was at this time that 
I began to read the works of Ruskin, which have never since 
failed to instruct and delight me. 

" This collateral reading we did in connection with the course 
prescribed by Chautauqua, which was merely suggestive or used as 
a guide, so that we would all read on the same subject at the 
same time. 

"What did the Chautauqua course do for me? It taught me 
to read thoughtfully and critically, and to see and appreciate new 
beauties in literature and art. It prepared me to continue earn- 
estly my search for knowledge, for it gave me a taste for studi- 
ous reading. S. E. D." 
* * * 

Sir John Herschel said that a taste for reading, and the means 
of gratifying it, can hardly fail to make a " happy man, unless, 
indeed, you put into His hands a most perverse selection of 

VOL. LIII, 30 



464 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [June, 

books." In many departments of thought the books selected for 
the Chautauqua course are very defective, and from a Catholic 
point of view decidedly objectionable. We have yet to ses any 
book endorsed by Chautauqua which contains a reliable account 
of the glorious work for " Roman Art" and "Modern Italy" 

accomplished by the Sovereign Pontiffs of the Catholic Church. 

* * * 

We would like to see at least one Catholic author represented 
in the Chautauqua course of reading on Christian art. Americans 
of all denominations will gladly unite with Catholics in paying a 
fitting tribute to Miss Eliza Alien Starr, for her life-long labors 
in promoting the study of art as exemplified in the works of the 
great masters. By her lectures and writings she has introduced 
the art students of the United States to the studios of the re- 
nowned Catholic artists. In recognition of her claim on the at- 
tention of the Catholic reading public as one of the best of our 
own writers, the Columbian Reading Union has just published a 
list of her books, with an admirable introduction written by 
Miss A. M. Mitchell, of the Fenelon Reading Circle, Brooklyn, 
N. Y. The list has been sent to all the members of our Read 
ing Union, and we urge them to make it known among art 
students. We will cheerfully furnish it to any one following the 

Chautauqua course of reading on art, on receipt of postage. 

* * * 

Miss Mitchell quotes Nathaniel Hawthorne's statement that 
"Christian faith is a grand cathedral with divinely-pictured win- 
dows. Standing without, you see no glory nor can possibly im- 
agine any ; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony 
of unspeakable splendors." She then continues : 

" One cannot but feel that, in the present state of enhght- 
ment, there is an overwhelming percentage of those within the 
'grand cathedral' on whom the unspeakable splendors are en- 
tirely lost because they are not sufficently familiar with the sacred 
.legends of the church. Miss Starr, in Pilgrims and Shrines, has 
^endeavored to give us these legends, weaving them in with her 
.artistic descriptions of the monuments reared abroad, to honor the 
^church's elect. In Patron Saints she leads us on to a still more 
intimate acquaintance with those who bear the palm-branch of 
.triumphant struggle, while in her most recent publication, Chris- 
tian Art in Our Own Age, she encourages the belief that the 
.artistic torch, so long flickering, is about to glow anew." 

'' Fifty years ago, when an interest in mediaeval art began to 
..manifest itself in England, those who were interested in the subject 
found themselves at a loss to interpret intelligently the motives 
.that stimulated the conceptions of the artists ot the Middle Ages; 
ior .Christian Art ia so inseparably connected with the history ot 



1 89 i.j THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 465 

the Catholic Church that it is impossible to study, the former 
without a knowledge of the spiritual triumphs of the latter. It 
was to meet this want that Mrs. Jameson published, some years 
later, her works on Sacred and Legendary Art ; but lacking the 
sympathetic insight of one who stands within the temple of faith, 
it was impossible for her to view her subject other than obscurely. 
As we contrast Mrs. Jameson's work on religious art with that 
of Miss Starr, the position of the two women in regard to their 
subject is most apparent. One sees poetical conceptions which 
she analyzes with purely intellectual discrimination, the other 
through her spiritual relation with the artist sees as he saw, 
feels the devotional thrill that he felt, and works as he worked, 
hoping that those who read may receive the divine message." 

In reply to an inquirer we may here add that some of Mrs. 
Jameson's relatives became converts, but we can get no positive 
proof that she herself joined the Catholic Church before her death. 
The notice of her life which appears in the latest edition of the 
Encyclopedia Britannica contains no allusion to her final religious 
convictions. * * * 

Not long ago we heard a statement to the effect that educational 
institutions in America should not be surrounded by a cloister 
if their light is to shine in places where it can do great good. 
Evidently this remark will suit the writer of the following letter : 

" I agree with Professor Egan, in his article 0:1 the school 
question in the North American Review, that Catholic lay mem- 
bers take little trouble to answer questions, and often shirk 
responsibilities. They do not perform their share of the public 
work imposed on Catholics. Our most zealous members enter 
the religious life, and the world loses sight of them. But our 
Protestant friends, so inclined, join a crusade, a guild, sewing 
societies, clubs, etc., and every little act is published, put before 
the public, for influence, emulation, admiration. We know amon^ 
our religious there are a thousand times more sacrifices.made, 
almost daily, and noble work done. The world knows scarcely 
anything about it. We suspect it at times ; sometimes have 
personal cognizance of it. Why could net our own magazine 
and weekly papers bring into more prominence the lives of 
these workers ? Nearly every secular paper mentions some work 
done by the King's Daughters or others. Why should we let 
pass the heroic deeds done under Catholic auspices ? Do you 
think it would change the motive of the doers to bring them 
into prominence ? I am annoyed at the way our ideas are 
usurped. I remember one of the Jesuits gave an interesting ac- 
count of some of the hardships and difficulties he had to encounter 
in a new part of the country, and I said : ' What a pity, father, 
to let that all pass unknown, unnoticed.' ' Yes,' he said, ' the 
French have a very good way of keeping a journal, jotting 



466 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [June, 

down thoughts and experiences, which sometimes serve those 
who come after.' J. E. P." 

The writer of the above letter is a most active worker for 
Catholic Reading Circles, and has touched on a subject that may 
be profitably considered as bearing on the public manifestation 
of the heroic deeds performed without hope of earthly re- 
cognition or reward. 

* * * 

"Thanks to THE CATHOLIC WORLD, the 'Life of Father 
Hecker ' has been to me not only a present pleasure, but a re- 
minder of a time when his name was a household word, spoken 
in a home presided over by one who thirty-three years ago passed 
over the silent river. Perhaps he was her confessor. When a 
child I was often taken to the Redemptorists* Church, although 
.it was not in our parish. 

" If Reading Circles could only be started in the various 
parishes I have no doubt that they would soon prove as great a 
success as congregational singing. If somebody would only come 
forward and start them, and those who have means would send 
books, what a great work it would be. One way to counteract 
the pernicious effect of flippant reading would be to give occa- 
sional readings to outsiders, who might be glad of something 
that promised an evening's entertainment, yet who would not read 
good literature for themselves. Again, there are people who, 
from want of opportunity to know better, or who, from too stub- 
born clinging to their own opinions and prejudices, cry down all 
literature except the daily papers, and so make things unpleas- 
ant for those who wish to read. Some believe, or pretend to be- 
lieve, that novel- reading is synonymous with vile reading, and yet 
will read the papers, some of which are schools for crime. If 
such as these could attend those readings perhaps their stubborn- 
ness would yield a little, some of the cobwebs be swept out 
of their brains, and their families get a chance to improve. 

" There are no Reading Circles in this neighborhood that I am 
aware bf; if there were I would become a member. I belong to 

parish. If there is a Reading Circle it has never been spoken 

of in the church, soT conclude there is none. I confess I am 
surprised at it, as I do not think 'we are behind the age in any- 
thing else except congregational singing. Nobody has come to 
start that yet; when they do they will find us ready. I wish 
success to the Columbian Reading Union, and hope we shall 
soon have plenty of Reading Circles. A. E. K." 

"Brooklyn, N. Y. 

We recommend the writer of this letter to express these 
ideas vigorously among her acquaintances, and get a few of her 
friends to join with her in a request for the formation of a 
Reading Circle. No doubt she will find the priest quite willing 
to assist M. C. M. 



.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 467 



WITH THE PUBLISHER. 

THERE is no place like the Publisher's desk to learn that 
there are " many men of many minds." The letter of an old 
subscriber, published in this department of the magazine last 
month, in which the " brightness " of the color of the new cover 
was questioned, opened the flood-gates of an epistolary torrent 
on the Publisher. With all sorts of suggestions of every one (al- 
most) of the primary colors, there- have been many who claim 
that the present is the best color that could be used from every 
point of view. We quote the following letter for the reason that 
it exactly hits the idea the Publisher had in adopting a change 
in the dress of the magazine : 

* * 

" BUFFALO. 

" REV. DEAR SIR : It is with some interest I look over ' With 
the Publisher' in THE WORLD, and in the current number I was 
rather amused at the objection raised by 'An old Subscriber' to 
the color of the new cover. I should say, Do not change; it is 
all right. With so many magazines on the book-stands it is well 
to have, and really quite important, something striking to appeal 
to the eye of the general public. The old color was negative ; 
the new one is positive. Keep it. 

" In connection with suggestions, etc., you solicit, allow me to 
ask if you have ever considered that the sale, and, possibly through 
it, the subscription, of THE WORLD might be increased by a little 
judicious advertising, and more particularly by generous dealing 
with the book and magazine sellers throughout the country. It 
cannot cost much to print a few hundred of each issue beyond 
the regular number, and these I would suggest be placed with the 
dealers to have upon their stands together with Harper 's, Scrilmer's, 
etc. Arrange to have them returnable within a stated time, in 
this way protecting the dealer and enabling him to handle them 
without loss, as undoubtedly the sale and demand would not be 
brisk in the beginning. 

" In this way THE WORLD would appeal to and reach many 
Catholics who at present never see and seldom hear of it. For 
instance, as a matter of information, I have inquired at all the 
book-stores and stands in this city for THE WORLD and found 
not one for sale. The same is true of other cities where I have 
been. In Chicago I found it at one stand ; it may have been 
at others, but certainly was not at all where it should have 
had a place beside the standard magazines. 



468 WITH THE PUBLISHED. [June, 

" The American is an inquisitive person, and is most likely 
to feed upon whatever looks new ; wishes to taste, as it were, 
of new things. Why not give him the opportunity of feeding 
upon Catholic* reading and the Catholic side of things. It will 
do him no harm, and may be productive of much good. Is it 
not worth trying ? 

" Pardon the length of this letter, but there is much to say 
when the start has been made. 

" Very truly yours, 



The Publisher admits the truth of all that is said in the 
foregoing letter ; and, so far as it rests with himself, he has 
done all he can to secure greater patronage from the news- 
dealers. The magazine can be obtained by them from the 
American News Company, through whom the dealers through- 
out the country are supplied with this as with every other 
magazine and on the same terms ; for THE CATHOLIC WORLD 
is " returnable." That some dealers h'nd sale for the magazine 
is shown by the regular orders of the American News Com- 
pany, but that these orders should be larger and that the 
magazine should become better known at the news-stands is 
frankly admitted. In the ordinary course of things the Publisher 
cannot reach the dealers directly, nor can he add to the in- 
ducements already offered. The dealer studies the question of 
demand ; he will supply what is ordinarily called for. The 
inducements necessary to make it worth the experiment of offer- 
ing a comparatively unknown publication, even when it is 
returnable, are, unless the Publisher is in error, very much in 
advance of the present resources of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. 

* 

* * 

Hence the Publisher would ask his readers to do the next best 
thing to secure a better acquaintance with the news-dealers to 
make a demand for the magazine. If our readers generally would 
inquire for it now and then, the dealer would soon be led by 
mere business instinct to venture on the experiment outlined by 
our correspondent. The demand at the various public libraries 
of the country for Catholic books and the works of Catholic au- 
thors, suggested and urged by the director of the Columbian 
Reading Union, met with a ready response, as a general rule, in 
the purchase of books that otherwise might never have found a 
place on the shelves of these public libraries, as if the Catholic 
body formed no part of the public. So in like manner a regular 
demand might lead the news-dealers to understand that there was 






1 89 1.] WITH THE PUBLISHED. 469 

such a thing as a Catholic reading public and that it was worth 

catering to. 

# 
* * 

And we have a Catholic reading public a public that finds 
interest in Catholic reading. It is small, but it is giving many 
signs of healthy growth. And the Publisher is glad to find in 
the proceedings of the recent Second Convention of the Associat- 
ed Catholic Editors of the United States abundant evidence of 
that growth, abundant grounds for the hope of better things to 
come. The Association has doubled its membership within the 
past year, and surely where the spirit of unity gains strength such 

as this that hope is a reasonable one. 

# 
* * 

There was but one thing that in the Publisher's idea marred 
this second convention, and he is surprised that in the published 
accounts no stricture, no mention even, was made of it. It was 
the sentiment which one of the principal speakers at the recep- 
tion gave utterance to. He "never read," said he, "a Catholic 
paper," and "his confessor had never yet imposed it upon him as a 
penance." On such an occasion and before such an audience this 
remark surely deserved a decided rebuke. If the rebuke was not 
administered it was because the numbers of such alleged " edu- 
cated " Catholics is decreasing. It's easy enough to find fault 
with anything under the sun ; merely to find fault is shabby 
criticism. As a mere matter of comparison it would be well for 
those Catholics who manifest such scorn for the Catholic Press 
and who do nothing with their purse or their pen to make it 
better, to compare the intellectual pabulum served in the ordi- 
nary Protestant journal with its magnificent support with that 
furnished by Catholic periodicals generally. It would, we feel 

sure, be a revelation to many. 

# 
* # 

Attention is called to an article of much interest in the last 
issue of the Dublin Review (April, 1891), entitled "The Scho- 
lastic Movement and Catholic Philosophy," by Mr. Wilfrid Ward. 
It 'is the writer's purpose to direct attention to the lines of 
thought outside the church which may assist Catholic philo- 
sophers in solving the problems of life. Mr. Ward, himself a 
philosopher in the full sense of the term, would have Catholic 
thinkers divested of superstitious antipathy to the contributions 
of non-Catholics, especially contemporary writers, to the philo- 
sophical discussions of our time. In urging this he says : 

" A recent and saintly Catholic thinker has maintained that 



4/o WITH THE PUBLISHER. [June, 

the narrowing of Catholic thought since the Reformation has 
been owing to a duty of this kind. Private judgment had run 
wild, and the idea of authority was thrown to the winds by 
Luther and his followers. A stern enforcement of authority 
became necessary to neutralize the danger ; no matter if the 
intellectual life in the churqh did suffer for the time. A more 
important interest was at stake Catholic faith itself. Authority 
became more absolute, more stringent. A liberty at other times 
allowable, and even essential for vigor and life, became danger- 
ous. As martial law supersedes in time of rebellion the freer 
process of trial by jury, and other institutions essential to the 
rightful liberties of a people in a state of peace, so the neces- 
sary vindication of authority after the Reformation contracted 
and repressed the freedom of Catholic thought and speculation 
which characterized the middle ages. Authoritative suppression 
of opinion became more necessary, lest liberty, at other times 
desirable, should under the peculiar circumstances degenerate 
into license. But this interference with speculation, however 
necessary, naturally checks the ardor of a philosophical move- 
ment, and may even render philosophical thought impossible. 
And in the palmy days of mediaeval philosophy, though the 
danger of scandalizing the weak was not forgotten, and the 
great masters of the second period of scholasticism were not 
accused, as Abelard had been, of unsettling young men by 
startling and dangerous disputations, it was recognized that, in 
the sphere of philosophy, careful, dispassionate, and, in a great 
measure, sympathetic study of all great thinkers was called for." 



He would have this reign of " martial law," as he calls it, 
and which was necessitated by the assaults of the enemies of 
authority on our defences, brought to an end, since the hostile 
forces which gave it existence have themselves weakened and 
withdrawn. What he says in the following quotation in favor of 
more liberty for .English Catholics applies with equal force to 
Catholics of all tongues : 

" And at the present time, now that comparative peace is 
supervening after the struggle of the Reformation and spiritual 
rebellion has resolved its elements into renewed obedience in 
some and hereditary separation in others ; now that the sus- 
pended commerce of intellect is being resumed and the institu- 
tions essential for a flourishing community in time of peace 
are again coming into play ; now that English Catholics have 
their civil and political rights in a measure restored, have their 
hierarchy re-established, are making themselves felt in the great 
social movements of the day, are recognizing who are their 
friends outside the visible fold in these movements, are sur- 
mounting the indiscriminate sense that every man's hand is 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHED. 471 

against them in the world of politics and society, we naturally 
have to look more exactly in the intellectual sphere as well as 
in other spheres at non- Catholic writers and their principles. 
Intellectual life becomes possible for us as political life and 
social life. In the absence of philosophical organization at such 
times as I have referred to our rulers may warn us against 
false prophets, against Kant, against Locke, against the Scottish 
school, as well as against thinkers whose principles are anti- 
religious, as out of accord in much or in little with the prin- 
ciples of the church. A wholesale flight is the only course 
when the weapons and resources of philosophy have been re- 
moved. But when the ruler's martial law is revoked and arms 
are once more allowed, and Catholic philosophy is called upon 
to deal with the matter, it must separate the wheat from 
the chaff." 

It condemns Kant' c theoretical scepticism, but it recognizes in 
his pages probably some of the deepest thoughts which the in- 
tellect of man has wrought out on the great principles of ethics. 
It treats him as St. Thomas treated Aristotle interprets him for 
the best, claims his support where it can, examines him closely, 
parts company with him where he is clearly at variance with 
Catholic truth, but reverences him intellectually, and recognizes 
that his great thoughts as all great thoughts come from God. 
And so with our great English and Scotch thinkers ; Catholic 
philosophy does not treat them as enemies, but it considers 
closely what they say, and welcomes the good, and examines 
"nd corrects what is inaccurate. The great fact that in the ex- 
ercise of purely philosophical thought a non-Christian intellect 
may be supreme, and far superior to his Christian commentators, 
was emphasized once and for ever by the schoolmen, and to for- 
get it is to forget a cardinal point in their teaching. 

* * 
Who is meant by " a recent and saintly Catholic thinker " 

is shown by Mr. Ward at the conclusion of the following ex- 
tract : 

" To express briefly the practical conclusion towards which 
these remarks tend, there appear to be two conceptions of the 
direction which the Catholic philosophical movement should take. 
One tends rather to fall back on the scholastic phraseology, to 
devote its principal attention to the identical questions which St. 
Thomas had to deal with in contemporary Aristotel-ianism, to view 
modern thinkers, so to speak, at a distance, as enemies on the 
whole, to be read hastily, for the purpose of refutation ; nervous- 
ly, half in fear lest to read them carefully and fully will be to 
shake Christian faith, wholly in fear of adopting in any consider- 



472 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [June, 

able degree opinions first advocated by thinkers outside the 
church. The same view is inclined to regard contemporary phil- 
osophical movements as something quite external to us and radi- 
cally vicious, to be compared (more in their conclusions than in 
their trains of thought, which are not entered into) with individ- 
ual scholastic conclusions, and where they differ to be considered 
simply false, while the scholastic conclusions are held to be sim- 
ply true. Such, I say, is a not uncommon view observable among 
Catholic writers. But there is another view more or less preva- 
lent in the writings of such thinkers as Father Maher, and which 
falls in with the general account of the history of Catholic 
thought given by Father Hecker." 

To the older readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD the line of 
thought pursued by Mr. Ward must be familiar ; it formed the 
theme of Father Hecker's most vigorous writing, and was empha- 
sized in his last published work, The Church and the Age. 



* 
* # 



Mr. William Swan Sonnenschein, of the well-known firm 
of London publishers, has just issued a " guide for readers " 
of eleven hundred pages quarto under the title The Best Books. 
It . is a monument to his patience and love of books. Its ob- 
ject is. nothing less than the provision for both the special student 
and the general reader of a guide to the best available books 
(which, according to the compiler's estimate, number about fifty 
thousand) in every department of science, art, and literature down 
to 1890. It was a great task for a single man to attempt, but 
in the general opinion of those who are qualified to judge, he 
has been successful. Whether one wishes to investigate the Eng- 
lish marriage laws, or to learn all about the Colorado beetle, or to 
discover what has been said of the state of departed souls, the 
authorship of the letters of Junius, or the intention of Shak- 
spere in writing Hamlet, all that has to be done is to turn to 
Mr. Sonnenschein's index of authors, tables, and subjects, and in 
another moment the key of the special treasury of knowledge is 
in one's hands. The New York agents are G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. 



* 
* * 



Mr. C. Kegan Paul, of the London publishing firm of Kegan 
Paul & Co., has written a volume of essays entitled Faith and 
Unfaith, and other Essays. Four of these essays treat of re- 
ligious subjects, the three concluding papers deal with literary 
matters. In the words of a recent critic : " The book has this 
special interest: that it is the work of one who has handled, the 



iggi.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 473 

great records of spiritual life and history in the spirit of inquir- 
ing Liberalism, and who has found an answer in the august 
doctrines of Catholic Christianity." 

" Plurima quaesivi : per singula quaeque cucurri : 
Nee quidquam inveni melius quam credere 
Christo." 

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. have published the first volume of 
a Journal of American Ethnology and Archeology, by Professor 
J. Walter Fevvkes. It deals principally with the results of the 
Hemejiway Archaeological Expedition among the Zunis. 
The Catholic Publication Society Co. announces : 

Life and Times of Dr. Richard Robert Madden. Edited by 
his son, Thomas More Madden, M.D. 

Ireland and St. Patrick : A Stud^ of the Saint's Character, 
and of the Results of his Apostolate. By Rev. W. B. 
Morris. 

Cardinal Newman. Reminiscences of Fifty Years Since. By 
one of his oldest living Disciples, William Lockhart. 

Life of the Cure of Ars. From the French of Abbe Mon- 
nin. Edited by Cardinal Manning. New and cheap 
edition. 

Peter Paul & Brother, Buffalo, N. Y., announce for early pub- 
lication The Life and Times of Keteri Tekakwitha, the Lily of 
the Mohawks, 1656-1680, by Ellen H. Wai worth, author of 
An Old World as Seen through Young Eyes. 
Harper & Brothers have published : 
Criticism and Fiction. By W. D Ho wells. 
The Poems of Wordsivorth. Selected and arranged by Mat- 
thew Arnold. 

A Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant. By Margaret 
O. W. Oliphant. 

A new novel from the pen of Marion Crawford is called 
Khaled, a Tale of Arabia; and is published by Macmillan & 
Co. The same firm has issued in its "Temple Library" series 
the Essays and Poems of Leigh Hunt, edited and selected by 
Reginald B. Johnson. 

Longmans, Green & Co. announce for immediate publication 
the second volume of their new edition of James Martineau's 
works, which have been carefully revised by the author. It is 
devoted to Ecclesiastical and Historical Essays and Reviews. 
They also announce an Introduction to the Study of the History 
of Language, by Herbert A. Strong. 



474 BOOKS RECEIVED. [June, 1891. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

CONSIDERATIONES PRO REFORMATIONE VlT^E. CotlSCripsit G. Roder, S.J. 

St. Louis : B. Herder. 

SACRED ELOQUENCE. By the Rev. Thomas J. Potter. New York and Cin- 
cinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. '* 
THE HOLY MASS EXPLAINED. By the Rev. F. X. Schouppe, S.J. New York 

and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 
THOUGHT ECHOES. By the author of Wreaths of Song. Dublin : Gill & 

* Son. 
INFORMATION READER. By E. A. Beal, M.D. Boston: School Supply 

Company. 
THE PARNELL MOVEMENT. By T. P. O'Connor, M.P. New York : Cas- 

sell Publishing Co. 
How TO GET ON. By the Rev. Bernard Feeny. New York, Cincinnati, 

Chicago : Benziger Bros. ' 
READINGS AND RECITATIONS. Compiled by Eleanor O'Grady. New York, 

Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros. 
LIFE OF ST. ALOYSIUS GONZAGA. By the Students of Rhetoric of '92 of 

St. Francis Xavier's College. New York : Sold by all booksellers. 
A SIMPLE PRAYER-BOOK FOR CHILDREN. Philadelphia : H. L. Kilner 

& Co. 
A FIRST PRAYER-BOOK FOR LITTLE ONES. Philadelphia : H. L. Kilner 

& Co. 
MORES CATHOLICI ; OR, AGES OF FAITH. By Kenelm Digby. Vol. III., 

containing Books VII., VIII., and IX. New York: P. O'Shea. 
ORIGIN, PURPOSE, AND DESTINY OF MAN ; OR, PHILOSOPHY OF THE 

THREE ETHERS. By William Thornton. Boston : Published by the 

Author. 
OUR COMMON BIRDS, AND HOW TO KNOW THEM. By John B. Grant.- 

With sixty-four plates. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 



PAMPHLETS RECEIVED. 

ADDRESS OF THE FRIENDS IN BEHALF OF THE INDIANS. Philadelphia : 

Friends' Bookstore. 
FIFTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE TABERNACLE .SOCIETY; OR, WORK 

FOR POOR CHURCHES. Washington : Win. H. Lepley. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. LIII. JULY, 1891. No. 316. 



JUVENILE LITERATURE AND THE FORMATION OF 

CHARACTER. 

JUST twenty years ago the house of Lothrop & Co., of 
Boston, published for the first time one of those collections of 
miscellaneous reading for children, illustrated and in brightly 
lithographed covers, which have since become so familiar. A 
small edition was slowly gotten rid of in the two years 
following. To-day the same firm sells of this style of book 
alone, distributed among some twenty different forms, 1,250,000 
volumes annually. They publish besides from 75,000 to 100,000 
copies of bound annuals ; and from original manuscripts, an 
average of 75 new books yearly, with a sale of 150,000. With 
the subscription list of Wide Awake and its attendant magazines, 
which runs up now to over 100,000, this reaches a sum total ot 
1,580,000 books of purely juvenile literature, graded to meet the 
requirements of all ages between infancy and manhood. Remem- 
ber this is the record of but a single firm in a single city, and 
that there is scarcely a publishing house of any size in any large 
American town which does not make additions to the vast 
number. While it is 'but fair to state that Lothrop leads in the 
stupendous amount of his sales, many other houses press closely 
upon his figures. Harpers, the Century Company, Lippincott, 
the Appletons, and others show almost as large provision for 
the wants of youth, in their several departments. The four lead- 
ing magazines, St. Nicholas, The Youth's Companion, Harper's 
Young People, and Wide Awake, count three-quarters of a million 
of subscribers ; and among their contributors are some of the 
choicest names in politics, in science, in art, and in literary 
work of the known world. In addition there comes from across 

Copyright. REV. A. F. HEWIT. 1891. 



476 JUVENILE LITERATURE AND 

the water a host of novel and beautiful things ' to swell the final 
amount. The admirable and infinitely varied treatises which 
French ingenuity has put into the form of narrative or fiction 
to beguile the imagination into acting as interpreter to the intel- 
lect ; the equally diversified but not always so carefully finished 
\\ork of English book-makers'; and the folk-lore and fairy-tales 
of Germany and Denmark weigh down the shelves of our book- 
sellers. This would alone give an enormous amount in numbers 
if one could reach the figures. On one of the pages in a late 
issue of Scribner there is a list of 71 new fine-art juveniles, all 
reprints from earlier English editions. The American Publishers 
Weekly, giving in February, 1889, the resume of work in this 
department during the preceding year in the United States alone, 
gives the number of individual new works without counting 
new editions of older publications at 487; remarking, meantime, 
that the list is rendered incomplete by the failure of so many 
houses, especially in the West, to send in their statements. 
There are to be added to this importations of British authors of 
other new juveniles to the number of 112. The same paper 
states that " nowadays books addressed to young people are so 
admirably written and illustrated that adult readers are glad to 
use them, which renders it difficult for one who desires to classify 
to know under which heading they should be placed." The 
figures here referred to show 470 juveniles as against 1,314 novels 
in England, and 487 juveniles against 1,022 novels in this 
country. In neither case does this estimate include magazines. 
Unfortunately there is no account which would give the number 
of copies sold from this bewildering array ; but taking Mr. 
Lothrop's average as a basis of estimate, there would be not 
less than 1,200,000 individual volumes, with reprints in the shape 
of miscellaneous collections which would count at least 5,000,000 
more. 

If these statements could but be taken to represent a similar 
plethora of intellectual development what happiness for all 
concerned. But I have not even been able to reach any approxi- 
mately correct estimate of the number of comparatively useful 
books sold, as against those comparatively useless or worse. The 
" penny dreadfuls" of England, the five-cent pamphlets of 
Beadle's wretched detective stories, the degraded style and 
doubtful influence of such papers as the Fireside Companion will 
count their millions in the list as well as Stevenson's Kidnapped 
or St. Nicholas. In spite of the reformatory and educational 
work of our public libraries and schools, our Chautauquas and 



1891.] THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 477 

Reading Unions, the readers of this worse than worthless litera- 
ture mount every year into hundreds of thousands, and publishers 
are found reckless and vile enough to sow those seeds of death 
for sake of the filthy profits they receive. It is only a few 
seasons since Peck's Bad Boy, a work as subversive of manliness, 
of reverence, of uprightness, and of refinement as if it had been 
framed by some infernal ingenuity solely for purposes of perver- 
sion, sold its 250,000 copies; and made the fortunes of author 
and publisher when it should have been the disgrace of both. It 
is safe to say that each one of those 250,000 books passed 
sooner or later through the hands of at least two or three young 
people before it found its way to oblivion ; and every one counts 
for as much in the sales-list of those years as a copy of Bible 
stories or a volume of Robinson Crusoe. 

This is but one of the dangers to which the tremendo-u-s 
change of the last fifty years has left us open. At first sight 
an unmixed good, this superabundance of material disguises the 
germ of a subtle but most positive evil. Even supposing the 
whole range of absolutely vicious contributions -to be stricken 
out and only the good and true left, there would still be reason 
for a pause of apprehension at the threshold of this full granary, 
which has taken the place of the old emptiness. It is hard for 
loving hands to understand that beyond a certain point support 
and guidance are snares instead of blessings. Some struggle the 
child must have, some elements of danger and difficulty must be 
left for his own overcoming, or the strength of his nature will 
never be fully developed. There is, congenitally, sufficient lean- 
ing toward the curves of least resistance in humanity, without 
eliminating altogether by disuse from the virtues of mankind the 
elements of antagonism, of perseverance, and of stubborn self-re- 
liance. There is danger of drifting toward the maelstrom of 
indifference and ease, which has already swallowed up so much 
promise, and which appears year by year to threaten more di- 
rectly the integrity of character among us. The best minds of 
the age are at work now upon the problem of simplifying life's 
realities and meanings, so that the dawning intelligence shall 
comprehend almost unconsciously, as it learns to walk or to talk. 
The perceptions are no longer allowed to be strained beyond 
their normal power in the effort to grasp the full meaning of 
some great truth ; but piece by piece, with infinite patience and 
many twists and turns, the subject is brought within the child's 
focus of vision. The texts for the school, the moral lesson at 
the mother's knee and the church altar, the. principles and re- 
VOL. mi. 51 



JUVENILE LITERATURE AND [July, 

finements into which the plastic nature is to be taught to mould 
itself, must be illuminated with light beyond that which comes 
from their own merits, and be imbibed rather than inculcated. 
There is now a royal road to learning, which little feet may 
tread. It has been graded after the best plans of modern en- 
gineering, every stumbling- block has been removed from its 
course, it has been widened and paved, it <has been smoothed 
and swept and garnished, and poor as well as rich have been 
made welcome to tread the highway. It remains now to be 
seen whether this gracious and easy passage will induce such 
sturdy muscle and brave pedestrianism as of old, when there 
were ups and downs, miry spots, and stony places to be gotten 
ever. We have rid ourselves of the Slough of Despond and the 
Hill Difficulty pray Heaven that we may not also have ridden 
ourselves of the energy formerly required to overcome them ! 

Another risk of which the plethora of juvenile writing is 
shall I say effect, or cause ? is that which at present attaches 
itself to all our dealings with childhood, in allowing too much 
scope to its preferences and impulses, under the illusion that we 
are thus interfering less with the personality of the individual. 
To be of use either to itself or to others, 'must not all individu- 
ality be trained into the service of loyalty, of reverence, and of 
principle ? The highest liberty can be known only where law 
and order exist; outside that, all is license. To make the child's 
\\ill or the child's whim of the first importance in choosing the 
books he shall amuse or enlighten himself with, .is to jeopardize 
not only intellectual training, but moral force. We do not yield 
to the nursery rebellion against the daily bath, the early hour 
for bed-time, the plainness of simple and wholesome diet. Why 
should we risk for the spiritual constitution what we would con- 
sider hazardous or actually unsafe for the physical ? We know 
that the youthful mind, naturally eager and curious, passes with 
delight from one field of emotion to another, but refuses, without 
wise constraint, to remain long at any one quest. Allowed in 
the beginning to roam unchecked in a desultory way, the de- 
mand for the excitement of change becomes first customary and 
then habitual. Reading which requires any effort of thought or 
strain upon the attention grows irksome, and is quietly dropped 
for more congenial pages. Since the supply always answers the 
demand, there results a flood of light and flimsy story-telling, 
over-sweet with vapid sentimentalism, over- spiced with weak sen- 
sations, which sweeps the idle fancy away with it, and leaves 
behind stagnant pool and treacherous marsh, where proper irriga- 



1891.] THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 479 

tibn would have developed fertile and fair fields. A false stand- 
ard of emotion is made to take the place of true feeling; and 
where the old writers failed only through turgid expressions or 
bombastic language, the new often go astray in conception and 
sentiment. Our best writers to-day have admirably solved the 
problem of simplifying expression while retaining purity of 
thought But the literature which stocks our Christian counters 
and overflows our library shelves has shifted its shortcomings 
from the form to the idea. Tt is the spirit instead of the letter 
which now halts. The proportions of this Barmecide feast are 
so great, and its debilitating influence on the mental growth of 
the child so evident, that it sensibly diminishes whatever vain- 
glory we might be apt to feel at the magnitude of the provision 
made. It would be quite safe to assume that one-half the entire 
number of books written for young 'people belong to this skim- 
milk and adulterated candy grade it would be nearer truth to 
say it reached three-quarters of the total. If there could be a 
Congressional decree creating a board of censors with full power 
to destroy all this questionable travesty on the name of literature, 
it would do more for the security of American progress and 
prosperity than even the solution of the proper distribution of 
the surplus. It is not wholly the vicious or the absolutely 
worthless which is to be feared ; but that other type which is 
almost as unhealthy in its subtle undermining of pure taste and 
sterling worth. Made simply to amuse, written as hack-work 
by scribblers in whom the intellect is as arid as the imagination, 
they are so managed as not to shock conventional morality, and 
thus escape the censure they deserve. They make advances 
upon sensitiveness by such slow but sure degrees that they act 
as anaesthetics, lulling the conscience and deadening the will. 
Their use is the more to be regretted in that the child's imagin- 
ation, vivid, inexhaustible, glorious, is as ready to assimilate the 
finished as the imperfect work ; it is as easy to train his under- 
standing of literary style upon Lamb's Tales from Shakspere 
and Kingsley's Stories from Homer, upon Longfellow, and Scott, 
and Tennyson, as upon Oliver Optic, and Miss Alcott, and the 
host of lesser writers who fall infinitely below even these in 
merit. 

Before passing to the suggestions which prudence and thought- 
fulness would naturally arrive at as means of remedy for these 
dangers, there is a third which deserves a moment's notice. The 
old proverb, " Beware of the man of one book," reflected not 
only the ignorance and intolerance of a little learning, but also 



480 JUVENILE LITERATURE AND [July, 

the absolute knowledge of his subject which the student 
developed upon this principle possessed. To the boy or girl of 
that time his hero was an intimate personal friend. His interest 
was that of long acquaintance ; adventure and incident were his 
own possessions, conned over, reflected upon, revelled in, until 
they were familiar as- the faces and exploits of his brothers. 
What book of to-day is such portion of the life of its child- 
reader beyond the passing moment during which it claims his 
attention. What image is so fixed in memory as to hold its 
own amid the vaporous crowd of hurrying phantoms, silhouettes 
rather than substantial figures, which tread upon each other's 
heels through the excited imagination, . and fade like shades 
thrown upon the disc of a magic lantern ? Here is really the 
greatest evil which threatens the helpfulness and benefit of the 
rich material provided for youth by the helpfulness and gene- 
rosity of the modern spirit. The curse of superficiality, the risk 
of losing that after-growth of the mind which is the harvest of 
cultivation, clings about our own times with a pertinacity which 
endangers future progress at least as much as the harshness of 
mental discipline which preceded it. The habit of skimming a 
book instead of reading it, of demanding amusement instead of 
study, of allowing curiosity to take the place of reflection, is 
becoming so common among young people that it leaves much 
to be desired in the dispositions they bring to the acquirement 
of information and refinement afterward. 

It is precisely in this matter of careful reading, as food for di- 
gestion rather than delectation of the palate, that the basis of true 
culture lies as opposed to commonplace acquirement. The child 
whose taste has been formed upon good models, and who has been 
taught to extract not sweetness alone but nourishment from the 
delectable pages spread before him, is sure to develop into the man 
of cultivated understanding and elevated imagination. His per- 
ceptions will be more delicate in all the finer and nobler issues 
of life. As for the girl, to whom the habit of interest in study 
and earnestness of thought is to mean so much more ; whose life, 
as a woman, is to depend so largely for its vitality, health, and 
usefulness upon the power to turn readily into communion with 
great and noble minds, the training is not only beneficial, it is 
indispensable. In spite of all the widening paths which the new 
apprehension of women's rights and privileges have laid open to 
her feet, she is still to be the housekeeper, the housewife, the 
house-mother by nature, by grace, and by inclination. From the 
close environment of these dear but wearing cares, from the 



1891*] THE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 481 

narrowing influence of this happy but monotonous routine, she 
will find freshness, vigor, recreation of sense, soul and body, in 
her wise love of books. It is this which will lead her from over- 
critical self-concentration into wholesome interest in ampler and 
more varied fields. The overpowering strain upon nerve strength 
which the demands of modern society place upon those who 
form it, and which has resulted in an epidemic of prostration as 
alarming as it is prevalent, will find its best corrective in some 
earnest mental exercise which shall invigorate instead of wearying. 
The attention turned wholly into other channels for even very 
short spaces of time will create for itself counter issues of abun- 
dant interest to offset the frivolous and useless preoccupations 
which wear out so many sensitive temperaments. I remember 
some twenty years ago, when arguments of this kind were much 
less general than at present, being very much struck by a series 
of " Lenten Talks " given by the celebrated Bishop Dupanloup 
to the ladies of his congregation. The subject was the means of 
enlarging ordinary life into healthier and happier channels, and 
nobler uses and ideals. He claimed that for rich and poor, the 
woman of fashion as well as the household drudge, the most 
complete rest and relaxation would be found in fifteen minutes, 
if no more could be spared, of thoughtful daily reading. This 
was to be carried on regularly ; not by those fits and starts which 
are to solid improvement what jerks are to a steady pull ; and it 
was for study, not amusement. And he was quite right. Even 
physically, as a distribution of the blood and nervous forces, it is 
the surest tonic for fatigue and weakness. But the power to avail 
me's self of this vivifying influence can only come to those 
'hose earlier life has been an apprenticeship in careful and 
loughtful habits. It must be the result of growth and 
training. 

It is among the juvenile literature of the day, rich, varied, and 
)lentiful as it is, that these tastes are to be formed upon which so 
tuch of the fortune of the future is to depend. In it we have a 
strong and brilliant blade ready for our youthful warriors. But 
whether it is to cut its way upward to divine heights, or 
lownward to realms of stagnation and iniquity, depends upon 
low the hand has been trained to use it. If there could be 
introduced into the homes of America the habit of reading 
iloud, it would be in itself a great safeguard. There would 
at least assured sobriety and carefulness in the matter of 
ipproaching a book ; there would be security in the choice 
lade when it was to be shared by an audience ; there would 



482 JUVENILE LITERATURE AND [July, 

be the benefit of association of ideas as a help toward under- 
standing and reflection. No other method could better help to 
weed the good from the bad. Even where the natural order is 
reversed and the child instead of the parent has the better 
education in books, the riper moral sense of the elders would 
still be able to. discern good from evil ; while the great watch- 
fulness exercised by the public libraries, and the suggestions 
of the school, would make the chances of improper choice 
infinitely less than they otherwise might be. 

To the objection so frequently made that the child has often 
no taste for the class of reading with which the more mature 
judgment would provide him there is but one answer. Taste is 
as much a matter of education and habit as cleanliness or 
morality. There may be an exceptional boy or girl who natu- 
rally and without urging keeps face and hands washed, or intui- 
tively chooses the proper solution of a problem which involves 
some subtle discrimination between right and wrong. But for 
one such example there will be a hundred to whom the intrin- 
sic merit of soap and water is only revealed after forced applica- 
tion three times a day for at least six or eight years ; or in 
whom conscience is not the slow growth of ceaseless precept 
and example, planted in a thousand tiny seeds by the loving 
Christian watchfulness of the parents and teachers. So about 
taste in reading. Here and there a child will be found with 
such strong congenital bias as swa) s him toward certain pursuits 
or recreations as surely as the flower bends before the blasts. 
Meantime the other ninety-and-nine of his comrades are purely 
creatures of the measures employed in their rearing. Brought 
up on elevated and true models ; made early acquainted with 
pure, beautiful, and strong thought as well as good English, they 
will take to it readily and kindly as their native element when 
the time comes that bids them choose for themselves. Accus- 
tomed, on the other hand, to poverty of imagination and the 
glare of crude coloring, they will turn from the better things 
which they have never been taught to appreciate, to the poorer 
glitter which has caught their eager fancy. The trouble, as a 
rule, is that we do not recognize early enough the dawning in- 
telligence which is biasing the little child and receiving an im- 
pulse upward or downward as the case may be. I believe most 
heartily, that long before the infant has been born into the 
changing fortunes of this life the mother has power to mould 
somewhat the soul which has been entrusted to her. Certainly 
as soon as its bodily eyes have been opened to the light it is 



1891.] TJIE FORMATION OF CHARACTER. 483 

time to guide it toward the goal of promise. The bed-time 
prayer and song, the nursery stories, are stronger agents than we 
dream of in the formation of mental as well as moral habit. 

So that, after all, it is to restriction of choice by the elder 
mind that we must look for purifying the mass, until those lean- 
ings toward right ideals are established which we call inclinations. 
It is this little leaven which must leaven the whole lump. Of 
all races on the face of the earth the American most requires 
the help of high inspiration and the guardianship of self-control 
because of the chaos of conditions and temperaments from which 
it emerges. 

Obliged to look to itself for repression and direction, mak- 
ing its own laws and abiding by its own decisions from the 
moment it reaches manhood, what is to train its undeveloped 
powers to teach it prudence, obedience to lawful authority, per- 
severance and integrity? Are these qualifications to be gathered 
from the crudeness of uncultivated taste, the license of unawak- 
ened principle, the absence of wholesome restraint while young, 
until the plastic mind and strong perversity of unbridled passions 
have learned to mistake self-will for conscience, and absence of 
belief for liberality of spirit ? What is to get for the beginning 
of life that understanding which is beyond all other getting ? 
You might as well expect the youthful intellect to absorb with- 
out suggestion or assistance the alphabet, arithmetic, or chemistry, 
as that those deeper problems of life and character should be 
solved by one who has never been taught to regard them. If 
he does not receive his training from books, at least his elders 
must or his teachers. You may shift the responsibility of care- 
ful choice to some earlier period, but it is still there and must 
rest somewhere. 

It is an ungracious task to emulate Cassandra, predicting de- 
struction in the smiling halls of peace and famine in the midst 
of plenty. Yet unless we change many of the conditions which 
at the present time govern the distribution of juvenile literature 
among our children this is the only role left the impartial ob- 
server. There must be, not occasionally but always, that wise 
and kindly parental oversight which directs without forcing the 
preference toward high ideals. There must be an understanding 
that weakness of sentiment and poverty of style are nearly, if 
not quite, as injurious to the character formed upon them as ab- 
solute taints to morality and undermining of principle. There 
must be, above all, the firm conviction that a cup of strong broth 
or a slice of good bread, taken at regular intervals, is better for 



484 INSPIRATION. . [July, 

the mental constitution than this constant nibbling at never-so- 
carefully chosen food, which is sure to induce mental dyspepsia. 
It is only by such beliefs crystallized into absolute rules of con- 
duct on the part of elder minds that we can winnow the wheat 
from the chaff, the cockle, and the tares, and know that good 
seed is being sown in the rich fields of thoughtfulness and ad- 
vancement, instead of in the stubborn soil of a barren curiosity. 

MARY ELIZABETH BLAKE. 



INSPIRATION. 

AN organ thrilling in cathedral glooms, 
A song chance-heard, a robin's roundelay, 
A kiss, a clasp of hands, a sprig of spray, 

A sudden waft of meadow- land perfumes, 

An old name graven in a place of tombs, 
In winter-land a flower of spring astray, 
A face remembered after many a day, 

A bridal bell, a funeral with plumes : 

Trifles, you say ? But in the poet's heart 

They set strange rhymes a-ringing, till, behold ! 
Well-hewn beneath the master's cunning hand, 
Touch unto touch and perfect part to part, 
Finer than Phidian stone or statued gold, 
His gradual-shapen dreams of beauty stand ! 

P. J. COLEMAN. 



1891.] THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 485 



THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN THE PENNSYL- 
VANIA LEGISLATURE. 

THE School Question will not down. A solution of the 
educational problem must be found. And this is demanded not 
only from a consideration of the justice of the case, but much 
more so in the interest of a sound public policy. It is as un- 
wise from the standpoint of the statesman as it is plainly unjust 
in itself to impose weighty burdens on any one class of our 
population, and worse still to persist in ignoring the fair and 
reasonable claims of this same class for a redress of their 
grievances. 

The Legislature of Pennsylvania is in our day the first public 
body to approach the school problem in the proper spirit. At 
the recent session and for the first time, probably, in the history 
of the commonwealth, a prelate of the Catholic Church and 
another prominent Catholic clergyman appeared in the capitol 
before a legislative committee in opposition to the present ad- 
ministration of the common-school system. On the invitation of 
the Senate Committee on Education, Bishop McGovern, of Har- 
risburg, and Father McTighe, of Pittsburgh, threw a flood of 
light on the dark side of the school question. The scene, it is 
said, was one which might make Thaddeus Stevens, the founder 
of the present State system of schools, feel a little uncomforta- 
ble in his grave; and yet, the claims of the bishop and the priest 
were moderate and their argument dispassionate, their manner 
that of men earnest and conscientious in their belief, sincere as 
Christians and patriotic as citizens. Such was the impression 
they made on the committee, as reported by the press. 

The occasion that brought these advocates of the Catholic 
cause before the Educational Committee of the Senate of Penn- 
sylvania was briefly this : Senator Henry A. Hall, of Elk County, 
had introduced into the Senate a resolution calling for the 
appointment of a committee to devise some plan by which the 
parochial schools may be adjusted to the public-school system 
and thus receive a share of the school-tax. Here are the words 
of the resolution : 

" Resolved (if the House concur), that a joint committee of 
six be appointed, whose duty it shall be to confer with the 



486 THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN [July, 

managers of such denominational schools throughout the State 
in order to learn of some feasible plan to be adopted whereby 
the control of such schools may be given over to the various 
school boards to become a part of the public- school system, and 
to be made practically non-sectarian, so as to come within the 
meaning of the Constitution, ^and if so, to draft and report a 
bill to secure that end." 

The resolution was referred to the Committee on Education 
without any opposition, and, as before said, Bishop McGovern 
and Father McTighe were heard on the subject in committee. 

There were eight members present, the majority of whom 
were Republicans ; the chairman, Senator Flinn, is a Republican ; 
one member of the committee is a Catholic, while Senator Hall, 
the author of the resolution, is a prominent Democrat and a 
Protestant. It was too late in the session to do more than begin 
hearing evidence, which will be continued, it is hoped, next 
winter, and may lead to decisive action in the constitutional 
convention likely to assemble within a couple of years. 

The arguments and evidence in support of the resolution 
were clearly and forcibly presented. The committee was much 
impressed by the facts and proofs of injustice brought forward. 
The line of argument pursued was this : It was bad public 
policy to so limit and conduct the public-school system in the 
name of the whole commonwealth as to cut off from its bene- 
fits a large and patriotic body of citizens. A public- school system 
supported by the taxes of the whole people should be for the 
benefit of the whole people. The bill of rights recognizes the rights 
of conscience and protects every citizen in the exercise of them. 
But to so conduct the public-school system as to practically debar 
from its benefits something like a million of those who are taxed 
for its support, but whose conscience will not permit them to 
use it, is to deny them the use of it as conclusively and unjustly 
as if they were excluded by name. 

Again, it was held to be bad policy to train children from 
childhood into two opposing classes, one class feeling itself 
excluded from part of the rights of citizenship ; for it was main- 
tained that there is no higher right than that of education. This 
condition of things, it was urged, was bound to provoke con- 
tinued disturbance and vex the peace of the State. Therefore, 
in the interest of peace and kindly relations between all citizens, 
a just and satisfactory solution of the problem should be sought. 

Attention was directed to the fact that there are about 
seventy thousand children in the Catholic schools of Pennsylvania, 



1891.] THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE. 487 

and fully half that number in those of the Lutheran and Episco- 
palian churches. If these were suddenly closed, the public 
schools would have neither room nor teachers to. take care of 
this vast body of children. In the eyes of a Catholic the public 
school, as conducted up to date, appears as a state church. It 
has been a proselytizing institution. Facts prove this. A Metho- 
dist minister in Massachusetts had publicly stated that the 
influence of the public schools was so great that in twelve years 
1,800,000 Catholic children had been lost to the church. And 
this arose solely from the fact that religion was not taught in 
these schools. Catholic parents want their children to become 
neither apostates nor infidels. Hence they are forced by the 
State's action to pay a double tax to save the faith of their 
children. The committee was reminded that this question could 
only be settled by extermination or compromise. It would be 
the duty of the commission, if appointed, to find a compromise 
that will work justice all round. 

At this writing the committee agreed to report the resolution 
for printing, after which it will be recommitted for further con- 
sideration. It will interest the readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD to 
learn that, with one or two exceptions, the action of the Legis- 
lature on this subject has been favorably received by the leading 
newspapers of the State. For instance, a writer in the Pittsburgh 
Press closes a remarkable article with this suggestion : 

" If the parochial and other denominational schools are to 
receive State aid, let the superintendent of the city, borough, or 
county be empowered to visit such schools at least once every 
year, and report to the State the efficiency or inefficiency of the 
secular instruction given in said schools, as well as in the public 
schools." 

But this grave problem concerns not alone the citizens of 
Pennsylvania, but those of the whole United States. The action 
of the Legislature of Pennsylvania directs attention to the 
common schools and the future of our country. It opens up a 
timely discussion of the very fundamental principles of education, 
in which all alike are interested. 

We are all agreed that there can be no question of more 
vital importance to the American people than this : How are the 
children who, in a few years, are to be entrusted with the 
responsibilities of citizenship and the destinies of the nation to be 
educated ? Every one, in a measure, realizes that the growth, 
development, and prosperity of the State depend on the intelli- 



438 THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN [July, 

gence of the people. Happily for the Republic of the United 
States, with its citizens principles on this subject have passed 
into proverbs. We are all alive to the necessity and force of 
popular education. Not one of us who does not believe that 
knowledge is power. There are many, however, who fail to 
understand that the power may be for good or evil. And hence 
arises much of the confusion .of thought, and of the conflict of 
opinion that prevails among us. 

If \ve aimed only at the material greatness and happiness of 
the nation, the extension of trade and commerce, the adding to 
the country's wealth, the enlargement of its territory, the facility 
and comfort of travel, and various other benefits that might be 
mentioned, then we could consistently be satisfied with a purely 
secular system of education. But if our purpose is, as assuredly 
it must be, to preserve our form of government, to keep the 
moral bonds of society strong and secure, to maintain peace and 
good -will among all classes, to create and develop a sense of 
duty and justice in the individual so that honest and harmonious 
relations may exist between man and man, then surely we 
need something more than mere ' intelligence. We want virtue 
in the people. Without it there is no hope for the safety 
and perpetuity of our institutions. The history .of the nations 
enforces this truth. The fall of the Roman Empire was due to 
its moral ruin ? Yet all will admit that Rome and. the other 
civilizations of antiquity were richer and more learned in the 
time of their decay than during the period of their infancy 
and growth ; but the moral correlative being wanting, they 
tottered to their fall. 

And is it not significant that our enterprising press invites 
thoughtful and patriotic men to discuss the dangers that 
threaten American civilization; that such questions as the 
following are proposed : 1st, Will our present republican form of 
government last one hundred years longer ? 2d, And if not, why 
not? 3d, What is its greatest peril? The answers collected 
from men holding very different views on other subjects are 
substantially the same. All are agreed that there is danger 
ahead. One or two express the opinion that our present 
republican form of government cannot last one hundred years 
longer. It is well to note that it is the true and best friends 
of our common country, not her enemies, who to-day are 
asking and answering these questions. It is agreed that the 
greatest peril arises from a decadence of virtue among the people. 
The Protestant Bishop Potter does not differ from Cardinal 



1891.] THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE. 489 

Gibbons in saying that the impending danger lies in the 
" departure from those Christian principles upon which our very 
laws and institutions are based. As long as these Christian 
principles are maintained our institutions will, under God, survive 
and flourish. Our laws, which are only expressions of eternal 
law, will command our respect and therefore our loyal obedience. 
On the other hand, every departure from these Christian prin- 
ciples upon which our social fabric rests tends to the loosening 
of the foundation-stones of the Republic." 

Let us view the situation in a slightly different light. Is it 
not clearly evident to all that false standards of morality are set 
up for the guidance of the people ? that dangerous principles at 
variance not alone with conscience but reason are enunciated and 
daily acted upon by men prominent in business and political 
life ? It is not necessary to multiply instances. Take the case 
of a foremost public man who, quite recently, stated boldly and 
without rebuke from his hearers that, to his mind, " the deca- 
logue and the golden rule have no place in a political campaign." 
Or the case of one of the great plutocrats of the land, who gave 
forcible expression to his belief that the public had no rights 
which he was bound to respect. 

The idea is. essentially pagan that in any sphere of thought 
or action a man can escape from his conscience ; that for any 
purpose or under any circumstances he can cease to know right 
from wrong, arid to be bound by his knowledge. There is no 
moral teacher, heathen or Christian, of any age or school, who 
questions that the happiness of a republic depends on the virtue 
I use the word in its widest sense of its citizens. No 
American can be at once a good man and a bad citizen. 

Regarding only, for the present, the preservation of our 
liberties and the perpetuity of our institutions we see from what 
has been said that virtue as well as intelligence is an essential 
condition. How is this virtue to be attained ? That is the 
problem which to-day confronts the American people. In com- 
parison with it ail other issues shrink into insignificance. If we 
clear our minds of misconceptions and prejudices, getting a firm 
grasp of first principles, and following the lines of reason and 
justice, there is every hope of a safe and practical solution. 

In the first place, let us try and understand the situation. 
There are many popular errors on the subject of education. The 
idea is quite prevalent that intelligence is the necessary foe of 
vice and crime ; that when the future citizen is made intellectu- 
ally smart, he is at the same time made morally good. All that 



490 THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN [July, 

is needed to insure a decrease of mental or moral delinquency 
is to remove 'illiteracy. How utterly false this notion is our daily 
experience and statistics prove. The Socialists, Anarchists, and 
Nihilists of to-day are by no means illiterate ; the corrupt official, 
the absconding cashier, the " boodle " alderman, the scheming 
politician, and the merciless monopolist, all have had the benefits 
of a more or less extended secular education ; the men and 
women who burst the bonds of domestic peace and happiness, 
and those who crowd our divorce courts seeking relief from a 
galling yoke, are they not reckoned among the intelligent classes 
chiefly? 

. If Ave turn to the records ot our mentally and morally 
deranged, as exhibited in our statistics of insanity and crime and 
vice, it is the same disheartening truth is told. The number of 
our criminals and insane increases while illiteracy decreases. The 
tenth census shows that for the decade ending with 1880, popu- 
lation having increased thirty per cent and illiteracy only ten 
per cent, (a relative decrease), the number of criminals dur- 
ing the same period presents the alarming increase of 
eighty- two per cent, while of insane persons the ratio 
of increase is out of all proportion to that of population. 
When confronted with such alarming facts, is it to be wondered 
at that thoughtful and patriotic men are beginning to fear for 
the welfare of the country and the stability of its institutions ? 
What shall the ending be if with greater educational facilities 
there is to be increased crime, and every enlargement in the 
seating capacity of our schools means a larger demand for in- 
sane accommodations and additional felons' cells ? If the instruc- 
tion of our common schools subdues the tendency to crime, 
why is it that the ratio of prisoners, being one in 3,442 inhabi- 
tants in 1850, rose to one in every 1,647 m 1860, one in 1, 021 
in 1870, and one in 837 in 1880? Will the census of 1890 
show more encouraging results ? We fear that it will not. 
Some persons regard the large and constant influx of foreign 
immigrants as a partial explanation of this startling growth of 
crime ; but the facts deny the hope, for the great increase is to 
be found among the native-born. The Tenth Census Report 
says that, while in 1850 the ratio of foreign criminals to popula- 
tion was five times that of the native-born, in 1880 the ratio of 
foreign criminals is but little in excess of that for native whites. 
Father Young, of the Paulist Congregation, New York, in a late 
number of the Independent, refuting the alleged statistics of 
Mr. Dexter A. Hawkins, establishes beyond all doubt the same 



1891.] THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE. 491 

unwelcome facts. Taking Massachusetts, where up to the last few 
years the public-school system was " the supreme and only 
system," he proves that something more than education, purely 
secular, is needed to account for the large relative excess of 
native-born paupers and criminals over those of the foreign- 
born. 

At a session of the National Prison Congress, held in Boston 
during 1888, Mr. Brooker, chairman of the board of directors of 
the South Carolina penitentiary, declared that " it is a fearful fact 
that a large proportion of our prison population is of the 
educated class." No thoughtful American can view these facts 
and statements without alarm. They prove conclusively that 
secular education, however perfect or extended it may be, does 
not diminish vice, pauperism, and crime ; and since these are 
everywhere justly regarded as the worst and most deadly foes 
of the state, a system of education that, judged by results, shows 
a tendency to increase rather than diminish such, must be set 
down as not alone imperfect, but radically defective. It fails in 
Its results. It does not furnish the Republic with the expected 
quota of self-supporting, law-abiding, virtuous citizens. Perhaps 
there is no country in the world where the purely intellectual 
side of education has been so wonderfully developed within the 
present generation as in our own. The moral side, however, has 
been sadly neglected. And yet this is more important, because 
it is of more vital interest to the state and society. Here, in 
our Republic, where each individual voter helps to shape the 
destinies of the nation, makes and unmakes parties and policies, 
character is everything. If, then, our state is to exist, our citi- 
zenship must be not only intelligent but as virtuous as possible. 
The very life and welfare of our institutions depend on this. 

It is because we have lost sight of this essential idea, or have 
not given it its proper place in our educational system, that 
results which all deplore, the startling increase of vice, pauper- 
ism, and crime, are brought about. 

Let us illustrate the situation by an example. Suppose a 
verified report was made to the board of directors of any of our 
great railroad lines by the chief constructing engineer that bridges 
of accepted form were showing visible signs of weakness, the 
report would be listened to with the greatest consternation and 
dismay. The board of directors would, doubtless, institute the 
closest inquiry and most searching examinations; it would, un- 
doubtedly, stop the construction of such bridges until the cause 
of failure had been determined and the remedy ascertained ; and 



492 THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN- [July, 

failing in this, the construction of such bridges would be per- 
manently abandoned and more perfect structures substituted. Now, 
our theory of state education, as at present constructed, is evidently 
faulty and imperfect ; facts which no sensible person can impugn 
prove it to be so. And of what utility are facts and experiences 
unless their lessons are heedecf and their meaning properly inter- 
preted? When the facts disclosed by our social statistics make 
it appear that, in the education of our youth, we have gone too 
far in our aim for material advancement and development of 
wealth, and that we are rapidly losing in the direction of moral 
growth and culture ; that we are face to face with a condition of 
society which reveals illiteracy decreasing and crime increasing, 
a marvellous addition to the nation's wealth with more wide- 
spread destitution. 

The problem is : How are we to remedy this state of things ? 
How are we to adjust the moral balance of education so that in 
civic virtue and strength of character we may keep pace with 
our material, social, and political progress ? 

In the first place, since education rightly understood means 
the training of the whole man and of all the faculties, of the 
conscience and of the affections, as well as of the intellect, we 
must make due and necessary provision for the moral instruction 
of the future citizen. And since it cannot be questioned that 
morals rest on a religious basis, provisions should be made for 
the moral and religious training of children in our common 
schools. Over the door-way of every school in the land should 
be written, and on the tender hearts of our youth should be im- 
pressed, the sublime words of the poet: " Let all the ends thou 
aim'st at be thy God's, thy country's, and truth's." 

This is a Christian country, in the sense that Christianity is 
" an original and essential element of the law of the land." To 
maintain and practically act on the truth of this proposition does 
not tend, in the least, to weaken or invalidate our cherished 
American principle of the entire separation of church and state. 
The Christianity affirmed to be an essential element of the law 
of the land is not the Christianity of any one class of the pop- 
ulation, but the Christianity which is inherited and held in com- 
mon by all classes of our Christian people. 

This principle is expressed in many decisions of our courts. 
In a decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in the year 
1824, it is declared that " Christianity, general Christianity, is 
and always has been a part of the common law of Pennsyl- 
vania ; not Christianity founded on particular tenets ; not Chris- 



1891.] THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE. 493 

tianity with an established church, and tithes, and spiritual 
courts; but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men." 
Chief-Justice Kent, in a decision of the Supreme Court of New 
York, in 1811, laid down the same doctrine. 

Cardinal Gibbons, in his admirable book, Our Christian Heri- 
tage, traces the influence and predominance of the religious ele- 
ment in our American civilization. The discoverers of the Con- 
tinent, the first settlers, the founders of the Republic, the men 
who framed the Constitution, the illustrious signers of the De- 
claration of Independence, all our Presidents, from Washington to 
Harrison, were Christian believers. At the era of the Revolution 
all the colonies adopted Christian constitutions in assuming their 
new character as sovereign btates. The daily proceedings of 
Congress and of State legislatures are opened with prayer by a 
Christian minister. Our laws are largely founded on the princi- 
ples of Christian ethics ; and so " intimately interwoven are they* 
with the Christian religion that they cannot be adequately ex- 
pounded without the light of revelation." The vast majority of. 
the population are professing Christians. 

Why, then, have we banished from the common schools of, 
the land our Christian heritage? Why deprive the youth of the 
country of that Christian education to which, by every title that 
is just and sacred, it has the strongest claims ? Why run coun- 
ter to all history and experience in striving to preserve and per- 
petuate our institutions, which are established on Christian princi- 
ples, whilst we ignore all positive moral and religious instruction 
in the schools ? Is it possible, a student of our institutions 
might ask with astonishment, that the school-room is the only 
place into which our common Christianity cannot enter? Why,, 
on the ground of making the public school unsectarian, intro- 
duce the worst and most objectionable form of sectarianism the 
sectarianism of infidelity ? 

The general reply to these questions is: "The state has no 
right to teach religion ; therefore, religion should not be taught 
in our public schools." That is false reasoning. The state, of 
course, has no right to teach any particular form of religion to 
the exclusion of others. No one asks that. That would be 
essentially a union of church and state, and it would involve 
injustice to all who differed from the system of religion taught 
by the state. What is asked of the state is that its citizens 
shall have the right of teaching their own religion, to their own 
children wherever they go to school. 

Others say: "It has been settled by the American people 

VoL. LIU. 32 



494 THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN [July> 

that religion is to be left entirely to the home, the Sunday- 
school, and the church." The answer is, there is no settlement 
of this or of any question until it is settled right. Catholics and 
Protestants agree that these agencies are not adequate to teach 
religion ; the latter as well as the former found and establish 
denominational schools. It is, a fact not widely known that in 
Wisconsin, where an objectionable school -law was the prominent 
issue in the late election, a single Protestant denomination, the 
Lutheran body, has 287 parochial schools to the Catholics' 193. 
Evangelicals of all denominations hold that their children should 
receive a religious education and training. To that end they 
are urged in conferences, synods, and general assemblies " to do 
their full duty to all children by gathering them into schools and 
colleges thoroughly Christian " ; they are reminded by their 
leaders that "morality cannot be inculcated in the most effective 
manner without religious enforcements." It is true non-Catholics 
are not as logical and consistent as one could wish. They make 
provision for the children of the wealthier members only, whilst 
the education of the children of their poorer co-religionists is 
sadly neglected. 

From what has been written it is quite evident that there is 
satisfactory unanimity of sentiment on the fundamental principle, 
namely, the necessity of the moral and religious element in 
popular education. All accept the practical wisdom of the state- 
ment of Guizot, a Protestant writer, who said : " In order to 
make popular education truly good and socially useful, it must 
be fundamentally religious. It is necessary that national educa- 
tion should be given and received in the midst of a religious 
atmosphere, and that religious impressions and religious obser- 
vances should penetrate into all its parts. Religion is not a study 
or an exercise, to be restricted to a certain place or a certain 
hour ; it is a faith and a law, which ought to be felt everywhere, 
and which after this manner alone can exercise all its beneficial 
influence upon our mind and our life." 

And in our own country thoughtful men are fast coming to 
the same conclusion. President Eliot, of Harvard, recently 
wrote : " I am persuaded that it is a grave error to ' secular- 
ize ' the public schools ; first, because education would be 
thereby degraded and sterilized ; secondly, because the attempt 
is too unnatural to succeed ; and thirdly, because this policy 
never can make the public school the school of the whole 
population." 

But some one will say: "If the public schools are secular- 






1891.] THE PENNSYLVANIA LEGISLATURE. 495 

ized, who is to blame ? Are they not 'degraded and sterilized' 
because no feasible and satisfactory alternative, just and accepta- 
ble to all concerned, has been brought forward ? Let," it. may 
be urged, "the different Christian bodies of the country come 
together and agree on some working plan that is fair and rea- 
sonable ; then the solution of the school problem will be soon 
reached." Prejudice and politics have too deeply impressed 
themselves on this subject to look for any immediate relief in 
any other way. 

Happily, there are not wanting indications of a very marked 
change for the better in the tone and temper of public senti- 
ment on the school question. The urgency for reform comes 
from many quarters. Non- Catholics are beginning to see, what 
American Catholics have always fully understood, the important 
truth that Washington laid down in his Farewell Address to his 
countrymen. "Reason and experience," he wrote, " both forbid us 
to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of re- 
ligious principles." Hence do we find a growing popular desire 
on the part of our non-Catholic fellow-citizens to hear and read 
the views of representative Catholics on this subject. The 
resolution of the Pennsylvania Legislature indicates the growth 
and strength of this popular desire. It augurs well, too, for a 
satisfactory adjustment of the problem when the most eminent 
Catholic ecclesiastics are cordially invited to the national as- 
semblies of public- school teachers to discuss the question. This 
was done two years ago at the Nashville convention, and dur- 
ing the past year at the convention held in St. Paul, where 
Archbishop Ireland indicated a possible way out. 

What " the way out" will eventually be it would be hazardous 
to conjecture. That there is such a way is clear to all minds 
that are free from prejudice, that have a thorough grasp ot 
fundamental principles, that have given sufficient thought to the 
whole school question, and that are, above and beyond all other 
considerations, ready to do full justice to the entire population 
without infringing on the rights of any class. The Rev. Thomas 
Jefferson Jenkins, in the February number of THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD, shows how it is possible to have "American Christian 
state schools" by citing several instances where a local modus 
vivendi has been established. 

God grant that the American people will see, before it is too 
late, the dangers that threaten our civilization and republican 
form of government from our false system of education ! As the 
scales fall from men's eyes they recognize what a noble and truly 



496 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [July, 

patriotic work the Catholic Church has done in keeping before 
the mind of the nation the true idea of education. Many will 
give thanks to God that he has preserved, to quote the words 
of the late Rev. Doctor Hodge, of Princeton, " the Roman 
Catholic Church in America to-day true to that theory of educa- 
tion upon which our fathers ^founded the public schools of the 
nation, and from which they have been so madly perverted." 

MORGAN M. SHEEDY. 

Pittsburgh, Pa. 



A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 

III. 

THERE are still in the world some people, generally among those 
who congratulate themselves on having had ancestors rather than 
on the prospect of themselves being such to a coming generation, 
who believe they are uttering a truism when they assert that " it 
takes three generations to make a gentleman." 

They forget that this dictum was formulated before it had ever 
entered the mind of man to conceive of the lightning-like 
rapidity with which progressive Americans achieve results which 
hitherto the plodding old world took centuries to evolve. In 
those days, too, when woman was but a secondary satellite of 
man, no one thought it necessary to calculate how many gener- 
ations were needed to produce a lady ; and now it would be a 
useless speculation, since the American gir 1 , with her marvellous 
adaptability and her infinite capabilities, has attracted the atten- 
tion and aroused the admiration of two continents. Suppose 
some genteel apostle of antiquated aristocratic faith should have 
seen Mary Cunningham, for instance, with her delicately-curved 
lips, slightly aquiline nose, and near-sighted, gold-eye-glassed 
brown eyes ; suppose he or your pardon ! it would have been 
sne could have heard Miss Cunningham's irreproachable Eng- 
lish spoken in a voice that drawled almost imperceptibly, could 
one possibly have blamed madame if she had accepted the young 
lady at once upon such unmistakable evidence as of long and 
honorable descent ? 

What was there about her, from her shining, silky hair to her 
faultlessly-gaitered foot, to warn aristocrats that she was the 



1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 497 

daughter of a man who worked his way up from the fireman on 
the engine to be owner of half a million of stock in the road ? 
What suggestions were there in the Redfern gown of blue cloth 
to remind one that the wearer's mother was clad in emulation of 
the rainbow on the day that she wedded the fireman above 
mentioned ? 

There would be but one way for madame to meet this liv- 
ing and breathing and quietly elegant refutation of her fine 
theories, and she would take that eagerly. She would gravely 
discourse on the influence of education and association, and would 
draw from you the fact that Miss Cunningham was not born until 
her parents had already moved into a handsome stone house of 
their own, and that most of her life which was not spent at the 
best select schools had been lived in Europe, surrounded by all 
that made for culture and refinement. 

Miss Cunningham herself would have yielded assent to every 
article of madame's creed of lineage and its advantages. In her 
secret soul she bowed in reverence before " the daughter of a 
hundred earls " It seemed to her, with her romantic tendencies 
and warm imagination, something to make one's pulses thrill and 
one's heart beat high to know that the blood which coursed 
through one's veins was the same that had once moved knightly 
arms to deeds of chivalry and lady's hands to acts of tenderness. 
Margaret Tyler, who had lived her life amid a class by whom 
gentle birth was accepted as a rightful inheritance, was not slow 
to perceive this bit of sentiment in Miss Cunningham's character, 
and was a little inclined to laugh at it. 

One evening, when she and Miss Cunningham had been sit- 
ting alone in the bay-window, in deep conversation, which 
Nicholson soon discovered was about him from the glances both 
women cast toward him, Mrs. Tyler beckoned to him to come 
and take the seat which the young lady had just vacated. She 
surveyed him critically, her eyes twinkling with amusement 
Somehow Nicholson objected to this kind of regard, and said 
petulantly : 

" Is there anything wrong about me this evening ? I could 
see that you and Miss Cunningham have been discussing me for 
the last half-hour, and now you are laughing at me." 

:< You are quite mistaken," Mrs. Tyler hastened to say. " I 
was at that moment metaphorically 4 taking your measure ' to 
decide what sort of figure you would cut as the hero of. a 
romance." 

" With you as the heroine ? " asked Nicholson audaciously. 



4Q8 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [July, 

A quick flash of Mrs. Tyler's blue eyes told him he was even 
with her, and so soothed his ruffled feelings ; but her voice was 
as calm and amused as ever as she replied : 

" I thought you understood that / was merely to be the 
teller of the story, or shall I say the prompter? I have com- 
menced my part already. Guess what Miss Cunningham and I 
were saying about you just now." 

" As if a man could ever guess what two women were saying 
about him or anything else !" exclaimed Nicholson with lofty 
superiority. If there were in Mrs. Tyler's face any lines which 
told that she knew how to bide her time, the gentleman had no 
opportunity to observe them, for she turned at that moment and 
became to all appearances absorbed in the antics of a little boy who 
was dancing around the parlor in the unconscious freedom of a 
joyous child. Nicholson waited for her to resume the conversa- 
tion, but she had suddenly become oblivious of his presence ; 
and he really wished to know what they had said about him. 
Silence was a feminine weapon to which he was unaccustomed, 
and he at length confessed that it vanquished him by saying, 
somewhat shamefacedly : 

"Were you and Miss Cunningham abusing me?" 

Only the gleam of Mrs. Tyler's eye and the faint curve of 
the lip showed that she knew herself victor. 

" No," she said, " not to any serious extent, as I might have 
done. The truth is you were shining with a sort of reflected 
glory. I was telling her about that silver service of yours with 
the Nicholson crest on it ; and then I described your grand old 
house, with its octagon room opening out on the lilac-scented 
garden that was guarded by arbor-vitae dragons, and the solid 
mahogany stair-rail, and the frescoed drawing-room ceiling. I 
told her, too, how your great-grandfather built it after his return 
from France, where he had been with Mr. Jefferson, and how 
tradition said he named the place Montmorenci in memory of 
the French lady he loved and lost. I dwelt on the grove of 
ancestral oaks about it, and the family portraits within it. Miss 
Cunningham's weak point is her love of blue-blood ; and I assure 
you she is interested in you. I also told her just enough about 
Helen Hunter and you to awaken her sympathies. Now, isn't 
there material enough for a girl to make a hero out of?' ; 

' 'What I want to know," said Nicholson with a quizzical 
smile, " is how you knew all that ; you've never been to Mont- 
morenci." 

" It is but two miles from Shockoe Springs," explained Mrs. 






1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 499 

Tyler a trifle hurriedly, " where grandma and Aunt Maria used 
to go ; and they told me all about it, when oh ! ages ago " 

So she had asked minutely about him and his home that sum- 
mer. He felt suddenly a keen sense of elation. 

" How many ages ago ? " he asked, leaning toward her while 
his voice dropped into lower and tenderer tones. When Mrs. 
Tyler seemed not to hear him he was still better pleased ; it was 
a tacit confession that she was conscious of having betrayed her- 
self. 

" I was doing my best for you," she continued with some- 
what strained lightness. " Foreign noblemen, I should say, must 
be getting scarce by this time. Why shouldn't an heiress be 
content with a well-to-do Southerner who has a family crest, 
and a genealogical tree with its roots in the time of Elizabeth ? " 

"When shall I propose?" asked Nicholson. "Is to-night an 
auspicious time ? Of course I am more than willing, being quite 
as buyable as a foreign noble ; but I suppose one still has to go 
through the form of being in love with the lady, hasn't he ? " 

Then that small woman chose to turn upon him and say in- 
dignantly : " Why should it be a form ? Surely if ever a woman 
was made to be loved Mary Cunningham is that woman. And 
you and she would suit each other so well. I can picture her 
now brightening Montmorenci with her sweet presence and mak- 
ing a new man of you. All her money aside, I do wish you and 
she would fall in love and get married." 

The speech instantly deadened the elation he had felt but a 
moment before. In the -sudden chill and falling of his spirits he 
realized vividly that in these days he had been picturing another 
than Miss Cunningham in the halls of the old homestead. 

"I wish you would not trouble yourself to marry me off," he 
said brusquely. "I can attend to such affairs for myself." 

He had never before known that Margaret Tyler's voice had 
in it a ring like steel against steel. 

" Can you pardon my presumption," she said icily, " when I 
tell you I thought we were friends ? I shall not make the mis- 
take again." 

" Oh ! forgive me, forgive me," he exclaimed, penitently, hold- 
ing her skirts and detaining her as she rose to go. " How could 
you know that you were hurting me? How could you under- 
stand that there is but ?ne woman in all this world whom I 
could see the mistress of Montmorenci ? " 

The look of quick sympathy which she turned upon him 
showed him how far she was from comprehending him. 



500 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 

"Why, you should have told me of your engagement before," 
she said, all resentment gone from her manner. " It seems to 
me I might have expected that much." 

" But I haven't told you I was engaged," corrected Nichol- 
son. " I only said that that " 

" Oh ! " she exclaimed, smfling at his floundering, " you mean 
that you would like to be. Will you tell me her name ? " 

Nicholson knew women too well to imperil his chances by 
telling her then. She would never have forgiven him for taking 
advantage of the avenue so directly opened by herself, even 
though she had done it in this obviously unintentional way. 
He saw clearly that this woman was to be wooed, and he had 
not lost hope that she could be won " I will tell you all about 
it some day," he said; " it is a long story." 

After that neither of them again refiJred to Miss Cunning- 
ham, and Nicholson fancied that there crept into Mrs. Tyler's 
manner a sort of reserve which gave to it a different quality 
from the friendliness that had hitherto characterized it. He be- 
gan to find it difficult now to draw her into talking about that 
summer of lang syne 'which grew daily more interesting to him. 

Sunday afternoon in an Asheville boarding-house is apt to be 
tedious. There really seems no place made for it in the week's 
programme. Cards are frowned down upon, driving is considered 
questionable, and the dull hours have to be gotten through some- 
how, generally in wishing it were Monday and occasionally by 
organizing impromptu chorus clubs, which begin by singing a 
hymn and can end with a negro shouting jubilee if there be two 
or three in the company who are able to delude themselves and 
the others into the belief that they have caught the fervor and 
the rhythm so natural to the colored enthusiast. 

On one of these days when music was the refuge the group 
about the piano began singing those ballads which were street 
favorites yesterday and to-day supplanted by newer songs, which 
to-morrow will in their turn be relegated to backwoods villages 
and country lanes, if, indeed, they be fortunate enough to reach 
these pleasant by-ways. 

As Nicholson turned over the pile of old music his eye sud- 
denly fell upon a familiar title. 

" Sing this," he said, placing the sheet on the rack as the 
lights were brought in, and taking a^ position where he could 
watch Mrs. Tyler, who sat apart delighting an old scholar's soul 
by her close listening to his discourse on the prehistoric races 
of America. Scarcely had the first notes of the air been played 



1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 501 

before Mrs. Tyler looked up quickly to find Nicholson's gaze 
fastened upon her. Their glances met, a common memory in 
both, and a blush as vivid as any girl's suffused her usually pale 
face. 

" I had no idea you could sing like that," exclaimed a young 
lady to Nicholson when it was over. Nor had he but his 
heart was singing. 

When Lew Hamilton and Flora Monroe had sung that seren- 
ade in their end of the honeysuckle-porch had not Fred Nichol- 
son and Margaret Somerville, in their end, entered into a sol- 
emn compact to think of one another whenever they heard 
that air, wherever they should be and whatever should betide ? 
And Margaret Tyler blushed at the first chords of it, after all 
these' years ! She scarcely waited for it to be finished before 
she arose and left the r^oom, and Nicholson followed her as she 
went through the darkened hall and stood before the western 
window, looking out upon the last expiring glories of the sun- 
set " 

"You remember?" he asked softly, as he stood behind her. 

"Yes," she answered without turning to look at him, "I 
remember." 

" If we had but known ourselves better in those old days," 
he said sadly, " how different it all could have been for you 
and me ! " 

She made no attempt to reply and he continued (restrain- 
ing by a strong effort the desire to tell her the rest with his 
arm holding her close to his heart) : 

"Margaret Somerville was sweet and lovely ; Fred Nichol- 
son the boy had sense to see that ; but you as you are in 
your noble womanhood make me bless God that it is given 
me to behold my highest ideal of woman. 

" Sweetheart, Fred Nicholson the man loves you with the 
love of his life. Will you not turn around and tell him it has 
not come too late." 

She put aside the hand which would have clasped hers and 
>oked at him with eyes full of unshed tears. The conflict of 
emotions made speech an impossibility to her, and he guessed 
ither than heard the murmured words that told him she could 
lot talk to him then words she spoke, as she moved away 
rom him. Had she been a younger woman, or one 
iccustomed to being swayed by impulse in the crises of life, 
>he would have yielded then. It is inexpressibly sweet to a 
,'oman to know herself beloved, and in the agitation caused 



502 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [July, 

by Nicholson's avowal, and the stirring of the old tender mem- 
ories that clustered around him and her younger self, she be- 
lieved at that moment that the quick beating of her own heart 
meant that love for him was awakening there. 

Even when she became calmer the visions she saw were 
very fair. She pictured to herself the life they would lead at 
Montmorenci the placid, pleasant plantation life she knew so 
well, and to which her family had been used for generations. 
She saw herself falling easily and naturally into the role of lady 
of the manor, which her mother and her grandmother, and their 
grandmothers before them, had played so graciously. She. con- 
trasted this uneventful, quiet home-life, with its domestic duties, 
which most women enjoy and which had their attractions for 
herself, brightened by the warm social neighborliness of the old 
county families, and crowned and sweetened by a strong man's 
love and protection, with the loneliness of her present and the 
future that lay before her, full of effort of some sort or another 
as it would be to the end. Why should she presume to mark 
out for herself, as she had done, lines so different from those 
where other women were content to dwell ? That this question 
arose before her showed that the other part of her nature was 
making itself heard. 

No one knew so well as she her need of sympathy in the 
intangibles. Could Nicholson give her that ? Could she give 
him support and sympathy always in the thoughts and aspira- 
tions that filled his mind ? That home vision was wonderfully 
fair, but would it in reality satisfy her ? Would there be no 
void in it ? 

Her religion was a sealed book to him ; nay, more, the Lord 
Jesus Christ, whom she adored as her God and loved as her 
Friend, he who made for her the centre and sum of all that was 
best on earth or in heaven, what was he to Nicholson ? " an 
enthusiastic Jewish peasant " ; or at most but the wisest and 
purest of men. Rightly or wrongly, she measured the real by- 
standards that exalted it into the ideal ; he thought these stand- 
ards beautiful for her, but impossible for him, and smiled conde- 
scendingly at her quixotic notions of honor and honesty. She 
herself often doubted their practicability and wisdom, but she 
knew she could never relinquish them. 

Perhaps if she had married him in her girlhood, while her 
character was in its formative state and she had as yet ar- 
rived at no convictions, they might have adapted themselves to 
each other. Would it be possible now ? In the question of 



1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 503 

growth had she not left him behind her, and would she not be 
likely to make him as well as herself wretched by continual 
efforts to quicken his pace should they now start on the journey 
together ? 

Yet his companionship was very, very pleasant She won- 

dered how she should pass the days when he no longer made 

a part of them. Why should not one take the good things life 

offers and rest satisfied ? " But what are the good things ? " 

asked that other self which would not be silenced. 



IV. 

The next day it rained as it can rain in these mountains a 
steady, uncompromising down-pour the sort of day when nature 
so veils her face and wears so forbidding an aspect as to awaken 
in the veriest misanthrope the instincts which tell him that man 
is a gregarious animal and drives him to seek human compan- 
ionship. 

Not that Mrs. Tyler and Miss Cunningham phrased it this 
way when the latter sought the former's room in the afternoon 
and was welcomed with unfeigned warmth and eagerness. They 
said something or other about the influence of mind upon mind, 
which had evidently brought the visitor, since Mrs. Tyler had 
been thinking at that moment of going to seek her. The day was 
conducive to confidences, when aided by the influence of a bright 
fire and rocking-chairs, and it soon happened that the two women 
were talking with a sense of fellowship and comprehension which 
was new in their acquaintance with each other. When the maiUwas 
brought Miss Cunningham received a photograph wh'ich, after pon- 
dering over for a while, she handed to Mrs. Tyler, saying some- 
what nervously : 

" What do you think of him ? " 

Luckily the face was that of such a frank and kindly young 
fellow that Mrs. Tyler was not obliged to sacrifice truth to po- 
liteness and could admire it sincerely. " But somehow I had 
an idea there was as yet no him in your case," she ended by 
saying. 

" There really isn't," Miss Cunningham replied, moved to 
frankness by the surroundings, " but he would like very much to 
be ; and I am ever so fond of him, you know. But you said 
that as if you had hoped there was no him, and I had fancied you 
were an advocate of marriage." 

The older woman looked into the fire and said nothing. One 



504 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [July, 

of the comforts of Mary Cunningham's society was that she per- 
mitted you to enjoy it in silence. 

" So I am," she answered at last, " for most people ; but mar- 
riage is a great risk for a girl like you." 

" Why for a girl like me ? " asked she, drawing near. Mar- 
garet felt that the talk, comirfg after last night, was as if she were* 
arguing her own case over again as well as advising the girl be- 
side her. 

"Because," she said, " you are a woman with ideals and a ca- 
pacity for idols. Marriage shatters ideals and shows an idol's 
clay feet." 

Miss Cunningham looked disappointed. 

"I dislike to hear a woman like you say cynical things," 
she remonstrated. , " They are not in accord with your charac- 
ter." 

The two earnest faces looked into each other ; there was cer- 
tainly no trace of the cynic in either. 

" Yes, that speech has a flippant sound," said Margaret, ac- 
cepting the rebuke, " and I did not mean to generalize. I meant 
to say that a woman with your high ideals would find it difficult 
to meet the man who would come up to them. Most women 
have about 'them a quality which makes them easily take shape 
from the conditions that bound them, and, to use the old simile, 
they can be moulded to their husbands' characters. But you are 
too sensitive and reserved to do that, and would pine your life 
away, fret it out against prison-bars as it were, if you found 
your marriage a disappointment. But, ah ! if he is the right 
kind," she continued, smiling down on the picture she held in her 
hand, " and can answer the needs of your earnest and exacting 
nature, then it will be very, very good, will it not ? You could 
make a glorious wife and mother, but it all depends on the man 
you marry." 

Another silence fell, and the firelight played over faces 
sweet with womanly seriousness. It was perhaps a subtle bond 
of sympathy between them that each as she seemed to gaze into 
the glowing coals was asking her own heart if the man she was 
seeing could meet the requirements of the best part of her. 

" You do not think so highly of me as I do of you," Miss 
Cunningham said after the pause had lengthened into a long half 
hour. " I believe you would make a glorious wife and mother, 
no matter who you married, and I wish you would marry. Yours 
seems to me such a lonely life as it is." 

Was one side of her own perplexity finding voice in these 



1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 505 

sympathetic, womanly tones ? If so, the other side must have 
answered when Mrs. Tyler spoke with a new inflection of firm- 
ness. 

"The loneliness of an unmarried woman," she said, " is but 
isolation, and it need not be that if she will but still the cravings 
of her own heart until she can hear the beatings of the mighty 
world's heart that throbs around her and shows itself wherever 
there is a human being in need of sympathy or help ; especially 
must this be true if she be a Catholic, for does she not then rec- 
ognize in every act of kindness she extends a deed of love 
to those over whom the Heart of Jesus yearns with infinite and 
fraternal charity? 

" But the loneliness of the married woman is desolation, the 
very existence of the feeling is a tacit wrong to the man whom 
she has sworn shall fill her life. 

" It is good sometimes to call things by their right names, 
and that woman is, I believe, guilty of a crime who for the sake of 
being loved and cared for, the safety of being shielded, allows her- 
self to be tempted into marriage. There is but one thing in all this 
world that should prompt a marriage that is pure love ; love so 
deep and true that it makes two generous people ready and glad to 
suffer all things, and renounce all others if need be, for the sake of 
each other's dear companionship. If there are some so consti- 
tuted that none with whom they are thrown can awaken this ex- 
alted love, then they may be unfortunate, but they have no right 
to profane an ordinance of God by entering it from any but the 
highest motive." 

She had spoken rapidly, as a woman does under strong ex- 
citement, and there was on her face a look of consecration which 
transfigured it. Her deep emotion communicated itself 'to Mary 
Cunningham, who presently slipped from her chair and knelt be- 
side her. 

" Dear Mrs. Tyler," she whispered as she put her arms about 
her, " cannot you and I love each other ? We need one an- 
other, do we not ?" 

For answer Margaret drew the kneeling figure closer to her, 
and there was born one of God's rarest and most precious gifts 
a deep and lifelong friendship between two women. Their talk 
was low and fragmentary after that, but when the twilight shad- 
ows filled the room and the firelight flickered in only occasional 
brightness, Mary Cunningham said tentatively : 

" It seems to me a woman might love Mr. Nicholson that 
way; don't you think she might?" 



506 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [July, 

If both women blushed who was there to see ? The kindly 
darkness had fallen over them. 

" I remember that I came very near loving him myself once 
upon a time," Margaret replied, with a lightness which had been 
a stranger to her manner heretofore during their talk. 

f 

Perhaps both of them remembered the speech when, a day or 
two later, they found themselves thrown with Nicholson in the 
party which had been made up to go from their house to the 
mountains to search for arbutus, but the slight constraint wore off 
from all of them in the woods. The sudden sense of freedom and na- 
turalness which comes when the pines whisper above one and the 
dried leaves and pine-needles rustle under one's feet, possessed 
them ; they were children or savages once more, and the party 
of conventionalized beings welcomed the sensation as only conven- 
tionalized beings can. 

But the climb was steep, and Margaret Tyler had during the 
past few weeks been so played upon by varying emotions that 
her strength, at no time great, failed utterly as she reached the 
summit, and she sat down exhausted on the steps of the untenant- 
ed house which crowned it. Nicholson saw the sudden paling of 
her face and made no comment, but seated himself just at her 
feet, while the others, noting the position, left them to them- 
selves. 

It was a silvery day. The sky was covered with floating 
clouds that here were fleecy white and there shone in radiant 
grayness. The hidden sun revealed its position by the long streams 
of brightness which it sent downward athwart the shifting grays 
to bring out in clear perspective some dainty bit of land- 
scape. Snow had fallen on the far western range during the night, 
and glistened against the cloud- masses, and shone in gleaming 
whiteness amid the blue of the lower hills, a blue which had in it 
the coldness of steel and the softness of soft veiling, with an airi- 
ness foreign to either of these, an airiness too light and exquisite 
to be adequately told oi in words, and which affected one like 
the gentlest strains of music. The river shone by mirror-like 
snatches from its hidden course among the nearer and deeper blue 
hills. In the valley Asheviile lay, what of it that was homely 
changed into picturesqueness, and whatever it had of fairness made 
infinitely more fair ; an occasional clump of trees just feathering 
into foliage told of the spring, and the only sound which reached 
them was the sighing of the wind as it waved the dark and slen- 
der pines to and fro. 



1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 507 

On the other side of the ridge far below them Chunn's Cove 
smiled in its inexpressible quiet and peace, the subdued tints of 
the newly-ploughed ground, mingled with the fresh green of 
the growing oats or young grass ; and a party of horsemen, the 
only signs of life, passed, moving atoms, on the red road which 
wound its devious way through the valley. The near mountains, 
which shut in the cove, stood solemn and silent with their tree- 
covered summits silhoueted against the dark eastern sky, and 
Craggy kept watch from the south clothed in misty purple shad- 
ows and crowned by lowering clouds, while through the gap, 
away and away into infinitude, stretched the blue, blue mountains, 
so losing shape and outline toward the horizon as to remind one 
involuntarily of the ocean. 

For awhile neither Nicholson nor Margaret spoke ; it was a 
scene and a time when God's glorious outer world says to the hu- 
man soul, however tempest-tossed, " Peace, be still ! " and the 
winds and the waves of sorrow and passion obey. Nicholson at 
last looked up at Margaret with tenderness and love shining in 
his eyes. She oddly remembered at that moment that her par- 
tiality for amethysts began because in her foolish girlish fancy their 
purple gleam reminded her of these same eyes. 

" Sweetheart ! " he said, referring to her evident weariness, 
" you are overtaxing yourself greatly. When are you going home 
with me to Montmorenci ? " 

He spoke with the air of one who has no doubt of his posi- 
tion, and his security and certainty of her sent a flash of resent- 
ment through Mrs. Tyler, and served to divest him of the gla- 
mour which her memories of their youth were continually throwing 
around him ; but she did not reply at once, and he continued, still 
smiling up at her: 

" Now you can understand, my Margaret, why you hurt me 
so when you suggested another mistress for Montmorenci. Mar- 
garet Somerville alone could reign there, ever." 

He had an instinctive dislike to using her married name of 
late ; there was in him a vague jealousy of her husband, though 
he was dead. She looked down at him regretfully. 

" Margaret Somerville is no more," she said. 

He caught the tone of her voice, and a quick fear rose in his 
face as he did so. 

" But all that was best and sweetest in her lives in the de- 
veloped woman," he replied gently. 

" Ah ! Margaret ! " he exclaimed, as he caught the hand 
that rested on her lap, " you will not, you cannot tell me that 



5o8 A QUESTION OF GROWTH. [July, 

your love for Fred Nicholson is one of the things that are 
dead ! " 

" Then you think she loved you in those old days ? " she 
asked, a bitterness creeping into her voice. 

" I think we loved each other, though we scarcely knew it," 
he answered, "and now it is given us to see now when our 
lives may go on together to the end." 

" How is it possible that you can ignore the years that have 
passed between that summer and this winter?" she asked, after 
a pause. " Are you conscious of no change in yourself since 
then that you can speak as if it were but yesterday?" 

" It seems to me since I met yo'u the other day that my love 
for you has filled all the years/' he said tenderly. " I have but 
been waiting for you." 

Nothing could have so conclusively proved how far she 
had outgrown her own fancy for him as the fact that she 
smiled at the extravagance of this speech. She had the faculty 
of occasionally seeing the humor of a situation at the wrong 
time. 

"Shall we call that remark poetic license?" she queried, 
lightly. 

" Call it what you will," he replied, vexed at her tone, " it 
was but the simple truth. You would not have laughed at it on 
the honeysuckle-porch." 

" No/' she answered, " because I would have been so glad 
then to have heard you speak in earnest as you spoke just 
now." 

The whole import of her words flashed over Nicholson. 

" I.n Heaven's name," he said, vehemently, " why weren't you 
honest with me that summer, Margaret ? Why did you let us 
both throw our lives away?" 

he rose and stood looking down on him, even though he 
rose also. He thought he had never seen her so stately. 

"Was /the dishonest one?" she asked, proudly. "Did /say 
meaningless words of love which perchance might win a young 
heart's devotion simply to serve my own amusement ? Suppose 
you had been honest, Mr. Nicholson." 

Ah ! suppose he had. At that moment Nicholson felt what 
many another one of us have felt before him, that he stood be- 
side a grave for ever closed and the name of the grave is a lost 
opportunity, and in it lies buried the might-have-been. But he 
was not thus easily going to give up the struggle for his life's 
hopes and happiness. There was anguish in his face and voice 



1891.] A QUESTION OF GROWTH. 509 

which melted all the woman's resentment into pity when he 
spoke again. 

" Margaret, God knows I have repented the insincerity of 
those days, if it was insincerity I believe I loved you even 
then but now surely, when I see the light, you will not let a 
woman's pique stand between us ; you are too noble and true 
for that ! Dearest, come to me and hallow my life and sweeten 
your own." 

He made a step toward her and held out his hands but 
even as he did so that sense of her exaltation above him came 
over him ; he knew not the meaning of the look on her face. 

" Dear friend," she said she knew he would wince at the 
words, but she could find no other and her tones became but 
the tenderer and lower for the added evidence of his pain, " so 
far am I from pique or anger that the memories of that past 
have at times blinded me to the truth of the present, so tender 
and sweet were they. But October is not May, however bright 
the sun shines. Whatever I might once have been to you, I 
cannot now be other than I am. I belong to my work and 
must live my life untrammeled ; I know what you would say," 
she continued, as he attempted to speak, " that as your wife I 
lould do that, but I could not. Your strong, deep love, pre- 
:ious and sacred as it is and would be, would prove the great- 
est of trammels for it calls for strong, deep love in return; and. 
that I could never give." 

Her voice died into a whisper and there was unutterable 
sadness in her eyes, which yet did not for an instant mar the 
jentle firmness of her glance and words. 

The arbutus party returned the next moment and the home- 
ward tramp began. 

As they reached the town, Margaret Tyler was stopped by 
L. lady to advise about the nursing and care of some suffering 
>treet-waif and Mary Cunningham and Fred Nicholson walked. 
>n together. 

F. C. FARINHOLT. 



VOL. LIU. 33 



510 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [July, 

THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 

IV. THE INDUCTIONS OF CONSCIENCE. 

THERE is one objection, fatal, as I hear it said, to arguments 
in Natural or Inductive Theology ; and it is, that they leave 
out the facts. Fatal indeed, were it true. Yes, I am told, they 
may serve as apologies, but they will not convince any one who 
has tasted the cup of bitter and real experience ; they sound 
plausible, but they are no less shallow than the writers who 
make use of them are unfeeling. To the wounded heart what 
can they offer? Syllogisms abstract reasoning which does not, 
nor ever will, take away the winter of its discontent ; for how 
shall we assuage grief or lighten sorrow with words, and dia- 
grams, and idle talk of the adaptation of life to circumstances ? 
" Read your Pascal," the brooding Pessimist will say, not with- 
out a touch of contempt, " your Leopardi and your Schopenhauer, 
nay, or your Dante and your Newman ; and then, if your daring 
so much exceeds your intellect, begin to prove, from the facts of 
life and the order of the universe, the existence of that Righteous 
Deity whom alone reason could admit, were any Deity admis- 
sible. But remember that the deepest minds in the world's 
history have put aside your excuses for the existence of evil, 
the ever-springing pain of life, for the reign and triumph of 
death, for the disorders of the physical and the moral being of 
which we men are made, as at once futile and irreverent. 
Silence alone is great ; why do you trouble the stillness with 
reasonings that end in bewilderment and amaze ? " 

Why ? Surely because I must attempt to satisfy my reason, 
and Pessimism is no answer, but despair of an answer. I have 
read my Pascal and the rest of that illustrious company more than 
once. I feel that their eloquence is overpowering, but, if I must 
record the instinctive judgment of my nature when all is said 
and done, it is that Pascal trusts himself rather to feeling than 
to calm intellect, and is narrow and partisan, though on the side 
of goodness. Much more do I suspect Schopenhauer and the 
tribe of cynical Pessimists, to whom the miseries of human kind 
afford a gloomy sport, as though disdain and not fellow-feeling 
were the clue to man's essence. Ill-temper and congenital or 
acquired sadness do not, to my thinking, furnish reason with its 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 511 

best methods of research. I am well-assured that the confusion 
of the inward being which follows upon the silence here applauded, 
and the impotence in action so characteristic of its adepts, are a 
proof that the beginning is as great a mistake as the end is dis- 
astrous. What I feel constrained to seek until I find it, is the 
rational purpose of my existing as I am, a standard by which to 
live, and a final cause of the activities wherewith I have been 
endowed, so that when the end comes I shall have fulfilled, how- 
ever inadequately, my part in the universe, as I see things inani- 
mate fulfil theirs. I cannot live at random, or upon the impulse 
of the moment, without forfeiting my claim to be regarded as a 
reasonable being. For it is beyond cavil that my faculties are 
always urging me to act; and that, if I do not bring them to 
some harmonious issue, I am after a sort committing suicide, and 
running counter to the whole stress and strain of the tendencies 
which make me human. I can simply not deny that every fibre 
of my being is instinct with purpose. The senses look for their 
gratification ; the intellect desires knowledge, that is to say, truth ; 
the will seeks after good ; and the conscience bids it choose what 
is right and turn away from evil. My entire organism, as I know 
it, is founded and set up on the idea of purpose ; and not only 
of purpose, but of moral purpose. And as it is with me, so is 
it with all men Whether they reflect or no upon the astound- 
ing mystery of their nature, with its faculties, laws, and innate 
aspirations, they too, like myself, exist in the kingdom of moral 
ends and means ; they are a part of it ; and never while they 
are conscious and free have they an escape through any door 
into the supposed but imaginary chaos where purpose does not 
rule. How, then, can I help asking whether the world without 
me, in which I have beheld such magnificent systems upon 
systems of the most exquisite order and adaptation, is .not like- 
wise a moral universe, of one pattern with the ideal held up to 
me by conscience ? Did I cease to ask that question, I should 
cease to be man. 

But I will not allow that my interrogation of nature ends in 
bewilderment and amaze. In deep wonder it does, in an O 
altitudo, to speak with St. Paul and St Augustine. I do not 
pretend that our light shines except in a dark place ; it is almost 
put out when the flood of noonday beats upon it, and I pass 
from the sanctuary of my own bosom, where conscience keeps 
the lamp burning, to that great and high prospect, the manifold 
existence of men, so little known to me, so full of trouble, so 
entangled in circumstance, so secret because it is so vast, so 



512 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [July, 

much beyond my searching into by reason of its rich and puis- 
sant variety. Let every one, then, speak for himself; and perhaps 
it will be found that the most forbidding, the least encouraging, 
of the phenomena which perplex the moral historian, may be 
explained by a frank Mea culpa. There is something, no doubt, 
besides the guilt of man ; he submits to conditions and must 
fashion and mould his character in time, amid surroundings he 
would not have chosen. But still, he is himself, not another, still 
less a mere mechanism of wheels and pulleys driven by a force 
outside him. I do not require to make any assumptions but 
these which are self-evident, or conclusions from self-evident 
premises viz., that man in a normal state has some power of 
shaping his character by acts of choice ; and that, as I have 
shown, the physical universe presents indubitable tokens of adapta- 
tion to ends foreseen, and in their realization co-ordinated to 
issues of use and beauty. 

The test of valid science is prediction. From its knowledge 
of the past it foretells the future ; which could not be, unless past 
and future were fitted each to each by the intrinsic reasonables 
of causes and effects, or of substances and their many modes and 
accidents. 

This is what we mean by order, purpose, and at last by 
design, if we carefully examine our words. Blind forces, it must 
be said again and again, would be incapable of producing 
uniform results. The line upon which things move to definite 
issues cannot but be a line of guidance or direction. And I 
believe the most determined agnostic would allow that the order 
ot the world seems due, in its lower circles, to adaptation of part 
to part ; as certainly the late Mr. Stuart Mill, no follower of 
Paley, allowed that the whole cosmic order was due, though he 
demurred to the notion of Omnipotence. However, I am not 
discussing Omnipotence now; and all I say is, that were the 
inanimate universe solely in question, the marks of design would 
be overwhelming. But immediately this reply is made to me, 
" On the supposition of an Objective Reason, you may perhaps 
account for the orderliness of matter ; how will you account 
by the same for the disorder of life ? " 

That is the problem. Matter, by which I understand tin 
entire system of energies acting in space and time exclusive ol 
living things, appears, strangely enough, to tall within the 
domain of reason ; while lite is refractory, and the more so the 
higher we ascend in the scale. Not that we have grasped the 
essence, whatever it is, of physical energy ; but we know its 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 513 

laws in a certain measure, and are not put to confusion on look- 
ing out upon its activities. How different is the scene when we 
turn to contemplate man, the race or the individual ! He wit- 
nesses, by the mouth of all his prophets and teachers, that 
he is an enigma to himself. " Unhappy that we are ! " exclaims 
Pascal, with his accustomed severity of tone, " more unhappy 
than if there were nothing great in our condition. We have an 
ideal of happiness, and we cannot reach it ; we have an image 
of the truth, and we possess nothing but a lie ; we are incapa- 
ble of absolute ignorance as of certain knowledge ! " Who 
shall disentangle so intricate a skein ? 

Well, let us begin at the beginning, and not, as so many do, 
at the end. What are the facts' of the case ? That I find myself 
simultaneously in two worlds ; I am a denizen of the physical 
universe, allied to it, imprisoned in it, if you will, by the texture 
of nerves and brain, as I am of the spiritual by virtue of the 
mind and conscience I possess. Now mark : if there is any 
force in the difficulty put forward, it would follow that as a 
physical being I exist in the realm of perfect law, where reason, 
the deeper it inquires the more it is satisfied ; while, as a spirit- 
ual being, I live and move amid confusion worse confounded. 
The Supreme Power whose wisdom in adapting means to ends 
where matter alone is concerned, has, so far as we can judge, 
simply no limits, and who chooses from infinite contingencies an 
order of being so stable and constant that for a myriad million 
of years it goes through its courses untroubled, does, it would 
seem, fall back in disorder as soon as a living organism, subject 
to pain, emerges from the dark of its own nothingness. There 
is harmony admitted in the clash of world-systems, in the rush 
of constellations together ; but none, not one single bar of music, 
in the so-called struggle of that organism to maintain itself within 
or to overcome the attack of its enemies from without. Divine 
Wisdom made the outside of things ; folly and unwisdom the 
inside, which yet is their life ! The mind which alone has the 
idea of Truth is, we know not why or how, condemned on this 
showing to eternal falsehood ; and Conscience is lighted up by 
the sun of Righteousness, only to discern that righteousness never 
has existed, but is the dream of man the self- tormentor ! Tor- 
mented, surely, beyond all speech are we, if the ideal in whose 
radiance we perceive our moral imperfection, and vex ourselves 
daily because we come short of it, turns out finally to be the mir- 
age of our own hunger and thirst, with the desert sands stretching 
endlessly before us as we march, and the night bereft of its stars 



514 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [July, 

descending upon our utter disappointment ! There was, again 
it should seem, enough intellect in the nature of things to real- 
ize in visible forms the laws of mathematics and of chemical affini- 
ties ; enough to make the brain of man responsive to echoes 
and pulsations from the remotest nebula ; but not enough to 
appease the desire for justioe and holiness which has been 
awakened in his heart ; enough, therefore, to design his misery, 
but not enough to make it the instrument of good. Will reason 
permit us to halt in this fashion between Wisdom and Unwisdom 
as the root of things? Must we not either fall headlong down 
the abyss with scepticism ; or make sure that the foothold we 
have attained by means of physical science is the first round of a 
ladder leading upward to the light ? 

These considerations appear to me by no means fanciful, but 
of a most solid scientific worth, as showing that we cannot allow 
more to the axioms and postulates of physical inquiries than 
we allow to the primary dictates of the moral sense, as it is 
called. In both cases, the foundation is in the nature of the 
mind itself here as conscience affirming the objective moral 
order, there as pure intellect declaring that an Objective Reason 
exists. To make the co-ordinations of science real, and to main- 
tain at the same moment that moral truth and ethical justice 
have no substance, nay, not the shadow of a meaning, outside the 
thoughts of man himself a figure passing swiftly over the stage 
and disappearing into the gulf where all phenomena vanish I 
call a crime against logic, good sense, and experience. If the 
visible frame of things is held and knit together by the law of 
gravitation, no less certainly must I believe or rather, I see 
and therefore I believe that human society, and the very 
nature of the individual man, are coherent entities only because 
of that unchanging moral law to which we know that we are 
subject. The parallel is complete. I take the physical universe 
as it lies before me, and examining its ten thousand details with 
the aid of Newton's genius, I find that one formula explains and 
exhausts the action in space (I do not say, lays bare the 
essence), of its contending elements. However complex may 
seem their motions, and although I can make satisfactory trial 
of the law in but a few instances, I do not feel that I can re- 
fuse my assent when the physical philosopher announces that all 
bodies in the universe, so far as it is known to us, attract in- 
versely as the square of their distance. Were they to act 
otherwise, the sciences of dynamics and of statics would have to 
be expunged from our text-books, and experience make a fresh 






1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 515 

start, as though nothing were ascertained concerning the motion 
of bodies. Apply this to the elementary ideas of moral good, 
of righteousness, and the reward of just and unjust actions, which 
are at least as connatural to our minds as the notions of weight, 
attraction, and repulsion. Could we imagine a human society 
which was not under the influence of them ? Would not all the 
reasons we have for calling a polity, however civilized, human, in. 
the strict and proper sense of the word, dissolve and pass away 
when the distinction between moral right and moral wrong had 
ceased to win acknowledgment from the men and women com- 
posing it ? And in like manner must we judge of the individual. 
Righteousness, I say with Edmund Burke, is the law under which 
we are all born. Repeal or disown it, and man sinks to a 
beast of the field ; his volitions become mere appetites, his 
desires the cravings of self-interest, his affections the instruments 
of his brutal passions. It is not true, therefore, that we can 
philosophize accurately about man, while disregarding his moral 
nature ; and when we attribute mind to him we mean of 
necessity that he is a conscience also. 

See, then, what is the force of my argument. When I would 
establish science, physical or metaphysical, on a sure foundation. 
I am compelled to recur to the very make and constitution of 
my intellect, affirming, in opposition to the scepticism of Kant 
or of Hume, that the laws of thought which I discover in my- 
self are the laws of things ; and that in this equation truth 
stands and must stand for ever. But the horrid doubt which ap- 
pears as Scepticism where truth in general is questioned, takes 
the form of Pessimism so soon as the idea of goodness of course 
I mean moral good is refused its objective value. In the one 
case, though man affirms that truth, being the very form of his 
intellect, cannot be a phantom or delusion springing up in his 
own brain, the sceptic tells him that he knows nothing except 
such delusions. In the other, conscience itself declaring that it 
binds man as a subject, and is therefore the voice of a sovereign, 
the Pessimist replies by pointing to the chance-medley, as he 
deems it, of human existence, and asking where is the Judge 
and Master who rules the fray. With equal cogency might the 
objection be raised to a common man unversed in mathematics, 
that he ought to state the formula of three or more moving 
bodies before he was permitted to believe or to act upon the 
law of gravitation. But he knows that bodies have weight; and 
the man who attends to his conscience is perfectly well aware 
that the right and the wrong of the moral dictates have not 



516 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [July, 

been put into things by his mere fancy, nor by that of any one 
else He possesses the certain knowledge (called, not unfairly, 
intuition or mental insight) of his own present power of choosing 
and the standard according to which he ought to choose nay, 
and ethically speaking, must choose under penalties. The vision 
of the moral order is as steadfast and as permanent before his 
mind's eye, as the vision of physical order is before the gaze of 
science. To deny either is to shake the foundations of both. - 

If we term the first principle of inductive science the " uniformity 
of nature," we may with as good reason define the first principle 
of morals to be the supremacy of conscience. But the " Categor- 
ical Imperative " thus admitted, would lose all its binding force 
and superhuman majesty, were it nothing more than a law im- 
posed upon man by himself, the coinage of a frightened or 
intoxicated brain. Nor is it an empty ideal which he is free to 
follow or forget, an artist's dream (suppose), lovely indeed, but 
melting into the cloud-forms of imagination ; else where would be 
its authority? The so-called " laws" of physical science are want- 
ing in the element which truly constitutes law, for they have not, 
in themselves, any power to coerce and bring about the effects 
they describe. But the Moral Law is the first and greatest of 
sovereign powers, from which, as our being testifies in its inner- 
most depths, there is neither appeal nor escape. The dread 
anticipations which are the immediate fruits of wrong-doing bear 
witness that the Power we offend is beyond us to overthrow. -If 
the first stage of transgression be lawless liberty, rioting in its 
own delight, the second, which comes quickly until blindness has 
seared our vision, is, it cannot be doubted, a certain fearful look- 
ing for judgment to be executed upon us. Are not these things 
disclosures of a new and terrible kingdom of means and ends, 
wide as the world, commensurate with human existence, and 
extending round it on every side, into eternity ? 

Such are the facts, be the inferences from them what they 
may. In conscience, as we know it, apart from all theoretic 
determinations, there is discernible a threefold experience ; ot 
free-will able to choose ; of a command to choose right according 
to the standard shown us ; and of guilt anticipating punishment 
whenever we disobey the inward voice. I do not see what is 
"wanting here to the strictest induction. As for experiment and 
verification, is not our life from hour to hour one perpetual 
series of trials made and results accruing, as in a moral labora- 
tory of the spirit ? Have we not knowledge from the past 
whereby to foretell the future ? " Who hath resisted Him, and hath 



1891 ] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 517 

had peace ? " If we understand these words as they were 
intended, we shall acknowledge that they are a summing up of 
the experience of the perverse and frovvard in every age. To 
break the moral law, to rebel against its commandment, is that 
very instant to lapse and be degraded into a lower creature. 
As he who thinks falsehood cannot hold the truth which he 
denies, so the man to whom sin is pleasing slips away from 
justice, and in being unjust, without further penalty, he is 
punished ; the seed of death is already sown within him, and 
needs only time for its ripening. Is not this a demonstration 
plain that the nature of things is holy, and just, and righteous? 
For it not only does not, but I will dare to say that it cannot, 
save the unjust from the greatest and worst consequences of his 
injustice, which are not that he should endure pain of body or 
limb, neither that he should be mulcted of this world's goods, 
but that he should fall below the level of the just man, being 
degraded and spoiled of that spiritual essence which he flung 
from him in the very act of sinning. He never can be again 
what he was before he sinned. 

I have implied throughout this argument two things, which 
in the nineteenth century are often denied and still oftener for- 
gotten. One is that pain is not the greatest of evils ; and the 
other, that moral guilt, as I am now considering it, cannot exist 
apart from the exercise of free-will. In addressing Christians, I 
take for granted that the doctrine of original sin, as held by 
them, is declared to be perfectly compatible with Divine Justice, 
and will not be urged against the objective existence of the 
moral order which I am defending. To the philosopher who 
abstracts from original sin, or does not believe in it; I point out 
with ^Aristotle that moral evil is the consequence of a free choice 
wrongly exercised. And furthermore that pain, in itself, has no 
moral quality, but is good or evil according to the end which 
determines its application. I must not be understood as saying 
that to inflict pain for the sake of pain is ever good. On the 
contrary, I hold it to be intrinsically bad and forbidden by that 
moral law which to me is the nature of things itself. But that 
pain, either inflicted or endured, miy be a relative good, as the 
instrument of justice and sanctity, I think self-evident. And 
that not pain but deflection from the moral standard is the 
highest evil, must be granted by all who are not Utilitarians. 
Now I do not profess to argue from science in favor of a 
Utilitarian religion. The stand I take is that of all those to 
whom virtue or righteousness comes first, as the absolute end of 



5i8 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [July, 

man, and happiness, in whatever sense, comes in the second place, 
not at all as a thing indifferent to the Supreme Providence 
which governs the world, but still as subordinate to that Holi- 
ness without which nD man shall see God. If I prove that our 
experimental and inductive knowledge bears witness to justice in 
the objective order, I shall have made out my contention. And 
I say that it does, and that I have proved it by appealing to 
the experience of our spiritual life which alone can throw light 
upon these problems, since to it alone they belong and apart 
from it have no intelligible meaning. 

It is a hard saying in the ears of our luxury- stricken time 
that pain is not the supreme of evils. Yet men's softness, self- 
indulgence, and sensual cowardice cannot make a vain thing of 
the Cross of Christ, looked at, I do not say with the eyes of 
faith, but as confessedly the centre of human history, and the 
ethical force which has raised civilization to its noblest heights. 
There is a scale of perfection in the moral as in the material 
world; one thing is better than another, one ideal overtops the 
rest. To behold the triumph of justice, Plato has written in a 
passage of inspiring eloquence, we must consider the just man, 
who is truly such but does not seem so to his fellow-citizens, 
when they have scourged, racked, and bound him, nay when, 
after suffering every kind of evil, he is crucified. And to suffer 
injustice, Plato argues, is not the first of evils, for it cannot hurt 
the soul ; but they are miserable who inflict that suffering 
on the blameless, and are themselves most to be pitied. But 
if before the Divine experience of the Gospel, even a Greek 
philosopher could, by the light of reason, discover that in 
apparent defeat and humiliation, in pain and wrong-suffering, 
there might be the very conditions of a perfectly just life, an 
ideal fulfilled to the uttermost, " all glorious within," though its 
outward seeming were mean and despicable, what will the impar- 
tial judge affirm, to whom the life of Jesus of Nazareth and its 
ever-enlarging consequences from age to age have been made 
manifest? I repeat that my argument is not addressed to believ- 
ers ; it borrows its strength neither from faith nor from authority. 
The patent facts of the New Testament which abide the coldest 
critic's scrutiny are my warrant when I would conclude, as the 
heart does even against the shrinking senses, that self-sacrifice 
opens to the moral intuition a range of most heroic, most pathe- 
tic and subduing, virtues, to which we cannot but assign the 
crown of goodness. While, on the other hand, since free-will, 
the voluntary surrender of ourselves to lower influences, yielding 



1891 ] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 519 

where we might and ought to resist, is a necessary condition of 
wrong-doing, it follows that, in the order of righteousness, every 
man remains his own master, nor can be injured unless he is 
willing. The spirit is superior to violation. Personal dignity and 
true honor stand in our own choice ; and he only is conquered 
who suffers himself to be overcome. 

Yet this is not the conclusion of the whole matter, though, 
as I would most earnestly contend, it ought to be " the master- 
light of all our seeing." Free moral choice, under conditions 
ranging from the easy to the heroic, and always involving some 
degree of martyrdom in witness to the ethical standard, is our 
one sure guide through the mazes of existence. But who will 
grant that the tragic defeat, though it be a moral victory, 
is the last scene of all, and that the curtain shall never rise 
again upon injustice caught in its own snare ? When I refuse 
to barter virtue for happiness, and deny that it looks beyond 
itself to some future reward, I am riot forgetting the scandal 
of every day, goodness trampled underfoot, cunning and 
malice making sport of the innocent, injustice sowing with 
an assurance that it shall reap its golden harvest. These 
eclipses and disasters of the moral world, painted in too dark 
a color by the ready pencil of discontent, have still a terrible 
truth in them ; the anguish of good men cries out that evil, 
if not in the nature of things, has a wide domain and a 
present power which extends over those to whom it is hateful ' 
and repellent. Shall the just perish for ever ? Shall the mouth 
of unrighteousness never be stopped ? Where is that balance 
of the moral order in which none shall eat the fruits of 
another man's devices, but every one, as the Categorical 
Imperative commands, shall be rewarded according to his 
works ? We may allow that suffering is a means, provided 
that it be not the end. But if the ethical character, made 
perfect by endurance, lifted upon Calvary for all the world to 
contemplate its winning loveliness, shall straightway fall to dust 
and ashes, what can be the purpose, or how shall we talk of the 
reason which science would fain discover in that marvellous spec- 
tacle, the pattern and instance of virtues known to commoner 
experience ? It is not enough to say with modern enthusiasts 
that self-sacrifice hands on the lamp of moral splendor from 
one century to another. That does not answer my question. 
I speak of justice, not of consequences. It is not just that 
wrong should go unpunished, or that goodness should be wantonly 
afflicted and though, as I have said, there is a penalty insepar- 



520 THE REWARD FOR A CUP OF COLD WATER. [July, 

able from the very act of evil choice, and virtue is and must 
be its 'own reward, yet reason demands that, in the end, it shall 
be well with him that means well, and ill with him to whom 
injustice was pleasant. By the law of gravitation, all things" 
are kept in stable equilibrium and the visible world endures. 
Can I point to indications *'of a law in the spiritual order 
which fulfils the same office and renders to every free choice 
its due ? I say yes, there is one great law which presents itself 
to us under a double aspect ; the law that character tends to be 
permanent, and that spiritual energy is indestructible. We may 
define it, indeed, as the highest form of the conservation of 
energy, or as Ethical Optimism ; by which I mean that the 
supreme expression of intellectual and moral being is justice, and 
that the spirit of the just is immortal. In my next paper I will 
touch upon the grounds for this momentous conclusion offered to 
us by inductive science. 

WILLIAM BARRY. 



THE REWARD FOR A CUP OF COLD WATER. 

"Whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water 
only . . . shall not lose his reward." ST. MATT. x. 42. 

DIVES IN HELL. 

Tis plain that He meant Heav'n as the reward for boon so 

small, 

Since I would gladly give all Heav'n twice o'er to him 
Who from his plenteous cup's cool, overflowing brim 
Upon my burning tongue would let one drop in mercy fall. 

ALFRED YOUNG. 



1891. J THE AMERICAN STATE, ETC. 521 



THE AMERICAN STATE AND THE PRIVATE SCHOOL. 

IN two of the Northwestern States, Wisconsin and Illinois, 
the question of the relation between the State and the school 
has been, within the last two years, very generally and very 
thoroughly discussed on the rostrum and in the press, and it 
was submitted last autumn to the arbitrament of the popular voice 
at the polls. The issue involved the claim of the State, as em- 
bodied in certain school laws passed by the General Assembly, 
to control the management and the studies even of the private 
and denominational schools that derive no aid whatever from the 
public funds. This claim of State control was pushed still further. 
Compulsory education laws were passed and for a short time en- 
forced, which, whatever may have been the purpose of their 
authors, were held by many to invade the domain of parental 
rights. When these laws came to be applied by school directors 
they were found in many cases to be meddlesome, annoying, and 
oppressive, and excited determined opposition. The interference 
complained of extended chiefly to the following points : 

1. Parents were obliged to send their children to a school ap- 
proved by the school board or school directors. 

2. To an approved school in the district wherein the parents 
resided. 

3. For a certain number of weeks (say sixteen) continuously, 
and at a time of the school year to be determined by the school board. 

4. No school to be considered as a school, within the meaning of 
this law, unless there should be taught therein, in the EnglisJi 
language, reading, writing, United States history, geography, and, 
arithmetic. 

5. Truant children, when arrested, were to be sent to the 
nearest public school. 

6. Any failure to comply with the several provisions of this 
law subjected the offending parent to a fine, determined by the statute, 
and to be paid into the court, on the mere charge and testimony 
of the school director as the accusing witness. 

7. The failure to teach in the English language any one of 
the several branches named in the statute might, at the pleasure 
of a school director, have the effect of outlawing the school, and 
subjecting the parents of all the children frequenting such school 
to the penalties provided for in the law. 



522 THE AMERICAN STATE AND [July, 

From the foregoing clauses of the Bennett law of Wisconsin 
and the Edwards law of Illinois, it is clear that this is not 
simply compulsory school legislation in the sense of securing to 
the children of criminally negligent or indifferent parents a cer- 
tain amount of instruction, or of arresting the very real evil of 
truancy as it exists in certain t>f our large cities. Here is some- 
thing very different. Here is State interference and State control 
in matters which had hitherto been considered as within the ex- 
clusive right and jurisdiction of the parents. This legislation 
formed a new departure. It attempted to extend over the child, 
the parent, and the private school an authority hitherto un- 
known, and to dictate to the family how much and what sort of 
schooling it must give the child, and where and at what time. It 
is not to be wondered at that such laws excited opposition. They 
were denounced as uncalled-for, unnecessary, unjust, oppressive, and 
tyrannical. They were said to be the work of fanatics, of enemies 
of religious schools, of doctrinaires devoted to State paternalism, 
of Know-nothings hostile to the German parochial schools. They 
were defended with equal warmth. Religious prejudice was in- 
voked against the German Lutherans and the German Catholics, 
who fought for their parochial schools and who were virulently de- 
nounced as enemies of the public schools, assailants of American in- 
stitutions, aliens in tongue and in spirit, and so on. The war was 
waged with a good deal of rancor towards the patrons of private 
and denominational schools. The issue was carried into the 
political arena and was fought out, first in Wisconsin, with a 
result which was almost as much of a surprise to the victorious 
Democrats as to the defeated Republicans. The party identified 
with the obnoxious Bennett law was overwhelmed at the polls 
and lost everything. In Illinois both political parties entered the 
contest by pledging themselves, in their State conventions, either 
to repeal the compulsory law or to amend its most objectionable 
clauses. But even this did not save the Republicans from defeat. 
They had been unwise enough to renominate for the office of 
State Superintendent of Schools Mr. Richard Edwards, the 
reputed author of the compulsory education law. To emphasize 
their condemnation of that law, the voters of the State of Illinois 
elected Mr. Edwards's opponent by thirty-five thousand majority. 

The election in these States is over long ago, and the smoke 
of the battle has rolled away ; it may be well to review the 
situation and note some of the lessons taught by the contest and 
its results. Such an analysis has its value for others than 
politicians. From the educational standpoint and as a question 



1891.] THE PRIVATE SCHOOL. 523 

of civics involving the relation of State and school, it will be 
instructive to notice what principles were rejected or admitted 
by either side in the contest. 

In the first place, it is pleasant to observe that none of the 
dire consequences predicted by the party that defended the com- 
pulsory law have followed the defeat of that party at the polls. 
The " little red school-house" has not been closed. The English 
language has not been abolished ; nor does either of these valued 
institutions seem to be threatened with any immediate disaster. 

In the second place, the election has settled, so far as a de- 
cided majority can settle anything, that the time has not yet 
come, if it ever will come, when the State, under the dictation 
of a political party, can interfere with the right of parents to 
educate their children in the schools of their choice, or can con- 
trol and virtually suppress schools that derive no aid from the 
public funds. 

When it became evident that the issue between the advo- 
cates and the opponents of State control as embodied in the 
compulsory school law, or of ''State paternalism," as its enemies 
called it, would be made a political issue, both parties addressed 
themselves to the task of formulating the principles they were 
prepared to maintain. Party lines were rigidly drawn ; the two 
great political parties were arrayed against one another chiefly 
on the question of the compulsory law ; and in their respective 
State conventions they adopted certain principles on which they 
appealed to the people for support. A comparison of these 
principles will now engage our attention. 

Let us first compare the principles of the two parties in the 
State of Wisconsin. The Republicans, through their State officials, 
chiefly the Governor and the Superintendent of Public Instruc- 
tion, were committed to the compulsory school law, called the 
'* Bennett Law " ; but certain provisions of that law, in fact its 
chief and fundamental provisions, had been so vigorously assailed 
and were so unpopular that the party felt the necessity of 
making concessions. Accordingly we find them, as their oppo- 
nents termed it, " hedging " in the following clauses of their 
platform : 

" We believe that the compulsory education law is wise and 
humane in all its essential purposes, and we are opposed to its 
repeal; but at the same time we assert that the parent or guar- 
dian has the right to select the time of year and the place, 
whether public or private, and wherever located, in which his 
child or ward shall receive instruction, and we pledge ourselves 



524 THE AMERICAN STATE AND [July, 

to modify the existing law so that it shall conform to the fore- 
going declarations. . . . The Republican party recognizes as 
valuable auxiliaries in the work of popular education the private 
and parochial schools, supported without aid from public funds, 
and disclaims absolutely any purpose whatever to interfere in any 
manner with such schools, either as to their terms, government, 
or branches to be taught therein* . . . We repudiate as a gross 
misrepresentation of our purposes the suggestion, come whence 
it may, that we will in any manner invade the domain of con- 
science, of trample upon parental rights or religious liberty." 

These disclaimers did not save the Republicans from defeat. 
The party was popularly identified with the Bennett law and 
was swept out. of place by the tidal wave of reaction against 
State interference. This formal recognition of certain inalienable 
rights of parents in the matter of education, though it failed of 
its immediate purpose, is valuable on other accounts, as we shall 
presently see. 

Let us turn now to the platform of the Democratic party. 
The authorship of this platform is credited to Colonel Vilas, since 
elected to succeed Mr. Spooner as United States Senator from 
Wisconsin. It is clear, bold, aggressive, and direct. This is what 
it says on the subject of the odious compulsory school law : 

" The Bennett law is a local manifestation of the settled 
Republican policy of paternalism. . . Favoring laws providing 
for the compulsory attendance at school of all children, we 
believe that the school law in force prior to the passage of the 
Bennett law guaranteed to all children of the State opportunity 
for education, and in this essential feature was stronger than the 
Bennett law. The * underlying principle ' of the Bennett law is 
needless interference with parental rights and liberty of conscience. 
The provisions for its enforcement place the accused at the 
rnercy of the school directors, and deny his right to trial by jury 
and according to the law of the land. To mask this tyrannical 
invasion ot individual and constitutional rights, the shallow plea 
of defence of the English language is advanced. The history of 
the State, peopled largely with foreign-born citizens, demonstrates 
the fact that natural causes and the necessities of the situation 
are advancing the spread of the English language to the greatest 
possible extent. We therefore denounce that law as unnecessary, 
unwise, unconstitutional, un American, and un-Democratic, and 
demand its repeal/' 

There was no mistaking this pronouncement. It went to the 
very root of the whole question. It attacked the " underlying 
principle " of State control over private schools, denounced the 
law in this sense and demanded its repeal. The people of Wis- 



1891.] THE PRIVATE SCHOOL. 525 

consin, hitherto counted as a safe Republican Stale, by a very 
sweeping majority supported the party pledged to repeal the law. 
Looking back over these two platforms, we find that their 
differences concern the scope and meaning of the compulsory 
law actually on the statute book, rather than the abstract ques- 
tion of State control over education. The Republicans profess to 
regard the Bennett law as " wise and humane in its essential 
purposes, and are opposed to its repeal." At the same time they 
" disclaim absolutely any purpose whatever to interfere in any 
manner with such (private or parochial) schools, either as to 
their terms, government, or branches to be taught therein." 
They also agree with the Democrats when they repudiate as a 
gross misrepresentation of their purposes the suggestion " that we 
will in any manner invade the domain of conscience or trample 
upon parental rights or religious liberty." They pledge them- 
selves to modify the Bennett law so as to eliminate from it 
every clause that seems to interfere with parental rights or to 
control private schools. 

The Democrats, on the other hand, see in the Bennett law 
not the benign purpose of securing to all children an elementary 
education, but a meddling and encroaching tendency which they 
'call paternalism, and a fixed resolve to ''interfere with parental 
rights and liberty of conscience." 

However far asunder the two parties stood in their interpre- 
tation of the existing compulsory law, their differences as to 
principle were more apparent than real. To the thoughtful reader,, 
who studies the public expression of party creeds put forth in 
these platforms, it is in the highest degree interesting and grati- 
fying to note that both parties are sound on this vital question 
of State interference with private schools. If the principles 
enunciated in these party manifestoes are sincerely held by the 
rank and file of the two parties, there is not much reason to fear 
the encroachment of the State upon the rights of parents. 

Let us now turn to the neighboring State of Illinois, where, 
though the contest was not so bitter, the same issue was involved. 
There the Democrats were first in the field with their declaration 
of principles. . On this compulsory law question they hold " that 
the parental right to direct and control the education of the 
child should for ever remain inviolate, and that the provision of 
the law of 1889, commonly known as the Compulsory Education 
Statute, impugning that inalienable right, should be at once 
repealed." 

To this the Republicans reply : " We are opposed to any 
VOL. LIU. 34 



526 THE AMERICAN STATE AND [July, 

arbitrary interference with the right of parents or guardians to 
educate their children at private schools, no matter where located ; 
and we favor the amendment of the existing compulsory educa- 
tion law so as to conform to the declarations herein set forth, 
and also the repeal of so much of said law as provides for 
public supervision of private $ckools" So far the two political 
parties are at one in the rejection of all unnecessary or arbitrary 
interference with the parent's right to educate his child. Both 
parties then proceed to define their position on the question of 
compulsory education. The Republicans say : " We declare in 
favor of a compulsory education law, which will guarantee to all 
the children of the State ample opportunity of acquiring such 
an elementary education as will fit them for the intelligent per- 
formance of civil and political duties " The Democrats state 
their principles still more explicitly: "Compulsory education in 
the sense that parents who violate or neglect their parental duty 
may be compelled to its performance or punished for non-per- 
formance, is licit. Compulsory education in the sense of control- 
ling or seeking to control, or to dislodge from their rightful 
place, those parents who are discharging their parental duties 
commensurately with the state of life of parent and child, is 
not allowable even to the State." 

The principles thus admitted or rejected by the two great 
parties in Illinois as well as in Wisconsin, in so far as we can 
judge of principles from the platform^ adopted under the pressure 
of political exigency, in the heat of a political campaign, appear 
to be substantially identical. What the one party rejects the 
other also rejects with a little more emphasis ; what the one 
repudiates as foreign to its spirit and purpose, the other con- 
demns as unjust, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. What the 
one admits, namely, the natural right of the parent to control and 
direct the education of his child, the other defends as an inalien- 
able right with which the State cannot interfere. Where one 
disclaims all intention of arbitrary interference with the right of 
parents to educate their children in any school, no matter where 
located, the other declares that this parental right must for ever 
remain inviolable. So far, therefore, as the theory or abstract prin- 
ciple of State interference is concerned, there is not much room 
for choice between the two sets of resolutions. If the popular 
vote went so largely to the Democratic side, it was because 
popular opinion had come to identify the Republicans, despite 
their political platform, with the odious compulsory law which 
in- practice contradicted their theory. The movement that car- 



1891.] THE PRIVATE SCHOOL. 527 

ried two strongly Republican States over to the camp of Dem- 
ocracy is now generally admitted to have been a reaction against 
State paternalism, or that tendency towards what is called a 
" strong government" which characterizes a small and restless 
clique of doctrinaires. On this subject, as on all the fundamental 
questions which the popular mind can easily grasp, the people 
are undoubtedly sound, and may be trusted to approve no laws 
that unnecessarily and seriously interfere with parental rights or 
the rights of conscience. The people of these two prosperous 
States, and notably the patrons of private and parochial schools, 
are as progressive and as willing to make sacrifices for popular 
education as those of any State in the Union. They prove it by 
the burdens they voluntarily assume, to give their children the 
best possible education, according to their convictions and the 
dictates of their conscience. The line of State interference was 
sharply drawn in the contest through which those States passed 
last autumn, and the result of the election set the limit so 
emphatically that no one, for the present, can pretend to ignore 
or mistake it. 

The State may assist parents to control habitual truants ; it 
may compel negligent parents to provide their children with an 
elementary education ; but it may not invade the domain of 
parental rights. It may not dictate the sort of school, public 
or private, religious or secular, domestic or foreign, to which the 
parent shall send his child ; it may not prescribe the place, the 
time, the amount or the quality of schooling, or otherwise interfere 
with the management or control of schools supported without 
aid from the public funds. Private and parochial schools enjoy 
the fullest right to exist and to flourish as " valuable auxiliaries 
in the work of popular education." In selecting a school, public 
or private, or in providing instruction for his children at home, 
the parent " exercises a right protected by the law of the 
land as well as by the law of nature and in exercising this 
right he need offer neither excuse nor apology." 

These points, as we have already observed, may be con- 
sidered settled, so far as a great and decisive political contest 
can be said to settle anything. It is worth a great deal to 
have had these principles so distinctly formulated and so 
generally admitted. They have cleared the atmosphere of much 
haziness and have helped to define the true relation between 
the State and the school, 

E. A. HIGGINS, SJ. 

Sl, Ignatius College, Chicago, IL. 



528 THE OLD LANDLADY' s ALBUM. [July, 



THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. 

THE old landlady came to our little village about the first of 
October, just after the summer visitors had left for their homes 
in the valleys. Being the only new member of a very small 
community, she and all her belongings received a full measure 
of attention, all other subjects having been so thoroughly dis- 
cussed they had lost their relish. She lived just across the 
street from us, and I learned to know her before I ever spoke 
to her. When I threw open my shutters in the early morning 
madame would be at her window, busy with her birds and 
flowers, or walking up and down her wide galleries softly, as 
though she felt all the glories of earth and sky which surrounded 
her and yet her thoughts were far away. 

Her white hair was put back smoothly from her brow, and, 
after being plaited in two heavy -bands, was confined low on the 
back of a head whose noble outlines would delight a sculptor. 
She was always dressed in black, and though one would never 
call her fashionable or stylish, there was about her a certain 
elegance in costume and bearing which impressed the least 
sensitive of those who saw her. 

It was not long before I sought her acquaintance. Her 
cordial smile and sincere voice put me thoroughly at ease, 
almost as soon as I entered her cosy sitting-room. Her 
manner, though so gentle and dignified, was alert and business- 
like ; her eyes, behind their gold- rimmed glasses, met yours frankly. 
She seemed to comprehend you at once, to know you thoroughly ; 
and yet so kind was her judgment that she knew you at your 
best rather what you wished yourself to be than what you 
really were. 

She began the conversation, as many people do, about the 
weather, but she spoke so enthusiastically of the ever-changing 
moods of nature that I found myself valuing less cheaply the 
charms of my mountain home ; but when she began to extol 
the delights of monotony, declaring it to be a " poultice to her 
aching nerves," I avowed my detestation of all poultices, real or 
figurative. She laughed as merrily as I did, but suggested that 
the difference in our feelings could be readily explained by 
considering the differences of age and occupation. " You are 
young, ignorant of the big and busy world ; you imagine it full 
of pleasant adventures, but I have tested its promises and I am 



1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY* s ALBUM. 529 

quite willing to leave its crowded ways to those who love them." 
Seeing a protest on my face, she continued: " I do not wish to 
discourage you ; the present generation of Southern girls will 
probably not be called upon to .endure the hardships and horrors 
of a civil war. That great tragedy left me a widow with 
children to educate, almost penniless and totally untrained to any 
sort of business, but we naturally proceed along the line of least 
resistance. The whole training of the average Southern girl 
before the war consisted in learning to make herself agreeable 
in society, as well as capable to direct her household affairs so 
that the limitless hospitality which was practised in those days 
by all people in good circumstances should cause no inconveni- 
ence to herself, her family, her guests, or her servants. Being 
thoroughly trained in that school, having kept house on a large 
scale in brighter days, my first thought was to do for pay, now 
that necessity demanded it, what I had formerly done for habit 
and inclination. So gathering together what I could I opened a 
boarding-house in the capital of my native Tennessee, where I 
had friends and kindred. As I have continued in that business 
uninterruptedly for twenty years, my dear child, perhaps you 
can understand why my nerves need soothing, for I assure you 
the woman who fights steadily the ever-rising billows of detail, 
which threaten daily to engulf the city boarding-house keeper, 
is as busy as the shipwrecked manner in mid-ocean with only 
a plank between him and death." 

"Oh! but madame," I cried, "you have fought the fight, you 
have won the victory. I would be glad to know I could do 
anything successfully." 

" Victory is a fine word," she said soberly. " If success is 
to be counted by dollars and cents, many a woman earns more 
in one season by dancing or singing than I have done in twenty 
years of steady application to duties teasingly small and merciless- 
ly exacting ; but I do not count success alone by dollars and 
cents. Through all those long years I am sure I never lost 
that instinct of hospitality which decided my choice of a business ; 
the fact that my boarders paid me money only emphasized my 
duty as a hostess. Wits of the newspaper variety have always 
made themselves merry over the comical situations which arise 
from the different points of view occupied by Mrs. Tuffstake and 
Mr. Haffed ; but in our latitude, at least, these jokes rarely have 
any foundation. Twenty years ago the boarding-houses of the 
South were, as a rule, presided over by ladies whose instincts 
and traditions prompted .them to make a home, as far as was 



530 THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. [July, 

possible, for all who received the shelter of their roof. Yes," 
she continued musingly, " the life of a landlady is a laborious 
one, but it is not without its pleasures. Do you see that large 
album every face in it is the face of a boarder, and many a 
one the face of a friend." 

I took the large and handsome volume in my hand and 
began carelessly to turn the leaves, being more interested in 
madame's conversation than in her boarders, when the pictured 
face of a young woman arrested my attention. A wealth of 
black hair above a low, broad brow ; heavy eye-brows, almost 
meeting, shaded large, mournful eyes sorrowful they were, and 
yet so eager ! Only the bust, shoulders, and part of the arms 
were visible, but I felt sure the hands must be tightly clasped 
so intent were those wonderful eyes. 

" Ah ! madame," I cried, interrupting her, " who is this ? " 
pointing to the picture. 

" That is the picture of one whom I knew as Mrs. Johnson, 
of St. Paul, Minnesota." 

" Do tell me about her ; she has such a singular expression." 

" Her expression is no more singular than her life," madame 
replied. 

" Do tell me about her," I begged, and madame readily con- 
sented, adding that old soldiers love to recount the histories of 
their battles. 

" Really," she began, " Mr. Howells was not far wrong 
when he divided mankind into three classes men, women, and 
boarding-house keepers. In the management of her business 
affairs a boarding-house keeper needs the faculties of a man, 
and those of a woman in the discharge of her domestic duties ; 
in addition to all that, she needs to be free from prejudices ; the 
progress of her busy life will do much to destroy them, however 
ancient or deep-seated. But to the story." 

Early in the seventies a young man came to the house with 
a note of introduction, signed by the chief train-despatcher 
at the L. and N. office. " Mr. Hugh Johnson/' the note ran, " is on 
duty in my office. I send him to you for comfortable room and 
board." As I knew Mr. King very well, of course Mr. John- 
son was made welcome. He was apparently about thirty years 
old, quick and lively in conversation, and showed at once a 
disposition to be very friendly and communicative. He came in 
September, and spent all his leisure hours about the house, seem- 
ing to enjoy the wide ' halls and galleries of the stately old 



1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. 531 

mansion, which had once been the home of one of the most 
aristocratic families of Tennessee. It was not long before he 
gave me his history how he had gained his not very perfect 
education by his own exertions, cared for his widowed mother, 
won the good-will of his neighbors in Pennsylvania, etc., etc.; 
and finally after establishing himself in business he had married 
about the close of the war, in which he earnestly assured me " he 
took no stock." (All my boarders knew I was a totally unre- 
constructed rebel.) He was passionately in love with his wife, 
but she, he learned too late, had married him to spite another 
lover, and of course things went rapidly from bad to worse ; the 
only child, a little girl, died the wife returned to her mother. 
By agreement he left the State, and, as quickly as the matter 
could be arranged before the courts, a copy of the divorce was 
forwarded to him in Texas. Telegraphers are a migratory race. 
He finally found himself in Nashville, and declared himself for- 
tunate to be in a house whose mistress was so thoroughly a 
mother to her boarders, etc., etc. 

The next day after this first outburst of confidence, Judy, my 
faithful black cook, came into my room and, with the familiarity 
born of life-long association, dropped into a chair near the open 
door and proceeded to unburden her mind. 

" Now, Miss Nett," she said (my baptismal name is Jeannette), 
" I know times is changed an' you is 'bleeged to make yore livin'. 
Jse glad to git a boarder, an' I does my best to please 'em. 
I know de wah's done coasted an' we oughten to hate nobody, 
but I jes nacherally 'spises to see a Yankee 'bout dis house, an' 
dat ar las' white-eyed un's not fitten to be in no real lady's 
house." 

" Why, Judy, what is the matter with Mr. Johnson ? Didn't 
he give you the handkerchief you have on your head this very 
moment ? And does he not declare that you make the best bis- 
cuits in the world ? " 

" Yes, an' he gin me dis too," she said, showing a round sil- 
ver dollar ; " but I doan like no white man 'ceptin 'tis some dese 
boys what we all knows comin' flingin' little rocks at my win- 
der an' callin' right easy 'Aunt Judy! Aunt Judy!' 'Who's 
dat?' I say. 'Me, Hugh Johnson,' he say. 'I an't none o' 
yore A'nt,' I tell him ; but he keep on : 'Aunt Judy, jes lissen a 
minute come to de winder; here is something for you.' Wid 
dat I jes kinder hist the winder a little bit, an' he gin me dis 
dollar, an' he say : ' Now, Aunt Judy, just open de hall door and 
don't tell madame. I have been out with a friend and had a 



532 THE OLD LANDLADY' s ALBUM. [July, 

little too much wine.' Now, I knowed 'twas whiskey, an' he was 
mos' too drunk to walk ; but I let him in ; 'twas mighty nigh 
day. When de time come I fetched him up his brekfus', an' I 
seed you didn't 'spect nuffin'. But now I done tole you, don't 
you let dat white man beat you outen his bord. I done tole 
you now"; and with a warning shake of her turbaried head she 
disappeared to look after the affairs of her own peculiar domain. 

Despite Judy's warning, Mr. Johnson won my sympathy, and 
I spent some little time encouraging and admonishing him, in 
which missionary efforts I was warmly seconded by one of my 
boarders, a rich young widow, who had come from a country 
town to enjoy the pleasures of a season in the gay capital. 

In February he went away, having paid all that he owed, so 
far as I knew, and avowing the most extravagant admiration for 
Southern women in general, and for myself in particular the most 
respectful affection and the warmest gratitude. 

In a short time a postal card came to tell me that he had se- 
cured a good situation in St. Paul ; after that nothing was heard 
and but little thought about Mr. Johnson. The widow showed 
some interest in his fate, but apparently that died out, and Mr. 
Johnson was only a memory among many others. One day in 
August I received a bulky envelope containing a long and en- 
thusiastic letter, signed Hugh Johnson, filled with his courtship 
and marriage to the " sweetest woman that ever lived upon the 
face of the earth." " I know your kind heart," he continued ; 
" you will rejoice with me in my happiness, but that happiness 
will never be complete until you know my wife. Next month 
we will go to see my brother in Texas, and we will stop two 
days with you, the kindest, the best," etc. I thought the letter 
extravagant in its praise of me, if not of his wife, and I sighed 
over the state of public sentiment which allowed divorced people 
to re-marry without exciting disapprobation or even comment. 
Before the war, in the South such occurrences were almost un- 
heard of. However, I wrote a short note of congratulation, and 
asked to be notified of the date of their arrival. Time, in accord- 
ance with a fixed habit, steadily dropped the days into the gulf 
of the past, which flows just behind the marching column of hu- 
manity. September came and went, so did October but not the 
Johnsons. One dreary afternoon in November I was summoned 
to the parlor to see a lady who wanted a room. She sent no 
card. When I entered I saw a young lacy most stylishly dressed 
and exceedingly handsome, accompanied by a conductor on the 
L. and N. load, as I knew by his uniform. I bowed, saying, 



1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. 533 

" I am madame." As the lady made no reply the conductor 
spoke : " Madame, this lady asked me to bring her to your 
house, to which she had been directed by a friend of yours." With 
that he made a hasty retreat. 

I looked at the lady for further explanation, but without 
speaking she gazed at me so wistfully, so strangely, that I was 
uncertain what to do or say. To break the awkward silence 
I reminded her that I had not the pleasure of knowing her 
name. 

" My name is Johnson,'' she answered slowly, " and I live in 
St. Paul, Minnesota/' 

" Indeed ! It seems odd that the one acquaintance I have in 
that city should bear the same name Johnson though it is not 
an uncommon one." 

She gave me a startled glance. " Is your acquaintance a 
gentleman?" " Yes." "What is his given name?" 

At the moment I had forgotten it,, but I described him 
minutely. 

"Was his name Hugh?" she asked. 

"Yes," I answered, "and'' but the sentence was never com- 
pleted, for without a sob or a groan my new acquaintance fell to 
the floor limp and insensible. I summoned assistance as hastily 
as possible ; she soon revived sufficiently for Judy and the house- 
maid to get her up-stairs and in bed. Of course all debate 
about receiving an unknown person into the house had to be 
adjourned for later consideration. 

After seeing to everything necessary for her comfort I told 
Miss Johnson I would leave her in Sallie's care until she had 
entirely recovered, as she protested she would in a few moments. 
She caught my hand and cried out, as one in mortal agony, 
"Madame, do not leave me; I have something to tell you." 

I sent Sallie away and sat by the bed. " I have come all 
this way to see you, and to see you alone," she said. " I am 
Hugh Johnson's wife!" 

"Why did you not write? Where is Mr. Johnson?" 

" I don't know where he is he is gone. I have come to ask 
you where he is." 

" My dear lady, I know nothing of him. I have only one 
letter, which you shall read, telling of your marriage and 
promising to bring you to see me." 

" Well," she continued, speaking rapidly, " you will hear 
from him very soon. Six weeks a f ter we were married, when 
I was happier thin anybody that ever lived on earth, Hugh left 



534 THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. [July, 

me one evening to be gone half an hour to deliver the packages 
in the express office to the 7.30 train. He delivered them all 
right, the receipt was found next day, but he has never been 
seen again. There was money gone. I know he did not take 
it ; my people call him a thief he is not ! " with rising excitement. 
" While I stay at home I cannot hear from him they keep my 
letters I know they do. He has told me a thousand times 
about you that you were a Christian and really afraid to do 
wrong that he would trust you with his life. You are Madame 

, this is No. , and street ; I am safe you will befriend 

me!" 

" What can I do, my dear child?" 

" You will get a letter; he will try to communicate with 
me through you ; you will be my friend as you were his ; only 
promise me this, dear madame let me stay here until I hear 
from him. Don't deny me ; I have money to pay my board 
and I can earn more." 

The tears were streaming down her pallid cheeks, her lovely 
hair fell loosely around her face, her distress was pitiable. Of 
course I consented that she should stay ; begged her to quiet 
herself, and in every way I tried to comfort the poor creature. 
After awhile she seemed to be asleep, and I went down to 
look after the supper-table. Of course I told Judy all about 
the affair and how sorry I felt for the unhappy, deserted girl. 
Judy was but little touched by the recital. " She knowed that 
Johnson was pore white trash the fust time she sot eyes on him." 
However, she prepared a dainty meal, and, more from curiosity 
than sympathy, carried it to Mrs. Johnson's room. One glance 
at Judy's face when she returned from her errand was sufficient 
index of her opinion of the new boarder ; but that high-spirited 
individual left no room for doubt by asserting unequivocally that 
" dat gal was gwine to gib trubble if she didn't go straight 
back to dem Yankees, whar she b'longed." Next morning Mrs. 
Johnson came in to breakfast, quiet and dignified. One could 
not call her a lady, though her movements were graceful, and 
her voice exceedingly rich and full. At a glance it could be seen 
that her blood, if not her birth, was foreign. Her whole appear- 
ance was anomalous and puzzling; evidently uneducated, she 
occasionally quoted a line or two which bespoke acquaintance 
with books ; unused to the ways of polite society, there was 
something far from commonplace in her free and harmonious 
movements. After my morning duties were finished she sat by 
my side while I wrote several letters of inquiry for her. The 



1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. 535 

most important were to Mr. King, who had gone West from 
Nashville, and to Mr. Johnson's brother in Texas, though there 
were several other friends of her husband and herself to whom I 
wrote, signing always my name with no mention of her. She 
seemed very much relieved, and confident that in a short time 
she would hear from her husband. She reiterated her conviction 
that he had tried to communicate with her in St. Paul, but that 
her friends, believing him guilty, had intercepted the letters. 
She told me that her mother died soon after the family came 
from Norway to America ; her father was a sailor ; he left her 
with a German family, sailed away and never returned. These 
people had treated her very well, probably as well as if she had 
been their own child. They had sent her to the public school, 
but had given her no other advantages ; of her own accord she 
had cultivated her one small talent she could draw and paint, 
after a fashion, without effort, and she had applied her skill to 
the production of all sorts of trifles which s~em to have become 
articles of necessity to a very large class of American women. 
Her foster parents had allowed her to earn what she could in 
that way, and so she had bought the handsome clothes for her 
wedding, and also paid her expenses to Nashville. The old 
people were very indignant at her coming, and, indeed, it was a 
singular thing to do. " Suppose I had left the city ? " I asked her. 
" I knew you had not," she replied. " I felt sure you had not." 

Among other things, she told me she had travelled for one 
season with a theatrical company, a place in which had been , 
secured for her by a niece of Mrs. Hertwig her foster-mother, 
who held a good position in the troupe, but the life did not suit 
her. That episode in her history explained the elegance of her 
movements and the distinct tones of her voice. For a few days 
she was very quiet, and rarely spoke to anybody but me. If 
she noticed the attention she attracted among the boarders she 
gave no sign of it, though, of course, she had been introduced to 
every one of them. 

Almost a week passed before replies to the letters began to 
come in. First, the brother knew nothing of him in fact, he 
and Hugh were not on the best of terms. Then Mr. King knew 
nothing of him, but would send letters and telegrams to men in 
the business and would notify me promptly. 

Apparently she felt but little discouraged. " She felt certain 
that Mr. Johnson would write to me as soon as it was safe to do 
so. In a few days we would hear." 

The next morning she came down dressed for the street in a 



536 THE OLD LANDLADY* s ALBUM. 

picturesque walking-dress of dark green cloth and a dainty little 
hat to match. She carried in her hand a satchel of open straw- 
work, lined with green satin, filled with a number of sketches of 
all sorts of subjects on all sorts of materials for all sorts of orna- 
mental purposes. My enthusiasm for her art treasures was not 
very high, but I could easily 'believe she would find little diffi- 
culty in disposing of them to ladies who possessed, at least, as much 
money as taste. Fortunately for her the aesthetic wave had just 
reached Nashville, and she came back at dinner-time flushed with 
triumph, having sold mats, tidies, throws, lambrequins, quantities 
of things, and having taken orders enough to keep her busy for 
some time. I had directed her carefully in what part of town to 
look for patronage. She declared herself almost happy. Hugh 
would write soon and all would be well. 

After dinner she begged me to go up to her room. Of course 
she went over the whole story again and again how he had no 
friends to clear up his good name, he could not have stolen the 
money, somebody else took it, he became aware of the theft and 
fled because he knew it would go hard with him among strangers. 
In my heart I thought the poor man was dead, but I did not say 
so of course. 

" Madame, let me read some of his beautiful letters to you," 
she said after a pause. 

To please her I consented, so she sat by the window and read 
aloud many letters he had written to her before they were married. 
They were of the usual order, full of praises for her beauty and 
protestations of his deathless love. He was older than she, but 
experience had taught him to value truly the happiness which he 
would find in their little cottage, etc. ; all commonplace enough, 
but to her it was the music of the spheres. Her face, as she care- 
fully replaced the letters in her trunk, was bright with emotion the 
radiance from her loyal heart lit up every feature. In anticipation of 
finding him, she had brought his trunk, containing all his wardrobe. 
She opened it and showed me a little package of letters, which she 
had written to him, neatly labelled and put away in a box I recog- 
nized at once. At last she picked up a dainty envelope addressed 
to Mr. Hugh Johnson, which she said came after he left. " She 
was sure there was some mistake about the letter, as Hugh had 

never spoken to her about F ," a little town near Nashville 

from which the letter was mailed. She brought me the letter. 
It was very short. 

" The $ I oo you borrowed for two weeks from me has not been 
received. C. D." 



1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY 's ALBUM. 537 

The post- mark and the initials told that the widow's missionary 
zeal had cost her something. Handing it back I merely said : 
" Evidently a mistake." After Elise, as she entreated me to call 
her, had put away the letters, she came to the fire and talked 
hopefully of his coming at Christmas, which was new close at hand. 
My heart sank, for I began to fear he was a worthless scoundrel. 
As gently as possible I tried to insinuate my fears that he might 
never return. The blood left her face, her short and irregular 
breathing alarmed me, but she rallied and said after a painful pause : 
" I feel, I know he will return, but I promise to say nothing more 
about him if he does not come by the first of January. But, dear 
madame, do not send me away. I will paint, I will work hard, I 
will do anything for you only let me stay here ; do not send 
me back where they hate him and constantly reproach me for lov- 
ing him him, so noble, so true, and so unhappy ! " " Hugh ! " she 
cried, walking rapidly about the room, " should all the courts in the 
world pronounce you guilty I know you are innocent. Call me, 
dear darling ; I will fly to you at the ends of the earth." Her eyes 
were blazing, her hands deadly cold. I spoke to her reassuringly, 
reminding her that there were yet ten days till the New Year, and 
much might happen in that time. She rewarded me with a bright 
smile, but sank into a chair faint and pallid. After that interview 
my cogitations, when the Viking's Daughter as the boarders called 
her occupied my thoughts, were far from pleasant. I did not want 
such a member of my family on such terms. A landlady's respon- 
sibilities are serious enough without complications. I had no means 
of verifying her statements. I knew nothing about her. I could 
only hope and pray for something to relieve the poor young crea- 
ture of her sorrow and me of my burden. 

The joyous hubbub of Christmas came and went. After some 
persuasion Elise consented to go to church, though she protested 
it did no good, declaring she knew everybody would go to 
heaven when they died, and as for this world the good people 
always came in for their full share of trouble. However, after 
she went once, she rarely missed a Mass ; the novelty of the ser- 
vice, the lights, the music, the priest in his robes, and the little 
altar boys, diverted her mind. Christmas day she showed me a 
small silver image of the Virgin, not more than an inch tall, 
which had been her mother's. I advised her to invoke the aid 
of that Sweet Comfortress of the Afflicted, but she turned away 
with an incredulous smile. 

As New Year's drew near I watched almost as eagerly for 
the postman as Elise did. Nothing came until the morning ot 



538 THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. [July, 

December 31. The letter was from Mr. King, saying that he 
could hear nothing of Mr. Johnson, but reliable information from 
St. Paul left no room for doubt it was a plain, prosaic case of 
making off with funds committed to his care, without extenuating 
circumstances. 

Now, what was I to-do*? 

The best room in the house had long been occupied by a 
lawyer and his wife, my very good friends as well as boarders. 
To Mr. Trewhilt I always went for advice in an emergency. Of 
course we had often discussed the Viking's Daughter, and he 
had laughed at the sentimentalism which had allowed her to 
stay in the house for a single day ; but truly, after all these 
years have passed, I cannot see what else was possible under the 
circumstances. " Why, madame, show her the letter ; she must 
go back to her own people, there is no other course." 

I did not feel so confident, and my heart fell at the thought 
of her despair when informed of even a part of the contents 
of Mr. King's letter. 

I waited until after dinner, thinking that the most comfortable 
and prosaic time to talk over exciting subjects. 

She was in the sitting-room alone, running her fingers over 
the keys of the piano, drumming out an accompaniment for some 
simple ballad. I entered as cheerfully as possible. 

" Mrs. Johnson," I began, " I received this morning another 
letter from Mr. King." She turned her large eyes eagerly towards 
me. I went on rapidly : " He can hear nothing from your husband, 
and thinks" but the poor girl had fainted. 

She was taken to her room and after a little while she seemed 
to be asleep. At supper-time Judy sent Sallie with a cup of 
tea, which .came back untasted. After supper I went to see 
her. She seemed entirely prostrated she wanted nothing ; she 
would be well in the morning. I returned to my room with no 
light heart. In vain I tried to prepare my monthly bills and 
examine the accounts which awaited my attention. I sat sor- 
rowfully looking into the fire, utterly bereft of the power to come 
to any conclusion concerning my unfortunate boarder. The clock 
struck ten, and I still sat gazing helplessly at the glowing coals 
when the door-bell rang sharply ; thoroughly upset, dreading I 
knew not what, I hastened to answer it myself. The gentleman 
who rang it apologized for interrupting me, but " there was a 
very handsome young lady, with flashing eyes and black hair, 
inside the Capitol grounds. She refuses to stir unless madame 
will come for her. The night watchman locked the gates, as 



1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. 539 

usual, at nine o'clock, not knowing any one was inside. Soon after 
that Policeman Bolton saw her in the bright moonlight flitting 
about over the terraces and steps, apparently talking to some one 
whom he could not see. When he approached her she looked at 
him with wide-open eyes and told him ' not to disturb her, she 
was expecting her husband, who had promised to meet her 
there.' After some time she told Bolton she would go home if 
madame would come after her." Just then Mr. Trewhitt, who 
had heard the whole conversation through his open door, came 
into the hall. " Ah ! madame," he cried, " that's your boarder 
no doubt about it ; but come on, let's see what can be 
done." 

A few steps brought us to Capitol Hill, that fine elevation 
upon which rests the noble State-house of Tennessee. Built of 
native marble, its massive Corinthian pillars and grand propor- 
tions are the pride of the whole State. The radiance of a full 
moon in a cloudless sky gave it a singular beauty that cold night, 
the last of the old year. 

The heavy iron gate was still locked, though a messenger had 
been despatched for the key. Outside stood a motley crowd, 
principally men and boys, with a few of the gentler sex, colored 
cooks hurrying home with their buckets of cold victuals, and oth- 
ers who chanced to be on the street at that hour. Inside were 
the policeman and Elise, with her beautiful, pale face pressed close 
to the cold bars of the gate; her long hair, falling over her shoul- 
ders, contrasted with the white wrapper of soft merino which she 
wore. The heterogeneous crowd seemed awe-stricken by her ap- 
pearance ; they made way for us at once. Some one said, " Here 
is madame." Elise raised her eyes, and, seeing me, began to shake 
the gate. But there was a delay until the key came. When 
the gate was opened she put her hand in mine, saying: "My 
man told me he would meet me at the Capitol, but there was 
such a crowd he did not come ; but he will come to-morrow 
night, will he not, dear madame ? " 

The truth dawned on me. She was crazy ; her sorrows had 
dethroned her reason. I spoke cheerfully to her, assuring her 
that Mr. Johnson would never come in that crowd, and that the 
best thing would be to go home. She went with us, but her 
excitement was alarming. After reaching her room she began 
anew the recital of her woes. Mr. Trewhitt, who declared he 
could not leave me alone with a mad woman, sat patiently while 
she read the letters and took all of Mr. Johnson's clothes out of 
his trunk. At the bottom she found a razor, which she said she 



540 THE OLD LANDLADY } s ALBUM. [July, 

had sharpened to cut her throat the day she knew he was dead 
or false to her. Mr. Trewhitt examined the razor, declared it 
very dull, and put it in his pocket, promising to have it put in 
good order for her. 

That performance was a trifle exciting, but the day's fatigue, 
the cold walk, and the warm* air of the room conspired with my 
comfortable position on the sofa to put me to sleep. As I 
dozed off I heard kind Mr. Trewhitt saying, "Yes, madame ; no 
madame," as occasion required to the rapid speeches of Elise. 
When I awoke the cold gray of New Year's morning was strug- 
gling with the light from the flaring gas-jet. Elise was asleep, 
with her arms clasped over the trunk, and Mr. Trewhitt was 
asleep in the rocking-chair. I threw a blanket over Elise, turned 
down the gas, replenished the fire, and aroused Mr. Trewhitt. 
Outside the door we held a whispered consultation. I felt sure 
she would be all right when she awoke. He declared he could 
not help it if she was not ; he must have a nap before breakfast. 
There was no nap for me. My time was absorbed between the 
necessary morning duties of a landlady and intense watchfulness 
of Mrs. Johnson's room. 

When the breakfast-bell rang she came down looking worn, 
pale, and listless. She remembered nothing of the night's adven- 
tures, as she asked me how her room came to be in such disor- 
der ; but her interest in the matter was so slight that she was easily 
diverted from the subject. 

After breakfast Mr. Trewhitt again advised me to send her 
home at once. " But," I replied, " she tells me she will never 
go home; but I can write to her foster-father"; which I did that 
day. 

Of course the strange events of the night had come to the 
ears of the boarders, and their glances of curiosity or pity could 
not entirely escape Elise's attention, but she was too languid to 
take interest in anything ; even her paint-box and brushes 
remained untouched. 

The family physician was summoned, but, after a lengthy 
interview with the patient, he could give but little information. 
Diseases of the mind were difficult to diagnose ; he was no expert, 
but he would advise her to be sent to an asylum for the insane. 
Sure enough ! why had we not thought of that ? 

Mr. Trewhitt readily agreed to see Dr. Callender, of the State 
Asylum. 

All that day I felt like a traitor to the poor girl, who followed 
me timidly from room to room, or sat pathetically gazing into 



1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. 541 

the fire unconscious of the plans which had been formed for 
her. 

Dr. Callender could not receive a patient who was not a 
citizen of Tennessee, Mr. Trewhitt reported that night. " But 
great heavens ! madame," he cried, " there is some place for her 
besides your house, where she is not only dependent on your 
bounty but where she will seriously injure your business. Mrs. 
Trewhitt, I am sure, will prolong her holiday visit indefinitely if 
she hears there is a lunatic in the house. I will see the county 
and city authorities." 

Upon investigation he found there was no place for her 
except the county jail ! I had one hope yet Mr. Hertwig would 
certainly come or send for her. Days passed and no answer 
to my letter. Elise would be quiet enough through the day, 
but as night came on she would get restless and be sometimes 
entirely unconscious of her surroundings. I moved her into a 
small room opening into my own, with the key on my side of 
the door. One night after I had seen her in bed I thought I 
heard the sound of opening a window. I hoped I was mistaken, 
but the thought came back again. My heart quaked a little, 
and I called Judy. That respectable personage had suffered 
greatly; " to see her mistis keep a bodin-house " was bad enough, 
but " a lunacy 'sylum wid jes one in it, and dat one a Yankee ! " 
words failed her. 

She opened Mrs. Johnson's door cautiously and peeped in ; 
the fire was low in the grate, but she soon discovered that the 
room was unoccupied ! After a short search we found Elise on 
the banisters of the second floor gallery, clad in her night-clothes, 
her hair flying and her eyes blazing, as we could see by the light 
from the street lamp. The composure of a veteran landlady, 
who had served her novitiate as a refugee during four years of 
terror and bloodshed, almost forsook me at the sight. She sat 
easily, her bare feet hanging over the banisters ; one false 
motion and she would be hurled to the pavement, crippled or 
dead ! 

Judy was not nervous. " Mis Johnson, what you doin' dar in 
de coie ? " Elise turned her head slowly, and sighed rather than 
spoke : " I am waiting for my man." 

We took her down-stairs and put her to bed, fastened the 
windows and the shutters, and tried to sleep ; but there was little 
sleep for me with such a neighbor. 

About the middle of January Mr. Hertwig's letter came. 

lie said "they were poor people; had no money to send for 
VOL. LIU. 35 



542 THE OLD LANDLADY'S ALBUM. [July, 

Elise. This was her second serious offence, the first being the 
theatrical engagement, but considering her forlorn condition they 
would receive her once more if she would promise to have noth- 
ing to do with Hugh Johnson. As for the fainting spells, years 
ago she had been afflicted with them, but not lately." All this 
badly spelled and in mingled German and English. 

I read the letter to Elise, and, God forgive me ! interpolated 
expressions of affection. Mr. Trewhitt offered to get her a ticket 
from the county, if possible ; if not, he and the other boarders 
would furnish it. " No," Elise said ; " they could put her on the 
train, but she would jump off and kill herself rather than go 
home." 

I was truly at my wits' end when help appeared from a 
most unexpected quarter. 

If there is one thing besides the demonstrations of mathe- 
matics which Southern people believe, it is that the men of 
Dixie's Land are by nature, when the weaker sex is concerned, 
the most courteous, the most gentle, the most loyal , in a word 
the most chivalrous, men on earth. Between them and other 
men they admit no comparison. We hold, with scarcely less 
unanimity, that the men north of us are selfish towards women, 
that they are not only indifferent to the sweet courtesies of life, 
but in stern reality sacrifice a woman's interest as unhesitatingly 



as a man's. 



After Mrs. Johnson came to the house there was another 
arrival from the North, a rosy-cheeked, sturdy young fellow, not 
more than nineteen years old, named Andrews. He had shown 
great sympathy for Elise, not only because she was a young 
and handsome woman, but because she was penniless, helpless, 
and among strangers. When nobody knew what to do and 
everybody felt the burden intolerable, Mr. Andrews proposed that 
he should write to his mother about the whole affair ; his mother 
was half a doctor and entirely a Christian philanthropist, with a 
large house and ample means and leisure. Of course I was glad 
for him to write, but I agreed with Mr. Trewhitt, that nothing 
would come of it. 

In the meanwhile Elise was sometimes better and sometimes 
worse, but always a source of exceeding anxiety. Mr. Andrews 
assured me that the end was near ; and, indeed, as quickly as the 
mail could go and come the answer reached us. " Certainly," 
Mrs. Andrews wrote, "send the young lady along at once." Mr. 
Andrews was delighted, and Elise shared faintly in his joy. He could 
not leave his business, but a bachelor of means and leisure, such 






1891.] THE OLD LANDLADY' s ALBUM. 543 

as nearly every boarding-house can supply, volunteered to escort 
Elise to her new home. Mr. Trewhitt obtained from the county 
and city authorities transportation for " Elise Johnson, a pauper 
and lunatic, and her guard." Armed with that, Mr. Lavalle and 
Elise, with her two handsome trunks, were driven from my door 
one bright morning in February. Truly we cannot always judge 
by appearances. Mrs. Andrews wrote of her patient's gradual 
recovery and final restoration. Young Andrews went further 
South and only the photograph remained to remind me of Elise. 
A few months ago a gentleman sent up his card, " C. Andrews, N. 
Orleans." The name did not recall to my mind the Knight of the 
Rosy Countenance the hero who had so unselfishly, so quixotically 
rescued poor Elise until he spoke ; then, despite his heavy beard 
and the assured manner of a successful man, I joyfully recognized 
him. 

He had married a Southern girl and was living in New Or- 
leans. Of course I asked about Elise. He had never seen her 
since she left Nashville, but she had lived until about six years 
ago with his mother, who was much attached to her protegee; 
then she had gone off to become a member of some Roman Cath- 
olic community he thought, the Little Sisters of the Poor. There 
was a convent near his mother's house. Elise soon learned to 
love the sisters. " We suppose that was the cause of her last 
freak "; and he looked at me with a merry smile. 

"Johnson? He died seven or eight years ago in an Aus- 
tralian prison." M. M. 



544 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 



THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER.* 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
FATHER HECKER'S SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE. 

HAVING given in the preceding chapter Father Hecker's prin- 
ciples of the religious life in community, a more general view of 
his spiritual doctrine, as well as of his method of the direction 
of souls naturally follows. And here we are embarrassed by the 
amount of matter to choose from ; for as he was always talking 
about spiritual doctrine to whomsoever he could get to listen, so in 
his published writings, in his letters to intimate friends, and in 
his notes and memoranda, we have found enough falling under 
the heading of this chapter to fill a volume. Let us hope for 
its publication some day. 

It need hardly be said that Father Hecker did not claim to 
have any new doctrine ; there can be none, and he knew it well. 
Every generation since Christ has had His entire revelation. 
Development is the word which touches the outer margin of all 
possible adaptation of Christian principles to the changing condi- 
tions of humanity. But in the transmission of these principles from 
master to disciple, in practically assisting in their use by public 
instruction, or by private advice, or by choice of devotional and 
ascetical exercises, there is as great a variety of method as of 
temperament among races, and even among individuals ; and 
there are broadly marked differences which are conterminous 
with providential eras of history. This was a truth which Father 
Hecker, in common with all discerning minds, took carefully 
into account. 

His fundamental principle of Christian perfection may be 
termed a view of the Catholic doctrine of divine grace suited 
to the aspirations of our times. By divine grace the love of 
God is diffused in our hearts ; the Holy Spirit takes up his abode 
there and makes us children of the Heavenly Father, and brethren 
of Jesus Christ the Divine Son. The state of grace is thus an 
immediate union of the soul with the Holy Trinity, its Creator, 
Mediator, and Sanctifier. To secure this union and render it 
more and more conscious was Father Hecker's ceaseless endeavor 
through life, both for himself and for those who fell under his 
influence, whether in cleansing the soul of all hindrances of sin 

* Copyright, 1890, Rev. A. F. Hewit. All rights reserved. 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 545 

and imperfection, or advancing it deeper and deeper into the 
divine life by prayer and the sacraments. 

His doctrine of Christian perfection might be formulated as a 
profession of faith : I believe in God the Father Almighty ; I 
believe in Jesus Christ the Only Begotten Son of the Father ; I 
believe in the Holy Ghost the Life Giver, the spirit of adop- 
tion by whom I am enabled to say to the Father, My Father, 
and to the Son, My Brother. 

He wished that men generally should be made aware of the 
immediate nature of this union of the soul with God, and that 
they should become more and more personally conscious of it. 
He would bring this about without the intervention of other 
persons or other methods than the divinely constituted ones 
accessible to all in the priesthood and sacraments. It was the 
development of the supernatural, heavenly, divine life of the re- 
generate man, born again of the Holy Ghost, that Father Hecker 
made the end of all he said and all he did in leading souls ; 
and he maintained that to partake of this life which is " the light 
of men," many souls needed little interference on the part of 
others, and that in every case the utmost care should be 'taken 
lest the soul should mingle human influences, even the holiest, 
in undue proportion with those which were strictly divine. 

" Go to God," he wrote to one asking advice, "go entirely to 
God, go integrally to God; behold, that is sincerity, complete, 
perfect sincerity. D > that, and make it a complete, continuous act, 
and you need no help from me or any creature. I wish to 
provoke you to do it. That is my whole aim and desire. Just 
in proportion as we harbor pride, vanity, self-love in a word, 
self-hood just so far we fail in integrally resigning ourselves to 
God. Were we wholly resigned to God He would change all in 
us that is in discord with Him, and prepare our souls for union 
with Him, making us one with Himself. God longs for our 
souls greatly more than our souls can long for Him. Such is 
God's thirst for love that He made all creatures to love Him, 
and to have no rest until they love Him supremely. If my 
words are not to your soul God's words and voice, pay no heed 
to them. If they are, hesitate not a moment to obey. If they 
humble you to the dust, what a blessing ! He that is humbled 
shall be exalted." 

" Peace is gained by a wise inaction, and strength by integra 
resignation to God, who will do all, and more than w*, with 
the boldest imagination, can fancy or desire." 



546 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

"May you see God in all, through all, and above all. May 
the Divine transcendence and the Divine immanence be the 
two poles of your life." 

The natural faculties of the understanding and will, whose 
integrity Father Hecker so rrmch valued, were to be established 
in a new life infinitely above their native reach, glorified with 
divine life, their activity directed to the knowledge of things not 
even dreamed of before, and endowed with a divine gift of 
loving. In this state the Holy Spirit communicates to the 
human faculties force to accomplish intellectual and moral feats 
which naturally can be accomplished by God alone. This is 
called by theologians supernatural infused virtue, and is rooted 
in Faith, Hope, and Love, is made efficacious by spiritual gifts 
of wisdom and understanding, and knowledge and counsel, and 
other gifts and forces, the conscious and daily possession of 
which the Christian is entitled to hope for and strive after, and 
finally to obtain and enjoy in this life. 

That this union is a personal relation, and that it should be 
a distinctly conscious one on the soul's part, all will admit who 
think but a moment of the infinite, loving activity of the Spirit 
of God, and the natural and supernatural receptivity of the 
spirit of man. Although not even the smallest germ of the 
supernatural life is found in nature, yet the soul of man cease- 
lessly, if blindly, yearns after its possession. Once possessed, the 
life of God blends into our own, mingles with it and is one 
with it, impregnating it as magnetism does the iron of the lode- 
stone, till the divine qualities, without suppressing nature, en- 
tirely possess it, and assert for it and over it the Divine 
individuality. "Now I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 
An author much admired by Father Hecker thus describes the 
effects produced in the soul by supernatural faith, and hope, 
and love : 

" These virtues are called and in reality are Divine virtues. 
They are called thus not because they are related to God in 
general, but because they unite us in a divine manner with 
God, have Him for their immediate motive, and can be produced 
in us only by a communication of the Divine nature. . . . 
For the life that the children of God lead here upon earth 
must be of the same kind as the life that awaits them in 
heaven." (Scheeben's Glories of Divine Grace, p. 222 ; Benziger 
Bros.) 

To partake thus of the inner life of God was Father Hecker's 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HE.CKER. 547 

one spiritual ambition, and to help others to it his one motive 
for dealing with men. He was ever insisting upon the closeness 
of the divine union, and that it is our life brought into actual 
touch with God, whose supreme and essential activity must,' by 
a law of its own existence, make itself felt, dominate as far as 
permitted the entire activity of the soul, and win more and 
more upon its life till all is won. Then are fulfilled the 
Apostle's words : " But we all beholding the glory of the Lord 
with open face are transformed into the same image from glory 
to glory, as 'by the Spirit of the Lord " (II. Cor. iii. 18). 

Here are some of Father Hecker's words, printed but a year 
or two before his death, which treat not only of the interior 
life in general, but in particular of its relation to the outer 
action of God on the soul through the divine organism of the 
Church : 

" St. Thomas Aquinas attributes the absence of spiritual joy 
mainly to neglect of consciousness of the inner life. ' During 
this life,' he says (Opuscula de Beatitudine, cap. iii.), 'we should 
continually rejoice in God, as something perfectly fitting, in all 
our actions and for all our actions, in all our gifts and for all 
our gifts. Ic is, as Isaias declares, that we may particularly 
enjoy him that the Son of God has been given to us. What 
blindness and what gross stupidity for many who are always 
seeking God, always sighing for Him, frequently desiring Him, 
daily knocking and clamoring at the door for God by prayer, 
while they themselves are all the time, as the apostle says, 
temples of the living God, and God truly dwelling within them ; 
while all the time their souls are the abiding-place of God, 
wherein He continually reposes ! Who but a fool would look 
for something out of doors which he knows he has within ? 
What is the good of anything which is always to be sought and 
never found, and who can be strengthened with food ever 
craved but never tasted ? Thus passes away the life of many a 
good man, always searching and never finding God, and it is 
for this reason that his actions are imperfect.' 

"A man with such a doctrine must cultivate mainly the in- 
terior life. His answer to the question, What is the relation 
between the inner and the outer action of God upon my soul? 
is that God uses the outer for the sake of the inner life. 

" There seems to be little danger nowadays of our losing 
sight of the Divine authority and the Divine action in the gov- 
ernment of the church, and in the aids of religion conveyed 



5|S THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Jb T 

through the external order of the sacraments. Yet it is only 
after fully appreciating the life of God within us that we learn 
to prize fittingly the action of God in His external Providence. 
Such is the plain teaching of St. Thomas in the extract above 
given. 

" By fully assimilating this, doctrine one comes to aim stead- 
ily at securing a more and more direct communion with God. 
Thus he does not seek merely for an external life in an external 
society, or become totally absorbed in external observances ; but 
he seeks the invisible God through the visible Church, for she 
is the body of Christ the Son of God. 

" Once a man's hand is safe on the altar his eye and voice 
are lifted to God. 

" It is not to keep up a strained outlook for times and 
moments of the interior visitations, but to wait calmly for the 
actual movements of the Divine Spirit ; to rely mainly upon it 
and not solely upon what leads to it, or communicates it, or 
guarantees its genuine presence by necessary external tests and 
symbols. 

" Not an anxious search, least of all a craving for extraordin- 
ary lights; but a constant readiness to perceive the Divine guidance 
in the secret ways of the soul, and then to act with decision 
and a noble and generous courage this is true wisdom. 

" The Holy Spirit is thus the inspiration of the inner life of 
the regenerate man, and in that life is his Superior and Director. 
That His guidance may become more and more immediate in an 
interior life, and the soul's obedience more and more instinctive, 
is the object of the whole external order of the Church, includ- 
ing the sacramental system. 

" Says Father Lallemant (Spiritual Doctrine, 3d principle, chap, 
i. art. i): 'All creatures that are in the world, the whole order of 
nature as well as that of grace, and all the leadings of Provi- 
dence, have been so disposed as to remove from our souls what- 
ever is contrary to God.' ' 

What follows has been culled from notes and memoranda: 

" When authority and liberty are intelligently understood, 
when both aim at the same end, then the universal reign of 
God's authority in the Church will be near and the kingdom of 
God be established universally." 

"The whole future of the human race depends on bringing 
the individual soul more completely and perfectly under the 
sway of the Holy Spirit." 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKEF* 549 

"What society most needs to-day is the baptism of the 
Holy Spirit." 

"That soul is perfect which is guided habitually by the 
instinct of the Holy Spirit." 

" The aim of Christian perfection is the guidance of the soul 
by the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is attained, ordinarily, first 
by bringing whatever is inordinate in our animal propensities 
under the control of the dictates of reason by the practice of 
mortification and self-denial ; for it is a self-evident principle that 
a rational being ought to be master of his animal appetites. And 
second by bringing the dictates of reason under the control and 
inspiration of the Holy Spirit by recollection, and by fidelity and 
docility to its movements." 

"To attain to the spiritual estate of the conscious guidance 
of the indwelling Holy Spirit, the practice of asceticism and of 
the natural and Christian moral virtues are the preparatory 
means." 

" To rise before the light appears, is vain ; to hinder the 
soul from rising when it does appear, is oppression. In the 
first place, the soul is exposed to delusions ; in the second, it is 
subjected to arbitrary human authority. The former opens the 
door to all sorts of extravagances and heresies; the latter breeds 
a spirit of servility and bondage." 

"To reach that stage of the spiritual life which is the con- 
sciousness of the indwelling and guidance of the Holy Spirit 
some souls need the practice of asceticism more than others, 
these latter being more advanced by the practice of the Christian 
virtues. Others, again, need the strenuous practice of both of 
these means of advancement until the close of their lives. And 
there is another class which reaches this degree of spiritual 
growth sooner and with less difficulty than the generality of 
souls." 

" Whenever the guidance of the Holy Spirit is sufficiently 
recognized, then the practice of the virtues immediately related 
to this action and proper to increase it in the soul are to be 
recommended, such as recollection, purity of heart, docility and 
fidelity to the inner voice, and the like." 

" It should ever be kept .in view that the practice of the 
virtues is not only for their own sake and to obtain merit, but 
mainly in order to remove all obstacles in the way of the guid- 
ance of the Holy Spirit, and to assist the soul in following his 
operations with docility." 

" Obedience in its spiritual aspect divests one of self-will and 



550 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

makes him prompt to submit to the will of God alone. Viewed 
as an act of justice, obedience is the payment of due service to 
one's superior, who holds his office by appointment of God." 

" The essential mistake of the transcendentalists is the taking 
for their guide the instincts of the soul instead of the inspira- 
tions of the Holy Spirit. They are moved by the natural 
instincts of human beings instead of the instinct of the Holy 
Ghost. But true spiritual direction consists in discovering the 
obstacles in the way of the Divine guidance, in aiding and en- 
couraging the penitent to remove them, and in teaching how 
the interior movements of the Holy Spirit may be recognized, 
as well as in stimulating the soul to fidelity and docility to His 
movements." 

"The director is not to take the place of the Holy Ghost in 
the soul, but to assist His growth in the soul as its primary and 
supreme guide." 

" The primary worker of the soul's sanctification is the Holy 
Spirit acting interiorly ; the work of the director is secondary 
and subordinate. To overlook this fundamental truth in the 
spiritual life is a great mistake, whether it be on the part of the 
director or the one under direction." 

The great obstacle to the prevalent use of this privilege of 
divine interior direction is lack of practical realization of its ex- 
istence by good Christians. And this want of faith is met with 
almost as much among teachers as among learners, resulting in 
too great a mingling of the human element in the guidance of 
souls. What is known as over- direction is to be attributed, as 
Father Hecker was persuaded, to confessors leading souls by 
self-chosen ways, or laboriously working them along the road to 
perfection by artificial processes, souls whom the Holy Spirit has 
not made ready for more than the beginning of the spiritual life. 
This is like pressing wine out of unripe grapes. Another prac- 
tice which Father Hecker often deprecated was the binding of 
free and generous souls with all sorts of obligations in the 
way of devotional exercises. This is forcing athletes to go on 
crutches. The excuse for it all is that it really do 23 stagger 
human belief to accept as a literal matter of fact that God the 
Holy Ghost personally comes to us with divine grace and gives 
Himself to us ; that He actually and essentially dwells in our 
souls by grace, and in an unspeakably intimate manner takes 
charge of our entire being, soul and body, and all our faculties 
and senses. 



1 89 1 .] THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. 5 5 1 

"By sanctifying grace," says St. Thomas (p. I, q. xxxiii. 
art. 2), " the rational creature is thus perfected, that it may 
not only use with liberty the created good, but that it may also 
enjoy the uncreated good ; and therefore the invisible sending of 
the 'Holy Ghost takes place in the gift of sanctifying grace and 
the Divine Person Himself is given to us." 

It is the soul's higher self, thus in entire union with the 
Spirit of God, that Father Hecker spent his life in cultivating, 
both in his own interior and in that of others. He insisted that 
in the normal condition of things the mainspring of virtue, both 
natural and supernatural, should be for the regenerate man the 
instinctive obedience of the individual soul to the voice of the 
indwelling Holy Spirit. 

To what an extent this inner divine guidance has been 
obscured by more external methods is witnessed by Monsignor 
Gaume, who places upon the title-page of his learned work on 
the Holy Spirit the motto " Ignoto Deo " to the Unknown God ! 

Objections to this doctrine are made from the point of view 
of caution. There is danger of exaggeration, it is said ; for if in 
its terms it is plainly Catholic it may sound Protestant to some 
ears. And in fact to those whose glances have been ever turned 
outward for guidance it seems like the delusions of certain 
classes of Protestants about " change of heart" and " inner light." 

" But," says Lallemant (and the reader will thank us for 
a detailed reply to this difficulty from so venerable an authority), 
" it is of faith that without the grace of an interior inspiration, in 
which the guidance of the Holy Spirit consists, we cannot do 
any good work. The Calvinists would determine everything by 
their inward spirit, subjecting thereto the Churc'h herself and 
her decisions. . . . But the guidance which we receive from 
the Holy Ghost by means of His gifts, presupposes the faith 
and authority of the Church, acknowledges them as its rule, 
admits nothing which is contrary to them, and aims only at per- 
fecting the exercise of faith and the other virtues. The second 
objection is, that it seems as if this interior guidance of the Holy 
Spirit were destructive of the obedience due to superiors. We 
reply: i. That as the interior inspiration of grace does not set 
aside the assent which we give to the articles of faith as they are 
externally proposed to us, but on the contrary gently disposes 
the mind to believe ; in like manner the guidance which we 
receive from the gifts of the Holy Spirit, far from interfering 
with obedience, aids and facilitates the practice of it. 2. That 
all this interior guidance, and even [private] divine revelations, 
must always be subordinate to obedience ; and in speaking 



552 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

of them this tacit condition is ever implied, that obedience en- 
joins nothing contrary thereto. 

" The third objection is that this interior direction of the 
Holy Spirit seems to render all deliberation and all counsel 
useless. For why ask advice of men when the Holy Spirit is 
Himself our director? We reply that the Holy Spirit teaches us 
to consult enlightened persons' and to follow the advice of others, 
as He referred St. Paul to Ananias. The fourth objection is 
made by some who complain that they are not themselves thus 
led by the Holy Spirit, and that they know nothing of it. To 
them we reply: I. That the lights and inspirations of the 
Holy Spirit, which are necessary in order to do good and avoid 
evil, are never wanting to them, particularly if they are in a 
state of grace. 2. That being altogether exterior as they are, 
and scarcely ever entering into themselves, examining their con- 
sciences only very superficially, and looking only to the outward 
man and the faults which are manifest in the eyes of the world, 
it is -no wonder that they have nothing of the guid- 
ance of the Holy Spirit, which is wholly interior. But, first, let 
them be faithful in following the light which is given them ; it 
will go on always increasing. Secondly, let them clear away 
the sins and imperfections which, like so many clouds, hide the 
light from their eyes : they will see more distinctly every day. 
Thirdly, let them not suffer their exterior senses to rove at will, 
and be soiled by indulgence ; God will then open to them their 
interior senses. Fourthly, let them never quit their own interior, 
if it be possible, or let them return as soon as may be ; let them 
give attention to what passes therein, and they will observe the 
workings of the different spirits by which we are actuated. 
Fifthly, let them lay bare the whole ground of their heart to 
their superior or to their spiritual father. A soul which acts 
with this openness and simplicity can hardly fail of being favored 
with the direction of the Holy Spirit" (Spiritual Doctrine, 4th 
principle, ch. i. art. 3). 

Father Hecker had himself suffered, and that in the earliest 
days of his religious life, from want of explicit instruction 
about this doctrine. Father Othmann, whom our readers remem- 
ber as the novice-master at St. Trond, was too spiritual a man to 
have been ignorant of its principles. Yet he seemed to think 
that either no one would choose it in preference to the method 
in more common use, or that he would not find his novices ready 
for it. But to Father Hecker it was all-essential. " When I 
was not far from being through with my noviceship," he was 
heard to say, " I was one day looking over the books in the 
library and I came across Lallemant's Spiritual Doctrine. Getting 
leave to read it, I was overjoyed to find it a full statement of 
the principles by which I had been interiorly guided. I said to 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 553 

Pere Othmann : ' Why did you not give me this book when I 
first came ? It settles all my difficulties.' But he answered that 
it had never once occurred to his mind to do so." Besides the 
Scriptures, Lallemant, Surin, Scaramelli's Directorium Mysticum, 
the ascetical and mystical writings of the contemplatives, such as 
Rusbruck, Henry Suso (whose life he carried for years in his 
pocket, reading it daily), Tauler, Father Augustine Bakers Holy 
Wisdom (Sancta Sophia), Blosius, the works of St. Teresa, and 
those of St. John of the Cross these and other such works 
formed the literature which aided Father Hecker in the under- 
standing and enjoyment of the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 
Lallemant he returned to ever and again, and St. John of the 
Cross he never let go at all. It was always with him, always 
read with renewed joy, and its wonderful lessons of divine wis- 
dom, expressed as they are with the scientific accuracy of a 
trained theologian and the unction of a saint, were to Father 
Hecker a pledge of security for his own state of soul and a 
source of inspiration in dealing with others. 

To the ordinary observer a knowledge of the men and 
women of to-day does not give rise to much hope of the wide- 
spread use of this spirituality. But Father Hecker thought other- 
wise. He ever insisted that it must come into general prefer- 
ence among the leading minds of Christendom ; for independence 
of character calls for such a spirituality, and that independence is 
by God's providence the characteristic trait of the best men and 
women of our times. God must mean to sanctify us in the way 
He has placed us in the natural order. He believed that the 
Holy Spirit would soon be poured out in an abundant dispensa- 
tion of His heavenly gifts, and that such a renewal of men's 
souls was the only salvation of society. Some may think that 
he was over-sanguine ; many will not interest themselves in such 
" high " matters at all. But some of the wisest men in the 
Church are of his mind, notably Cardinal Manning. And the 
signs of the times, if interrogated with regard " to the problem 
of man's eternal destiny, give no other answer than the promise 
of a new era in which the Holy Ghost shall reign in men's 
souls and in their lives with a supremacy peculiar to this age. 

The following extract from The Church and the Age, a com- 
pilation of Father Hecker's later essays, shows his estimate of 
the form of spirituality we have been discussing, as bearing upon 
the regeneration of society in general : 

" The whole aim of the science of Christian perfection is to 



554 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

instruct men how to remove the hindrances in the way of the 
action of the Holy Spirit, and how to cultivate those virtues 
which are most favorable to His solicitations and inspirations. 
Thus the sum of spiritual life consists in observing and yielding 
to the movements of the Spirit of God in our soul, employing 
for this purpose all the exercises of prayer, spiritual reading, the 
practice of virtues, and good works. 

" That divine action which is the immediate and principal 
cause of the salvation and perfection of the soul, claims by right 
the soul's direct and main attention. From this source within 
the soul there will gradually come to birth the consciousness of 
the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, out of which will 
spring a force surpassing all human strength, a courage higher 
than all human heroism, a sense of dignity excelling all human 
greatness. The light the age requires for its renewal can come 
only from the same source. The renewal of the age depends on 
the renewal of religion. The renewal of religion depends on a 
greater effusion of the creative and renewing power of the Holy 
Spirit. The greater effusion of the Holy Spirit depends on the 
giving of increased attention to His movements and inspirations 
in the soul. The radical and adequate remedy for all the evils 
of our age, and the source of all true progress, consist in in- 
creased attention and fidelity to the action of the Holy Spirit in 
the soul. ' Thou shalt send forth Thy spirit and they shall be 
created : and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.' ' 

Lallemant's answer to the difficulty of excess of personal 
liberty in this method has been already given. Father Hecker's 
own is as follows : 

" The enlargement of the [interior] field of action for the 
soul, without a true knowledge of the end and scope of the ex- 
ternal authority of the Church, would only open the door to 
delusions, errors, and heresies of every description, and would 
be in effect only another form of Protestantism. But, on the 
other hand, the exclusive view of the external authority of the 
Church, without a proper understanding of the nature and work 
of the Holy Spirit in the soul, would render the practice of re- 
ligion formal, obedience servile, and the Church sterile. 

" The solution of the difficulty is as follows : The action of 
the Holy Spirit embodied visibly in the authority of the Church, 
and the action of the Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the soul 
form one inseparable synthesis; and he who has not a clear con- 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 555 

ception of this two-fold action of the Holy Spirit is in danger 
of running into one or the other, and sometimes into both, of 
these extremes, either of which is destructive of the end of the 
Church. The Holy Spirit, in the external authority of the Church, 
acts as the infallible interpreter and criterion of divine revela- 
tion. The Holy Spirit in the soul acts as the divine Life- 
giver and Sanctifier. It is of the highest importance that these 
two distinct offices of the Holy Spirit should not be' con- 
founded. 

"The increased action of the Holy Spirit, with a more vigorous 
co-operation on the part of the faithful, which is in process of 
realization, will elevate the human personality to an intensity 
of force and grandeur productive of a new era to the Church 
and to society an era difficult for the imagination to grasp, 
and still more difficult to describe in words, unless we have 
recourse to the prophetic language of the inspired Scriptures." 

" The way out of our present difficulties," said Father Hecker, 
speaking of the conflicts of religion in Europe, " is to revert 
to a spirituality which is freer than that which Providence 
assigned as the counteraction of Protestantism in the sixteenth 
century to a spirituality which is, and ever has been, the normal 
one of the Christian inner life. That era accentuated obedience, 
this accentuates no particular moral virtue, but rather presses the 
soul back upon Faith and Ho]5e and Love as the springs of life, 
and makes the distinctive virtue fidelity to the guidance . of the 
Holy Spirit, imp.lling the Christian to that one of the moral 
virtues which is most suitable to his nature and to the require- 
ments of his state of life, and other environments." 

But from what has been said it must not be inferred that 
Father Hecker thought it safe to be without spiritual counsel, 
above all when the soul seemed led in extraordinary ways. He 
firmly believed in the necessity of direction, and that in the 
sense intended by spiritual writers generally. In practice he 
himself always consulted men of experience and piety. We have 
seen how he sought advice, and was aided by it at every crisis 
of his life. But he did not accept all that is said by some writers 
about the surrender of the soul to one's father confessor. He 
thought that confession was often too closely allied with direction, 
and he was convinced that many souls could profit by less intro- 
spection in search of sin, and more in search of natural and 
supernatural movements to virtue. He condemned over-direction, 
and thought that there was a good deal of it. He thought that there 



556 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

were cases in which spontaneity of effort was too high a price to" 
pay for even the merit of obedience. His se.ntiment is well 
expressed by St. John of the Cross in the ninth chapter of The 
Ascent of Mount Carmel : 

" Spiritual directors are nqt the chief workers, but rather the 
Holy Ghost; they are mere instruments, only to guide souls by 
the rule of faith and the law of God according to the spirit which 
God gives to each. Their object, therefore, should be not to 
guide souls by a way of their own, suitable to themselves ; but 
to ascertain, if they can, the way which God Himself is guiding 
them." 

Leave much to God's secret ways, was one of Father Hecker's 
principles. " When hearing some confessions on the missions," he 
once said, " and when about to give absolution, I used to say, 
in my heart, to the penitent, Well, no doubt God means to save 
you, you poor fellow, or He wouldn't give you the grace to 
make this mission. But just how He will do it, considering your 
bad habits, I can't see ; but that's none of my business." 

Leave much to natural or acquired inclinations, was one of 
his maxims. He was not deeply interested in souls who by 
temperament or training needed very minute guidance in the 
spiritual life ; to him they seemed so overloaded with harness as 
to have no great strength left foV pulling the chariot. But he 
would not interfere with them; he knew that it was of little avail 
to try to change such methods once they had become habitual ; 
and he recognized that there were many who could never get 
along without them. At any rate he was tolerant by nature, 
and slow to condemn in general or particular anything useful to 
well-meaning souls. 

" It is vain to rise before the light," was another motto. 
" Make no haste in the time of clouds." These two texts of 
Scripture he was fond of repeating. " When God shows the 
way," he once said, " you will see ; no amount of peering in the 
dark will bring the sun over the hills. Pray for light, but don't 
move an inch before you get it. When it comes, go ahead with 
all your might." Self-imposed penances, self-assumed devotional 
practices he mistrusted. He was convinced that the only way 
sure to succeed, and to succeed perfectly, was either that shown 
by an interior attraction too powerful and too peaceful to be 
other than divine, or one pointed out by the lawful external 
authority in the Church. 

When asked for advice on matters of conscience his decisions 



.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 557 

were generally quick and always simple. Yet he often refused 
to decide without time for prayer and thought, saying, " I have 
no lights on this matter ; you must give me time." And not 
seldom he refused to decide altogether for the same reason. One 
thing annoyed him much, and that was the blank silence and 
stupid wonder with which some instructed Catholics listened to 
him as he spoke of the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the way 
of Christian perfection, treating it as beyond the reach of 
ordinary mortals, intricate in its rules, " mystical," and visionary ; 
whereas Father Hecker knew it to be the one only simple 
method, with a minimum of rules, useful for all, readily under- 
stood. What follows is a brief outline of the entire doctrine in 
its practical use in the progress of the soul from a sinful life 
onwards ; we have found it among his memoranda : 

"What must one do in order to favor the reception of the 
Holy Spirit, and secure fidelity to His guidance when received ? 
First receive the Sacraments, the divinely instituted channels of 
grace : one will scarcely persevere in living in the state of grace, 
to say nothing of securing a close union with God, who 
receives Holy Communion only once or twice a year. Second, 
practise prayer, above all that highest form of prayer, assisting 
at Holy Mass ; then mental and vocal prayer, the public offices 
of the Church, and particular devotions according to one's 
attrait. Third, read spiritual books daily the Bible, Lives of the 
Saints, Following of Christ \ Spiritual Combat ', etc. But in all 
this bear ever in mind, that the steady impelling force by which 
one does each of these outward things is the inner and secret 
prompting of the Holy Ghost, and that perseverance in them is 
secured by no other aid except the same hidden inspiration. 
Cherish that above all, therefore, and in every stage of the 
spiritual life ; be most obedient to it, seeking meantime for good 
counsel wherever it is likely to be had." 

Father Hecker was of opinion that a larger number of per- 
sons can be led to perfection than is generally supposed, and 
he would sound the call in the ears of Christians generally 
far more than is commonly done. He was also persuaded 
that there are many souls whose whole lives have been entirely, 
or almost entirely, free from the taint of mortal sin, and these 
he considered should be the most active spirits among Chris- 
tians. He thought that more room should be made for them . 
in our discourses, and that everybody should not be lumped 
together in one mass as hardened sinners or as penitents. . 

VOL. L1II. 36 



558 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

To these innocent men and women the mediatorship of Christ 
should be made as distinct as possible, the elevation of the soul 
to divine union through the Incarnation brought out fully, and 
the redemption of man from sin and hell be included in it, and 
be absorbed by it. Too many souls who have never sinned 
mortally fail to struggle for,' perfection, Father Hecker often 
said, because they never have heard any invitation but the call to 
repentance. The positive side of Christianity is the Incarnation, 
which lifts all men of good- will, repentant and innocent alike, into 
participation with the Deity. Father Hecker would talk by the 
hour of the need of bringing that view of our Lord's mission 
most prominently forward, the idea of redemption applying to 
innocent souls only on ^account of original sin, and by sympa- 
thy with their brethren infected by actual sin. And he would 
show that even hard sinners could often be brought to a good 
life more surely, and be enabled more certainly to persevere, by 
forcibly emphasizing the Incarnation and its benefits than by 
any other method. Their blindness and selfishness hinder hard 
sinners from easily appreciating our Lord's sufferings as borne 
on their account. Father Hecker regretted that the idea of 
redemption was so often presented in a way to give the im- 
pression that atonement was the whole office of Christ. There 
are many souls for whom access to Christ as Mediator was 
more in consonance with the truth than access to Him as Re- 
deemer, Mediator in that case including Redeemer, rather than 
the Redeemer absorbing the idea of Mediator. Redemption from 
original sin is, of course, necessary to the mediatorship of a fallen 
race. But our Lord became Redeemer that he might be Mediator ; 
he cleansed us from sin that he might lift us up to the God- 
head; and in many souls Father Hecker knew that the pro- 
cess of cleansing began and ended with original sin and venial 
sins. Such souls often go their lives long with no compelling 
stimulus to perfection, because they cannot apply to themselves 
the accusations of sin commonly put into the directions for be- 
ginners. 

Much has been already said of the aids to perfection which 
Father Hecker perceived in a right use of the liberty and in- 
telligence of our times. He also insisted that the commercial 
and industrial features of our civilization were no obstacles to a 
high state of Christian perfection. 

In a remarkable sermon, entitled " The Saint of Our Day," 
published in the third volume of the Paulist series, Father 
Hecker, after making a powerful exposition of the advantages 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 559 

of liberty and intelligence as helps to the interior life, insists 
that the opportunities and responsibilities peculiar to our civiliza- 
tion are capable of being sanctified to the highest degree. The 
model he proposes in this sermon is St. Joseph. He was no 
martyr, yet showed a martyr's fidelity by his trust in God. 

" Called by the voice of God to leave his friends, home, and 
country, he obeys instantly and without a murmur. To find 
God and to be one with God, a solitary life in the desert was 
not necessary to St. Joseph. He was in the world and found 
God where he was. He sanctified his work by carrying God 
with him into the workshop. St. Joseph was no flower of the 
desert or plant of the cloister ; he found the means of perfec- 
tion in the world, and consecrated it to God by making its cares 
and duties subservient to divine purposes. 

" The house of St. Joseph was his cloister, and in the bosom 
of his family he practised the sublimest virtues. While occupied 
with the common daily duties of life his mind was fixed on the 
contemplation of divine truths, thus breathing into all his 
actions a heavenly influence. He attained in society and in 
human relationships a degree of perfection not surpassed, if 
equalled, by the martyr's death, the contemplative of the soli- 
tude, the cloistered monk, or the missionary hero. 

" Our age is not an age of martyrdom, nor an age of her- 
mits, nor a monastic age. Although it has its martyrs, its 
recluses, and its monastic communities, these are not, and are 
not likely to be, its prevailing types of Christian perfection. Our 
age lives in its busy marts, in counting-rooms, in workshops, in 
homes, and in the varied relations that form human society, and 
it is into these that sanctity is to be introduced. St. Joseph 
stands forth as an excellent and unsurpassed model of this type 
of perfection. These duties and these opportunities must be 
made instrumental in sanctifying the soul. For it is the difficul- 
ties and the hindrances that men find in their age which give 
the form to their character and habits, and when mastered be- 
come the means of divine grace and their titles to glory. 
Indicate these, and you portray that type of sanctity in which 
the life of the Church will find its actual and living expression. 

"This, then, is the field of conquest for the heroic Christian 
of our day. Out of the cares, toils, duties, afflictions, and re- 
sponsibilities of daily life are to be built the pillars of sanctity 
of the Stylites of our age. This is the coming form of the 
triumph of Christian virtue." 



56o THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

With all, moreover, Father Hecker insisted on the practice of 
the natural virtues, honesty, temperance, truthfulness, kindliness, 
courage, and manliness generally, as preceding any practical move 
towards the higher life. He first explored the character and 
life of his penitent in search of what natural power he had, and 
then demanded its full exerfeton. He began with the natural 
man, and made every supernatural force in the sacraments and 
prayer aid in establishing and increasing natural virtue as a 
necessary preliminary and ever-present accompaniment of super- 
natural progress. Perhaps Father Hecker's antipathy to Calvin- 
ism sharpened his zeal for the natural virtues, and strengthened 
his advocacy of human innocence. The craving for the super- 
natural, he was convinced, would be strong in proportion to the 
enlightenment of the natural reason ; the need of the grace of 
God is, of course, most urgent in a sinful state, but it would be 
more quickly perceived in proportion to the possession of natural 
virtue. As the exercise of reason is necessary to faith and pre- 
cedes its acts, so the integrity of natural virtue is the best pre- 
paration for the grace of God. Many pages of The Aspirations 
of Nature, from which the following brief quotations are made, 
are devoted to the dignity of humanity and the need of placing 
the excellence of human nature in the foreground when con- 
sidering how man may attain to a high supernatural state : 

" Every faculty of the soul, rightly exercised, leads to truth ; 
every instinct of our nature has an eternal destiny attached to 
it. Catholicity finds its support in these and employs them in all 
her developments." 

" The Catholic religion is wonderfully calculated and adapted 
to call forth, sustain, and perfect the tastes, propensities, and 
peculiarities of human nature. And let no one venture to say 
that these characteristics which are everywhere found among men 
are to be repressed rather than encouraged. This is to despise 
human nature, this is to mar the work of God. For are not 
these peculiarities inborn ? Are they not implanted in us by 
the hand of our Creator ? Are they not what go to constitute 
our very individuality ? " 

Humanity is a word of vague meaning to most ears, but to 
Father Hecker its meaning was a living thing of value second 
only to Christianity. Here is his summary of the relation of 
Catholicity to human nature, taken from the same source as the 
foregoing: 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 561 

" Catholicity is that religion which links itself to all the facul- 
ties of the mind, appropriates all the instincts of human nature, 
and by thus concurring with the work of the Creator affirms its 
own Divine origin." 

We give the following extracts from letters of spiritual ad- 
vice, to show Father Hecker's views of mortification : 

" Exterior mortifications are aids to interior life. What we 
take from the body we give to the spirit. If 'we will look at it 
closely, two-thirds of our time is taken up with what we shall 
eat, and how we shall sleep, and wherewithal we shall be clothed. 
Two- thirds of our life and more is animal including sleep. 
I do not despise the animal in man, but I go in for fair play 
for the soul. The better part should have the greater share. 
The right order of things has been reversed : <?#-version is 
necessary. Read the lives of the old Fathers of the Desert. 
They determined on leading a rational and divine life. How 
little are they known or appreciated in our day ! Their lives are 
more interesting than a novel and stranger than a romance." 

" Self-love, self-activity, self-hood, is something not easily de- 
stroyed. It is like a cancer which has its roots extending to the 
most delicate fibres of our mental and moral nature. Divine 
grace can draw them all out. But how slowly ! And how ex- 
quisitely painful is the process the more subtle the self-love 
the more painful the cure." 

" Never practise any mortification of a considerable character 
without counsel. The devil, when he can no longer keep us 
back, aims at driving us too far and too fast." 

" How can the intellect be brought under direction of divine 
grace except by reducing it to its nothingness ? and how can this 
be done except by placing it in utter darkness ? How can the 
heart be filled with the spirit of divine love while it contains any 
other? How can it be purified of all other inordinate love ex- 
cept by dryness and bitterness ? God wishes to fill our intelli- 
gence and our hearts with divine light and love, and thus to deify 
our whole nature to make us one with what we represent God. 
And how can He do this otherwise than by removing from our 
soul and its faculties all that is contrary to the divine order?" 

" All your difficulties are favors from God ; you see them on 
the wrong side, and speak as the block of marble would while 
being chiselled by the sculptor. When God purifies the soul, it 
cries out just like little children do when their faces are washed. 



562 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

The soul's attention must be withdrawn from external, created 
things and turned inward towards God exclusively before its 
union with Him; and this transformation is a great, painful, and 
wonderful work, and so much the more difficult and painful as 
the soul's attention has been attracted and attached to transitory 
things to creatures." ' 

He was often heard repeating the following verse from The 
Imitation (book iii. chap, xxxi.), as summarizing the necessary 
conditions of the active life : " Unless a man be elevated in 
spirit, and set at liberty from all creatures, and wholly united to 
God, whatever he knows and whatever he has is of no great 
weight." He wrote to a friend that he had studied that verse for 
thirty years and still found that he did not know all it meant. 

We give what follows as characteristic of Father Hecker's 
manner as a director : 

" At first, in all your deliberate actions, calm your mind, 
place yourself in the attitude of a receiver or listener, and then 
decide. Imperceptibly and insensibly grace will guide you." 

" Don't care what people say ; keep your own counsel. Use 
your own sense and abound in it ; as the apostle says : ' Let 
every one abound in his own sense.' Don't try to get anybody 
to agree with you. No two noses are alike, much less souls. 
God never repeats." 

" Nobody nowadays wants God. Every one has the whole 
world on his shoulders, and unless his own petty ideas and 
schemes are adopted and succeed, he prophesies the end of the 
world. You are on the right road push on ! Our maxim is : 
Be sure you are right and then go ahead ! " 

" How much that is good and noble in the soul is smother- 
ed by unwise restraint ! The whole object of restraint is to re- 
ject that which is false and to correct the preference given to a 
lower good instead of to a higher one. As for the rest -free- 
dom r 

" I know a man who thinks he don't know anything who 
every day knows that he knows less ; and who hopes to know 
nothing before he dies. O blessed emptiness which fills us with 
all ! O happy poverty which possesses all ! O beatified noth- 
ingness which can exclaim, Detis metis et omnia ! " 

It will have been seen by this time that Father Hecker's 
first and fundamental rule of direction was to have as little 
of it as possible. His method started out with the purpose to 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 563 

do away with method at the earliest moment it could safe- 
ly be done. To be Father Hecker's penitent meant the privi- 
lege of sooner or later being nobody's penitent but the Holy 
Ghost's. The following rules of direction he printed in 1887 : 

" The work of the priesthood is to help to guide the Chris- 
tian people, understanding that God is always guiding them in- 
teriorly. 

"An innocent soul we must guide, fully understanding that 
God is dwelling within him ; not as a substitute for God. 

" A repentant sinner we must guide, understanding that we 
are but restoring him to God's guidance. 

" The best that we can do for any Christian is to quicken 
his sense of fidelity to God speaking to him in an enlightened 
conscience. 

" Now, God's guidance is of two kinds : one is that of His 
external providence in the circumstances of life ; the other is 
interior, and is the direct action of the Holy Spirit on the hu- 
man soul. There is great danger in separating these two. 

" The key tp many spiritual problems is found in this truth : 
The direct action of God upon the soul, which is interior, is in 
harmony with his external providence. Sanctity consists in mak- 
ing them identical as motives for every thought, word, and 
deed of our lives. The external and the internal (and the same 
must be said of the natural and supernatural) are one in God, 
and the consciousness of them both is to be made one divine 
whole in man. To do this requires an heroic life-sanctity. 

"All- the sacraments of the Church, her authority, prayer 
both mental and vocal, spiritual reading, exercises of mortifica- 
tion and of devotion, have for their end and purpose to lead the 
soul to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. St. Alphonsus says in 
his letters that the first director of the soul is the Holy Ghost 
Himself. 

" It is never to be forgotten that one man can never be a 
guide to another except as leading him to his only Divine 
Guide. 

" The guide of the soul is the Holy Spirit Himself, and the 
criterion or test of possessing that guide is the Divine authority 
of the Church." 

What follows was published by Father Hecker in THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD in 1887. It throws new light on the questions we have 
been considering, abounding in practical rules of direction, and 



564 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July* 

therefore, though somewhat long, we venture to close the chapter 
with it: 

" ' If any one shall say that without the previous inspiration of 
the Holy Spirit and His aid, a man can believe, hope, love, or 
repent as he should, so that trje grace of justification may be con- 
ferred upon him, let him be anathema.' 

" These are the words of the holy Council of Trent, in which 
the Catholic Church infallibly teaches that without an interior 
movement of the indwelling Holy Spirit no act of the soul can 
be meritorious of heaven. This doctrine, embodying the plain 
sense of Holy Scripture and the unbroken teaching of the Church 
in all ages, bases human justification on an interior impulse of the 
Third Person of the Divine Trinity. This impulse precedes the 
soul's acts of faith, hope, and love, and of sorrow for sin : the 
first stage in the supernatural career, then, is the entering of the 
Holy Spirit into the inner life of the soul. The process of justi- 
fication begins by the divine life of the indwelling Spirit taking up 
into itself the human life of the soul. 

" Nor is this to the detriment of man's liberty, but rather to 
its increase. The infinite independence of God and his divine 
liberty are shared by man exactly in proportion as he partakes 
of God's life in the communication of the Holy Spirit. 

" If it be asked how the Holy Spirit is received, the answer 
is, Sacramentally. ' Unless a man be born again of water and the 
Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' As man 
by nature is a being of both outer and inner life, so, when made 
a new man by the Spirit of God and elevated into a supernatural 
state, God deals with him by both outer and inner methods. 
The Holy Spirit is received by the sacramental grace of bap- 
tism and renewed by the other sacraments; also in prayer, vocal 
or mental, hearing sermons, reading the Scriptures or devout 
books, and on occasions, extraordinary or ordinary, in the course 
of daily life ; and when once received every act of the soul that 
merits heaven is done by the inspiration of that Divine Guide 
dwelling within us. Even though unperceived, though indistin- 
guishable from impulses of natural virtue, though imperceptibly 
multiplied as often as the instants are, yet each movement of 
heaven-winning virtue, and especially love, hope, faith, and re- 
pentance, is made because the Holy Spirit has acted upon the 
soul in an efficacious manner. 

u It is not to induce a strained outlook for the particular 
cases of the action of the Spirit of God on us, or the signs of 



1891.1 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 565 

it, that these words are written. The sacraments, prayer and holy 
reading, and hearing sermons and instructions, are the plain, ex- 
ternal instruments and accompaniments of the visitations of God, 
and are sufficient landmarks for the journey of the soul, unless it 
be led in a way altogether t extraordinary. And apart from these 
external marks, no matter how you watch for God, his visitations 
are best known by their effects ; it is after the 'cause has been 
placed, perhaps some considerable time after, that the faith, hope, 
love, or sorrow becomes perceptibly increased always excepting 
extraordinary cases. Not to * resist the Spirit ' is the first duty. 
Fidelity to the divine guidance, yielding one's self up lovingly to 
the impulses of virtue as. they gently claim control of our thoughts 
this is the simple duty. 

" Having laid down in broad terms the fundamental doctrine 
of the supernatural life, it is proper to say a word of the natural 
virtues and of their relation to the supernatural. It has been 
already intimated that the goodness of nature is often indistin- 
guishable from the holiness of the supernatural life ; and, indeed, as 
a rule, impulses of the Holy Spirit first pour their floods into the 
channels of natural virtue, thus rendering them supernatural. 
These are mainly the cardinal virtues : Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, 
and Temperance. Practised in a state of nature, these place us 
in our true relations with our nature and with God's provi- 
dence in all created nature around us ; these are the virtues 
which choice souls among the heathen practised. They are 
not enough. When they have done their utmost they leave 
a void in the heart that still yearns for more. It is the pur- 
pose of the Spirit of God to raise our virtue to a grade far 
above nature. The practice of the virtues of faith, hope, and 
love, which bring the soul into direct communication with God, 
and which, when practised under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, 
are supernatural, following upon the practice of the cardinal vir- 
tues under the same guidance, place the soul in its true and per- 
fect relation with God a state which is more than natural. 

" Let us, if we would see things clearly, keep in sight the differ- 
ence between the natural and supernatural. In the natural order 
a certain union with God was possessed by man in all ages in 
common with every creature. The union of the creature with 
the divine creative power is something which man can neither 
escape from nor be robbed of. But in the case of rational crea- 
tures this union is, even in a state of nature, made far closer 
and its enjoyment increased by a virtuous life one in which rea- 
son is superior to appetite ; a life only to be led by one assisted, 



566 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [July, 

if not by the indwelling Holy Spirit peculiar to the grace of 
Christ, yet by the helps necessary to natural virtue and called 
medicinal graces. The practice of the four cardinal virtues Pru- 
dence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance in the ordinary 
natural state gave to guileless men and women in every age a 
natural union with their Creator. Although we maintain that 
such natural union with God is not enough for man, yet we in- 
sist that the part the natural virtues play in man's sanctification 
be recognized. In considering a holy life natural virtues are too 
often passed over, either because the men who practised them in 
heathen times were perhaps few in number, or because of the 
Calvinistic error that nature and man are totally corrupt. 

" And we further insist on the natural virtues because they 
tend to place man in true relations with himself and with nature, 
thus bringing him into more perfect relation or union with God 
than he was by means of the creative act a proper preliminary 
to his supernatural relation. Who will deny that there were men 
not a few among the heathen in whom Prudence, Justice, For- 
titude, and Temperance were highly exemplified ? They knew 
well enough what right reason demanded. Such men as Socrates, 
Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius had by the natural light 
of reason a knowledge of what their nature required of them. 
They had faults, great ones if you please ; at the same time they 
knew them to be faults, and they had the natural virtues in 
greater or less degrees. Thus the union between God and the 
soul, due to the creative act, though not sufficient, never was in- 
terrupted. The Creator and the Mediator are one." 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 567 



THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 

II. 

WHOEVER admits revelation as a certain fact, and a certain 
interpretation of its genuine, authentic sense, must maintain 
its precedence over every kind of human knowledge. The data 
which it furnishes in theology, ethics, history, or any kind of 
science, as certainly attested by divine authority, must be true 
and beyond denial or question. Any theory which contradicts a 
revealed truth must be false, as surely as if it denied the reality 
of self- consciousness, the axiom that the whole is greater than a 
part, or the principle of contradiction. 

If the fact of revelation is questioned, it only remains to fall 
back upon rational philosophy, pure and simple. Likewise, if 
revelation, being admitted, its certain, infallible interpretation is 
questioned, there must be the same recourse to rational philosophy 
as the tribunal of final appeal, although in the higher part of its 
domain as religious philosophy it will admit Christian elements. 
Professor Ladd's Introduction to Philosophy shows that this is the 
case. 

A merely sentimental religion, which is not rational and philo- 
sophical, has no field and no forces or weapons for a warfare with 
science, and no claim to supremacy. All sciences in the natural 
and rational order are co-ordinated and regulated under the 
supremacy of their queen, philosophy. This is briefly but clearly 
shown by Dr. Barry in his article in our last number. 

In order that Religion may be put in logical opposition to 
Science, it must have a supernatural entity, as a divine revelation 
proposed and proclaimed by an infallible witness, custodian, and 
judge. The Catholic religion and church is on one side, the 
whole complex system of human rational knowledge, summed up 
under the general title Philosophy, or Science, is on the other. 

Some readers unfamiliar with the technical language of logic 
may fancy that the opposition connoted above between Catholic 
authority and rational science implies hostility. This is not so, 
but the term designates distinction between two objects of thought, 
as, for instance, the two opposite poles of the earth's axis. 

The truths of revelation and the propositions presented to the 
mind as rational truths stand over against each other. The in- 



568 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [July, 

fallible authority of the church is on one side, the authority of 
reason on the other. What is the relation between the two ? I 
am writing only for Catholics, who may have perplexities in regard 
to this relation, caused by the accusations made against the 
church, as if she were an enemy to the just liberty and progress 
of science. Therefore I merely make an exposition of the Catholic 
idea. I assume the infallible authority of the Catholic Church as 
the organ of divine revelation within its proper sphere, and the 
infallible authority of reason within the limits of a certain domain. 
They are concentric circles, and the circle of revelation is the 
outermost, including the circle of reason. 

The authority of the church is the divine right to keep and 
teach the revealed truths of the deposit of faith, to define dogmas 
and condemn errors, with a certitude which is rendered infallible 
by the assistance of the Holy Spirit, not by the way of revelation 
or inspiration, but by a divine providence and direction in the use 
of all the means for understanding and proclaiming the contents 
of the sources of faith, Scripture and Tradition. This infallible 
authority is limited to the sphere of that which is explicitly, 
implicitly, or virtually revealed i. e., to objects of divine faith 
credible on the divine testimony, and those which are so related 
to these" that the revealed truth is a criterion of their certitude. 

The direct, immediate, and principal object of the infallible 
judgments of the church is the Faith, the Truth disclosed by 
divine revelation. Every other matter, whether it be a fact or 
a proposition, is accessory. 

Now, the divine revelation was given in view of the highest 
ethical, spiritual, and eternal good of the human race. It was 
not given for the satisfaction of the ingenium curiosum of man. 
It is not even a systematic theology. Much less, a formal, scien- 
tific philosophy, and least of all, a disclosure of the system of 
the universe, a revelation of astronomy, cosmology, zoology, 
chemistry, and natural science in general. The history contained 
in the inspired books is recorded, for a sacred and religious, not 
for a secular purpose. Its whole scope is to teach men what to 
believe, what to hope for, what to do, in order to attain to the 
love of God in Jesus Christ, and the possession of the inherit- 
ance of the sons of God in everlasting Life. 

Whatever is contained in the inspired books which is not 
doctrinal, ethical, or of the nature of dogmatic fact, is accidental. 
All of science and history, which is transmitted with the divine 
tradition of religious and moral doctrine, but only accidentally 
connected with them, has more or less of obscurity and ambigu- 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 569 

ity, and admits of more than one interpretation. It is that 
which is certainly revealed, certainly understood in its true, 
authentic sense, attested and proposed by the church in her 
ordinary magistracy or by solemn definitions, which is the matter 
of Catholic faith. All that is revealed is de fide in se, all that 
is sufficiently proposed to us as revealed truth is de fide quoad nos. 
The church is infallible in making this proposition, but cannot 
transcend the divine limits of that which is de fide divind in se, 
in proposing dogmas as de fide Catholicd, There can be no 
growth and increase in the deposit of faith itself since the age 
of the apostles, who transmitted the completed revelation, the 
word of God in Scripture and Tradition, to their successors. But 
there has been a continuous, gradual progress and development 
in the understanding and proclamation of the truth revealed by 
the divine word, in the reduction of implicit to explicit faith, as 
is shown in the History of Dogma, and of which the definition 
of the Immaculate Conception is a signal, recent example. 

Theology is a science founded upon the dogmas of faith, 
and upon all the contents of Scripture and Tradition, which 
have not been explicated in the dogmatic teaching of the church. 
It is the product of Fides quaerens intellectum. In so far as it 
reproduces the testimony and judgments of the infallible church, 
it is only an instrument by which the church proclaims her doc- 
trine and law, a mouth piece of ecclesiastical tradition. It is in 
this sense that the unanimous consent of the Fathers makes a bind- 
ing rule in doctrine, as a witness to that which has been be- 
lieved and taught in the church always, everywhere, and by all. 

When theology passes, beyond this boundary it becomes a 
human science. Private doctors are not infallible. Their systems 
and text-books have the authority of the evidence and the 
reasons upon which their theories are based, and of the appro- 
bation which they receive from competent judges and common 
consent. They contain some amount of certain science, a great 
deal that is probable, and more or less, according to the genius 
of different authors, of hypothesis and conjecture. Of course, there 
is a wide field open to controversy, and the human liability to 
error. From the nature of the case, theology is progressive and 
subject to development, and sacred science in its comprehensive 
sense must borrow from many special secular sciences, and depend 
for its advancement upon their discoveries and improvement. 

The luminous orb of revelation has its penumbra, which 
gradually fades away into the space of opinion and conjecture. 
The authority of the Ecclesia Docens, infallible in its central 



5/o THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [July, 

sphere, is modified and lessened as it changes from dogmatic to 
disciplinary, passing through all the gradations from the highest 
to the lowest, from the Roman Congregations to the mother 
teaching her little child the catechism. 

The authority of reason is infallible in a certain sense, and 
under certain conditions. That is to say, the human faculties of 
cognition acting normally upon their proper objects do not deceive 
us. The senses, the intellect, the reasoning faculty, give us 
knowledge of which we are infallibly certain. The same is true 
of human faith in testimony. Metaphysical, physical, and moral 
certitude are attainable by the use of the natural faculties. True, 
we do make false and erroneous judgments. But this error to 
which we are liable is an accident. The infallibility of the 
church is secured against this accidental error in a supernatural 
way. The infallibility of reason has only natural safeguards 
against accidental errors, and therefore the authority of reason 
can only be called infallible with a restriction, in the concrete, 
and in respect to the judgments of individual minds. Making all 
due allowance for the fallibility of individual men, and the liability 
to error in the domain of rational thought and history, there are 
truths and facts which are certain) verdicts of the authority of 
reason which are infallible, and which we can apprehend as such, 
and employ as an unerring criterion of the adequation between 
our intellect and objective reality. These truths and facts are 
the principles and data of rational science in all its ramifications, 
of all the known and all the knowable within the boundary of 
natural human intelligence. 

What now, we inquire, is the relation between revelation and 
natural science, the authority of the church and the authority of 
reason ? The discussion of this topic in all its extension and com- 
prehension is beyond the scope of our present intention. It is 
limited to the one, particular point, of the existence of a just casus 
belli in behalf of the liberty of science against oppression and 
interference from Catholic authority claiming a right of control 
and direction by which the progress of science is hindered. 

The gist of the accusation so often made against the church by 
anti-Catholic writers, especially by those who attack her author- 
ity in the supposed interest of the physical sciences, is this : 
That the church has wished to impede the progress of the scien- 
ces in order to keep the human mind in a darkness favorable to 
her omnipotence. Or, if it is made in a milder form, that Cath- 
olic theology, seeing that science was emancipating itself and be- 
ginning to live its own independent life, wished to cut short 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 571 

these efforts to gain a liberty which would put an end to the 
dominion which it claimed to exercise over science. This suppos- 
ed antipathy of the church for the scientific development of hu- 
manity has never had an existence, but is purely imaginary. 
There is nothing in principle which places Catholic authority in 
a hostile attitude to the authority of reason, to any science what- 
ever, or to free scientific investigation. Due subordination of 
particular to more general sciences, of philosophy to theology, 
and of theology to the infallible authority of the church, does 
not imply vassalage and servitude. Theology, beyond the domain 
of the revealed dogmas proposed to faith by the infallible 
authority of the church, and the conclusions virtually contained 
in them which have been defined, has freedom to expand and pro- 
gressively develop itself, from the principles which it finds in 
Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. Philosophy proceeds, not from 
data of revelation, but from rational principles and by its own 
purely rational methods. Each particular science goes its own 
way, following its own proper line and methods of investigation. 
They are subject, however, to the laws which govern all thought, 
and which they receive from mathematics, if they follow mathe- 
matical methods, from logic and from metaphysics. Philosophy 
is bound to recognize all the certain truths of theology, and, as 
it necessarily comes into more extensive and intimate contact with 
the teachings of revelation, by treating of the same topics, than 
any other rational science, there has been more occasion for the 
exercise of control and direction by ecclesiastical authority in the 
case of philosophy than in any other department. 

We are more immediately concerned, however, with the rela- 
tion between scientific discoveries and the interpretation of the 
Sacred Scriptures. On this head I will quote a few sentences 
from an article by Professor Gilbert, of the University of Lou- 
vain : 

" Undoubtedly the Holy Scripture has an object very different 
from that of the human sciences, and the labors of astronomers, 
physicists, and natnralists have in general no relation with the 
revealed dogmas. No one, however, will go so far as to assert 
absolutely that every scientific doctrine or assertion is indifferent 
or inoffensive in respect to the point of view of faith and the in- 
terpretation of the Scriptures. Who could maintain this total 
separation between the object of the sacred writings and that of 
the natural sciences ? May there not exist, in the domain of 
physiology, of linguistics, of anthropology, points of very close 
contact with the instructions which the Bible gives us concerning 
the origin and destination of man ? One would need to be sin- 



572 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [July, 

gularly rash to trace thus in advance an impassable line of de- 
marcation between theology and the study of nature."* 

Evidently, since the instruction from God through revelation, 
and the instruction from God through nature, must both be true 
and in harmony, theology and natural science cannot ignore each 
other. There must be some general principles of conciliation. 
Professor Gilbert remarks that these present no great difficulties 
in the abstract, although serious difficulties may arise in their ap- 
plication to determinate cases. 

The chief contention is about these general principles. The 
controversy about particular cases is of minor importance. The 
right of judging upon those mixed questions in which theology 
and natural science are both involved is not a usurpation upon the 
liberty of science, and does not trammel its legitimate exercise. 
The judgments of the supreme authority in the church which are 
dogmatic and irreformable scarcely come into the controversy at all. 
They are in a region above the domain of science, taken in a sense 
which prescinds from philosophy. Even in the domain of philoso- 
phy there are but few definitions outside of natural theology and 
ethics. In the domain of natural science taken in the restricted 
sense, what warfare its votaries have had to wage with theology has 
been a struggle with disciplinary authority, and with private doctors, 
singly or collectively. This authority of discipline, existing in the 
Holy See as its highest tribunal, in inferior tribunals, and after a 
certain manner in the consentient teaching of recognized doctors of 
sacred science, is a necessary adjunct of the supreme, infallible au- 
thority of the Ecclesia Docens. Without this adjunct that authority 
would be nugatory, and inapplicable to practical purposes. 

A strange and bizarre notion of what is the Catholic idea of 
the divine and infallible church under a supreme and infallible 
head, has been widely prevalent, and, if less so at present, is still 
obscuring the view of many intelligent persons. They seem to 
think that infallibility implies a continuous revelation and inspira- 
tion, extending to all kinds of matters, even to judgments on par- 
ticular facts, and to acts of jurisdiction and government. They 
imagine, also, that infallibility implies impeccability, as if, supposing 
the Catholic idea to be true, all members of the church, especially 
priests, must be saints through a magical influence of the sacra- 
ments, All ecclesiastical administration in spiritual and temporal 
matters must be the wisest and best. Theology, philosophy, polity, 
and ritual must have come suddenly, like Adam from the Creator's 

* Revue des Questions Scientifiques , tome deuxie;iie, p. 175. 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 573 

hand, into full maturity admitting of no further development. 
Consequently, since history proves abundantly that the church 
has not shown itself to have this purely supernatural being, has 
been subject to human vicissitudes, and in many respects to have 
been similar to other human societies, bearing on her rolls names 
of men of all varieties of character, from the best to the worst, 
the conclusion is drawn that the church is not in any sense a 
divine, but a purely human institution. 

This is a chimera. It is not the Catholic idea. 
The church is supernatural and divine, but not in this exag- 
gerated and exclusive sense. It is also natural and human, as 
man is both spiritual and corporeal. The treasures of faith, grace, 
sacraments, and spiritual power have been committed to earthly 
and fragile vessels. The citation of the misdeeds and mistakes 
of churchmen, supposing it to be perfectly correct, is none the 
less perfectly irrelevant. We are not bound in any way by 
loyalty to the Catholic cause to defend any of them, and we are 
bound by loyalty to truth, justice, and the law of God and 
conscience, to assent to the verdict of authentic and impartial 
history, in respect to all facts established by conclusive evidence. 
Controversy, to be genuine and truly logical, must be a dis- 
cussion of general principles, of fundamental facts, according to a 
comprehensive philosophy, and a philosophical view of the history 
of all human development, religious, moral, and scientific. On 
this ground the Catholic cause has always been victorious, and 
is invincible. We may justly and proudly adopt the language of 
Cardinal Wiseman, at the conclusion of his famous work on 
Science and Revealed Religion, <l Religio, vicisti" 

Our modern opponents, who make war under the aegis of 
science, are not fond of this mode of controversy. Wnether they 
attack natural religion, revealed religion, or specific Catholicity, 
they like to creep among particular facts, real or supposed, and 
single phenomena, and lead a long chase across dry deserts 
among interminable bushes, into caves and recesses among 
mountains, like the ancient Scythians. It is tedious work, 
though it may be useful or even necessary, to follow them into 
all their hiding places. At present, I am only intent, in. respect 
'to the particular topic in hand, oa showing that the general 
principles of Catholic disciplinary authority and theology are not 
in opposition to scientific liberty and progress. As to- particular 
applications of these principles in determinate casjs, and interfer- 
ence in the interests of religion with science in a detrimental manner, 
there will be occasion to consider th^se matters latei on. 
V^L. LIU. 37 



574 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [July, 

The Council of the Vatican has made the following declara- 
tion : 

4< The church, so far from opposing the cultivation of human 
arts and sciences, aids and promotes them in many ways. 
Nor surely does she forbid that these sciences, each in its own 
proper circuit, use their own proper principles and proper method ; 
but recognizing this just liberty, carefully watches that they do 
not adopt errors repugnant to the Divine Doctrine, or, stepping 
over their boundaries, invade and disturb the domain of faith." * 

St. Augustine had already traced out with a firm hand, in a 
manner which leaves little to be desired after more than a thou- 
sand years have passed, the rules to be followed in order to avoid a 
vain conflict between the Bible and sciences : 

" In obscure matters, remote from our penetration, if we find 
in the Divine Scriptures certain things which are susceptible of 
various interpretations without damage to the faith in which we 
have been instructed, let us not hastily commit ourselves to any 
one of them in such a way that if perhaps a more thorough discus- 
sion of the truth show its nullity we become compromised with 
it; and are drawn into a contest for our own opinion with 
which we strive to make the Scriptures agree, whereas we ought 
to endeavor to make our own opinion conform to the doctrine 
of the Scriptures." 

Again, and still nearer to the point, St. Augustine ex- 
presses himself in a passage, which Prof. Gilbert remarks seems 
to have been well adapted to " open the eyes of the adversaries of 
Galileo " : 

" It frequently happens that a man who is not a Christian 
knows something, by means of most certain reasoning or experi- 
ence, about the earth, the celestial region, about the different 
elements of the world, the movements and revolutions of the 
stars, certain phases of the sun and moon, the periodical return of 
phenomena which mark the measurement of time, the natural 
characters and properties of animals, plants and minerals, and other 
similar objects. Now, it is most shameful and pernicious, and there- 
fore most carefully to be avoided, that any infidel should hear a Chris- 
tian speaking of these things, under the pretence of having derived 
his opinions from the Christian Scriptures, in such an idiotic manner 
that he cannot help seeing, as the saying is, how heaven- wide of 
the mark his notions are, and can scarcely keep from laughing. 
It is not much matter that the mistaken man should be laughed at, 
but it is lamentable that our sacred authors should be supposed 
by outsiders to have held such opinions, and should be re- 

* Const, de Fide CathoL, c. iv. 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 575 

preached and despised as ignorant men, to the great spiritual 
detriment of those for whose salvation we are solicitous. For, 
when they have found a man who belongs to the Christians in 
error about things which they know perfectly well, and referring 
his absurd notions to our sacred books, how can they believe 
what these same books teach on the resurrection of the dead, 
the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, so long as 
they suppose that they contain falsehoods in respect to questions 
wherein their own experience and irrefragable reasons have en- 
abled them to perceive the truth." * 

St. Jerome rebuked those who were accustomed to force the 
Scripture into a sense according to their private caprice, "ad volun- 
tatem suam Scripturam trahere repugnantem " ; forgetting that 
4< many things in the Holy Scriptures are said according to the opin- 
ion of that time in which the events related took place, and not 
with a rigorous exactness. "f St. Thomas of Aquin also says that in 
a certain passage the Sacred Scripture " speaks, according to its 
customary method, in accordance with the way of viewing things 
common among men." 

In another place he lays down the following prudent rule : 

" It seems to me that it is safer, in regard to opinions generally 
admitted by philosophers and reconcilable with our faith, not 
to affirm them as we do dogmas of faith, . . . nor to deny 
them as though they were contrary to faith, lest occasion be given 
to the wise men of this world of contemning the doctrine of faith." 

The same great doctor expresses a doubt of the truth of the 
Ptolemaic astronomy, writing that " the presumptions which astrono- 
mers think to be discoveries .cannot be necessarily true, since that 
which is perceived by our vision in respect to the stars can perhaps 
explained in some other way not yet known to men."\ 
The Spanish Jesuit theologian Pereira, a little before the time 
of Galileo (f 1610), wrote as follows: 

' We should carefully guard against and absolutely ai>stain 
from adopting and maintaining in a positive and obstinate manner, 
in explaining the writings of Moses, any opinion in contradiction 
to certain conclusions derived from experience and reason in 
philosophy and the other sciences. For, since truth always agrees 
with truth, it is impossible that the truth of the Sacred Scriptures 
should be in opposition to the exact proofs and observations of 
the human sciences. " 

* De Genesi ad litt., lib. 1. c. 18, 19. t In Jerem. Proph., c. xxviii. 

Jin Job, c. xxvii. opusc. x. lee*. 17, 1. ii., De Coelo. In Genesim ad princip. 



S/6 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [July, 

Finally, even Cardinal Bellarmine, who probably had a prin- 
cipal part in the decisions of the Roman Congregation respecting 
the case of Galileo in 1616, affirms a principle of interpretation 
which fully justifies the universal assent which has been given to 
the heliocentric theory since the truth of it has been scientifically 
demonstrated. In a letter to 'the Carmelite Foscarini, who was a 
Copernican, he writes : 

" If a true demonstration were given of the central position 
of the sun in the world, and of the position of the earth in the 
third heaven, the earth revolving around the sun and not the sun 
around the earth, it would then be necessary to proceed with great 
prudence in the explication of the Scriptures which seem to teach 
the contrary, and rather to say that we have not understood them, 
than to declare false what has been demonstrated."* 

As I have not space enough left to go into the case of Galileo 
in this article, I will conclude it with a sentence borrowed from an 
excellent article on " Leibnitz and the Sciences in a Monastery," 
by M. Charles Lamey : 

" Although the philosophical age of Voltaire has passed, its con- 
sequences still remain and are everywhere felt. At the present 
time it is in the name of science that the church is constantly 
attacked with the expectation of accomplishing its overthrow. This 
design is more accentuated than ever before, and may we not recog- 
nize a precise indication of the. needs of our epoch in the words 
lately uttered by the Vatican Council (Const, de Fide, c. iv.) on the 
supreme importance of the sciences, their divine origin, and their 
natural alliance with the faith. 

" It is these instructions which it behooves us to set in a clear 
light before the eyes of unbelievers in our days, and in a manner 
so unanswerable that they will ere long be constrained to admit 
that the church is the faithful promoter and natural ally of the 
sciences."! 

AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT. 

* Published from in edited MSS. by Signor Berti. Copernico, pp. 121-123. 
\Rev.des Qu. Scientif., vol. ii. p. 86. 



1891.] A SPIDER-WEB, ALL GLITTERING. 577 



A SPIDER-WEB, ALL GLITTERING. 

NEAR my door is a spider's web of extraordinary size, and 
you will hardly believe it, but I assure you it is hung with 
sparkling brilliants, many of which are real jewels, pearls and 
diamonds ! I am greatly tempted to approach and pick off some 
of the gems. Thousands of people are doing so, at least trying 
to. Few succeed, however, while a vast number get so entangled 
in the meshes that they cannot get away ; and so they die 
there. 

It is the Louisiana State Lottery ! Listen to what Father J. 
T. Tuohy says in this connection and may God reward him 
for his bold, brave words ! Truly is his sermon called " one of 
the most remarkable utterances on the social question ever heard 
from a Catholic pulpit." 

He says : " The social question is a most important one ; .and 
for a clergy consecrated to the service of God and of humanity, 
it is the question of questions. . . . Too long has the church let 
the discussion remain chiefly in the hands of her enemies. 
Catholics do not do their full duty by attending Mass and church 
services, or with half-shut eyes, in highly artificial albeit pious 
meditations, dreaming dreams of heavenly bliss, or by turning to 
the controversies of mediaeval times, to indulge in their hair- 
splitting abstractions. . . . No thinking man of any experience 
can be blind to the fact that there is to-day a rapidly growing 
discrimination in the minds of the masses between Christ and the 
church. Christ and the church must be placed before them as 
one and inseparable." 

Aye, aye ! And responding to the inspiration of these mag- 
netic words, I will try to do my little share, as a Catholic writer, 
towards " placing Christ and the church as one and inseparable," 
the friend of the poor, the hope of the masses. 

I come, therefore, to arouse your interest, dear fathers and 
kind readers of this Catholic periodical, and to beg for your 
prayers, your sympathy, and your active assistance in behalf of 
my sorely- tempted State, unhappy Louisiana! 

You, who do not live here, have as yet but slight idea ot 
our lamentable condition. An almost inevitable net-work of webs 
is woven among us. Everywhere the insatiable spider says, 
" Won't you walk into my parlor ? " 



578 A SPIDER-WEB, ALL GLITTERING. [July, 

And the masses walk right in ; for where is there any one to 
warn them ? The spider is fattening enormously, for who raises 
a hand to stay him ? This now huge lottery began scarcely 
twenty-five years ago. Already it owns, virtually owns, the State. 
The press is in its power. Politics sways according to its con- 
trol, and it plays upon human nature with absolute mastery. 
Nothing could be more alluring than its promises ; more specious 
than its arguments ; more fascinating than its methods. It throws 
dust in our eyes gold dust so glittering that the best of us can 
hardly help being dazzled and blinded. 

Its advocates, and many of them are honest, sincere people 
(aye, some of our very own too, alas!), say in its defence: "I 
don't see any harm in it. It isn't a sin. It does a great deal 
of good. Gives a great deal in charity. If it obtains a new 
twenty-five years' charter, it promises to the State one and a 
quarter millions yearly for twenty-five years ! Magnificent ! It 
would be folly to lose such an offer. The Lottery party is not 
a bit worse than any of our political parties. Then why all this 
outcry ? We might just as well be governed by the Lottery 
party as by any other. As for its immense and dangerous 
power it's no greater than the railroads, for instance. So why 
oppose lottery and sustain railroads ? " 

Need I answer these fallacies ? Only briefly, because the 
readers of this monthly are men of pure hearts and prayer- 
enlightened minds. They can readily see through even such 
pleasing sophistries. 

If this lottery is not gambling, what is it ? And if gambling 
is not to be condemned, what is ? 

We all know that the devil is always willing to give away 
fifty cents' worth of good if, under cover of that generosity, he 
can get back fifty dollars' worth of evil. 

But so captivating are the Lottery's promises that they 
beguile us, and then our integrity is devoured by it, like flies by 
the spider. 

Other corporations, monopolies, combines, and political parties 
may be as corrupt, but none of them are as powerful. None 
have ever begged to build our levees, and pay our public-school 
expenses, and support our insane, and clean, pave, and beautify 
our city, and endow our Charity Hospital all for the small 
privilege of a twenty-five years' charter ! 

No wonder its opponents diminish steadily, while its advocates 
multiply and grow eloquent. No wonder they taunt us as being 
" fanatics, puritans, saints, fools, hypocrites." 



1891.] A SPIDER-WEB, ALL GLITTERING. 579 

No wonder they sneeringly say : " You can't legislate people 
moral. It's ridiculous to try. Gambling is an inherited instinct, 
and ineradicable. No use forbidding it. You can't stop it. It 
should therefore be licensed, not prohibited." 

They go further, and say : ' The lottery is an admirable system 
of taxation ; oppressive to no one ; free to all, but compelling 
none. As for draining the poor the poor would spend their 
money in worse ways if we had not the lottery ; they will 
throw away their earnings. The poor are always wasteful; the 
wasteful always poor. And it's the best thing for them that 
the State benefit by their gambling habits." 

What a pity that these wise and far-seeing counsellors were 
not around Moses when he was receiving the decalogue ! They 
would have prevented him from losing his time that way. Be- 
cause, of course, it was nothing but a loss of time this trans- 
mitting laws which would inevitably be broken. How ridiculous 
to forbid impiety, and cursing, and profanity ! They shouldn't be 
forbidden, because it's no use ; they should be licensed. In fact, 
we ought not forbid nor oppose anything in the nature of sin or 
temptation. What does it matter whether other people fall or 
not, just so we keep out of the pitfalls ? It's no affair of ours. 
"Am I my brother's keeper?" 

And, indeed, many a well-meaning lottery friend declares, in 
all seriousness too : " We Catholics must not meddle with it. It's 
not a moral question. It's purely a business matter. It is to 
be judged from a commercial standpoint. The opposition is 
merely political. Religion has nothing whatever to do with it." 

Certainly not ! Politics and finances being the devil's own 
chosen domain, we mustn't interfere. " Hands off! " We must 
give him full sway. He is entitled to it. It doesn't matter at 
all that the people and the poor are thereby down-trodden, both 
body and soul. It's none of our business. 

Ah ! terribly true are Father Tuohy's words. The disaffection 
from us of the masses is rapid. We cannot deny it. And it 
is easily accounted for, too. In Father Fabcr's incisive words : 
" The scandal of the fact is so much greater than the scandal of 
merely acknowledging it, that we brave this latter for the sake 
of a greater good." 

Cardinal Gibbons says the same thing, and attributes it to 
the same cause the neglect, the seeming indifference of the 
church to the social question, the miseries of the poor, and the 
machinations of the rich. Cardinal Gibbons says : " The tolerance 
of this is, unfortunately, in the pulpit. The close -fisted, affluent 



580 A SPIDER-WEB, ALL GLITTERING. FJ ul y> 

communicant who is sometimes not particular how he turns a 
penny, even to the point of downright dishonesty, is, as a rule, 
treated with marked deference by his pastor." And he further 
says that therefore " worldly men are confirmed in their worldli- 
ness, and the masses are repelled from the church that harbors 
and honors the mean sinner.", 

Equally pertinent to this subject are the welcome advices of 
our Holy Father's recent encyclical. Leo XIII. says that the 
social and labor questions of the day have assumed undeniable 
prominence, and therefore " the necessity of the church's dealing 
with them." We have a grand Pope, thank God ! 

Now, a composite view of the labor and social questions 
resolves them into one, namely, the MONEY QUESTION ! That is 
the question of the day. It is at the root of every labor, social, 
and political problem of the times. And I contend that of all 
the iniquitous schemes whereby the shrewd get money from the 
masses, not one of them surpasses in iniquity this soft, glittering, 
and irresistible lottery. And that, therefore, there is no other 
evil against which Catholic people, press, and pulpit should be 
more determined, active, outspoken, and fearless. 

With intense satisfaction I quote our Pontiff's attitude on 
these matters. The report says : 

"The Pope desires to deprive his adversaries of the slightest 
pretext for pretending that the church has only chanty as her 
programme, and nothing definite or precise to offer society. His 
object, above all things, has been the teaching of social jus- 
tice." 

Blessed words, and timely. For it were like gall and worm- 
wood to the poor man, to be offered charity by a religion 
which would seem to say to him : " In your present troubles I 
take no interest. You must look out for yourself. I cannot 
lift a finger against your moneyed oppressors. I give good 
general advice, but as to any definite, precise action on such mat- 
ters, that is out of my province. But when at length by fraud, 
compulsion, or " (worst of all) " cajolery, your earnings and your 
honor have been taken from you, and you are a wretched pauper, 
then I stretch out my hand Coma to me ! I will give you alms ; 
I will give you charity." 

Aye, gall and wormwood ! The workman turns away. Shall 
we blame him ? 

I heard a young lad talking about the lottery lately. He 
said : " Don't I wish I could strike Howard for $250 ! Phew ! 
wouldn't I " and he went on to build his air-castles. He had 



1891.] A SPIDER-WEB, ALL GLITTERING. 581 

bought a lottery ticket. Need I point out how already one 
film of the spider's web has fastened upon that boy's mini ? 
Already there is formed in him the ignoble desire of possessing 
what he has not earned. Thousands of boys are similarly en- 
snared. And is it not easy to see how that unmanly wish is 
excited, fostered, encouraged, played upon, by this corrupting 
lottery ? Is it not obvious that the lottery's chief aim is to fan this 
desire until it become a passion ? 

Some months ago the Catholic Review referred editorially to 
our State Lottery. The article was on its front page, among 
those " Topics of the Hour " which every week tingle with vivid 
ideas on the live issues of the moment. I regret exceedingly not 
having it at hand in order to quote verbatim. Nevertheless, I 
am able to recall quite distinctly its spirit and purport. It com- 
mented with surprise upon the silence of many of our Louisiana 
clergy, their inertia in so momentous a crisis, when their influ- 
ence could be of such avail and so beneficial. Yes, and there is 
no class of sufferers more sorely in need of that influence than 
we are, right now. 

Humanly speaking our case is hopeless. The lottery is bound 
to win, because it has a measureless purse ; and a measureless 
purse means measureless power. And then we are so poor. 
Many of our purest patriots say, "Louisiana is too poor; we 
cannot refuse the lottery." They never seem to be impressed by 
the peculiar fact, that while our State is " very, very poor," our 
lottery is very, very, enormously rich ! 

And so this " noble and beneficent institution " is having vic- 
tories right straight along. But is the arm of God shortened? Ah! 
no, no. Pray then that he deliver us. The courageous stand 
taken by the priests of New York against the liquor- traffic ; the 
strong and pregnant words of Father Tuohy ; the timely sym- 
pathy of the Catholic Review, and the unmistakable utterances of 
our grand Cardinal and our glorious Pontiff all combine to fill 
me with hope. I joy to think that very soon active steps will be 
taken, and I shall no longer writhe beneath the lash of taunts 
like the following from Protestant sources : 

" Your church is a sphinx. Aha ! I knew it long ago. She 
is dumb on this subject. She hasn't a word to say. She sanc- 
tions gambling. The Catholic Church has always approved of 
lotteries," etc., etc. 

God grant that such accusers be silenced soon ! And may God 
grant that the lottery be silenced too, and that no longer our 
people exemplify the song: 



582 AN OLD IRISH TOWN. [July, 

" Will you walk into my parlor," 

Said the spider to the fly ; 
"It's the prettiest little parlor 

That ever you did spy," 

no matter how siren-like the coaxing, nor how dazzlingly fair the 
glittering of that spider's wet? ! 

M. T. ELDER. 

New Orleans, La. 



AN OLD IRISH TOWN. 

THERE are three towns in Ireland of pre-eminent interest to 
the student and the antiquarian Kilkenny, Galway, and Youghal, 
and the last exceeds the other two in keen and vivid interest. 
It is on the Atlantic seaboard ; and down by the railway station, 
where the summer visitors congregate in smart villas, there is a 
steady roar and shock of Atlantic rollers inexpressibly fine and 
splendid, even on a mild autumn day. What it is in a storm I 
can only conjecture. The great sea-wall notwithstanding, the 
ocean saps the land every day. It has sucked in the strand 
steadily. What is now long stretches of undulating yellow sand 
when the tide is out used to be bog-land and salt marshes. In 
the last century they still dug turf there, and embedded in it 
were quantities of fir and hazel trees. They took from it once the 
skeleton of a great animal, or portions of it, and the horns of 
moose deer were also dug out. The whole points to a primeval 
forest ; and an old history tells us that once, when a violent storm 
had wasted the strand, there was laid bare a great expanse of 
roots and limbs of trees. It is a treacherous tide hereabouts, and 
if you stand below Clay Castle, the great promontory of cliffs to 
the south-west of the town, the loose clay of which becomes 
rose and blue and violet petrifactions, you may chance to find 
yourself dry-shod some distance out, while the tide is bubbling 
up and forming wide pools to isolate you. Fortunately for their 
safety many of the villa-houses climb up the hill, towards where 
the old town walls throw out a ruined bastion or buttress. Those 
on the strand itself are doomed. It is worth a good many hours 
of city life to stand by the sea-wall at Youghal and see the 
rollers forming far out ; first a dimple, then a long steady line, 
then the great plunge at the land, and the dull roar and thud, 
and high over you goes a cataract of fine silvery spray. This in 



1891.] AN OLD IRISH TOWN. 583 

the goldenest autumn evening ; in winter the sea is across the 
road and stealing like a great gray serpent into the houses. 

The town of Youghal is in a sheltered inlet The river Black- 
water "The First Rhine" tliey call it; though why not the 
Rhine " The German Blackwater " ? discharges itself into the sea 
at Youghal. The town lies at its mouth, and over yonder are 
the green Waterford hills, whither you may be ferried for a 
penny. Once there was a strange traveller over the ferry. Of the 
Desmonds, who made the fortunes of Youghal, there was at one 
time an Earl Gerald, who died and was buried at holy Ardmore 
of St. Declan, which, with its round tower and holy well and 
other interesting ruins, lies still and quiet, over there on the 
sea-shore. But no saint's grave, or aught else, could satisfy 
the dead earl, who desired to sleep at his own holy place of 
Temple Michael on the Blackwater. So it came that all night, 
in tempest or moonlight, when the waves were crooning their 
summer song, or roaring like loosed lions, a strange voice, 
like the voice of the dead earl, but hollow and terrible, went 
crying across the waters : " Garault, arountha ! arountha ! " 
(which is, Gerald, hurry! hurry!) "Give Garault a ferry." 
So at last some young men of his clan went over by night 
and lifted up the coffin and ferried him back, and at Temple 
Michael he slept in peace. 

Youghal is full of signs of its old consequence. The 
houses are strangely important for those of an Irish country 
town, and though many of them are degraded from their 
first uses, they are not the less stately even in misfortune. 
You enter Youghal through a street of those old houses, with 
a boulevard of twisted elms blown away by the sea-wind. 
Round and pointed chiselled doorways, trefoiled windows, 
corbels and mullions, heraldic badges and friezes all these 
tell of vanished glories, and are everywhere. But if you pass 
down by the College from the Raleigh house along the straight 
roadway, perched on the hillside, and from which narrow alleys- 
wind down to the main street, you might easily believe yourself 
in an English university town. On one side there are great old 
houses well kept and prosperous-looking, on the other are the 
college walls overhung with myrtle and valerian, and in their 
season crested with yellow wallflowers and campanulas. Sir 
Walter Raleigh brought the wallflower here as well as the 
potato and the cherry. The descendants of his cherries still 
flourish in the orchards at Afifane on the Blackwater, where he 
planted them. It is perhaps due to Afifane that one sees lovely 



584 AN OLD IRISH TOWN. [July, 

fruit in Youghal. In a little room off the main street, converted 
to a shop, I have seen the most lovely apples and pears, making 
with baskets of red and yellow tomatoes a perfect feast of 
colors. 

Sir Walter Raleigh and Spenser make many a one in love 
with Youghal. It is a place 'full of ghosts; the Desmonds jostle 
in the haunted air the gallant adventurer who had their estates 
when they were attainted, and further back are the Knights 
Templars, who had a preceptory at Rhincrew, at the mouth of 
the Blackwater, where perched high they could see the ships 
sailing in to bear them to the Holy Land. Some of them in 
stone, with crossed legs and sword in hand, are in St. Mary's 
Church, over against the bewildering monument of Robert Boyle, 
the " great Earl of Cork " ; another shade, for he followed Sir 
Walter in the Desmond inheritance when one of the handsomest 
heads of all time fell under the executioner's axe in London 
Tower. Then Old Noll himself was here in the winter of 1649. 
The house where he lodged is a ruins in the main street. That 
Christmas-time one of his officers, Lieutenant-General Jones, died 
of a pestilential fever ; he was buried in the H)arl of Cork's chantry 
in St. Mary's church, and Oliver himself read the funeral service. 
One can picture that curious night-scene my Lord Broghill, 
Sir William Fenton, and the other officers grouped about the 
open grave; on a bier the body of the dead soldier; by the 
flaming of torches the grim face of the Protector reading over 
the open grave his godly exhortation. In those streets it is not 
difficult to place him in his cloak and slouched hat. There he 
wintered in the mild climate the south of Ireland is s^mi - 
tropical and from this port he sailed away in May the year 
following, in the frigate The President. 

The main street is spanned by a great clock-tower and gate- 
way, the like of which I have never seen in any to\vn in Ireland. 
Half-way down it is the " Red House," a fine example of Queen 
Anne architecture. It looks like the scene of one of Hawthorne's 
stories, standing back from the street in a grave stateliness, all 
stained to beautiful harmonious colors by the sun and the sea- 
wind; its gardens climbing up the hill at the back. You can 
have the Red House for the moderate rental of thirty pounds a 
year, but you will need to roof it, for it has been left long to the 
ghosts. In Youghal you could live in a very stately way on a 
very small income if you were inclined to be out of the world. 

The Red House belonged to Mr. Drury, who owned the pot- 
teries. Youghal has made pitchers and vases of its red clay fro n 



1891.] AN OLD IRISH TOWN. 585 

time immemorial. The pitchers can be obtained everywhere 
through the country for domestic purposes. They are as simple 
and beautiful in shape as that Rebecca carried to the well. Vases, 
pots, and pans there are of all sizes, and many pretentious, but 
I lost my heart to the big pitchers which one sees in the hand 
of every second urchin going to the fountain. As for the prices, 
we interviewed a dame who sat by the clock-tower. The 
pottery was closed for the time being owing to -a coal strike, 
so I could not go to the fountain-head, so to speak, for my 
pitcher. This dame had a noble one among her wares. " Wnat 
price ? " we asked. She eyed us doubtfully, as if to measure 
the extent of our purses. " Well," tentatively, " you see it's very 
big. I'll have to charge yez fippence for that." " Fivepence / " we 
cried with one accord, and were misunderstood. " Well, yez 
needn't take it if yez don't like, but fippence it is." She was 
cautious in other matters. We asked her about the coal strike 
from which the town was suffering. She was bitter enough against 
it and its promoters, but would not satisfy our curiosity as to the 
strike leaders. 

" A shut mouth ketches no flies," she said oracularly, nodding 
her shrewd old head. 

Youghal has a stained-glass factory as well as a pottery. 
Few people know that Cox, Buckley & Co., the famous stained- 
glass house of London, have a branch factory in a little Irish town. 
It is there because Mr. Buckley, the junior partner, is a Youghal 
man, and in his prosperity remembered his native town. The 
factory employs nearly a score of hands. They are making win- 
dows for many big churches, Protestant and Catholic, and clients 
are jubt beginning to find out that they ca*n place their orders at 
home and see the work in process. If you call you will be shown 
round by a most courteous and intelligent young Englishman. 
The offices are full of cartoons for the stained glass, beautiful large, 
simple designs, which remind one of Mr. Walter Crane's work, 
with perhaps a touch of Burne Jones thrown in. 

If you are fin de siecle in politics, and interested in the Pon- 
sonby tenants, eight miles outside of Yqughal, you will be fortun- 
ate if you find so competent a witness to instruct you as a certain 
bright and handsome girl whose acquaintance we made in a shop 
in the main street. Her cleverness was simply a marvel. I should 
like to set her face-to-face with an exponent of the landlord view. 
She was an interesting example of the Irish inborn aptitude for 
politics. She was a farmer's daughter, one of eleven, I think, all 
of whom worked on the farm. She was the only one who had 



586 AN OLD IRISH TOWN. [July, 

ever had the courage " to go foreign," as she put it, Youghal being 
about nine miles from home. I wish I could give her views of the 
land question, but they would take an article in themselves. Her 
views on marriage were pessimistic and more prosaic than I looked 
to find even among the Munster peasants, whose marriages are the 
merest contracts, though afterwards the bond is held inviolably. 
She never seemed to think that there could be a question of any- 
thing but money in marriage. " An' if I was saving ten years 
what could I buy with my money ? " she demanded with some 
fierceness " an ould show of a widower ; though it's more likely 
hed be looking for a girl with three or four hundred pounds. 
Marry for love!" in reply to our astonishment. ''I've heard of 
people marryin' for love, foreign, .in Dublin or Cork, but never 
in Youghal. I never heard of but one marriage for love in Youghal, 
an that was before my time, an' it ended bad." She had evidently 
scant sympathy for that far-away love-affair which budded so out 
of place in the uncongenial air of Youghal. 

In the main street, besides Cromwell's house and the clock- 
tower, are one or two other antiquities. There is the arched 
doorway of the convent of the Hospitallers of St. John, and their 
orchard, still walled away, is across the street. Then there is 
Sir Robert Tynte's castle, a square old keep, now a corn and 
coal store. After James II. came to the throne the story goes 
that some of the Youghal folk went near having a small Eve of 
St. Bartholomew on their own account in this tower. They 
seized and imprisoned there a little knot of Protestants, and one 
knows not what might have happened if the news had not 
been brought to a Catholic gentleman of the county, named 
Ronayne, a name still preserved and honored in Youghal. He 
rode in at hot speed, and exhorted the crowd to such good pur- 
pose that they yielded up their prisoners, whom he released 
nothing worse than frightened. For this service, when a Ronayne 
dies the town bell is tolled, a curious privilege. 

Of course the antiquities of Youghal are St. Mary's Church, 
the College, and the warden's, or Raleigh's, House. In the latter, 
which now belongs to Sir John Pope Hennessy, Raleigh dwelt in 
1588-89, when he was mayor of the town. He had received a 
grant of 12,000 acres or more of the Desmond's estates on their 
attainder, and this included Youghal. The house is like an old 
English manor-house, gabled, and with twisted chimneys ; from 
its dense ivy the beautiful, irregular oriel windows look out. 
Here in the garden are the four yew-trees beneath which 
Raleigh sat smoking his pipe on that occasion when his servant 



1891.] AN OLD 'IRISH TOWN. 587 

deluged him with water to put out the fire. The place is 
smothered in myrtle-trees. Within the house is brown and 
rich and ancient, full of carved wood and oak panelling. In 
the oriel window of the drawing-room, once Sir Walter's study, 
tradition says Spenser sat and read to his host the MS. of 
"The Faery Queene." The room is most beautiful, all of dark 
oak, ceiling, walls, and floor, with a carved mantel of great 
beauty and value. It has the figures of Faith, Hope, and Char- 
ity set in niches between elaborate garlands of one knows not 
what. Everywhere about the room are portraits of Raleigh, 
brown-eyed, olive-tinted, with his keen and delicate oval face, 
his pointed beard, his ruff, his doublet of silk and mantle of 
velvet The furniture of the room is all old: an oak chest, 
some carved chairs, a tall oaken dresser, which has turned 
amid its carvings the device of Robert Boyle, Earl of Cork : 
4< God's Providence is Our Inheritance." Wax candles lit in the 
tall sconces only make the place eerier. If Raleigh, courtly and 
beautiful, came through the doorway one would scarcely feel 
surprise. 

This oriel looks toward St. Mary's, one of the most beauti- 
ful churches in Ireland. Around it the graveyard lies on a hill, 
and is all very fair and peaceful. Not so long ago the chancel 
was uncovered and partly ruined, but a generous and right- 
minded rector restored it with fine judgment. The east window 
has not its equal in this country for size and beauty. There is 
a great square tower outside, more like a keep than a church- 
tower. This is supposed to have subterranean connection with 
the Raleigh house, and, indeed, in a corner of the dining-room 
of the latter the boards of the floor lift up and reveal a passage. 
But some former inhabitants threw earth down into the passage 
and it has not been explored. Youghal, if one may believe the 
stories, is tunnelled by subterranean ways. The Templars had 
:heir secret ways down from Rhincrew to the sea-shore, and the 
Desmonds also had their burrows. In old Strancally Castle, a 
fortress of the latter, there is a ghastlier piece of ingenuity. 
[t is a chamber in the rock overhanging the water, where a 
captive walked in unwarily and dropped sheer into the dark 
water. " Drowning-holes " they call such oubliettes. 

The great Earl Thomas of Desmond re-edified the church, 
and built and endowed the college for a warden and eight fel- 
lows, with eight singing- men, who were to have a common table 
and live after the collegiate manner. They were munificent 
bunders, those Desmonds. The North and South Abbeys, which 



588 AN OLD IRISH TOWN. [July, 

were Dominican and Franciscan respectively, were founded by 
two Desmonds, father and son. There is no ruin of the South 
Abbey left. The North Abbey, now called "The Old Mass Yard," 
shows a beautiful bare window standing up amid stones and rub- 
bish, and, far enough away to show the size of the church a por- 
tion of the western gable. The burying place of saints is miser- 
ably dirty, overgrown, and neglected, in pitiful contrast to its 
neighbor, St. Mary's. 

The college of Thomas Fitzgerald, which he had endowed 
with 600 yearly, equal to more than ^"3,000 of our money, fell 
on evil days when Sir Walter Raleigh had yielded in his turn 
the spoil of the Desmonds to the .Earl of Cork. This latter was 
the very prince of adventurers, so far as rapacity goes. Sir 
Walter lost his handsome head, and what quid pro quo my Lord 
Cork gave him for his Irish estates remains unsubstantiated. To 
a surviving son of Raleigh's he gave a list, indeed, of various 
sums paid at times to his father, and on account of which the 
latter recommended his son Wat, since dead in the West Indies, 
to let Lord Cork have his Irish estates. " For if you do not 
some Scot will get them" is put into the dead man's mouth, 
with saturnine humor. Lord Cork had need of all the revenues, 
and so much for a warden and fellows and singing men was not 
to be thought of, so he took up his residence himself in the 
college, and bade the scholars begone to a little school-house 
he prepared for them, and which is still the endowed school of 
Youghal. If you go there and pass through its pointed door- 
ways you will see a beautiful Elizabethan ceiling of twisted 
and turned oak. 

The south transept of St. Mary's Church, which was once called 
the Chantry of Our Saviour, Lord Cork took for the burying 
place of himself and his family. Over against the stone slabs of 
the Crusaders and the ancient monuments of the founders this 
maker of a family reared a monument which is the most grotesque 
witness to human vanity. In the midst lies the earl himself, first 
of his name, in a suit of armor, with the Elizabethan ruff above 
it, and the cap of the time on his grizzled head. His fierce painted 
eyes stare at you out of the marble in a way to haunt your 
sleep of nights. On a pedestal by his head kneels the figure of 
his second wife, who bore him nine children. Below you 
see all the tiny effigies going down in steps and stairs, with 
one pathetic little figure fallen forward, Geoffrey Boyle, who was 
drowned in the college well. At the earl's feet is his first wife, 
who died in childbirth, her one little son not surviving her. 



1891.] AM OLD IRISH TOWN. 589 

Here he lies in the most elementary little cradle was ever seen off 
a christening cake. This first wife is robed gravely by contrast 
with the purple velvet and ermine of the second wife, the tri- 
umphant mother of children. As if all this pomp were not enough, 
there is over all the effigy of Joan Naylor, the earl's mother, in a 
great hat tied with ribbons and a ruff, solemnly contemplating from 
her cushion the skull she holds in her hands. The whole surpris- 
ing edifice is of Italian marble, painted over in the taste of the 
time. 

The great Earl of Desmond and his wife were buried here ; 
probably the recumbent figures on slabs which are not named in 
a recess of the church wall may be their monument. Here also 
was buried that Countess Eleanor who survived seven English, 
kings, and seems by the histories to have actually lived 1401 
years, though the rhyme says 

" . . . a hundred and ten, 
And died of a fall from a cherry-tree then." 

It was not she, but the countess of the last unhappy Earl 
Gerald, who walked on foot to -London to beg of Queen Elizabeth 
a sustenance out of the magnificent estates which once had been 
the possessions of the proud Desmonds. 

The Earl Gerald, after the failure of the great Munster rebel- 
lion, was beheaded in a hut in the mountains by one Daniel Kelly, 
who received for that thirty pounds yearly from Queen Elizabeth, 
and who, it is satisfactory to learn, was afterwards himself hanged 
it Tyburn. The condition of Munster after the Desmonds fell 
lust have been indeed appalling. Spenser's terrible description 
Tins the heart : 






" Notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and beauti- 
ful country, full of corn and cattle, . . . they are brought to 
such wretchedness as that any stony heart would rue the same ; 
out of every corner of the woods and glens they came, creeping 
forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them : they 
looked anatomies of death ; they spake like ghosts crying out 
of their graves. They did eat the dead carrion (happy were they 
who could find them) ; yea, and one another soon after ; inas- 
much as the carcases they spared not to scrape out of the graves ; 
and if they found a plot of watercress or shamrock they flocked 
there as to a feast." 

Years after Queen Elizabeth sent back Gerald's young son, 

VOL. LIII. 38 



590 AN OLD IRISH TOWN. [July, 

whom she had taken to England and reared after the English 
manner. She. wanted to set up a Queen's Desmond in Munster. 
His people, as she had counted, received him with passionate joy 
and welcome, flocking in from all parts of the country, and 
crowding about him so that his passage-way was long barred. 
Many of them remained all'" night around the place where he 
lodged, but great and bitter was the grief and disappointment 
when next day, being Sunday, he went to the Protestant church. 
From that hour he had no more following than any private gen- 
tleman, and after a while he returned to hide his diminished head 
in England. He died soon after, being a puny stripling at 
best. 

I have told nothing of the glories of the Desmonds which 
were also connected with Youghal. But the old town would take 
half-a-dozen magazine articles if one were to tell leisurely all the 
things one desired about it and its associations. I had gathered 
so many bits for quotation ; I have delicious extracts from my 
Lord Cork's diary and letters about that family he founded. But 
they must go. And one would need to abide a little in Youghal 
to appreciate the interest and claims of the old place, and the 
glamour of the past which lies upon it like a veil of silver mist 
wrought large with letters of gold. 

KATHARINE TYNAN. 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 591 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 

As in these notes we have referred repeatedly to the labor 
and social question, we cannot pass by the recent Encyclical 
of Pope Leo XIII , -of which the chief and the almost exclu- 
sive object is the discussion of the condition of the working 
classes with a view to its amelioration. Many articles would be 
required to bring out the true bearing and scope of this 
most important pronouncement, and we must be content with 
calling attention to a very few points. After speaking of the 
extreme difficulty of the matter, the Holy Father, notwith- 
standing this difficulty, affirms that " all agree, and there can be 
no question whatever, that some remedy must be found, and 
quickly found, for the misery and wretchedness which press so 
heavily at this moment on the large majority of the very poor." 
No recognition is, therefore, to be given to those who are inclined 
to dismiss the wrongs of the poor and of the laborer from their 
thoughts and efforts under the plea that the world is under con- 
demnation those who maintain that the church's work is only 
a spiritual work, and who relegate entirely to a future life the 
redressal of the wrongs of this : " A remedy must be found and 
quickly found." Already we have a decision on a most important 

point. 

* * # 

For many apologists and defenders of the church, and even 
for many moral theologians, the attitude of popes and councils 
in former times toward usury and the strict condemnation and 
even rigorous repression of it have afforded no little difficulty. 
Owing to the long-continued domination of what is now the old 
school of political economy, such maxims as that supply alone 
regulates price seem to have been looked upon as laws of 
nature. To the modern order of things based upon this teaching 
it has been the effort of many to make the church's doctrine 
agree, or at least to show that it does not disagree. The Pope 
seems to take a different view of the matter. After attributing 
to the repudiation which has taken place of the ancient religion 
the fact that " the working-men have been given over, isolated 
and defenceless, to the callousness of employers and the greed of 
unrestrained competition," he proceeds : " The evil has been in- 
creased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once 



592 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [July, 

condemned by the church, is nevertheless, under a different form 
but with the same guilt, still practised by avaricious and grasp- 
ing men." At all events the Holy Father attributes to usury a 
greater influence in causing present evils than is usually done. 
Usury in his eyes is by no means a sin of former ages exclu- 
sively ; it lives and flourishes now. 



While the main object of the Encyclical is to show the solu- 
tion of the labor question which is to be drawn from Catholic 
teaching, to which object far the greater portion of the docu- 
ment is devoted, the solution of the Socialists is rejected and 
condemned, and the right of private ownership in land and other 
property affirmed to be rooted in the law of nature. This is 
not the place to give an accurate and precise estimate as to how 
far this condemnation goes. But, so far as we can see, it would 
not affect any practical proposal yet made, or ever likely to be 
made in any English-speaking country, by responsible statesmen. 
For we can scarcely look upon the advocates of the nationalization 
of land as responsible statesmen. Socialism, as Cardinal Manning 
has pointed out, is a term hard to define, there being no agreement 
as to its meaning among its various advocates and opponents. 
According to the Anti-Jacobin the Irish Land Purchase Bill 
and the free education proposals of the Tory government in 
England are manifestly socialistic. We must, therefore, carefully 
learn from the Encyclical itself precisely what it is that is con- 
demned, and we must also bear in mind the wide scope allowed 
'by theologians for the exercise of altum dominium by the 
state, servatis servandis. The Socialism which is condemned is 
that held by those " who endeavor to destroy private property, 
and maintain that individual possessions should become the com- 
mon property of all, to be administered by the state or by 
municipal bodies." What, therefore, is condemned seems to be 
the theory of those who are commonly called Collectivists. 
* * * 

- Although we have not touched the main body of the Encyc- 
lical, the space at our disposal precludes further comment. 
Suffice it to say that the Pope directs the course of thought and 
action between the extremes of undue state interference and reg- 
ulation on the one hand, and of the laissez faire, as well of the 
theologian as of the political economist, on the other. Whatever 
leaning there may be is to the side of the working-man : be- 
cause, as the Pope says, " to the material well-being the labor 



.1891.1 THE LD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 593 

of the poor is most efficacious and altogether indispensable. 
Justice, therefore, demands that the interests of the poorer popu- 
lation be carefully watched over by the administration, so that 
they who contribute so largely to the advantage of the commun- 
ity may themselves share in the benefits they create. 
Both philosophy and the Gospel agree in laying down that the 
object of the administration of the state should be, not the ad- 
vantage of the ruler, but the benefit of those over whom he rules. 
When it is a question of protecting the rights of individuals, the 
poor and helpless have a claim to special consideration." We 
cannot conclude without a reference to the stress the Pope lays 
upon the obligation of rest, religious rest, on Sundays. He seems 
to go much farther in this matter than text- book theology, for 
he speaks of it as a rest not merely " sanctioned by God's great 
law of the ancient covenant," but " taught to the world by his 
own mysterious rest after the creation of man. He rested on 
the seventh day from all his work which he had done. This ap- 
proximates to what the late Father Formby used so zealously to 
defend. The Holy Father treats of the questions of child labor 
and that of women, rates of wages, equalization of land-owner- 
ship, and the homes of workmen, short and long hours, and 
workmen's societies, inclining in every case to the side of the 
poor man and his family. 

* * * 

The chief events of interest in the Labor World are the May 
Day demonstrations in favor of the eight -hour day and the sub- 
sequent and consequent events. As we have already noted, sys- 
tematic striking, as a definite settled policy, has been abandoned 
for the time being in Great Britain. A large number of strikes, 
it is true, have taken place some of them, such as those of 
the tailors and the omnibus and cab-drivers, involving a great 
many men. The cause of these strikes is found, however, in 
matters of detail, and, as such, no special interest attaches to 
them. The May Day demonstrations belong to a different cate- 
gory. This year they assumed colossal proportions and caused 
grave anxiety to the authorities of many countries. It is instruc- 
tive to note that while in monarchical England the demonstrators 
themselves bore public testimony to the courtesy and considerate- 
ness of the police, in republican France blood was shed and the 
most careful precautions were taken. No less than 42,000 soldiers 
were brought into Paris, in view of the celebration ; and on the 
day itself these troops were engaged in the constant work of se- 
curing the " circulation " of the people. In Fourmies as many 



594 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [July, 

as nine lives were lost. The first warlike service to which the Lebel 
rifle, the new weapon of the French army, was put was against 
French citizens. That the carnage stopped when it did was due to 
the bravery and zeal of the cure, who rushed between the soldiers 
and his people. The loss of life was the greatest at Fourmies ; but 
there was bloodshed also in R'ome, and disturbances in many other 
places. The outcome of the demonstrations as a whole has been 
to make the statesmen of Europe apprehensive for the future, 
and to show them that an international organization of the work- 
ing-men (in whose hands the power is placed in most countries) is 
a thing which must be counted upon and reckoned with. 



Belgium, however, is one of the countries in which the fran- 
chise is so restricted as not to admit of the working-men exer- 
cising their rightful influence upon legislation. And, as we stated 
last month, their lot in this country is all but unendurable, espe- 
cially that of the miners ; nor should we in all likelihood greatly 
err if, between these two facts, we should trace the relation of 
cause and effect. For this reason the disturbances in Belgium did 
not end with the May Day processions. In despite of the advice 
of their councils, the miners determined to leave off work, and in 
the different parts of the country nearly seventy thousand men 
struck. Many disturbances ensued ; business was brought to a 
standstill; bombs were thrown, and the anxiety throughout the 
kingdom was so great that rumors went abroad that it was 
the intention of the king to ask for the assistance of the German 
army, and French newspaper writers began to indulge in threats 
about what France would do in such an event. These rumors 
were, however, without foundation. For a long time the revision 
of the constitution has been a subject of discussion and agitation. 
In November last the question was referred to a committee. It 
was apprehended by the miners that such a reference might lead 
to the permanent shelving of the matter, and the main and imme- 
diate object of the strike was to prevent this. Success has so far 
attended their efforts that the committee has reported and the 
men have consequently returned to' their work. When revision 
has been secured, they hope to secure legislation for the much- 
needed improvement of their position. 

* * * 

The proposals of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain for a system of 
national insurance have been widely discussed, and seem in a fair 
way to enter into the region of practical politics. A committee 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 595 

of members of the House of Commons has been formed, or rather 
has formed itself (for it has no official character), for the purpose 
of working out the details of the scheme and embodying them in 
a bill for presentation to Parliament. The Rev. Canon Blackley, 
an Irishman by birth, has for many years been an ardent advocate 
of national insurance. The defect of his scheme was its ambitious 
character. He aimed at securing for the working-men, through 
state agency, provision for sickness and accident as well as a pen- 
sion in old age. This brought him into conflict with the friendly 
societies which abound in England le pays de self-help, as the 
Count de Mun styles it. It seems a pity that one good thing 
should so often place itself just in opposition to another. But this 
has always been the case and doubtless always will be. These 
societies provide for sickness a-nd for accidents. The magnitude 
of the work thus voluntarily done may be estimated by a few sta- 
tistics with reference to one of them the Odd Fellows. The adult 
membership of this society is 673,000, the net increase during the 
past year having been 21,000. The juvenile membership was 
greater, 738,000. The income for the year 1889 was ^.SOO,- 
ooo, the capital of the society being 7,358,000. There is an- 
other society larger even than this, and many smaller ones. 
* * # 

It is clear, therefore, that to enter into a conflict with such 
powerful organizations, and with the spirit which they represent, 
the spirit of self-help and voluntary co-operation in contradistinc- 
tion to that of reliance upon the state, was unadvisable. Canon 
Blackley, therefore, made no headway, notwithstanding his zeal. 
But these societies have been unable to grapple with the question 
of the superannuation even of their own members. Mr. Cham- 
berlain's scheme, therefore, aims at doing what the friendly socie- 
ties either have not attempted or have failed in accomplishing ; 
and as he does not aim at providing for sickness or for accident 
no reason for conflict exists. This renders it probable that a 
measure will be passed how soon it would be rash even to 
form a conjecture, so uncertain nowadays are the ways of 

Parliament. 

* * * 

Another gigantic organization for the mutual assistance of people 
whose means are small has been holding its annual meeting. We 
refer to the Congress of the co-operative societies of Great Britain 
and Ireland, which met at Lincoln in May. This is another work- 
ing-n.en's movement, managed and controlled by themselves, al- 
though not without the friendly assistance and advice of many 



596 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [July, 

educated and experienced men, of whom the author of Tom 
Brown's School Days is the most widely known. Its object is 
two-fold : co-operation in the supply of goods so that the profits 
of sale accrue to the purchasers, all of whom must be members 
of the society, and co-operation in the production and manufac- 
tu^e of goods, so that the workman shall share in the profits of 
his work. In the first of these objects the success has been start- 
ling. We must again give a few figures. The first store was 
opened not very many years ago in a provincial town in England, 
in a miserable room lit by a tallow candle. During the past 
twenty-five years the annual business of the retail stores has in- 
creased from about 4,000,000 to ,28,000,000, and the members 
from 175,000 to over 1,000,000. The business of the wholesale 
societies in England and Scotland "has grown from almost nothing 
to 10,000,000 a year in the same period. The flour-mills do a 
business of about 2,000,003 a year. 114,000 was paid last 
year for tea duty to the government. These figures show what 
working-men are capable of doing for a cause which enlists their 
sympathies and from which they reap substantial and tangible ad- 
vantages. Why do they not succeed in such undertakings in 

America ? 

* * # 

This success in the co-operative distribution of goods has not 
been shared by the co-operative production of goods. The soci- 
ety aimed no less at enabling the working-men to share in the 
profits of their toil than in lessening the expense of living by 
purchasing at their own stores ; but little or no success has so far 
attended their efforts in this direction. The society has become 
an employer of labor like any other capitalist. It has even failed 
in some instances to give satisfaction to its employees, and has 
been made to undergo the salutary correction of a strike. It is 
not that the attempt has not been honestly made, but that ill- 
success has attended nearly every such attempt. It would be 
very interesting and instructive to have an account of the precise 
reasons for this failure. If the working-man can himself be his 
own capitalist as well, the conflict between capital and labor must 
necessarily cease, and it is to this that many look for the solution 
of the problem. But the fact cannot be overlooked that attempts 
have been made to secure this end, and that these attempts have met 
with very small success. The failure, however, has not been so 
complete as to be disheartening. Want of success will lead to 
a closer study of the problem ; and the future may remove the 
difficulties hitherto found so great. 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 597 

The session, which opened with so much promise for social 
reformers, seems destined to frustrate their hopes. Little progress 
has been made with the various measures which have been brought 
before Parliament, and for some of them but little hope is enter- 
tained of their becoming law. It will be impossible to proceed 
with the Welsh Local- Option' Bill although it has received a 
second reading as it is a private member's bill. Whether the 
Sunday-closing bill for Ireland will share the same fate it is hard 
to say. Mr. Sexton is relentless in his opposition to it in its 
present form, and may succeed in defeating a measure ardently 
desired by all friends of the temperance movement. The legal 
eight-hour day for miners has no chance of being carried. It is 
doubtful whether it will be so much as debated. In fact, there is 
by no means a unanimous agreement among those most nearly 
affected by it. The free or rather the assisted education propo- 
sals of the government are now before Parliament ; but such is 
the state of public business that it may not be even in the govern- 
ment's power to pass them into law. We must console ourselves 
with the thought that progress when slow is on that very account 
the more likely to be sure and well considered. 



A new labor movement has been started of which, whether 
it succeeds or fails, it will be interesting to note the result. Mr. 
Frank Smith, the commissioner of General Booth, who abandoned 
his post at the head of the social wing of the Salvation Army just 
as it was getting into working order, has devoted himself since 
that time to the support of working-men's claims. Not content 
with this, he has formed the plan of organizing a labor army. No 
doubt the training received under the general has suggested the 
idea, although the .distinguishing mark of the Salvation Army, the 
supreme power wielded by its head, is not to form a feature 
of this new army. The hope is that it will embrace every work- 
ing-man as well those who belong to trade-unions as those 
who do not. It is to be a combination of all for political action. 
This is another evidence of the growing dislike to strikes which 
is felt by the capitalist and the working-man alike. The latter is 
turning to parliamentary action as the means most suitable for 
the relief of his wrongs; and strong efforts will be made to send 
to the House of Commons a large number of reliable labor 
members. This is a matter independent of the success or fail- 
ure of the new labor army. The chief interest attaching to this is 
whether it will be possible for purely material and temporal ad- 



598 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [July, 

vantages to organize a body at all analogous to the Salvation 
Army. 



"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Of the truth of 
the old saying Mr. P. H. Calderon, the keeper of the Royal 
Academy, must by this time have a somewhat keen and un- 
pleasant apprehension. Having read in an old life of St. Eliza- 
beth of Hungary that on a certain Good Friday, before the 
altar and in the presence of the clergy, the saint " omnino se exuit 
et nudavit" he leaped to the conclusion that she stripped 
herself then .and there of every shred of clothing, and accord- 
ingly has so represented her in a picture which is on view in 
this year's exhibition. The worst of it is, that it is no longer 
in the power of the artist to destroy this humiliating and dis- 
gusting manifestation of his ignorance, for the picture has been 
bought for the National Gallery, and as a consequence the folly of 
the painter will be handed down from generation to generation. 
The controversy has given yet another opportunity to Professor 
Huxley for airing his hatred of everything religious a hatred 
which, from his eagerness to manifest it, is becoming almost ridicu- 
lous. Dr. Abbott also, who has had the prudence to assail 
Dr. Newman's truthfulness after the cardinal's death and not 
before, as did Kingsley, has by coming forward on this occa- 
sion given an indication of his animus. When the case is so 
bad that even the London Times had to decide in favor of 
" the member of the Jesuit order writing in Farm Street " 
against the Royal Academician, we have some hopes that on 
another occasion these eminent writers will be less precipitate. 



During the past month it is in the little kingdom of Portugal 
that the most important events have taken place on the Continent, 
and although the status quo has been preserved for the time, and 
the future looks more promising, it would be imprudent to con- 
clude that all danger is over. For many years Portuguese 
expenditure has been in excess of income, and loan after loan 
has been made to meet the interest on the debt. The revived 
interest in its colonies and the conflict with Great Britain in 
South Africa have also been sources of expense ; for the colonies 
of Portugal, like those of the Continental powers, are govern- 
mental matters and not the outcome of the voluntary action of 
private citizens. Anew loan was therefore necessary; but inves- 
tors held back and the loan failed. This led to a crisis. The 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 599 

Portuguese government issued a decree in virtue of which the 
payment of obligations was suspended for sixty days. This 
extreme measure, instead of completing the disaster, as many 
outside Portugal expected, inaugurated an improvement, and at 
the present moment there is a better outlook and something like 
a restoration of confidence. 



What has materially contributed to this better state of affairs 
is the conclusion of an arrangement with England in settlement 
of the South African difficulty. Under this new agreement 
better terms have been secured by Portugal than under the 
treaty rejected last year by the Cortes. Lord Salisbury is said 
to have been influenced by two considerations in making these 
concessions. If Portugal were pressed too hard there was 
danger of bankruptcy, and much British capital is invested in 
Portugal. The other belongs to a higher categofy. As is well 
known, there is a strong republican party in Portugal, the spirit 
of which is such that it was thought there might be an uprising 
against the crown in the event of its being unable to conclude a 
satisfactory arrangement with England. Not to further such a 
blow to monarchical institutions, Lord Salisbury yielded. 



Just after the conclusion of this satisfactory arrangement with 
England, and before waiting to present it to the Cortes to obtain 
its consent, the ministry resigned. For a fortnight it was found 
impossible to form a new cabinet. In the end, however, Portu- 
gal rejoiced in having a new government, the third within the 
period of eighteen months. It is thought that the republicans 
would have taken advantage of this opportunity ; but it was well 
understood that had they done so the Spanish forces would have 
>ccupied Portugal, with the probability that they would never 
leave it, and that the kingdom would be incorporated with Spain, 
'his was mare than the republicans cared to risk, and so they 
:ept quiet. Meanwhile the outlook is brighter. The new minis- 
:ry inspires confidence, especially the minister of finance, who 
is a man of ability, public spirit, and enlightened views. 

* * * 

Servia, as we noted last month, has got rid of the disturbing 
presence of her ex-King Milan. It was looked upon as equally 
necessary for the peace of the kingdom that the ex -Queen Natalie 
should depart. To effect this persuasion and entreaty were 



6oo THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [July, 

employed, but with characteristic obstinacy the queen would 
not yield until the government, unlawfully and arbitrarily and 
by the most injudicious of means, forcibly expelled her from the 
country. The unfortunate mode of procedure adopted by the 
ministry has excited sympathy for the queen, and wrought 
division among its supporters', and so, bad as was the effect ot 
her presence, that of her enforced absence may be worse. 



It is instructive to note, apropos of Queen Natalie, the practi- 
cal workings of divorce in a schismatic church. This power 
is arrogated to itself by the synod. King Milan, bent on obtain- 
ing a complete separation from his queen, and not finding the 
synod compliant enough, prevailed upon the metropolitan, who 
was his tool, to supersede the synod and to pronounce the 
decree in his own name. And so the king and queen were 
divorced. But on account of a political change the metro- 
politan also is changed, and the new head of the Servian 
Church reverses the decision of his predecessor and declares the 
decree null and void. Here we have metropolitan against 
metropolitan; but to add to the confusion the decree of the 
second metropolitan has itself been declared to be ultra vires 
and in its turn null and void. To such a state are those reduced 
who have not the divine authority of the See of Peter to 
guide and rule them. 

* * * 

The Marquis de Rudini still holds the reins of power in 
Italy, but his tenure is very precarious. His cabinet rests for sup- 
port on the two extreme parties in the Chamber the Conservatives 
and the Radicals and closer acquaintance with each other does 
not make them better friends. A mere accident may displace the 
ministry at any moment, and no one can tell at what moment 
such an accident may occur. A warm sympathizer with the move- 
ment for the unification of Italy, and a personal friend and 
admirer of many of the men who brought it about, writes to the 
London Times to bewail the moral deterioration of the men who 
have taken their places. He finds the modern Italian politician 
destitute of public spirit and unwilling to sacrifice himself 
for the common good, a mere seeker of emoluments and per- 
sonal advantages, untrustworthy and contentious. Party spirit we 
find a bad enough evil in England and America, but it would 
seem Italy is afflicted with a worse, for its politicians have not 
enough public spirit to be faithful even to a party, but each one 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 60 1 

is seeking simply and solely his own advantage and nothing else. 
This is the picture drawn of Italy by a warm admirer of the new 
order of things. Meanwhile the people groan under the heavy 
burden of taxation; how heavy it is may be judged by a repre- 
sentative case. An artisan's family in the city of Florence out 
of the total income of 86 143. are calculated to have spent 
;8 i/s. io^d. in direct taxation and 1$ 143. ii^d. in the 
enhanced price of commodities due to indirect taxation, and this 
although none of them smoked, and consequently did not pay 
any share of the duty on tobacco. No wonder Italians are not 
enthusiastic about the Triple Alliance. 



The sufferings and persecutions which the Jews have been 
forced to undergo form one of the most striking events of the 
recent month. In Crete the populace made a violent onslaught 
upon them, and many lives were lost. This, however, was the 
unreasoning attack of the mob, and as such was ultimately 
repressed by the authorities ; but in Russia the measures taken 
against them are a part of a deliberate plan of the government 
itself. It would take many pages to describe in detail the char- 
acter of these measures. Suffice it to say that they are of the 
most inhuman and barbarous character. It seems evident that 
the set policy and plan of the government is to drive into exile 
some 5,000,000 of its own native-born subjects,, and the only hope 
that the friends of the victims have is that the czar will not 
carry out the measures all at once, but that he will vouchsafe 
time sufficient to enable friends to provide a home for the exiled. 
It seems clear that Baron Hirsch has made arrangements to buy 
and prepare in the Argentine Republic a large tract of land 
for this purpose. Some are emigrating to Turkey, others are 
finding their way to England, and doubtless also to this country. 
* * * 

As an illustration of the manner in which what takes place 
in one country has unforeseen and apparently unconnected conse- 
quences in other and far-distant countries, this Russian persecu- 
tion of the Jews may be instanced. The vast export of gold 
from this country and whatever consequences it may have upon 
our trade are due to the demand for gold in western Europe. 
This demand arises from the fact that Russia has recalled the de- 
posits she had made in England, France, and Germany These 
deposits were withdrawn because the Rothschilds, out of sympathy 
for the oppressed members of their race, would not finance a 



602 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [July, 

new Russian loan. Although this may not be quite certain, it 
rests at all events upon excellent authority and is generally be- 
lieved. 

* * * 

Bare mention of a few other European events will suffice. 
The youthful sovereign of Germany has given his high approval 
to the elevating and ennobling customs of duelling and drink- 
ing-bouts, both so much in vogue among German students. 
France is busy in raising her tariffs. We are glad to say that 
the French government has taken measures to afford the railway 
servants some degree of rest on Sundays. Austria remains under 
the skilful control of Count Taaffe. We cannot close without 
mentioning the inauguration of perhaps the most gigantic railway 
undertaking of modern times. The Russian government has defin- 
itely taken in hand the construction of a railway right across 
Siberia to the Pacific Ocean. It will cost, according to present 
estimates, $1215,000,000, as well as a permanent subvention. Its 
object is strategic, but it may result in larger commercial advan- 
tages. Death has removed M. Jean Bratiano, the statesman who, 
under King Charles, formed Wallachia and Moldavia into the flour- 
ishing little kingdom of Roumania. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 603 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 

THE evil rumors that somehow or other have got into circu- 
lation concerning the state of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's health give 
a certain ominous character to the sentences with which Mr. 
Henry James lately closed the admirable sketch that introduces 
the only American collection* of his tales for which their author is 
responsible. Mr. James is ample, unstinted, and yet discrimin- 
ating in his praise. Discrimination one counts on from him as 
a matter of course, but the generosity, not to say the lavishness, 
of commendation with which in this instance it is accompanied, 
and even the sense in the reader's mind that this also is but an 
additional testimony to the reality of the critic's accustomed vir- 
tue, comes as an agreeable surprise. Though Mulvaney carries his 
own credentials, and one needs no justification for having accepted 
them out of hand, yet it is pleasant to delight in him and in the 
circle of which he is, after all, only the central figure, in such 
good company. Concerning the future presumably wrapped up in 
such a present, Mr. James, while denying himself the luxury of 
prophecy, and declaring that he finds the young athlete "stepping out 
quite as briskly and still more firmly than ever," ended by saying : 

" A whimsical, wanton reader, haunted by a recollection of all 
the good things he has seen spoiled ; by a sense of the miserable, 
or, at any rate, the inferior in so many continuations and endings, 
is almost capable of perverting poetic justice to the idea that it 
would even be well for so surprising a producer to remain simply 
the fortunate, suggestive, unconfirmed and unqualified representa- 
tive of what he has actually done. We can always refer to that." 

Speaking for one, and with a memory recently refreshed by a 
renewed reading of a good deal more of Mr. Kipling's prose than is 
included in this volume, we find this " always " a well-chosen adverb. 
Even though the ill news should happily turn out unfounded, and 
Mr. Kipling as a producer may in the end survive himself, it can 
never be gainsaid that he made his own place in literature as 
positively and as precociously, the difference in their arts consi- 
dered, as Mozart did in music. There are but two of the stories 
in the present collection which are new, and as the hero of one 

* Mine Own People. By Rudyard Kipling. With a Critical Introduction by Jienry 
James. New York : United States Book Company. 



604 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

of these is an ourang-outang and of the other an elephant, it 
might under certain aspects seem invidious to say that Bimi and 
Moti Guj are not only ''people," but as strictly Mr. Kipling's very, 
own people as Mrs. Hauksbee, or Terence Mulvaney, or the ghastly 
" Man who would be King." But in reality there is something 
very far from offensive implied in the remark. These two stories 
intensify in a singular and unexpected way one's sense of that 
keen and abounding vitality, as receptive as a sponge to impres- 
sions and as ready to give them forth again, which to our own 
mind is singling itself out as Mr. Kipling's most unique and en- 
dearing characteristic. Even when he casts the plummet of his 
imagination into the depths that seem to lie below rationality, he 
brings up what one is fain to accept as deep-sea soundings, throb- 
bing with articulate life. Bimi, "mit der half of a human soul in 
his belly,'' and Moti Guj, " a bachelor by instinct" like the drunken 
mahout, his master, recall what some one not long since reported 
Edison as saying that to him everything in nature seems to pos- 
sess a living soul, and that it is in the attempt to " put himself in 
the place " of things usually considered inanimate that he has 
oftenest obtained the secret of his marvellous inventions. 

Mr. F. H. Smith, who speaks, wj believe, as one " to the 
manner born," gives in Colonel Carter* an unusually pleasant de- 
scription of one of the accepted types of the "high-toned Southern 
gentleman." It is very easy to comprehend the colonel's charm, 
to laugh good-naturedly at him, since circumstances of a congenital 
kind forbid laughing with him, and to rejoice in the good fortune 
which, through the unselfish generosity such men usually stand 
in need of, at last places him on his feet and permits him to 
settle up his grocer's account with something more to the latter's 
purpose than delightful manners and a flow of r-less eloquence. 

Glencoonoge^ is a story of Irish life into which neither politics 
nor religion enter as important factors. It is too long, and its 
interest is not at any point engrossing ; still it permits itself to be 
read with a certain pleasure. Its author bears a name very pon- 
derous with literary suggestiveness, and if his novel cannot be 
said to increase, neither does it greatly diminish the force of this 
antecedent attraction. 

'Those who not only read French with ease but are sensitive 
to the poetic and philosophic aspects of religion, will b^ sure to 

* Colonel Carter of Cartersvllle. By F. Hopkinson Smith. New York and Boston; 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

t Glencoonogi. By Richird Brinsley Sheridan Knowles. Baltimore : John Murphy 
& Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 605. 

find both pleasure and profit in a recent work * by M. Claude- 
Charles Charaux, professor of philosophy at the University of 
Grenoble. Following, but not too closely, in the path trodden 
by Chateaubriand in his Genie du Christianisme, he has brought 
fancy and imagination to the aid of a serene intelligence and an 
ardent faith, in order to devote all to the task of adorning and 
edifying the City of his love, the Church Catholic and Roman. 
To our mind he has made a very beautiful success. Among the 
dialogues of the first part, that entitled Notre Dame du Hetre has 
given us especial pleasure. But the second part of the work, which 
is more exclusively devoted to philosophy, is also by far the 
most suggestive and noteworthy. The pair of dialogues on " Time 
and the Unity of Time," and " Space and Matter," in which the 
chief interlocutors are the youths who were afterwards General 
Duroc and Count Hercules de Serre, to whom their instructor, 
Laillet, a learned Augustinian monk, plays the part of Socrates 
in drawing fine distinctions from their lips, are especially valuable. 
Some remarkably clever work may be found in a volume f 
called Noughts and Crosses, just brought out by Cassell's. There 
is a strongly individual touch in these sketches, and a refreshing 
novelty of tone and treatment. And in the quaint and delicate 
conceits of " Old ^Eson," " The Magic Shadow," and one 'or two 
others, there is vivid poetic insight as well. " Q " is plainly 
a man of imaginative substance, whose stores seem in no 
immediate danger of exhaustion. He has a style, too, which is 
not merely eminently his own, but a possession to be congratu- 
lated on. 

In fact, those who have of late been dinning into the ears of 
whosoever could be got to listen, that the " short story " is a rare 
and almost impossible form of art, practicable only by the excep- 
tionally gifted few, seem to be getting the lie direct from a more 
or less successful crowd of aspirants, new and old. Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps, for one in the title-page to this latest volume \ 
she discards the recently assumed addition to her name has never 
appeared to better advantage than in the fourteen tales of which 
it is made up. She profits more than most writers by compression, 
her most evident weakness having always been a tendency, to 
slop over and waste her motive power. These stones are of un- 
equal excellence. The best of them are the clerical sketches like 

* La Cite Chretienne. Dialogues et Rtcits. Par Claude-Charles Charaux, Professeur de 
Philosophic a la Faculte" des Lettres de Grenoble. Paris : Firmin-Didot & Cie. 

\Xougkb and Crosses. By Q. New York: Cassell Publishing Co. 

\ Fourteen to One. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. New York and Boston ; Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 

VOL. LIII. 39 



606 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

" His Relict," " The Reverend Malachi Matthew," and that which 
gives its title to the collection. The painful story " Too Late " 
is full of the kind of sentiment and material which afford this 
writer her amplest scope and opportunity. 

Mr. Stockton, too, is put with a collection* of his stories, old 
and new. The humor in them is as Stocktonian as ever, but some- 
how it fails to produce its old effect Perhaps that is because one 
has become so accustomed to laugh in the right places with Mr. 
Stockton that both mirth and interest have acquired an invincible 
tendency to merge into something which retains but a shadowy 
likeness to either. " Euphemia among the Pelicans " is the pleas- 
antest of these sketches. 

An author who deliberately excludes love between the sexes 
from the means and motives of a proposed fiction, and yet pro- 
duces a powerful novel whose interest does not flag at any point, 
deserves to be congratulated. And that is what has been done in 
Jerry\ by Miss Sarah Barnwell Elliott. It is true that as a man 
Jerry takes less firm hold on the reader's sympathies than he did 
as an abused and frightened but indomitably plucky child. But 
there is so much in the book besides its hero ; the study of old 
Joe Gilliam is so masterly, and all that relates to the mine is delin- 
eated with so firm a hand, that attention is enchained from the 
first page to the last. If the construction is thin in parts; if the 
Doctor seems to clamor for more explication than is furnished by 
his life of expiation and the scrap of conversation between him and 
Paul Henley's mother, overheard by Jerry at the ball, these are 
defects which, in their way, testify to the general solidity of the 
novel as a whole. To our notion it is among the best stories 
produced by Southern writers. For one thing, it is not over- 
loaded with description ; the interest is before all things human, 
and the dialect, though marked enough, is not pressed to that 
verge of weariness which makes one reflect on the possible ad- 
vantages of phonetic spelling in reducing all story-tellers to a level 
where sense and not sound would be their only hope. As things 
stand, there must be many readers who, addressing the nov- 
elists of the period, would echo Joe Gillianvs sentiment with regard 
to Jerry's efforts to pronounce his first reading lessons after the 
Doctor's fashion : 

" Joe's English was very demoralizing, and Jerry puzzled sorely 
over his words, speaking slowly and correcting himself when he 

* The Rudder Grangers Abroad, and Other Stories. By Frank R. Stockton. New York : 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 

t Jetry. A Novel. By Sarah Barnwell Elliott. New York : Henry Holt & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 607 

remembered. And Joe was very lenient, treating these efforts as 
signs of the weakness of Jerry's intellect. ' Jest please yerself 'bout 
words, Jerry,' he said kindly; * I don't rayly hev no feeliri agin one 
word or enother ; it's orl one to me, jest so I kin on'erstan yoimns; 
now jest pole erlong, but thet boy an' hisn's fly.' ' 

lermola * is a charmingly told, and in parts almost painfully 
interesting, tale of Polish low life. The theme, almost identical 
with that of Silas Marner, is worked out with an abundance 
of local detail which seems very well managed, and is, at all events, 
very effective. The old lermola, wakened to skill, energy, fore- 
sight, and invention by pure love for a helpless child, after a long 
life of apathetic resignation to 'hopeless poverty, is a very pathetic- 
figure. 

Mr. Crawford's new novel f dresses an old motive the very old- 
est, perhaps, in all the world in a characteristic and taking fash- 
ion. His hero is " one of the genii converted to the faith on 
hearing Mohammed read the Koran by night in the valley Al 
Nakhlah.' 7 For reasons for which we refer those in search ot 
certain entertainment to the tale itself, Khaled has been allowed 
to assume mortal shape and to become the husband of the most 
virtuous and beautiful woman in the world, ZehoWah, daughter of 
the Sultan of Nejed, for whose hand, left at her own disposal by 
her father, hundreds of princes have sued in vain. But, though 
granted mortal life, he can gain an immortal soul only after pro- 
bation. " Zehowah will accept thee in marriage though she love 
thee not," says the angel who conveys to Khaled the decision, 

"for Allah commands that it should be so. But if in the course 
of time this virtuous woman be moved to love, and say to thee, 
4 Khaled, I love thee,' then at that moment thou shalt receive an 
immortal soul, and if thy deeds be good thy soul shall enter para- 
dise with the believers ; but if not, thou shalt burn. Thus saith 
Allah. Thus thou art rewarded, indeed, but wisely and temperately, 
since thou hast not obtained life directly, but only the hope of life." 

The novel, managed in Mr. Crawford's best vein as to acces- 
sories and incident, continues to be a skilful variation on the theme 
of mutual wedded love, what it is and what it is not, and how 
impossible it is to attain it save by the pure grace of God. " You 
must love me as I love you, if you would save me from destruc- 
tion," says Khaled, almost in despair, to the uncomprehending 
Zehowah: 

* [crmola. By Joseph Ignatius Kraszewski. New York: Dodd & Co. 

\Kkaled: A Tale of Arabia. By F. Marion Crawford. New York and London: Mac- 
millan & Co. 



6o3 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

"Death is stronger than man or woman, but love is stronger 
than death, and all else is but a vision seen in the desert, having 
no reality." 

" I will try to understand it, for I see that you are very un- 
happy," said Zehowah. She was silent a r ter this, for Khaled's 
words were earnest and sank into her soul. Yet the more she 
tried to understand what the passion in him could be like, the 
less she was able to understand it, for some of Khaled's actions 
had been foolish, but she supposed that there must have been some 
wisdom in them, having its foundation in the nature of love. 

" What he says is true," she thought; " I married him in order 
to give my people a just and brave king, and he is both brave 
and just. And I am certainly a good wife, for I should be dis- 
solved in shame if another man were to see my face ; and, more- 
over, I am careful of his wants, and I take his kefiyeh from his head 
with my own hands, and smooth the cushions for him, and bring 
him food and drink when he desires it. Or have I withheld from 
him any of the treasures of the palace, or stood in the way of his 
taking another wife ? Until to day I thought, indeed, that this 
talk of love meant but little, and that he spoke of it as an excuse 
for marrying Almasta, who loves him. But when I said at a venture 
that he wished to make me jealous, he confessed the truth. Now 
all the tales of love told by the old women are of young persons 
who have seen each other from a distance but are hindered from 
marrying. And we are already married. Surely, it is very hard 
to understand." 

A Window in Thrums* is not less remarkable for its 
unlabored pathos and delicate humor than for the masterly 
selection of salient points and characteristic traits which attest its 
author's sense of fitness and proportion. It is hardly to be 
called a story, even though the connecting thread which binds 
the separate sketches to the personality of Jess is as strong as 
it is slender. The chapters are thrown together so loosely that 
their unity, though real, resembles that of the outdoor studies 
made by a consummate artist in a single locality and a single 
summer ; each of them begun and finished at a sitting, in which 
the strokes are few, and each stroke tells. The figures stand 
out with astonishing vividness. Jess, in her kitchen window, 
studying life through the scanty specimens of humanity which 
pass up and down the brae, or come to visit her in the cottage 
she has not left in twenty years ; Tammas Haggart, at the pig- 
sty, sitting on an upturned pail, planning a home for impecuni- 
ous geniuses, or dilating on his calling as a humorist to his 
' admiring neighbors ; Gavin Birse, the postman, trying to be off 

*A Winders in Thntms. By J. M. Barrie. New York: Cassell Publishing Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 09 

with the old love before being on with the ne\v ; Jamie, with 
the masculine shyness of a small boy, seeking to restrain the 
sisterly adoration which makes him the butt of all the other 
laddies, and yet unable, through pure softness of heart, totally 
to conceal that he is not as indifferent to Leeby as he wishes to 
appear ; Hendry, the weaver, upright, dull even where love for 
Jess might quicken his comprehension, God-fearing, tender- 
hearted all of them are creations to be remembered. Gavin's 
errand to Mag Lownie, who has been engaged to him a year 
or more, is thus narrated to - Jess and Hendry by Tammas, 
whom the reluctant wooer takes along with him as a witness. 
He wanted one, because " if she winna let me aff, weel and 
guid ; and if she will, it's better to ha'e a witness in case she 
should go back on her word." 

" Weel," said Tammas, " aff we goes to Mag's hoose, an 
sure enough Mag was in. She was alane, too ; so Gavin, no to 
waste time, juist sat doon for politeness' sake, an' syne rises up 
again ; an' says he, ' Marget Lownie, I ha'e a solemn question 
to speir at ye, namely this, Will you, Margat Lownie, let me, 
Gavin Birse, aff?" 

"Mag would start at that?" 

" Sal, she was braw an' cool. I thocht she maun ha'e got 
wind o' his intentions aforehand, for she juist replies, quiet-like, 
' Hoo do ye want aff, Gavin?' 

" ' Because,' says he, like a book, ' my affections has under- 
gone a change.' 

" 'Ye mean Jean Luke,' says Mag. 

" ' That is wha I mean,' says Gavin, very straightforrard. 

"But she didna let him aff, did she?" 

" Na, she wasna the kind. Says she, ' I wonder to hear 
ye, Gavin, but 'am no goin' to agree to naething o' that 
sort.' 

"'Think it ower,' says 'Gavin. 

" * Na, my mind s made up/ says she. 

"'Ye would sune get anither man,' he says earnestly. 

" ' Hoo do I ken that ? ' she speirs, rale sensibly, I thocht, for 
men's no sae easy to get. 

" ' 'Am sure o't,' Gavin says, with michty conviction in his 
voice, 'for ye're bonny to look at, an' weel-kent for bein' a 
guid body.' 

" ' Ay,' says Mag, ' I'm glad ye like me, Gavin, for ye have 
to tak' me.' ' 

"That put a clincher on him," interrupted Hendry. 

"He was loth to gi'e in," replied Tammas, "so he says, 
' Ye think 'am a fine character, Marget Lownie, but ye're very 
far mista'en. I wouldna wonder but what I was lossin' my place 



6 ro TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

some o' thae days, an' syne whaur would ye be ? Marget 
Lownie,' he goes on, 4 'am nat'rally lazy an' fond o' the drink. 
As sure as ye stand there, 'am a reg'lar deevil ! ' 

" That was strong language," said Hendry, " but he would 
be wantin' to fleg [frighten] her." 

"Juist so, but he didna manage 't, for Mag says, ' We a' ha'e 
oor faults, Gavin, an' deevil or no deevil, ye're the man for me!' 

" Gavin thocht a bit," continued Tammas, " an' syne he tries 
her on a new tack. ' Marget Lownie,' he says, ' ye're father's an 
auld man noo, an' he has naebody but yersel' to look after him. 
I'm thinkin' it would be kind o' cruel o' me to tak ye awa' frae 
him.' " 

" Mag wouldna be ta'en in wi' that ; she wasna born on a 
Sawbath," said Jess, using one of her favorite sayings. 

" She wasna," answered Tammas. " Says she, ' Hae nae fear 
on that score, Gavin; my father's fine willin' to spare me.'' 

" An' that ended it ? " 

"Ay, that ended it." 

" Did ye tak' it doon in writin' ? " asked Hendry/ 

" There was nae need," said Tammas, handing round his 
snuff-mull. " No, I never touched paper. When I saw the 
thing was settled, I left them to their coortin'. They're to tak' 
a look at Snecky Hobart's auld hoose the nicht It's to let." 

Mr. Keenan's new novel * is a long and not uninteresting tale 
of the civil war. Lincoln, Sherman, Stanton, President Davis 
and his wife flit in and out of its pages, though none of them 
can be said to contribute greatly to its action. It deals with 
various battles in much detail, but intersperses war with love- 
making which crosses Mason and Dixon's line without a with 
your leave or by your leave. The conversations between the 
various pairs of lovers take usually a sprightly, not to say epi- 
grammatic turn, which suggests the footlights and the soubrette's 
cap and jaunty apron. 

Mr. Grant Allen has just been repeating, in The Fortnightly, 
his old complaint against the restrictions imposed on British 
authors by the dense stupidity and commonplace morality of the 
British public. An Englishman, according to Mr. Allen, though 
desiring in his heart of hearts . such a world-wide fame as the 
Kreutzer Sonata procured for Tolstoi, finds himself cabined, cribbed, 
confined by the demands of the home public, and the fact that 
his bread and butter depend on them alone. No hope of transla- 
tion into foreign tongues awaits him, for none but English- 
speaking people read English books they are quite too tame for 
the Continental palate. So says Mr. Allen, forgetting, per- 

* The Iron Game. By Henry F. Keenan. New York : D. Appleton & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 611 

haps, that Mr. George Moore's venture into the unmentionable 
lands whither the patrons of Mudie decline to be taken, gained 
no more extensive foreign repute than his own. Mr. Allen feels 
that he would like to be free to say " all that is in him," and to 
see his brother novelists likewise set free. An expert in novels 
or in popularized science the two branches of literature which 
Mr. Allen most affects would, we fear, be apt to conclude from 
the specimens given that enough is even better than a feast 
where his work is concerned. He is nothing if not sensational 
in his tale What's Bred in the Bone* where he harps on the 
note of heredity, although something the influence of his 
British environment, one must suppose makes him keep carefully 
within the limits against whose pressure he protests in The 
Fortnightly. The heroine, though an English girl, is descended 
in a direct line from a " mesmeric sorceress who belonged to 
some tribe of far-Eastern serpent-charmers." This ancestress 
married an Englishman in George the Second's time, after having 
been duly baptized, and became the mother of a large family, the 
women of which have continued to transmit to their daughters 
a marvellous intuition and a propensity to the Eastern snake- 
dance which, soon or late, breaks out unexpectedly in every one 
of them. It generally defers its appearance until the first time 
they fall in love or see a live snake. How Elma careered around 
her bed-room with a feather boa in her hand, in lieu of a snake, 
when her time came, and how shocked and alarmed she was, 
not knowing what had befallen her, and how her will finally con- 
quered her propensity and allowed her to marry with a good 
conscience, those readers who desire to know must learn from 
the book itself. 

The recent death of Madame Craven has called forth a beauti- 
ful tribute to her memory from the pen of her friend the 
Vicomte de Meaux.f It is not in the nature of a biographical 
sketch, which, indeed, had long ago been made in a manner 
unnecessary by such matters of personal history as were included 
by Madame Craven in her first and most famous work, Le Rccit 
dune Sceur. All the world, one might say, became her intimate 
friends on the publication of that volume. She wrote it when 
she was nearly sixty, and it is now in its forty-second French 
edition, besides having achieved a wide reputation in the admir- 
able English translation of Miss Emily Bowles. Beginning a 

* What's Bred in the Bone. By Grant Allen. Boston : B. R. Tucker. 
t M i-lamz Craven, ne'e La Ferrjnn.ivs. Parle Vicomte de Meaux. Paris : Librairie Aca- 
ddmique Didier. Perrin et Cie. 



612 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

literary career so late in life, she afterwards produced some four- 
teen or fifteen other works, some of them biographical, others 
fictitious, but all having the same great motive, of inciting souls 
to the love of God, which had first induced her to make what 
must have been the painful effort of unveiling to the world the 
inner lives of those she had' held most dear. The Vicomte de 
Meaux says that on his return from the Catholic Congress held 
at Baltimore in 1889, he was able to tell Madame Craven that 
she was the European author whom he had heard most fre- 
quently spoken of on this side of the water, and concerning 
whom he had been questioned with the most interested and 
affectionate regard. One can easily believe that who, like the 
present writer, owes to her inimitable first volume the most 
powerful external impetus determining the end of an old life and 
the beginning of a new one. None of her succeeding volumes 
have reached so wide a circle of readers, although Fleurange, the 
best of her novels, has passed already into a twenty-eighth 
edition, and, like the Recit cTime Sceur, has been crowned by 
the French Academy. 

Madame Craven reached the very advanced age of eighty- 
two, and even then, says the Vicomte de Meaux, her death 
seemed premature. At eighty- odd she was still youthful. But 
her last illness, which lasted nearly a year, was at first marked 
by a sort of aphasia, which soon passed into an absolute impos 
sibility either to speak or write, while still leaving her hearing 
and her intelligence untouched. It was plain that her affections 
outlived all else, but the exchange of ideas, and the distinct 
manifestation of her will and her desires, was thenceforward for- 
bidden to her. Only at the very end, when she was apprised 
that the last sacraments were about to be administered, the soft 
groan which had become habitual on her lips, changed into a 
sort of joyful cry. "When the Sacred Host was brought to her," 
says the Vicomte de Meaux, " her poor body, already almost 
entirely inert, was seen to make an effort to rise, and her eyes 
burned with a final glow. All was ended for her. A few hours 
later, peacefully and without a struggle, she rejoined in the 
bosom of God those good and charming beings whose history 
she had written and whose memory she had made immortal." 
She had survived all of her own generation, and had never borne 
a child. But her nephew, Count Albert de Mun, son of that 
dear sister Eugenie who had been most near of all to Madame 
Craven's heart, still carries on most nobly the traditions of a 
noble and God-fearing race. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 613 

Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie's essays* on various aspects of nature, 
reprinted from the Christian Union, in which they have been 
appearing during the last four years, are very pleasant reading. 
They are not particularly suggestive, it is true ; but though they 
do not quicken thought, they present some agreeable pictures of 
out-door life as it affects one in a dreamy, semi- reflective mood. 
Mr. Mabie's prose is almost musical at times. Accompanying this 
volume comes, from the same publishers, another f which Mr. Mabie 
prefaces in a manner to persuade one that he would be a more 
trustworthy guide out-of-doors than in the library for people whose 
tastes have not been conventionalized. To us, at least, it seems 
as if no one who really knew and heartily loved his Shakspeare 
could be otherwise than bored, not to say disgusted, with Landor's 
Citation. So that when we are told, as in this introduction, that 
"there is nothing in English which surpasses it in the quality of pure 
literature," and that it is a " transcription of life ... so perfect 
of its kind . . . that we are reminded of the lavish and richly 
colored life of Egypt in * Antony and Cleopatra,' and of the large 
simplicity and massive form of Roman life in 'Julius Caesar,'" our 
interest in Mr. Mabie as an appraiser of literary values is extin- 
guished once for all. 

There is some excellent work in Miss Jewett's new volume, \ 
and none that is not very good. " In Dark New England Days " 
there is a certain weird, half-tragic force very simply attained, as 
most fine touches doubtless are. " The Luck of the Bogans " is also 
very sympathetically told. As a painter of New England life Miss 
Jewett is more subjective, more obviously reflective than her great 
rival in that field, Miss Wilkins. But though her stories have not 
the crisp alertness and unavoidably contagious sense of humor 
which distinguishes the work of the author of Sister Liddy, they 
are, and possibly for that very reason, not less veracious as tran- 
scripts of ordinary New England life. Miss Jewett's style is very 
charming, 

* Under the Trees. By Hamilton W. Mabie. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 

t Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare. By Walter Savage Landor. New 
York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 

\Strangersand Wayfarers. By Sarah Orne Jewett. New York and Boston: Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 



6 14 TALK ABOUT NKW BOOKS. 

I. A CHRISTIAN APOLOGY.* 

The translators of this admirable work are entitled to our 
warmest praise and thanks for the most opportune and useful 
task which they have undertaken and partly fulfilled. We are 
sadly lacking in original works in the very necessary branch of 
Apologetics in the English language. Those who might be 
capable of producing them are deterred by the great cost of 
publication, which publishers are unwilling to assume, having so 
little prospect of a sufficient sale even to defray their expenses, 
let alone making a reasonable profit. In Germany, on the con- 
trary, the most solid and learned works, in this and other 
branches of sacred science, are continually appearing. Some of 
these for instance, the works of Hettinger and Scheeben have 
been translated and published in England, and there are others 
which it would be most desirable to have translated. This is 
being done for Dr. Schanz's Apology by English ecclesiastics, 
although it is issued by an American publisher. It is a work of 
extensive and thorough learning, especially in scientific and his- 
torical branches. It is not so strong in the metaphysical portion 
as in its other parts. The first volume embraces topics of re- 
ligious history, biology, psychology, anthropology, natural theol- 
ogy, cosmology, the unity and antiquity of the human race, etc., 
under the general heading of " God and Nature." The second 
volume, the translation of which is now due, embraces under the 
general head of " God and Revelation " topics in the compara- 
tive history of religion, the origin and credibility of Christianity, 
Prophecy, Miracles, the Bible, and Christology. The third vol- 
ume embraces the principal topics which fall under the general 
heading of " Christ and the Church," concluding with the Papacy 
and the relation between Christianity and general culture. 

The author's style is very condensed, sometimes obscure, and 
evidently has presented great difficulties to the translators. The 
translation is very literal, too much so, in fact, usually correct, 
and sufficiently clear to make the sense intelligible. Neverthe- 
less, it is sometimes more obscure than the original, often awk- 
ward, and showing marks of haste and oversight, which have 
led even to singular mistranslations, unless .these are merely errors 
of the press. On page 437 we read that " Rambouillet has lately 
been vigorously belaboring the now defunct Motais, and he bids 

* A Christian Apology. By Paul Schanz, D.D., D.Ph., Professor of Theology at the 
University of Tubingen. Translated by Rev. Michael F. Glancey and Rev. Victor J. 
Schobel, D.D. In three volumes. Vol. I., " God and Nature." New York and Cincinnati : 
Pustet & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 615 

fair to continue the fight. He strenuously maintains that, accord- 
ing to Moses, the Catnites had long since gone forth from the 
land of Nod, etc." Now, this is the very thing that Motais 
maintained, and in the original we find that the word translated 
" maintains " ' is " bestreitet," which signifies " combats " ; " er 
sucht vor allem zu bestreiten, dass Moses das Geschlecht Kains 
schon friihzeitig aus dem Lande Nod aufbrechen lasse " (p. 353). 

The author has been criticised as falling short of the com- 
mon doctrine of theologians on the guarantee of inspiration against 
all error in matters not pertaining to faith or morals. The trans- 
lators have appended a cautionary note to a passage on page 
367. Those who have not read the whole work in the original 
German will be better able to understand the views of Dr. Schanz 
when the translation of the second volume appears. It contains 
an entire chapter on Inspiration, from which we quote one pas- 
sage : " Was aber den Umfang der Inspiration betrifift, so ist 
daran fest zu halten, dass die ganze Heilige Schrift das Wort 
Gottes enthalt, aber doch nicht alle Theile in gleich unmittelbarer 
Weise. Jedenfalls ist fur alle Theile als Minimum die Irrthums- 
losigkeit zu fordern, welche nur aus gottlichem Beistand und 
gottlicher Einwirkung zu erklaren ist " (p. 343). In respect to 
the extent of inspiration, it must be firmly held that the entire 
Holy Scripture contains the Word of God, yet not, however, 
all parts in an equally immediate manner. In every instance, 
for all parts, the very least which must be exacted is inerrancy, 
which is only to be explained by divine assistance and divine in- 
fluence. 

The mechanical execution of the volume might pass muster 
were it not for the faintness of the impression. 

2. OUR COMMON BIRDS AND HOW TO KNOW THEM.* 

On the farther side of the Harlem River, within easy reach by 
drive or walk, are 'some of the most charming* woodlands imagin- 
able. Along the Bronx, within a stone's throw of Fordham Col- 
lege, are dells and woods so exceedingly beautiful as to enchant 
one into long rambles and day-dreams and wild-flower gatherings 
and pencil sketching. During a recent ramble there we came 
across a great strapping, manly fellow wearing the uniform of St. 
John's cadets, sketching with an enthusiasm worthy of a true lover 

of nature. Not only may one find " woodlands wild " and the 



* Our Common Birds and How to Know Them. By John B. Grant. With sixty-four plates. 
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 



6i6 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

sweet perfumes that come from those humble little flowers, but 
also the wondrous variety of sound ; and, sweetest far, the songs of 
a thousand birds as they flit and glint midst the dank bowers of 
the spring woods. And all this not more than one hour's ride from 
where we write here in the very heart of this great dusty, harsh- 
sounding, albeit attractive city of New York. Those of us who 
are country bred and born, but who are now shut up amidst 
walls of stone and brick, with only a peep at nature now and 
then in the park, have a keener relish, I fancy, for things of na- 
ture than others. Therefore we welcome Mr. Grant's book most 
heartily. It is no uncommon book, though the author is very modest 
in his claim, as is shown by the very first line of his introduction. 
However, Mr. Grant is an ornithologist of no mean ability. His 
introduction tells you something about the book, his authorities, 
and a hint of method of bird study, and the region of his 
observation : " The birds which have come under the author's own 
observation, and whose habits are here recorded, were seen on Long 
Island, near Flushing, and at various points upon the Hudson 
between New York City and Peekskill." Then follows the essay, 
" Our Common Birds and How to Know Them," well written, full of 
information, a practical lesson on how, where, and when to study the 
subject, very valuable to a lover of birds who desires to know some- 
thing more of them than mere unenlightened observation will give 
him. The plates are beautiful illustrations, each accompanied by a 
descriptive text. The plate of the blue jay that winter dandy, a 
veritable Beau Brummell among birds is wonderfully life-like. 
We do not agree with what the author says of the cat-bird. Our 
own observation of this nightingale of the North leads us to think 
that it is not true to say that it has " skulking habits." It may be, 
however, that our .poetical friends of the honeysuckle bush they 
nested there in our youthful days were better bred than most cat- 
birds. Has Mr. Grant ever seen the work of Dr. Howard Jones, of 
Circleville, Ohio Birds of Ohio and Their Nests ? When a book is 
limited to one hundred copies, and each copy costing $150 it can- 
not now be obtained for less than $300 a copy, we believe every 
one does not get to see it. Mr. Grant should see it, however. Our 
Common Birds and How to Know Them is more accessible, and 
hence really more valuable. Its index is copious, the price modest, 
its English excellent. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 617 

3. MEDITATIONS ON THE GOSPELS.* 

The general plan of these excellent meditations is that the 
Gospel of each Sunday furnishes the matter for the whole week. 
There is an appendix with meditations on special feasts of the 
saints. We have any number of books of meditations, from all 
of which some profit may doubtless be gained, but there are 
few that can be highly commended. Extravagant, high flown 
language, strained interpretations of Scripture; sentences which 
sound well but mean little practically ; repetition of ideas in differ- 
ent words, are common faults, all of which are absent in the 
book before us. It combines brevity with great suggestiveness. 
Each sentence is in its right place and furnishes abundant 
material for thought, and there is a logical connection between 
each part of the meditation. We are happy, therefore, to recom- 
mend this practical, common-sense book of meditations. 

4. THE CENTENARY LIFE OF . ST. ALOYSIUS.f 

We trust we are not too late in congratulating the professor 
and students of the Rhetoric Class of '92 of St. Francis Xavier's 
College on their production of the Life of St. Aloysius Gonzaga. 
In a work of this kind, written by boys under nineteen, one 
would naturally expect to find bombast of language and crudity 
of thought. But such is not the case here. There is a gentle 
modesty and simplicity pervading the whole book which gives it 
a peculiar charm. We are told that almost ten thousand copies 
have been sold surely a success unparalleled in devotional litera- 
ture. It is not often that an ascetic book reaches its eighth edition 
within a few weeks nor is it often that an ascetic book can 
have appreciative and laudatory criticism from secular papers such 
as the New York Sun, Herald, and Recorder. The modern 
young man, whose chief ambition is a life of luxury, can draw 
much profit from reading this little book. 

5. THE AGES OF FAITH. $ 

Two years ago we praised the former volumes of this beauti- 
ful publication of Kenelm Digby's great work. What we said 

* Meditations on the Gospels for Every Day in the Year. By Pere Me'daille, S.J. Trans- 
lated into English under the direction of the Rev. W. H. Eyre, S.J. London: Burns 
& Gates, Limited ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 

t Life of St. Abysius Gonzaga. Edited by Rev. J. F. X. O'Conor, S.J. New York : St. 
Francis Xavier's College. 

\ Mores Catholic i ; or, Ajes of Faith. By Kenelm H. Digby. Vol. III. New York: 
P. O'Shea. 



6i8 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

then we now reiterate concerning the third volume. Certainly 
Mr. O 'Shea's enterprise should receive ready support from the 
public, so that the forthcoming volumes may soon be at hand. 
We will quote the closing paragraph of the third volume : " The 
monks and friars have conducted us to the threshold of those 
true asylums of peace, of which, in the beginning, I said that 
we should speak, where souls through powers that faith bestowed 
won rest and ease and peace, with bliss that angels shared. 
Our course tends unto the summit. ' On to the abbey ! ' as the 
poet says. Already we have met the men who come from it, 
whose strains still sound to us like the sweet south wind that 
breathes upon a bank of violets : but no more yet of this ; for 
'tis a chronicle of day by day, not a relation for a visit, nor be- 
fitting this late meeting. Here will we repose and wait till the 
morn, in golden mantle clad, shall walk o'er the dew of yon 
bright eastern hill. So that, gentle reader, with respect to the 
peace enjoyed and imparted during faithful ages, half yet re- 
mains unsaid." 

6. BELLS OF THE SANCTUARY.* 

Catholic literature sustained a real loss in the sudden death 
of Kathleen O'Meara in 1888, in the full maturity of the noble 
career she had chosen, and to which she gave the full bent of a 
pious and highly cultivated intelligence. 

The life of the holy priest De Segur, and that of the saintly 
Madame Legros, foundress and first novice mistress of the Sisters 
of Charity, compose the third of the series of publications enti- 
tled Bells of the Sanctuary, and are the last bequest to us of 
the gifted author. These lives are given in a clear, concise style, 
are of intense interest, and have received the warm commenda- 
tion of Cardinal Manning, who thus sums up the life of De Se- 
gur : " The life of Monseigneur Gaston De Segur is one of he- 
roic patience, zeal, and piety, under an affliction which would 
have crushed any soul which was not sustained, hour after hour, 
by continual union with God. For six- and- twenty years he per- 
severed in preaching and hearing confessions of students, soldiers, 
working-men, and of the poor, daily and without intermission, in 
total blindness." 

His youth was innocent in the world ; endowed with all social 
gifts and great artistic powers, beloved by kindred and friends. 

* The Blind Apostle and A Heroine of Charity. Third series of " Bells of the Sanctuary." 
By Kathleen O'Meara. London: Burns & Gates; New York: The Catholic Publication 
Society Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 619 

He began life in diplomacy ; gave up all to become a priest ; was 
sent to Rome by the imperial government in France, in an office 
of great distinction, with an open and certain ecclesiastical career, 
almost promised, before him ; but in one day and in a moment 
one eye became absolutely sightless. The other soon began to 
fail. He returned to France, and shortly after, while walking 
with his brother, he suddenly said " I am blind." The other eye 
was also dark. Then -began a life truly heroic. To console his 
mother he went to Tours, to Lourdes, to Ars, if haply he might 
miraculously regain his sight. But he had made an absolute sub- 
mission of his will to the will of God, and asked nothing but 
patience. For in his first Mass as a priest he had begged of our 
Blessed Mother whatsoever grace he needed most, and he believed 
that this affliction was the answer to his prayer. 

Patience he had, and much need of it, not alone because h^ 
was blind, but in regard to the sufferings he endured from the 
spiritual blindness of those with whom he came in contact. To 
De Segur was granted what Gabriel Malagrida and other saints 
have beautifully called "the supreme happiness of the supreme igno- 
miny." Which, being explained, is not only to be persecuted by 
the enemies of God, but by God's own servants ; to be misin- 
terpreted, misunderstood, and reviled, even by " the ministers of 
the Temple." In the midst of the untold good De Segur was 
loing for God's poor, at the very time when his life was threat- 
ened by the Freemasons of France, the holy priest, misinterpret- 
ed, misunderstood, and reviled, was suspended by the Archbishop 
>f Paris. How gloriously God righted this holy man Miss 
O'Meara has well told. 

The life of Madame Legros was truly heroic in devotion and 
celestial in wisdom. It was her wisdom that St. Vincent de Paul 
spoke of when he described her work. u Your convent," he said, 
" will be the house of the sick ; your cell, a hired room ; your 
chapel, the parish church ; your cloister, the streets of the city 
or the wards of the hospital ; your enclosure, obedience ; your 
grating, the fear of God ; your veil, holy modesty." The Sisters 
of Charity, who fill the world and are revered by all, are the 
reflection of her mind and example. 

The book is well printed on tinted paper and is tastefully 
bound. 



620 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [July, 

7. THE VENERABLE MADELEINE BARAT.* 

The object of this volume is to present to Catholics a cheaper 
and more popular history of the servant of God, the venerable 
Mother Barat, than the voluminous one translated from the 
French of the Abbe Biunard some years ago, and, while thus 
bringing it within the reach of a greater number of readers, to 
spread more widely the knowledge of her virtues and the lesson 
of her life. Mother Barat's virtues were many, no one of them 
more conspicuous than her deep humility. It was her profound 
humility which led to her great achievements ; and if God 
gives us grace to build in the least measure on the same foun- 
dation we may hope to accomplish something towards the same 
end. Lady Fullerton asks, " Who was ever more simply humble^ 
than Mother Barat ? " and answers in the record of a life that 
not alone preserved its humility but as well the perfect simpli- 
city which is the delicate bloom of that heavenly virtue. 

Mother Barat felt deeply that we want saints in what is call- 
ed society as well as amongst the poor. "Be apostles, my chil- 
dren," she said, as much to the young brides of the Faubourg 
St. Germain as to the nuns she sent to the shores of the Missis- 
sippi ; and, indeed, it is true that were there more saints among 
the rich there would soon be but few poor. We. regret to 
say that the publisher's part of this book is anything but well 
done. 



* The Life of the Venerable Madeleine Barat, Foundress of -the Society of the Sacred Heart oj 
Jesus. From the French, by Lady Georgiana Fullerton. New York : P. O'Shea. 



1 89*.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 621 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

ALL COMMUNICATIONS RELATING TO READING CIRCLES, LISTS OF BOOK?, 
ETC., SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION, NO. 
415 WEST FIFTY-NINTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. 

Catholic authors are watching with interest the progress of 
the movement initiated by the Columbian Reading. Union. The 
letters from them printed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD have 
been eagerly read and discussed in various Reading Circles. We 
again renew our request that authors will kindly send to us 
any suggestion which may assist in the diffusion of Catholic 
literature. In the catalogue of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
of Boston, we find eighteen books by Catholic authors. Six ot. 
the number are from the pen of the well-known writer whose, 
name is signed to this letter : 

" It is cheering to know that we are to have a complete list 
of Catholic authors of our vernacular. There never was a time 
when a solidarity of our literature was more needed than the 
present. A vast and ever increasing mass of printed matter is 
before the people, and infiltrates through all the homes of this 
nation. Much of it is pernicious, and of a nature to confuse the 
understanding as to what is true. It rises before us like some 
tower oi Babel, seemingly pointing skyward, but in reality a 
fabric of error. How good and useful, then, to have a safe guide 
to point the way : how valuable for those who read, and how 
inspiriting for those who write. 

"The literature of a country should be two-fold in its scope: 
it should not only be the exponent of the best thought of the 
age, but it should lead this thought to highest aims. Authors 
are the chosen intellectual standard-bearers. The public should 
follow those whose motto is ' Excelsior,' and turn away 
from low pessimistic realism. Yet how to know where to turn 
has been a perplexing question. Your careful labors will assist to 
dispel uncertainty. They will give light where light is needed, 
and future generations will profit thereby. 

" MADELEINE VINTON DAHLGREN. 

" Washington, D. " 

* # * 

We gladly accept the offer of assistance contained in the fol- 
lowing letter from Cork : 

" For well-nigh forty years I have been an ardent reader, es- 
pecially of Catholic literature ; have chiefly formed the library of the 
Catholic Young Men's Society here, and have collected a consider- 
able number of volumes for my own use, perhaps a. thousand. 

VOL. LIII. 40 



622 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [July. 

" While engaged in the pleasing duty of collecting donations of 
books for the reconstruction of our library about this time 
last year, I sent for a copy of a publication which, no doubt, would 
be of great use to your Reading Union : A Catalogue of Books 
presented to His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. by the Catholics of Great 
Britain on the occasion of his Jubilee, 1887; and inside a further 
title is : ' Papal Jubilee Library : A collection of books written 
or published by Catholics born or living in England daring the 
years 1837-87. Presented to the Sovereign Pontiff Leo the 
Thirteenth on the occasion of his Golden Jubilee, December 31, 
1887.' Should you desire to get a copy of this book and find 
that it is out of print, my copy would be most cheerfully placed 
at your service. 

" My writing now is not entirely from a disinterested motive. 
Reading your articles in THE CATHOLIC WORLD entices me to 
ask for membership, provided that one so far removed as I am 
could benefit by membership. I would earnestly ask to be 
sent a copy of Books and Redding, by Brother Azarias, also a 
copy of the list of his works which you have published. For 
our young men's reading-room I should also ask to be furnished 
with any reports you publish, rules for your reading classes or 
other study movements. 

" I think, from the books which I have collected for my own 
use, I may be able to somewhat assist your Union in its noble 
objects of encouraging the reading of Catholic works and enlarg- 
ing the scope of Catholic literature generally. 

" THOMAS H. ATTRIDGE. 

" Cork, Ireland." 

* * * 

Under the guidance of the Very Rev. Canon Sheehan, Mr. 
Thomas H. Attridge, and others a library has been formed for 
the use of the Cork Young Men's Society. Its objects are well 
stated in this appeal : 

" Much has been said of the want in Cork of the first requisite 
of intellectual progress a good popular library. That want is 
now, at least partially, supplied. There is not an institution in 
the kingdom that we know of which offers as good -a library o* 
such terms and with such facility as the Cork Young Men's 
Society now presents to its members. There are not, perhaps, a 
dozen men in Cork who possess, except as subscribers to the 
comparatively expensive public libraries, such a collection of books 
as that of which every member of the Young Men's Society may 
now be master. 

" Come then, brothers ; whoso feels the noble ambition to 
know truly and think rightly throbbing' at his heart, making his 
young blood bound, or preserving in age the vivacity of youth, 
let him avail of advantages such as he never had before. Whoso 
is resolved not to be a mere clod of the valley, or a mere imple- 
ment of commerce, let him coma. Whoso would glance back 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 623 

through the world of the past, or look abroad upon the world of 
the present, or peer out into the world of the future, let him 
come. Let those come who would train their own minds for 
the rough practical contest with the world ; who would not 
lose some of the greatest pleasures and advantages of life ; who 
would not expose themselves unprotected to some of its greatest 
dangers. Let those come who would learn the great sciences, 
know the great deeds, grasp the thoughts, or listen to the 
sweet songs of our own time and of other days. 

" Let us not leave refinement and cultivation of mind to thoss 
who call themselves our ' betters.' We have as good a right to 
enjoy and use the advantages of literature as any man in this 
land. Let us be convinced that any station is rendered noble 
and beautiful when its duties are performed and its opportunities 
are availed of; but self-indulgence, recklessness, and ignorance, 
these are in every station vulgar, disgusting, and deplorable. A 
scholar is a scholar, in purple or in rags ; a clown is a clown, 
whether he wears a tradesman's cap or a duke's coronet." 

"The character of the library is as good and as varied as the 
limited means of the society permit. Some of the departments, 
however, are almost empty, most of them are imperfect. It is for 
the members themselves, and those who think with them and 
those who would help the cause of religion and education amongst 
us, to say whether it shall so continue. Valuable books are 
mouldering in half the houses of Cork which would be of rich 
utility in the Young Men's Society. Persons die every week 
letting their libraries be sold or scattered, who by bequeathing 
them to the society would really promote God's glory and man's 
salvation. This should not be. But it is on the efforts of mem- 
bers themselves that most reliance should be placed. 

" The circulation of good books is an obvious benefit. It is en- 
forced not only by experience but by the most influential authority 
- of the present time. In fact, every one who observes with at- 
tention the condition of the people and the signs of the times 
becomes alarmingly conscious that the spread of irreligious and 
immoral publications is just the one danger that society has now 
most to fear, and that we cannot hope practically to meet that 
danger unless we are prepared to supplant these publications by 
good ones. The licentious novel, the Protestant or infidel news- 
paper, the brilliant, self-assured, but false and foolish essay these 
are the devil's weapons now ; and as there is a change in the 
policy of evil, so there must be a change in the policy of good. 
Let us look to it while it is yet time. Man is no machine 
never believe it. His hand is obedient to his head and heart : 
but these are ruled by ideas; and if you have allowed the insid- 
ious voice of error to beguile the one, and the fatal fascination of 
sin to seize upon the other, then you have allowed a man to be 
transformed into a demon ; and if you let this go on, nothing 
is safe; law, property, life, honor, religion all will sooner or 
later perish." 



624 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [July* 

A representative of the Pacific Coast Women's Press Associa- 
tion informs us that its scope is broader than that of any other 
press association in the United States. Its very commendable 
purpose is to educate the younger members of the association, 
and to give to all the members practical assistance in their work. 
Books written by members and well advertised ; readers and lec- 
turers are secured a hearing before the best-known newspaper repre- 
sentatives ; a circulating library and other means of self-improve- 
ment are to be supplied with earnest good-will and a deep spirit of 
helpfulness. As many of the members are Catholics, we may look 
to this Press Association for some of our future Catholic authors. 

The Pacific Coast has a climate very favorable for literary work. 

# * # 

Some of the members of our Reading Circles, gifted with a 
talent for writing, will be interested to know that the Pacific 
Coast Literary Bureau, 1419 Taylor Street, San Francisco, Cal, 
is prepared to take charge of the reading and criticism of all 
kinds of manuscript ; and to revise for publication short stories, 
novels, poems, etc. The manager is Mrs. Emelie Tracy Y. Park- 
hurst. 

We have received the following list of Pacific Coast Catholic 
writers : Charles Anthony Doyle, Sister Anna Rafael, Marcella 
Fitzgerald, Elizabeth Hogan, Elodie Hogan, W. S. Green, Emilie 
Tracy Y. Parkhurst, Mary Lambert, Teresa I. Talbot Condon, 
Agnes Manning, Carrie Stevens Walter, Harriet Skidmore, Kate 
Nesfield, Rose O'Halloran, Charles Warren Stoddard, Daniel 
O'Connell, R. E. White, and Rev. Father Crovvley. 

* * * 

Since the publication of the list of Catholic authors in the 
January (1891) CATHOLIC WORLD a number of additional nam^s 
have been sent to us from various places. Names only will' 
not give us the desired information. Concerning such Catholic 
authors we wish to know: (i) the titles of books, (2) the names 
of publishers, (3) an indication of which books are now for sale. 
W r e would like to have our complete list of authors thoroughly 
reliable as a guide to book-buyers and for reference use in libra- 
ries. Though the task of arranging the data at our disposal is 
very tedious, we hope to get it completed during the summer 

months. 

* * . # 

The missionary work to be done by Catholic literature is too 
often forgotten. In a Western State eight Catholic books of 
standard merit, though some of them are repulsively printed, 
have been read by a "would-be convert." He has made a 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 625 

good selection to start with, and if he will write again stating 
his difficulties, we shall cheerfully suggest a further course of 
reading. His letter is as follows : 

" I have read Faith of Our Fathers, by Cardinal Gibbons ; 
and Plain Talk, by Segur ; have managed to borrow a cate- 
chism ; Think Well On't and Catholic Christian Instructed, by 
Challoner ; Papist Misrepresented, by Gother ; Cobbett's Protes- 
tant Reformation, and the Mission Book. If these books are not 
quite suitable I am willing to purchase anything you specially 
recommend to be read. I am a would-be convert, a school 
teacher, and have just received an eye-opener and am anxious for 
more knowledge. There is no Catholic church nearer than seventy- 
five miles. I have never seen the priest, and no members in 
this vicinity have yet entered on their Easter duties. I am 
anxious to gain the greatest possible knowledge without reading 
the same over and over in different books, and to save time and 
expense ; and then turn colporteur. Was about to sell Alden's 
Manifold Cyclopedia, but found it endorsed only by Protestants, 
and wanted to secure the full set of volumes before I became 
interested in Roman Catholicity. Can you please recommend a 
cyclopaedia from Catholic origin which is more truthful and su- 
perior to Alden's Manifold?" 

* * * 

On Catholic subjects especially there is no cyclopaedia more 
trustworthy than Appletons'. Two prominent Catholic writers, 
Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, D.D., and John Gilmary Shea, LL.D., 
were employed on the staff of revisers, while the list of contri- 
butors contains the names of several eminent Catholic scholars. 
Cardinal Gibbons gave his opinion of the work in these words : 

" For the American reader and student I regard Appletons' 
American Encyclopedia as by far the best work of the kind that 
we have, and I cordially commend it to all as being just and 
fairly accurate in the vast amount of information it furaishes. 

"J. CARDINAL GIBBONS. 

"Baltimore, January 31, 1889." 

# * # 

A writer in the Michigan Catholic has given this favorable 
opinion of the Columbian Reading Union : 

" For the last three years New York has been the head 
centre of the crusade in favor of Catholic literature. THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD has been there doing the laborious pre- 
paratory work. It has searched catalogues of publishers, 
consulted bibliographies, prepared courses of reading, and by 
its enthusiastic devotion it has succeeded in arousing the interest 
of every thinking reader in a cause so pregnant with the happiest 
effects. Ever since it came into existence this magazine has played 



626 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [July, 

a conspicuous part in defending and advancing the cause of Cath- 
olic education. We think the patient industry expended on its 
Columbian Reading Union will not be the least fruitful of its labors. 
Moreover, there is nothing selfish or narrow about the men who 
make this magazine. They are the first to hail the coming of the 
Catholic Reading Circle Review and to recommend it to Amer- 
ican readers. This spirit of cb- operation among the leaders will be 
a valuable example for all the promoters of the work. We must 
all work with zealous and united effort. The spread of Catholic 
thought, the knowledge of a long maligned, long misunderstood 
church and people is the great missionary work of the day. And 
every Catholic from the Pope to the peasant can do his part. In 
union there is strength. If we work with earnest and united effort 
success is sure to follow. CLERUS." 

# # * 

The editor of the Northwestern Chronicle, Rev. John Conway, 
kindly endorses our work in very complimentary terms: 

" Our readers in the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis know of 
ma ny excellent local literary societies. The societies in these two 
cities are doing very good work, but there is room for more of 
them. The Columbian Reading Union, whose headquarters is in 
New York, is setting a good example to the whole country. Its 
object is to promote the study of Catholic literature. How well it 
is succeeding may be gathered from the various reports of the dif- 
ferent reading clubs which it has influenced. If the Union did no 
more than to prepare the long list of Catholic authors published in 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD, even this work entitles it to great praise. 
The list is restricted to those authors whose writings have appeared 
in English. Though by no means complete, it is a long and an 
honorable one, covering almost every field of literature. There are 
names in it which many people took for granted belonged to others 
than Catholics, although there was no reason why they should. 
The Catholic reader has a grand list from which to choose, and 
he is a mere snob and nothing more in literature who will not see 
merit in many of these writers. Those who note the trend of 
readers remark that some Catholics take a certain pride in stating 
that they never read a Catholic book. If these people were cata- 
logued their place in the world of literature would be similar to 
the social position of those Catholics who boast that they never 
associate with their fellow-Catholics The former are intellectual 
nonentities ; the latter are the objects of secret contempt, con- 
cealed only through politeness. The Columbian Reading Union is 
doing a great deal to establish a healthy state of literature among 
Catholics. We wish it every success." 

We hope that these words of encouragement will urge the 
members and friends of the Columbian Reading Union to renewed 
activity in assisting us to complete speedily our list of Catholic 
authors. M. C. M. 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 627 



WITH THE PUBLISHER. 



AMONG the many letters of good cheer which greeted the 
Publisher during the past month, and which are unhappily too 
numerous and often too lengthy to quote, there was one from 
which an extract will be opportune for the Publisher's text this 
month : 

" Returning to after an absence bf seven months in 

Europe, I am glad to see the admirable change in THE CATH- 
OLIC WORLD, which has been welcomed in our house for many 
years since April, 1865. Accept our congratulations, not only 
for the fine appearance of the magazine but for the excellent 

standard it has so long maintained." 

* 
* * 

This, my dear reader, is not a good month in which to call upon 
your enthusiasm for any kind of literature. You care for little else 
than to keep cool. Business is dull, vacation is at hand, you are 
fagged out with hard work perhaps, and you feel that your 
mind is unequal to anything heavier than a light diet of fiction. 
But the Publisher thinks it is just the time to tell you of his 
plans for the future ; and he hopes, indeed he feels sure, that he 
has your attention and your interest. 

* 

* * 

For of course you have said " Amen " to the congratulations 
of his correspondent You not only agree with what has been 
said .of the magazine, but it is not unlikely that you think 
you would put it stronger. Of course you would, and of 
course you will when you send the next renewal of your sub- 
scription. Don't forget it, please, and in the meantime re- 
hearse it frequently for the benefit of your immediate acquaint- 
ance. You know it is a fine magazine, that no effort is spared 
to make it such, that it has qualities which make it compare 
favorably with the best of its contemporaries. Don't be afraid to 
give these good qualities an equally good airing. You can't give 
the magazine and its aims too much publicity. It is in just such 

soil that it will thrive. 

* 

* * 

You may learn something of enthusiasm in this respect from 



628 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [July, 

a few sentences taken at random from two letters received by 
the Publisher from readers of the magazine who are not Catho- 
lics. The first is from a gentleman who holds a prominent posi- 
tion in public life, and whose name is known and honored through- 
out the land : " I enclose my check for $4 for the coming year's 
subscription to THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Some one has been kind 
enough to send it to me. Although I am not a Catholic, I find 
it such manly, Christian reading that I am glad to pay for it." 
Another writes: "I always welcome it first among all the regu- 
lar periodicals I receive, and though I am a Protestant I always 
recommend it to my friends." 

*** 

If every reader of the magazine had something of this enthu- 
siasm and put it into such practical shape it would speedily be felt 
in the right way at the Publisher's desk. I know the Publisher 
has said all this before, but he cannot say it too often. He has 
undertaken a number of plans which look to the improvement of 
the magazine, to the enlargement of the sphere of its usefulness. 
And he expects your support; he has counted on it in all that 
he has undertaken, and he feels that he will have no use for the 
word disappointment. 



And what has the Publisher been doing ? Well, he has been 
planning on a large scale on so large a scale, indeed, that there 
are some fulks who call him an optimist, a word which can be 
interpreted according to the taste and fancy of the interpreter. 
And he made the first step towards the realization of these plans 
when he plunged into debt and began the erection of a large 
building which will be used for the publication of THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD, and for spreading the Gospel generally through the me- 
dium of printer's ink. This building is now almost completed ; 
machinery, presses, and type have been purchased ; and he hopes 
it will not be long before the magazine will be printed, bound, and 
mailed from its new home and under his own supervision. The 
added control he thus obtains over every department of the 
magazine will enable him the more readily to adopt every new 
plan to make it better and stronger and more widely read. 



* 
* * 



All this is the result of months of thought and labor, and in- 
volves the expenditure of many thousands of dollars. It has 
been done with confidence in its ultimate success. It is don; 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHED. 629 

for the cause of God ; His- blessing is invoked upon it, and 
in His name we appeal to our readers for the help, the en- 
couragement, and the generosity to further the cause which gives 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD a reason for its existence and con- 
tinuance. 

* 
* * 

It must be of interest to our readers to learn of a very 
warm discussion in the London Spectator (April i8-May 30 
inclusive) provoked by Dr. Abbott's attack on Cardinal Newman. 
The doctor, whose tendencies in religious thought are those of the 
Broad Church type, has recently published through Macmillan & 
Co. a work entitled Philomythus, in which he discusses Newman's 
Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles. He characterizes the late Cardinal 
as "a lover of fables," and while disavowing any intention of ac- 
cusing him of insincerity, harshly criticises him on personal grounds, 
condemns his style for looseness and slovenliness, and charges him in 
some instances with " self-deception and a monstrous manipulation 
of conscientious conviction." These views gave rise to the lengthy 
controversy noted above, in which both Mr. R. H. Hutton and 
Mr. Wilfrid Ward were enlisted in behalf of Cardinal Newman. The 
points raised are too numerous for summary in this department ; 
the whole discussion is worthy of a regular article. We venture, 
however, to call the attention of our readers to the matter because 
of the interest which anything touching Cardinal Newman is sure 
to receive from Catholics generally. 



In the wake of Mr. Sonnenschein's The Best Books, Henry 
Frowde, London, will issue at once A Guide Book to Books, by 
Mr. Sargent and Mr. Bernard Whishaw. The total number of 
books on all subjects recommended in this " Guide " is about 
six thousand. While its plan is similar to that laid down in The 
Best Books, arranging the titles by subjects, giving prices, pub- 
lishers, etc., it differs from it in giving to each title brief de- 
scriptive notes. A Guide to the Choice of Books is the title of 
another work somewhat similar in character to those mentioned 
above. It is edited by Arthur H. Acland, and " has been pre- 
pared for those who have not competent advisers to tell them 
what to read, as well as to assist those who are responsible for 
libraries of books intended for popular or general use." 

The International Academy of Volapiik is now completing 
the normal grammar of the " universal language." It will be at 



630 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [July, 

once translated and published simultaneously in fourteen lan- 
guages : French, -English, Russian, German, Danish, Spanish, 
Portuguese, Italian, Hungarian, Roumanian, Dutch, Flemish, Swed- 
ish, and Japanese. The Academy of Volapiik, founded in 1887 
by the Munich Congress, and definitely established at the Paris 
Congress of 1889, is composed at present of thirty-five members, 
representing eighteen nationalities. The American members are 
Colonel Charles E. Sprague, of New York City; F. W. Mitch- 
ell, of Cambridge, Mass., and Lieutenant M. W. Wood, U.S.A., 
of Fort Randall, Dakota. The publication of this normal gram- 
mar is designed to put an end to certain dissensions, " appar- 
ent," it is said, " rather than real," which now exist among the 
adherents of Volapiik. 

The famous Greek manuscript of the New Testament, which 
dates from the fifth century and constitutes one of the chief 
treasures of the Vatican Library, where it is well known to 
scholars by its catalogue number, 1209, is now being phototypi- 
cally fac-similied by order of Pope Leo XIII., who intends to pre- 
sent a copy of the work to each of the principal libraries of 
Christendom. 

Harper & Brothers have ready for immediate publication Jin- 
rikisha Days in Japan, by Eliza R. Scidmore ; A Group of Noble 
Dames, by Thomas Hardy, and Unhappy Loves of Men of Genius, 
by Thomas Hitchcock. They will also issue a new popular edi- 
tion of W. C. Prime's / Go a-Fishing, and a library edition of 
H. Rider Haggard's Eric Brighteyes. 

Literary Industries, a volume by Hubert Howe Bancroft, is 
announced as nearly ready for publication by Harper & Broth- 
ers. The work is largely autobiographical, and contains the 
story of the conception of Mr. Bancroft's great history, the man- 
ner of its composition, and the .methods by which the materials 
for its completion were collected. There are many interesting 
reminiscences, also, of the famous men with whom Mr. Bancroft 
was from time to time thrown in contact, and numerous literary 
digressions, which give additional zest to an already entertaining 
narrative. 

Teaching in Both Continents is the title of a volume by E. C 
Grasby, which is introduced to American readers by Prof. W. 1 
Harris, which will be published by the Cassell Publishing Co. 
is a comparative study of our school system in connection with 
those of other nations. 






1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 631 

Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, O., have just ready a work 
entitled Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley historical 
and biographical essays on the early travellers and annalists, the 
pioneer press, early periodicals, the first libraries, pioneer schools, 
and numerous sketches of literary men and women, by Dr. W. H. 
Venable; Pronao : of Holy Writ establishing, on documentary 
evidence, the authorship, date, form, and contents of each of its 
books, and the authenticity of the Pentateuch, by Rabbi Isaac 
M. Wise. 

The Catholic Publication Society Co. has just published : 

History of St. John's College, Fordham. By H. Gaffney 
Taaffe, A.B. Profusely illustrated. 

The official translation of the Holy Father's Encyclical on 
the Labor Question. 

The same Company announces -. 

TJt Science of the Saints in Practice. By John Baptist 
PaganL, second General of the Institute of Charity. Vol. 
III., September-December. (Vols. I. and II. have already 
been issued.) 

Life of St. Francis di Girolamo, S.J. By E. M. Clerke. 
(JMew volume Quarterly Series.) 

St. Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits. By Stewart Rose. 
Anew edition, with about 100 illustrations. 



632 BOOKS RECEIVED, [July, 1851. 

BOOKS RECEIVED. . 

THE LIFE OF THE VENERABLE MADELEINE BARAT. From the French, by 
Lady Georgiana Fullerton. New York : P. O'Shea. 

TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE. By Sir Stephen E. De Vere, Bart. London : 
Walter Scott ; New York : Thtomas Whittaker ; Toronto : W. J. Gage 
& Co. 

PROTECTION OR FREE TRADE. By Henry George. New York : Henry 
George &' Co. 

MARY OF NAZARETH, a Legendary Poem (complete in Three Parts). By Sir 
John Croker Barrow, Bart. London: Burns & Gates; New York : Catho- 
lic Publication Society Co. 

CATHOLIC BELIEF; OR, A SHORT AND SIMPLE EXPOSITION OF CATHOLIC 
DOCTRINE. By the Very Rev. Joseph Faa Bruno, D.D. Author's Ameri- 
can Edition, edited by Rev. Louis A. Lambert. One hundredth thousand. 
New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros. 

THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH, AS SET FORTH IN THE BOOK OF COMMON 
PRAYER, ARTICLES, AND CANONS. Sermons preached in- Trinity Chapel, 
New York, during Lent, 1891. By Morgan Dix, S.T.D., Rector of Trinity 
Church. New York : E. & J. B. Young & Co. 

THE BIRTHDAY BOOK OF THE SACRED HEART. Being a collection of the 
Maxims of the Saints in honor of the Sacred Heart. Compiled by Vincent 
O'Brien. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 

THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED ANGELINA OF MARSCIANO, VIRGIN, PROMOTRESS 
OF THE THIRD ORDER REGULAR OF ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI. By the 
Hon. Mrs. A. Montgomery. London : Burns & Oates : New York : Catho- 
lic Publication Society Co. 

THE PRECIOUS BLOOD. By Richard F. Clark, S.J. New York, Cincinnati, 
Chicago : Benziger Bros. 

INCA ROCCA, and Other Poems. By Chauncey Thomas. Boston : Damrell & 
Upham. 

DE INSIGNIBUS EPISCOPORUM COMMENTARIA. Auctore Petro Josepho Ri- 
naldi-Bucci. Ratisbon, New York, Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co. 



PAMPHLETS RECEIVED. 

TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF THE HAMPTON NORMAL AGRICULTURAL 
INSTITUTE. 

AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF THE UNITED STATES CATHOLIC HISTORICAL SO- 
CIETY. By John Gilmary Shea. Elizabeth, N. J. 

SAYINGS OF CARDINAL NEWMAN. Reprinted from Me fry England. Boston: 
The Pilot Publishing Co. 

THE CATHOLIC PAGES OF AMERICAN HISTORY. A Lecture by Hon. J. L. 
MacDonald. St. Paul, Minn. : The Catholic Truth Society of America. 

OUR RIGHTS AND DUTIES AS CATHOLICS AND AS CITIZENS. A Lecture by Hon. 
W. J. Onahan. St. Paul, Minn. : The Catholic Truth Society of America. 

TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE TABERNACLE SOCIETY OF PHII A- 

DELPHIA. 

ON THE CONDITION OF LABOR. Encyclical of our Holy Father Pope Leo the 
Thirteenth. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. LIII. AUGUST, 1891. No. 317. 



THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. 

IT is no exaggeration to say that not since St. Peter wrote 
his inspired epistles, eighteen hundred and fifty years ago, has a 
document of more world-wide interest and acceptance emanated 
from his chair than the recent encyclical of his illustrious suc- 
cessor, Leo XIII., on the Condition of Labor. The man, the sub- 
ject, the treatment, the time all combine to place this encyclical 
among the noted documents of history. It is a new declaration 
of human rights, coming from the highest source on earth and 
bestowing the sanction of Heaven on every just and reasonable 
movement inaugurated for the relief of the toiling, struggling 
masses. And while it champions the cause of the poor and 
pleads for the rights of the wage-earners, it is a noble vindica- 
tion of the rights of all classes ; and society at large must hence- 
forth recognize a benefactor in Leo XIII. The reception given 
this encyclical on every hand is a sufficient test of its importance 
and the broad and liberal spirit that animates it. Catholic and 
non- Catholic, conservative and radical, are alike loud in its 
praise. Only a very few grotesque bigots here and there, who 
still stultify themselves and maintain that nothing of good can 
come out of Galilee, have questioned its value. 

This encyclical is remarkable not because it lays down any 
new principles or unfolds any new methods to be applied to the 
solution of the labor problem, but because it is the most com- 
plete and perfect summary of social economy from a Christian 
standpoint that has yet appeared, and shows how profoundly the 
Holy Father has studied the great economic questions of our 
day, and how keenly he realizes the condition and sympathizes 
with the lawful aspirations of the proletariat all over the globe. 

Copyright. REV. A. F. HKWIT. 1891. 



634 THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. [Aug., 

In reading it we are continually surprised at the accurate know- 
ledge displayed of the actual state of the working classes by one 
so far removed from contact with the work-a-day world ; the 
ordinary limitations of place, position, surroundings are not 
noticeable, and Cardinal Marfning could not address himself more 
intelligently to the labor problems of England or Cardinal Gibbons 
to those of America than does Pope Leo to the labor questions 
of the whole civilized world. His utterances on the subject are 
not simply those of a profound thinker, a great spiritual leader, 
but the utterances of a man in full sympathy with his kind and 
earnestly seeking to promote their temporal as well as their 
eternal interests. The great heart is visible throughout as well 
as the great head, and the undertone of sweet sympathy that is 
exhaled in every sentence, quite as much as the power of 
thought and grace of diction, will secure a hearing for this 
encyclical where papal document never before found entrance, 
and the name of Leo XTII. will become known and revered in 
the mine and the foundry, the factory and the workshop, among 
the toilers of all races and of all religions. 

This, of course, is not the first time that a pope has come 
forward to defend and to define the relative rights and obligations 
of capital and labor, for the questions now involved have come 
before the Holy See many times already under somewhat differ- 
ent aspects. Nor can the bitterest enemy of the Papacy deny 
that the judgments of Rome on these and kindred subjects have 
ever been on the side of right and justice, and the sympathies of 
Rome have ever been with the weak and oppressed of every 
land. For centuries the voice of the Vicar of Christ was the 
only voice in the world raised to rebuke tyranny and oppression, 
and the victim of oppression, whether an injured queen or an out- 
raged serf, found in the popes their most powerful protector. 
Pope Leo then, in descending into the area of social affairs to 
discuss questions that affect the well-being of the masses, is in 
full harmony with the best traditions of the Holy See and fulfils 
an important function of his office. Justice between man and 
man lies at the root of all morality, and if injustice is pre- 
valent in any direction it is the part of the supreme arbiter of 
faith and morals to take cognizance of it and try to find a re- 
medy for it. False theories, moreover, on the private ownership 
of property have been newly broached, an I they must needs be 
judged and condemned by that tribunal from whose decisions 
there is no earthly appeal, and whose anathema blights with 
perpetual sterility all noxious growths. 



1891.] THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. 635 

The right of possession, the right to hold private property of 
whatever kind, is the foundation of all social order and civiliza- 
tion, and until this primordial right is absolutely established and 
universally recognized no other right can be either sacred or se- 
cure. Hence, as the Holy Father well remarks, " our first and 
most fundamental principle, therefore, when we undertake to alle- 
viate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of 
private property." And so the first part of the famous, encycli- 
cal is devoted not merely to a statement of the right of private 
property, but to a profound demonstration of it. Pope Leo goes 
to the root of the question and shows that man, by the very 
nature of his being, has the right and the necessity of absolute 
ownership over that which his industry has created ; and the 
right, moreover, of transmitting that absolute ownership to others, 
and this altogether independent of the law of society or of the 
state; for, as he says, "man is older than the state, and he 
holds the right of providing for the life of his body prior to the 
formation of any state." Only in the exercise of its right of 
eminent domain can the state interfere with private possessions, 
and then justice requires that full compensation whenever possi- 
ble be made. The limits of state interference with the individual 
and with the family are also referred to and Caesarism is shown 
to be at variance with the law of nature and the law of God. 
For man was not made for the state, but the state was organized for 
the benefit of man. "If," says the Sovereign Pontiff, " the citi- 
zens of a state, on entering into association and fellowship, expe- 
rienced at the hands of the state hindrance instead of help, and 
found their rights attacked instead of being protected, such asso- 
ciation were rather to be repudiated than sought after." The 
rights of the family, too, are inviolable, and the state can have no 
sort of claim to interfere with its privileges or its possessions. 
Marriage is a primitive right, and human law can neither abolish 
it nor legislate against its essential purpose or relationship, for 
" the family, a man's own household, is a society anterior to 
any kind of state or nation, with rights and duties of its own, 
totally independent of the commonwealth," says the Holy Father, 
and so it must be left perfectly free to pursue its own ends and 
to possess its own inheritance, as the same right of possession 
that belongs naturally to a man individually must also belong to 
him in his capacity as head of a family. Domestic concerns, 
therefore, must be left entirely in the hands and under the com- 
plete control of the parents. The state has no business to inter- 
pose its authority except in rare emergencies, where parental au- 
VOL. LIU. 41 



636 THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. [Aug., 

thority is powerless or inadequate. The vindication of the sanc- 
tity of the Christian home is not the least admirable and striking 
feature of this encyclical, and is in full harmony with the idea 
that a man's house is his castle and its independence must be 
respected to the last degree. The relationship between parent 
and child is also touched upon, and that universal stepmother, 
the state, js given to understand that she must keep her hands 
off and .not obtrude her advice or assistance when they are not 
wanted. One short and pithy sentence sums up the subject : 
" Paternal authority can neither be abolished nor absorbed by the 
state, for it has the same source as human life itself." This is 
pretty strong doctrine for the paternal governments and military 
systems of Europe to swallow. The truth is, no sincere and 
consistent advocate of personal liberty could demand more freedom 
of action for the individual and for the family than Pope Leo pos- 
tulates in this encyclical ; and the man who, after a careful peru- 
sal of it, would still inveigh against the pope and the church as 
opposed to human rights must be an irreconcilable indeed. The 
broad spirit of humanity, the sincere benevolence, the noble poise 
and balance of justice that are everywhere manifest in this docu- 
ment, ought to convince the most sceptical that Leo XIII. is a 
true lover of mankind and in favor of the fullest liberty consistent 
with justice and good order. 

Having thus established the fundamental principles on which 
civil society must ever rest, the Holy Father enters " with confi- 
dence," as he says, on the burning question of the Condition of 
Labor. In the opening page of his encyclical he speaks of the 
difficulties that beset the subject, for it is not easy, as he sa; 
to define the relative rights and the mutual duties of the wealth; 
and the poor, of capital and labor ; but something, he insists, mu< 
needs be done to ameliorate the condition of the working classes 
To quote his exact words : " All agree, and there can be no qu< 
tion whatever, that some remedy must be found, and quickb 
found, for the misery and wretchedness that press so heavily at 
this moment on the large majority of the very poor." Now, ii 
the solution of this pressing problem religion must be recogniz< 
as the chief factor, and all revolutionary dreams and socialistic 
Utopias must be abandoned. " Let it be laid down in the fii 
place," he writes, ''that humanity must remain as it is : it is impc 
sible to reduce human society to a level." The Socialist's scheme 
of perfect equality is absurd on the face of it, for it is contrary t( 
the course of nature itself. There are differences in the mental 
and physical constitution of men, and hence different degrees of 



1891.] THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. 637 

success in life, and, as a consequence, difference in social position. 
Degrees in the social scale are not only the result of natural 
causes over which legislation can have no permanent control, but 
they are, moreover, necessary for the fulness of human life 
and the proper development of human society. Without these 
differences the world would be in a perpetual state of stagnation, 
and anything in the way of an advanced and complex civilization 
would be an impossibility. 

All this is so evident that it seems quite unaccountable 
how men of intelligence and sincerity could entertain for a 
moment the naked hypothesis of Socialism, which so far from 
promoting the greatest good of the greatest number would 
drag mankind down to a state of savagery. The grades in 
social position are in reality productive of good to all classes 
and conditions and establish a mutual dependence that is the 
strongest bond of civil society. The rich cannot do without the 
poor, any more than the poor can do without the rich. " Each 
requires the other," says the Holy Father. " Capital cannot do 
without labor, nor labor without capital." And although abuses 
may and often do occur from the inequality between wealth and 
poverty, they are not to be compared to the prostration and dull 
monotony that would inevitably settle down on society were things 
reduced to a dead level. So that no remedy for the hard lot of 
the poor can be found in the wild dreams and crude theories 
of the socialistic school of reformers. Not philosophy, not political 
economy, not social science, but religion holds the key of the 
position ; for it is religion, exclaims the Sovereign Pontiff, that 
" teaches the rich man and the employer that their work-people 
are not their slaves, that they must respect in every man his dig- 
nity, and that it is shameful and inhuman to treat men like chat- 
tels to make money by, or to look upon them merely as so much 
muscle and physical power." This single sentence covers the whole 
situation and exposes the root of the evil. The grasping spirit 
of the age runs counter to the spirit of the Gospel, and the poor 
are oppressed in consequence. A recognition of Christian prin- 
ciples is the first great step in advance. Religion alone can hold 
up the balance of justice before the rich and the poor alike and 
enforce their mutual rights and obligations in the name of the 
great God. " It teaches," continues the Holy Father, " the labor- 
ing man and the workman to carry out honestly and well all 
equitable agreements freely made, and never to employ violence 
in representing his cause or to engage in riot or disorder, and it 
reminds the rich that to exercise pressure for the sake of gain upon 



638 THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. [Aug., 

the indigent and the destitute, and to make one's profit out of the 
need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine." 

Where else, indeed, but to religion are we to look for the final 
sanction of right and the final condemnation of wrong ? Without 
religion we cannot approach any of the great problems of life. 
For if there is not something to look forward to beyond the 
present then selfishness pure and simple is the only law of life, 
and the world, as has been said, is only a vast pig-pen where the 
biggist swine are sure to get the most swill ; but we know that 
life under any and all circumstances is full of sorrow and care, 
that the brightest lives have a dark background, and when the 
shadow falls where is there any refuge except in religion and the 
immortal hopes it inspires ? When the poor* man loses the 
wife whom he loved or the children whom he reared and his 
home is desolate, can he find any comfort in cold philosophy, in 
political economy, in the theory of social equality ? The whole 
world is a blank to him, and life is a dark riddle unless there is 
a rift in the clouds through which the light of heaven shines in 
upon his soul, and bathes it in the bright beams of eternal 
hope. No ! without the aid of religion the labor problem, and 
every other great problem the world presents, are simply in- 
soluble. If there be only mechanical forces to rest upon they 
are inexorable, and the miseries of mankind must go on and on 
increasing as the world grows old and decrepit, until universal 
law ceases to operate and chaos and darkness resume their sway 
over earth and air and sea and sky. 

Not only must religious influence make itself felt, but th( 
church must bear a practical part in the work of relieving the 
material miseries and improving the social condition of th< 
wage-earners. " Nor must it be supposed," writes the head of 
the church, " that the solicitude of the church is so occupie( 
with the spiritual concerns of its children as to neglect their in- 
terests temporal and earthly. Its desire is that the poor, for ex- 
ample, should rise above poverty and wretchedness and shouk 
better their condition in life; and for this it strives." Leo XIII. 
is evidently no advocate of the theory that religion has nothing 
to do with the material interests of this life and should confin< 
itself to its purely spiritual domain. Religion is the highest g( 
of humanity informed by the revelation of God, and no humai 
good can be a matter of indifference to it or outside the just 
sphere of its influence. The church must concern herself witl 
social problems whenever they come up "and lend her potent ai< 
in their solution. She . has done so all along. The guilds am 



1891.] THE POPE AND TJIE PROLETARIAT. 639 

working-men's associations of the middle ages were her creation. 
She blessed them and directed them, and under her 'fostering care 
they fulfilled the objects for which they were founded. They 
perished at the period of the Reformation, or very soon thereafter, 
because the church could no longer guide and inspire them. 
They who would apply the laissez faire principle to religion in 
our times are not its friends. Religion is not an abstraction ; it 
is a concrete reality, and should make itself felt in every pore 
of human society, and particularly in all that concerns the poor 
and suffering members of Christ. The same lips that pronounce 
the first Beatitude " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven " must also be ready to utter the invita- 
tion, "Come, to me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will refresh you." There has been a little too much of the pas- 
sive, some might be disposed to call it the contemplative, spirit 
of religion in certain schools of Catholic thought, and this earnest, 
energetic, advanced encyclical of the supreme head of the church 
is a rebuke to it. Religion must not be held in leash. It must 
be altogether free to fulfil its mission in the world, and to go 
about the Great Father's business in whatsoever direction that 
business may lead it. And next to the evangelization of the 
nations, and as a necessary step towards it, religion has no higher 
work in the world to-day than to labor for the relief and 
elevation of the masses. 

Take the awful blight of intemperance, which is the cause of 
the greatest misery to the working-people of many lands, is re- 
ligion not called upon to grapple fiercely with that? The last 
stronghold of slavery in Africa is now besieged, serfdom has al- 
together disappeared, and it only remains to lift off the heavy 
burdens from the shoulders of the sons of toil which a ruthless 
greed of wealth has imposed upon them, and mankind will be 
in a condition to listen to the Divine Master whose " yoke is 
sweet and burden light." Men cannot turn their gaze heaven- 
ward when they are bowed down to the earth with incessant 
labor and care ; the aspirations of the soul are stifled in the 
sordid atmosphere that surrounds them., Even the day set apart 
by the Almighty himself for their rest and refreshment is fre- 
quently denied them, and the animal life and its wants absorb 
all their thoughts and efforts ; there is neither time nor energy 
left for the functions of the soul. Thank Heaven ! this condition 
of things does not yet exist to any very great extent in our 
country, but it certainly does elsewhere, and the Holy Father 
pours out his condemnations upon it all. He pleads for the ob- 



640 THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. [Aug., 

servance of Sunday as the poor man's day of spiritual refresh- 
ment and bodily rest, and denounces the desecration of it 
so common on the Continent of Europe. " No man," he says, 
" may outrage with impunity that human dignity which God 
himself treats with reverence, nor stand in the way of that 
higher life which is the preparation for the eternal life of heaven." 
In fine, the Vicar of Christ holds that religion, the Christian re- 
ligion, the Catholic Church, which renovated society in the past, 
must be the prime source of its renovation in the present ; and 
a return to Christian principles and institutions is a sine qua non 
for the adjustment of the difficulties and disorders that now 
threaten the whole fabric of civil society. 

But the Holy Father does not content himself with proclaim- 
ing these general principles and establishing their application by 
cogent arguments ; he recommends the adoption of positive 
and practical measures for the relief of the working classes and 
the permanent amelioration of their condition. And he appeals 
to the state to do its part in the needful work of reform by en- 
acting laws in favor of the rights of the poor and to guard them 
against the rapacity of the rich. " We have said," he writes, 
" that the state must not absorb the individual or the family ; 
both should be allowed free and untrammeled action as far as is 
consistent with the common good and the interests of others. 
Nevertheless rulers should anxiously safeguard the community in 
all its parts, . . . and the public administration must duly 
and solicitously provide for the welfare and comfort of the 
working people" The state is bound, of course, to enforce the 
rights of each and all its citizens; this is the object of its exist- 
ence. But Pope Leo insists that it is bound in an especial 
manner to enforce the rights of the poor and to protect their 
interests. " The richer population," he says, " have many ways 
of protecting themselves and stand less in need of the help of 
the state ; those who are badly off have no resource of their 
own to fall back upon and must chiefly rely upon the assistance 
of the state ; and it is for this reason that wage-earners, who are 
undoubtedly among the weak and necessitous, should be espe- 
cially cared for and protected by the commonwealth." The Holy 
Father mentions, moreover, some of the contingencies in which 
state interference between employers and their employees can 
and ought to be invoked, as when there is danger to the public 
peace, when family ties and obligations are relaxed or neglected, 
when the spiritual interests of the wage-earners are at stake or 
their morals are endangered through the unseemly mixing up 



1891.] THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. 641 

of the sexes, or other occasions of evil; and if the burdens im- 
posed by employers are unjust, degrading, or repugnant to the 
dignity of their employees as human beings, and if the labor 
demanded be excessive, injurious to the health, or unsuited to the 
age and sex of the operatives. " In all these cases there can be 
no question," says the Pope, " that, within certain limits, it would 
be right to call in the help and authority of the law." And, 
again, when referring to strikes and other serious disagree- 
ments between capital and labor, he does not hesitate to say that 
" the laws should be beforehand and prevent these troubles from 
arising; they should lend their influence and authority to the 
removal in good time of the causes which lead to conflicts be- 
tween masters and those whom they employ." And, on the 
other hand, repressive measures are to be resorted to only in 
extreme cases and when no other remedy can be found. Nor 
must the state enact laws that tell against the interests of the 
working classes or impose excessive taxation upon them. The 
policy of the state should be to encourage the industry of the 
poor, to make them happy and contented in their own land, and 
not to drive them into exile from their homes and their country 
to secure a decent subsistence. While exceedingly jealous of 
state interference in private affairs, as he has good reason to be, 
Pope Leo demands the protection of the state for the weak 
against the strong, and insists upon it that the law ought to 
find redress for the grievances of the poor. Trusts and monopo- 
lies, child-labor, the sweating system, forced contracts, etc., are 
all fit and proper subjects for legislative interference, and should 
be taken in hand and dealt with by the strong arm of the 
law. 

The truth is, the most pronounced advocate of the rights of 
the people under the constitution could not, in reason, demand 
from the laws of the state more complete protection for their 
every-day interests than Pope Leo concedes. To many it will, 
no doubt, be a new revelation to find the oldest and the most 
independent sovereign authority in the world pleading the popular 
cause, and demanding for the masses, in the truest and best 
sense, the "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
And that Leo XIII. does all this few who read his encyclical hon- 
estly and intelligently will be disposed to deny. Extreme radi- 
cals may, and doubtless will, scoff at it ; but, on the other hand, 
extreme conservatives, whether in church or state, will not find 
much comfort in it. 

The hours of labor and the important question of compensa- 



642 THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. [Aug., 

tion receive due attention in this comprehensive document ; and 
the attitude of the Holy Father on these subjects is in keeping 
with the humane and benevolent spirit that runs all through his 
encyclical : his plea is for the poor toilers' rights in everything. 
" It is neither justice nor humanity," he writes, "to so grind 
men down with excessive labpr as to stupefy their minds and wear 
out their bodies." The length of the day's labor, he says, should 
be determined by the character of the work, the season of the 
year, and the physical capacity of the worker ; and he proclaims 
that " every man should have leisure and rest in proportion to 
the wear and tear on his strength. Women should not be 
required to do work that is in any way unsuitable for them 
to engage in ; and children should not be placed in workshops 
and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently mature." 

These are wise and beneficent rules, and they should com- 
mend themselves to the intelligence and sense of humanity of 
the world at large. Life is intended to be, and for the great 
mass of mankind must be, a season of labor, but it is not there- 
fore to be an unbroken drudgery. And we think the time will 
come when eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and 
eight hours for recreation will be very generally regarded as the 
proper standard for man's daily occupation in life. But, as Pope 
Leo intimates, it will be always a difficult thing to fix an abso- 
lute limit, for the hours of labor cannot well be otherwise than 
relative to the character of the work and the condition of the 
worker. 

The matter of wages is also relative and a very difficult sub- 
ject to deal with in the abstract. The Holy Father feels this, 
and approaches the vexed question with great caution. Never- 
theless, his declaration on this head is among the boldest in his 
encyclical, and will bear a message of hope and encouragement 
to the ranks of the great labor army scattered all over the 
globe. He is thoroughly opposed to starvation wages, and while 
he upholds freedom of contract, he shows that in agreements 
between employers and their employees this principle is not al- 
ways present, inasmuch as the laborer is often forced to barter 
his labor in order to sustain himself and his family ; he must get 
employment or starve, there is no other alternative he is then 
the victim of necessity. And in view of this Pope Leo makes 
his noble declaration on the subject of due compensation a 
declaration that shall be quoted as long as employers are base 
enough to take advantage of the necessities of the poor and buy 
their sweat and blood at the lowest possible price. We give the 



1891.] THE POPE AND THE PROLETARIAT. 643 

Pontiff's statement on this subject in full: "Let it be granted, 
then," he says, " that as a rule workmen and employers should 
make free agreements, and, in particular, should freely agree as to 
wages. Nevertheless, there is a dictate of nature more imperious 
and more ancient than any bargain between man and man that 
the remuneration must be enough to support the wage-earner in 
reasonable and frugal comfort. If through necessity or fear of a 
worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions, because an 
employer or contractor will give him no better, he is the victim 
of force and injustice." This declaration most assuredly leaves 
nothing more to be said on the question of fair compensation 
for labor. The wages received should insure the workman and 
his family a comfortable living in a modest way, and even admit 
of his saving something when due economy is practised'. This 
is the test of fair wages, and there can be no better. 

The Holy Father favors the establishment of private boards of 
arbitration rather than state boards to adjust the disputes and 
differences that may arise between employers and their employees 
about wages and other matters. He also recommends very earn- 
estly and at considerable length the formation of working-men's 
societies for their mutual aid and support, but he takes very 
great care, of course, to insist that all such societies shall keep 
within their own proper bounds and honestly carry out the ob- 
jects for which they are founded, and he is at great pains to 
warn workmen against joining any labor organization that is in 
the least un-Christian or revolutionary in its tendencies. He 
would have modern tradesmen's associations modelled on the an- 
cient guilds. And when they are properly organized and peace- 
fully pursue their own ends, the state must in no way interfere 
with them ; they have a perfect right to exist, and it is nothing 
short of tyranny and oppression for the state to meddle in their 
affairs. This, of course, apropos of the utterly unjust and vicious 
attitudes of some of the European governments towards organi- 
zations that are perfectly legitimate and serve a good purpose. . 

Leo XIII. praises all who have taken an active part in found- 
ing sound associations to promote the welfare of the working 
classes, and he expresses the fervent hope that such societies 
will everywhere increase and continually prosper in their beneficent 
purpose. Finally, he implores the co-operation of all earnest men 
in the great work of alleviating the condition of the masses. ^ 
"Every one should put his hand to the work which falls to his 
share, and that at once and immediately," he exclaims, for "at 
this moment the condition of the working population is the 



644 FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. [Aug., 

question of the hour, and nothing can be of higher interest to 
all classes in the state than that it should be rightly and rea- 
sonably decided." He particularly urges upon the ministers and 
representatives of religion the duty of " throwing themselves into 
the conflict with all the energy of their minds and all their 
strength of endurance." Indexed Pope Leo XIII. would seem to 
imply by his encyclical that the church should take the lead in a 
world-wide movement for the relief and elevation of the toiling, 
struggling masses ; and surely the nineteenth century offers no 
ampler field for the exercise of her divine energy and the world 
no nobler cause than the cause of suffering humanity. 

E. B. BRADY. 



FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 

" You would like," said our good friend, the cura of the 
parish where our lot in Mexico has been for some time cast, " to 
see a great hacienda and something of the life upon it ? It gives 
me pleasure to be able to afford you the opportunity. Across 
the mountains from here, over in the valley of Ameca, lies a 
hacienda on which I spent five years as chaplain. The patronal 
feast of this estate is the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, and 
every year it is celebrated with great honor. The other day the 
haciendado, Senor C , came, according to his custom, to in- 
vite me to participate in the fiesta, and I have his permission to 
bring with me some foreign friends. You will, therefore, prepare 
to spend Candlemas on a hacienda which is typical of our great 
estates, and to see a fiesta thoroughly Mexican in its character." 

It is almost needless to say that this kind invitation was 
eagerly accepted. It was, indeed, an opportunity not to be 
neglected; for, although Mexican hospitality is equal to any 
demands made upon it, the stranger in the country can seldom 
obtain an inside view of the life of these vast estates, whose pro- 
prietors live among their tenants and dependents like feudal lords, 
and where there is a touching, patriarchal character in the rela- 
tion of master and servants maintained through generations 
a beautiful relation drawing forth some of the best feelings of 
human nature on both sides, one which the modern world is los- 
ing fast and replacing with the caste hatred and antagonism that 
exists between employer and employed when Christianity has 
been forgotten and the hard law of material gain alone rules the 



1891.] FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 645 

contract between them. On the hacienda to which we were in- 
vited the relation spoken of formed by kindliness and consider- 
ation on one side, by loyalty and attachment on the other ex- 
ists in its perfection, because it has always rested upon a Christian 
basis, the family who have owned this great estate for an un- 
broken period of a hundred and thirty- five years having been for 
all that length of time distinguished for their devotion to the 
church and its precepts. 

In this year of grace the feast of Candlemas fell upon Monday, 
therefore it was in the afternoon of Sunday that we made the 
drive of twenty-four mile's to the hacienda, passing from one 
lovely valley into another, around the base of a great serrated 
mountain which lies between. Of our own valley we had often 
said, in the words of Cortes about the valley of Mexico : " Es 
la cosa mas hermosa en el mundo" ; but we had now to acknowl- 
edge that its companion across the purple mountains was even 
more beautiful. How can one paint the picture which it presented 
in the still, golden light of that afternoon ? At least twenty miles 
wide by more than thirty long, it spread far as the eye could 
reach, vast levels of cultivated land alternating with stretches of 
woodland, a crystal river flowing through its midst, azure moun- 
tains encircling it, and over all the luminous Mexican sky, a vault 
of dazzling sapphire. Almost immediately on entering the valley 
we left the Camino Real the " Royal Highway " from Guadala- 
jara to the town of Ameca and entered by a gateway upon the 
lands of the hacienda. Here we drove for twelve miles through 
an Arcadia of fertility, loveliness, and peace. The full extent of 
the estate is eleven leagues (thirty- three miles), and this for a great 
Mexican domain is not remarkable. Even in Mexico, however, 
there are lands and lands, and those of this hacienda are of pecu- 
liar richness and value, covering, as it does, the greater part of 
the fertile Ameca valley. 

We had been driving nearly three hours when the cura sud- 
denly pointed. " Yonder," he said, " is the church." A glance 
showed it standing on a hill above the river, its picturesque front 
and open Carmelite belfries outlined with beautiful effect against 
the sky. A few minutes later we lost the view, as our road 
turned and ascended in the rear the eminence on which the church 
and casa grande stand, passing through a village of the people 
employed on the estate, its houses of adobe covered with tiles and 
surrounded by enclosures of luxuriant tropical shrubs, of a better 
and more comfortable order than are often seen on the haciendas 
and ranches. " The people on this hacienda," said the cura, " are 



646 FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. [Aug., 

generally of a very high character, noted for their honesty and 
intelligence. They are treated with liberality and justice, make all 
they need for living, and I am sure that there is not a single per- 
son among them who does not know how to read and write, the 
proprietor supporting the schools in which the children are taught." 
It may be added that, observing the throngs which filled the 
church during the next day, we were struck with the corroboration 
of these words in the appearance of the people, their neatness 
and cleanliness of attire, their well-bred, self-respecting manner, 
and the intelligence of their countenances. 

Driving rapidly up a gentle slope, we passed from the village 
through an immense gateway into a large, open square, capable oi 
containing several thousand people, enclosed on one side by the 
long wall of the great house (casa grande] of the proprietor, and 
on the others by the schools, the shops of the various industries 
of the hacienda (as the carpenters, saddle-makers, etc.), the house 
of the administrador or agent of the estate, and also a pretty resi- 
dence in which one of the brothers of the proprietor lives. Cross- 
ing this plaza, which had the true' air of a Mexican fiesta from the 
numbers of people already moving to and fro, and the dealers in 
fruits, peanuts, dulces, etc., who had established themselves along 
the borders, with their wares displayed on squares of matting, we 
drove up to a flight of handsome steps, which descended to the 
plaza from the end of the corridor of the great house. Here a 
group of gentlemen stood to welcome us, and conspicuous among 
them was a truly splendid figure, that of the haciendado himself. 
A man in the prime of life, of superb stature and proportions, with 
a handsome head set on massive, well-carried shoulders, he would 
have been a striking personality anywhere ; but here, on the 
threshold of his own stately home, dressed in the rich and beautiful 
Mexican costume' which Mexican gentlemen seldom wear now 
except on their estates a costume consisting of close-fitting trousers 
of black cloth, with double rows of silver buttons down each side, 
connected by delicate silver chains, and short jacket, also of black 
cloth, elaborately braided with silver he was so entirely in accord 
with his position and his surroundings as to charm both the eye and 
the fancy. 

Ascending the massive flight of steps, with their curving balus- 
trades of stone, we found ourselves on the corridor which extends 
along the front of the house, and the unsurpassed beauty of the 
situation burst fully upon the gaze. We are told that admiration 
of nature is the special attribute of our days ; but surely the man 
who nearly a century and a half ago planted his residence on this 



1891 ] FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 647 

spot had the love of nature in his soul and must have enjoyed the 
superb panorama of valley and mountains which lay before him. 
It is impossible to conceive anything more beautiful than the view. 
The hill, which slopes so gently behind that one is scarcely aware 
of ascending it, descends abruptly in front to the level of the river 
flowing below, and from the front of the house, which faces on this 
side, the eye passes over miles of cultivated and wooded valley to 
the glorious mountains that with their noble lines sweep around 
the horizon, forming a vast amphitheatre of encircling heights, the 
nearest of which are at least ten miles distant, and which are robed 
in such divine colors, changing with the changing light of every 
hour, as can be seen only in the lucid atmosphere of this true " land 
of the sky." 

From the broad corridor which extends into the platform before 
the church, twelve steps, running the whole length of the house 
and church, descend to what is termed an atria (atrium], which is 
that part of the terrace before the building enclosed by an Italian- 
like balustrade of stone into a paved court, containing in the centre 
a large, handsome fountain, and at the corners of which tall and 
beautiful carved stone columns stand. From this a path leads down 
the steep hill to a garden at the foot a garden that as one stands 
looking through its barred gate, while waiting for the key of admit- 
tance, again recalls Italy, for, down a vista of shining foliage, one 
sees a fountain of gray old stone and gray stone benches like those 
one remembers in the gardens of Roman villas. But when we enter 
Italy is forgotten in the luxuriant beauty of this tropical paradise. 
Its broad alleys lead between thick groves of every variety of fruit- 
trees known to this fortunate land. Orange-trees, lemons, limes, 
the graceful tree which bears the guava, the mango, the cherimoya, 
the palm-like melon-zapote, the shining leaves and clustering ber- 
ries of the coffee-tree ; these and a multitude beside, together with 
roses, magnolias, and oleanders, and long walks overarched by 
grape-bearing vines, supported from double rows of classic columns, 
make a spot where one might readily forget time in lingering, and 
where all the romance of the south seems to find a home. 

But although we have thus turned from the threshold of the 
house for a glimpse of the garden that lies under its broad terrace, 
it was not in reality the first or most interesting of the sights which 
awaited us. The interior of the casa naturally commanded atten- 
tion before its exterior. Like all Mexican houses it is built 
around an open court a court so large that a regiment might 
be reviewed within it. It is paved, but devoid of plants, as befits 
the stately, almost severe character of the whole edifice. Between 



648 FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. [Aug., 

each of the great arches that form the outer side of the corridors 
surrounding it there has, however, been planted an orange-tree ; 
and these trees, inclining outward, form a circle of luxuriant green 
around the patio and fill the air with the fragrance of their blooms. 
Standing on the farther side of this court, and looking up beyond 
arches and the glistening boughs of foliage, amid which shines 
golden fruit, one sees a sight for a painter the picturesque old 
wall and lovely belfry of the church standing out against the 
deep-blue sky, and looking down with solemn quiet into the 
inner heart of the home that has always yielded to God its first 
homage. 

The apartments which open upon the corridors surrounding 
the four sides of the patio are many and spacious. Everything is 
on a grand scale, without ornament; but in its solidity, its ex- 
tent, and its stateliness impressing one as having no need of 
it. A dining- room of immense dimensions extends back 
from the court, and on one side opens upon a lovely garden, where 
luxuriant creepers cover the sides of the walls with which it is 
enclosed, where flowers bloom and birds sing, and where a great 
green summer-house in the centre has been the scene of many, a 
feast notably the breakfast always given to the children of the 
estate when they make their First Communion. Then there are 
other courts enclosed by many domestic offices, by granaries and 
stables ; and one, most charming and monastic in its air, in the 
rear of the church, where a small stone staircase against the wall 
leads up to a secluded apartment, a library, which must have 
been built by one who possessed the true soul of a scholar and 
understood the love of all scholars for silence and solitude. No 
sound from the house reaches this quiet spot ; its walls are lined 
with book- cases, filled with Spanish and Latin volumes, and win- 
dows opening from the floor upon a stone balcony command a 
view of the valley toward the mountains that lie against the west- 
ern sky, a wide picture full of enchanting beauty and infinite 
serenity. It is an ideal retreat for a student, a poet, or a saint 
for any soul that loves communion with the great dead of past 
ages through their written words, and that, seeing God mirrored 
in the wonderful loveliness of his visible creation, would be led 
by it to lofty and touching thoughts of him. 

And now, in the order of ecclesiastical processions the great- 
est last we come to the cor cordium of this Christian home, the 
sanctuary of God. As the exterior of the church towers in 
height and beauty above the house beside it, so does the richness 
of its interior far surpass anything to be seen in the residence. 



i89i] FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 649 

Here man has offered his best to God, and, unlike some Catho- 
lics of whom we know elsewhere, does not leave a luxurious 
home to go and worship in a poor and humble chapel. The 
church, which will hold five or six liundred people, is built in the 
usual style of Mexican churches that, more or less, of the Span- 
ish renaissance a style most picturesque and effective for deco- 
ration both within and without. Upon this church wealth has 
been lavished with a princely hand by the owners of the haci- 
enda. The steps of the high altar are of silver ; and behind ex- 
tends from floor to ceiling, covering the entire sanctuary end of 
the edifice, a beautiful example of the highly ornate chirriguer- 
esque work,* the best examples of which are seen in the chapel 
of Los Reyes (The Kings) in the cathedral of Seville, and in the 
chapel of the same name in the cathedral of Mexico. This rich- 
est of all possible modes of church decoration is a mass of elab- 
orate carving executed in cedar and covered entirely with gold. 
Amid its multitude of intricate details are introduced statues of 
angels and saints, carved with exquisite skill and richly gilded ; 
while its expensive character may be judged from the fact that 
the example of which we speak cost twenty thousand dollars. 
All the vestments and vessels of the altar are in accord with the mag- 
nificence that rules elsewhere ; and even the tablet which is placed 
before the tabernacle, covering it entirely, is made of virgin sil- 
ver beautifully wrought. A very large and handsome organ fills 
the gallery at the farther end of the church. " There is no better 
in Guadalajara, except those in the cathedral," said the cura. 

No people understand better than Mexicans how to decorate 
a church effectively, either in an enduring or temporary manner ; 
and very beautiful were the special decorations of this church for 
its great feast. Above and behind the high altar and two smaller 
altars in the sanctuary magnificent draperies of cloth- of-silver 
were arranged, while such immense wax tapers as one sees 
only in Mexico covered the altars, in the midst of masses of 
golden leaves and silver lilies. In the body of the church 
crimson draperies hung in graceful festoons, and hundreds of 
wax candles were attached by invisible wires, so that they seemed 
suspended in the air, to cords carried from the chandeliers in 
the middle of the church to the side walls, thus forming a suc- 
cession of inverted arches of brilliant light, extending from the 
altar to the door, and filling the edifice with that soft radiance 
which multitudes of wax candles alone produce. 

* So called from the Spanish architect and sculptor, Chirriguera, who practised it about 
the end of the seventeenth century. 



650 FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 

As evening fell the fiesta appearance of everything deepened. 
In all directions men were at work preparing for the decorations 
of the night, hanging festoons of Chinese lanterns over the atria and 
between the arches of the corridor, and placing on the roof of 
church and house the oil-cups which, when lighted, make the 
most beautiful illumination possible. The plaza was fast filling 
with a distinctively Mexican throng, composed not only of the 
people of the estate but of many drawn from neighboring haci- 
endas and towns a lithe, sinewy people, with dark, gentle faces, 
quiet manners, full of courtesy and even of grace, and picturesque 
costumes, in which the bright red blankets of the men mingled 
with the soft tones of the blue and purple rebozas of the women. 
" I am always anxious on this occasion," said Senor C , " fear- 
ing disturbance chiefly from the outsiders who come to our 
feast ; and in the permission to sell given to venders of refresh- 
ment, anything in the form of spirituous drink is always posi- 
tively prohibited." Certainly all the merry-making on this occasion 
was of a most orderly character, and it was very striking to see 
now and then in the midst of the animated crowd a man or 
woman making his or her way to the church on bended knees, 
candle in hand and absorbed in prayer. Occasionally some per- 
son or persons would cast their blankets on the ground before 
these pilgrims, to soften a little the hard journey ; but often no 
notice whatever was taken of the sight so wonderful to a stran- 
ger, so little wonderful here. Truly in these remote districts of 
Mexico, removed from foreign and (it must be said) contaminating 
influences, one seems to have stepped back into the Ages of Faith, 
when men had neither learned to deny their Creator nor to 
withhold from him the outward homage which is his due ; when 
those touching practices of devotion prevailed which we have 
grown too cold, too mindful of the opinion of Protestants and infi- 
dels, to practise ; when the rich man saw in the beggar at his 
gate the living representative of Christ, to be succored and hon- 
ored accordingly, and when the Church of God sat enthroned in 
the splendor which is her right as Mother and Mistress of all 
men. 

After nightfall the bells rang out their clashing peal, and as many 
of the people as could do so gathered within the church, where 
the Solemn Matins of the feast were sung. In accordance with 
established custom, an orchestra and singers had been brought 
from Guadalajara (the musical capital of Mexico) for the occa- 
sion. There were eighteen of these musicians, who arrived just 
before us in two large carriages sent to the city (seventy- five 



1891.] FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 651 

miles distant) for their conveyance. The music consequently 
was such as is seldom heard out of great capitals. Its perfect 
cadences filled both ear and soul; while the church itself was like 
a vision of the New Jerusalem. The altars a blaze of radiant 
splendor, the arches of dazzling light, the festoons of color, the 
officiating priests in their vestments of cloth-of-gold, the Most 
Blessed Sacrament throned high over all, amid clouds of curling 
incense, the throngs of devout kneeling people extending far into 
the outer court beneath the starry sky all made such a picture 
as is only to be witnessed in a land where faith has not been 
weakened nor devotion grown cold. 

The services in the church over, our attention and admiration 
were claimed by the brilliant illumination without. The facade 
of the church, its graceful open belfries, the long lines of its roof 
and those of the casa grande, were traced in fire against the sky, 
while on the side of the house overlooking the plaza, in immense 
letters of flame, were the words Ave Maria Purissima. The 
plaza itself was at this time a wonderful sight, thronged with the 
people who had been for hours constantly arriving, until now 
there must have been upon the ground at least ten thousand 
persons. In the vast throng there was a constant movement, 
but not the least sign of tumult or disorder. All was as quiet 
and well-ordered as if squads of police had been present. The 
orchestra from Guadalajara, stationed at the head of the steps of 
the corridor, were playing inspiring airs. In the middle of the 
crowded square stood a tall, light tower on which fireworks, that 
are a part of every Mexican fiesta, were arranged for display; 
now and then, over the heads of the people, in the interval of 
waiting, rockets went up, or small lighted balloons sailed away 
into the dark-blue depths of the sky, as if charged to carry to 
heaven the tidings of the joy in Mary's honor on earth. The 
lines of living fire around the roofs flickered in the night-breeze, 
and the bells of the church told their jubilation to all the valley 
in such tones as make one realize here how large a part bells 
are intended to play in the worship of God, and how in a Cath- 
I olic land they do indeed 

" make Catholic the trembling air." 

It was about ten o'clock when the signal for the commence- 
ment of the fireworks was given. A volley of squibs opened the 
entertainment; and then, as the fire thus started leaped from 
point to point along the wires which conducted it, there were a 
succession of brilliant pyrotechnic effects that threw wonderful re- 

VOL. LIII. 42 



652 FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. [Aug., 

flections over the thousands of upturned faces, and culminated in 
displaying the figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe amid a shower 
of revolving lights on the summit of the tower. 

With three priests in the house, there were next morning two 
Masses ' before the High Mass, which began at nine o'clock. 
Each of these Masses was attended by many more people than 
the church could hold. Far out beyond the doors they knelt in 
throngs, praying with a simplicity, a fervor, and an utter absence 
of distraction that would be remarkable enough anywhere else, 
but is not at all remarkable in Mexico. When the swinging clash 
of all the bells summoned us to the great Mass of the day, we 
looked from the tribunes where the family and their guests had 
their places upon a representative scene of this most Christian 
country. The church which is, of course, without benches was 
again closely packed with a reverent mass of worshippers, and 
beyond the great open arch of the door, that framed a noble pic- 
ture of valley and distant mountains and bending sky, the kneel- 
ing forms of the people could be seen even to the end of the 
atria, their faces directed toward the altar with its shining lights 
and glistening draperies, their lips moving in prayer ; the heads 
of the women draped in their graceful scarfs ; the men, many of 
them, praying with extended arms and small, brown, toil-worn 
hands lifted in touching appeal to the Son of God, who on earth 
was himself a son of poverty and toil. And it was not the 
least edifying sight of the many around to see the stately haci- 
endado, with lighted taper in hand, kneel reverently in the sanc- 
tuary during the whole of the long and elaborate ceremonial of 
the Solemn High Mass, offering in person his homage to God, 
and setting an example to his people of striking devotion. The 
Mass was beautiful throughout ; beautiful in the splendor that 
surrounded it, in the full ritual that honored it, in the lovely 
music that accompanied it. The sermon (preached by the cura 
of Ameca) was eloquent and forcible, and it may be safely as- 
serted that nowhere in the world was the feast of Our Lady's 
Purification more worthily celebrated, with more to delight the 
eye and satisfy the heart, than in the church of this Mexican 
hacienda. 

The necessarily limited space of an article will not permit de- 
scription of the popular festivities of the day, nor of the many 
beautiful and interesting scenes around the noble old house that 
has enshrined in the past and still enshrines in the present lives 
and characters formed in a mould so truly Catholic, and where 
the tradition of antique virtues lingers like a fragrance of the past. 



FIESTA ON A MEXICAN HACIENDA. 653 

There were many things to make one almost fancy one's self in 
a feudal castle. The hosts of retainers, the number of guests and 
members of branches of the family, and the hospitality apparent- 
ly without limit. At least sixty persons sat down to a dinner 
that, with its many elaborate courses, lasted three hours. To speak 
of the charming hostess and lovely children of the house would 
seem a violation of the hospitality which, in grace and cordiality, 
left nothing to be desired ; but certainly the strangers who met 
so kind a welcome within its gates are not likely soon to forget 
the pleasure given and the courtesy shown them there. 

' The closing picture of that memorable day was too charming 
not to be sketched, in however light outline. It was drawing to- 
ward sunset when the bells of the church again summoned the 
people, first for Rosary and Benediction, and then for a ceremony 
which always closes the fiesta. There is in the church a small but 
very ancient and highly venerated image of our Blessed Lady. 
This is taken in solemn procession around the plaza, pausing at 
three or four temporary altars to receive the homage of the peo- 
ple, and then carried back to the sanctuary. It is perhaps worth 
while to remind the reader that under the present oppressive 
laws of Mexico religious processions outside of ,the churches 
are prohibited, and can only take place on private estates, so 
that some idea may be formed of the good which Christian pro- 
prietors like Senor C are doing in helping to keep the faith 

of the people alive by feeding it with the devotional practices to 
which they are accustomed ; for it should never be forgotten that 
faith and devotion are inseparable, and that where the second 
is neglected the first will soon be lost. The last golden rays of 
the sun were shining across the valley just as the tall processional 
cross emerged from the church door, and they caught and burn- 
ished it as well as the richly dressed statue following, borne on 
its flower- wreathed pedestal upon the shoulders of men. After 
the priests, and pressing close around them, came a throng of 
men and women, bearing for the most part lighted candles and 
saying the Rosary aloud. A parlor-organ was carried along, as 
well as the instruments of -the orchestra, and when a halt was 
made at the temporary altars some of the sweetest of Mary's 
hymns rose on the air, while the people knelt in prayer and 
homage. With these pauses the procession was long in making 
its way around the large plaza, and before its return to the church 
dusk had fallen. In the twilight the multitude of flickering tapers 
borne aloft were like so many stars fallen from heaven to earth 
to light the pilgrims' way and honor her who is the Morning 



654 THE UNKNOWN BOUND. [Aug., 

Star. The plaintive music rose and fell with softest cadence, 
purple shadows had fallen over the valley ; but beyond the dis- 
tant, dark-blue mountain-tops a golden glow showed where the 
fires of sunset had lately paled. It was an exquisite and most 
touching scene. Ladies in silken gowns knelt in the dust of the 
plaza side by side with cottons-clad peasants, and from every lip 
rose but one refrain familiar words clothed in sweet and stately 
Spanish " Santa Maria, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros peca- 
dores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen." 

And so ended the Feast of the Purification on a Mexican 
hacienda, where nothing was done for effect, but everything with 
a noble simplicity and generosity for the glory of God alone. 
It was an occasion of edification, even in a land where such occa- 
sions abound, and made us feel again, as often before, that Cath- 
olics at home both priests and people may well come to 
Mexico to learn how God is served with a depth of inward 
devotion and a splendor ot outward service which shames our 

best efforts. 

CHRISTIAN REID. 



THE UNKNOWN BOUND. 

I WATCHED a sail until it dropt from sight 
Over the rounding sea. A gleam of white, 
A last far- flashed farewell, and, like a thought 
Slipt out of mind, it vanished and was not. 

Yet, to the helmsman standing at the wheel, 
Broad seas still stretched before the gliding keel. 
Disaster ? Change ? he felt no slightest sign ; 
Nor dreamed he of that dim horizon line. 

So may it be, perchance, when down the tide 
Our dear ones vanish. Peacefully they glide 
On level seas, nor mark the unknown bound. 
We call it death to them 'tis life beyond ! 

JAMES BUCKHAM. 




1891.] ' TONIA. 



TONIA. 

IN the women's work-room of the Warham Penitentiary there 
were two or three dozen women languidly at work. There is not, 
as a rule, much zest of industry among the state's compulsory 
servers, men or women, but always there is more purposeless per- 
formance of duty among the latter. The reasons are evident 
enough; among them being, perhaps, the greater variety and 
pleasantness of the work allotted to the men. The women in this 
particular institution had no occupation but various kinds of 
mending. They were of all ages and of varying degrees of degra- 
dation in appearance. The coarse, loose-fitting, blue-checked 
gowns they wore were far more slovenly looking than the gray 
stripes of the men. They worked in silence except for an oc- 
casional whispered word or two, an occasional cough or giggle. 
Without much nagging from the matron their apathy would 
have accomplished nothing. Only one of them seemed indus- 
trious a young mulatto at the end of the row, who sewed with a 
feverish rapidity that betokened an anxiety to compel into inactiv- 
ity thoughts that were vigorous and unwelcome. For half an 
hour her fingers flew, her eyes never left her work. At the end 
of that time there came a sound of noisy little feet along the cor- 
ridor outside. The door opened arid a child, about three years 
of age, came dancing in. The mulatto woman looked up and the 
sudden gleam of fierce affection that lit up her handsome eyes 
proved, more than the likeness between them, that this was her 
child. Most of the women smiled, looking for the moment as if 
the chubby hand of a little child had taken from their faces the 
mask of sin and weakness and placed there again the radiancy 
of innocence and purity. The matron took the little girl in her 
lap and started to talk with her. The mother sprang up from her 
work and stood gazing hungrily upon the child. " 'Tonia ! " she 
called. The matron turned to rebuke this breach of discipline. 
The little one sprang from her arms and rushed to her mother. 
Just then the bell sounded for the end of work. The women 
began filing away to their cells. The matron, a sharp-faced, kind- 
hearted woman, came up to the mulatto and said to her, " Send 
away 'Tonia now. I will come and talk to you in a moment." 

When the other prisoners were disposed of, and the spring had 
been drawn that locked the tier of cells, the matron returned 



656 'TONIA. [Aug., 

and said, kindly enough, to the mulatto, " You may get ready 
to go, Rosa. In an hour your time is up." 

There was no reply, and the matron continued, somewhat 
sharply: "I hope you mean to behave and not get here again. You're 
a bright, smart young woman and this is not the place for you. 
Besides you've got your child to consider. It's your duty to make 
a respectable woman of her." 

Rosa eagerly caught the matron's hand and said in a soft, 
sweet voice, singularly free from the negro accent and peculiari- 
ties of pronunciation : " Mrs. Last, what am I to do with Tonia ? 
I can't take her with me, and I can't stay here with her, and I 
won't let her go into an asylum where strangers will be unkind 
to her and teach her to despise her convict mother. Do you 
think the superintendent would allow me to leave her here 
a few months till I have found work and made a little home for 
her? You will be good to her, I know, and the superintendent 
seems very fond of her." 

Mrs. Last's sharp eyes measured Rosa up and down while she 
meditatively plaited and unplaited the hem of her apron. After 
a few minutes she said : " I will see -Mr. Sefton. You may get 
ready to go. I will give you your things, and when you are 
dressed you may come to the office and Mr. Sefton will tell you 
his decision." 

In half an hour the mulatto, dressed neatly in a plain dark 
gown, brown ulster much the worse for wear, and close-fitting 
bonnet, tapped at the door of the superintendent's private office. 
In response to his " Come in" she entered timidly and stood, with 
downcast eyes, just inside the door. The superintendent, a tall, 
loosely-built, shrewd-faced man of forty, looked keenly at her. 
She was clean, neat, intelligent-looking, and, with the exception 
of her color, possessed scarcely any negro traits. 

"Well, Rosa," said he kindly, "Mrs. Last has been telling me 
your request concerning your little girl. It is quite contrary to 
all the rules, I am afraid, but I will see what can be done. I 
have a suggestion to make to you. I am very fond of children 
and I am a childless widower. Your little girl is a bright, lovable 
child and I am willing to adopt her as my own. But you will 
have to sign a paper agreeing to forego all claims on her here- 
after. You must promise never to seek any communication what- 
ever with her. In that case, I am willing to take her for my 
own, to educate her, and care for her in all respects as if she 
were my own daughter." 

He paused. The mulatto trembled violently, her eyes dilated, 



1891.] ' TONIA. 657 

but still she said nothing. " There is another thing," he continued ; 
" a negro called John Hunter, a short-term man, who will be out 
in a few days, wants to take your little girl with him. He wants 
to turn over a new leaf, and he says she would keep him straight. 
It is a risk for the child, but in some respects it would be better 
for her to be with her own kind." 

" No, Mr. Sefton, sir, I should never allow that. A nigger is 
not her own kind. My father was a French half-breed Indian, 
my husband an educated Italian." 

Mr. Sefton smiled incredulously. " You are sure that is true, 
Rosa ? " 

''Yes, it is true. I am a thief but not a liar." 

" Yes, it was thieving, I believe, that brought you here. How 
did you come to it ? " 

" My husband died when Tonia was a year old. My parents 
had died long before. I was alone in the world. All my life I 
had been poor. Carlo was an educated man, but always in ill- 
health, always discouraged, always unlucky. He left me penni- 
less. For a year I managed to earn a living for my child. I 
could not do much. There were no influential friends to help me 
on and procure me congenial work. I did whatever I could get 
to do, but finally constant anxiety and lack of proper food and 
rest wore me out. I could not work any more. One day there 
was nothing in the house to eat. I was sick and faint. 'Tonia was 
crying for bread. At last I could stand it no longer. I rushed 
from the house in despair. I came back a thief, but 'Tonia went 
to bed that night satisfied and happy. I was too miserable to 
sleep at all. The next day I was caught, and and then we 
came here, and you were very good, sir, to let 'Tonia stay here 
with me. But I can't let her go to the nigger, and I can't take 
her out with me." 

She ended abruptly, a sob in her voice. Her black eyes filled 
with tears. Mr. Sefton cleared his throat. 

" I can quite understand your feeling, my good woman, but I 
still think it might be a wise plan for the negro to take her. 
For your sake I wish you would decide to keep her yourself. I 
am still, however, quite willing to adopt her myself. I think I 
shall leave the decision to the child. A child's intuitions are 
sometimes clearer than any man's judgments. Will that satisfy 
you, Rosa ? " 

"Yes, sir." 

It did, indeed, satisfy her. Her passionate mother-love fought 
against the idea of giving her " Tonia " even to Mr. Sefton, 



658 ' TONIA. [Aug., 

which was the course that common- sense seemed to approve. 
Now her common-sense and her mother-love would at once be 
satisfied, for 'Tonia would come with her. Mr. Sefton sent for the 
convict, then for the child. 

When 'Tonia came running into the room three anxious people 
looked at her. The mother, by a great effort, controlled her face 
and held back the tears that were gathering in her eyes. The 
effort was so great that her face became positively gray in the 
struggle. The passionate love in her heart was so completely 
held down that her expression became cold and repellent. The 
negro's broad face grinned cheerfully when he saw the child. 
He was a burly, good-natured fellow, whose convict stripes had 
not taken all manliness from him. Mr. Sefton's shrewd face re- 
laxed when he, too, looked at the little girl. A kindly smile lit 
up his blue eyes. 'Tonia glanced from one to the other. It was 
only her mother who looked coldly at her, although she half-invol- 
untarily put out her hand to the child, then resolutely drew 
back. 'Tonia came towards her, then stood still, afraid of this new, 
strange expression on " mammy's " face. She looked up at the 
negro and smiled in answer to his grin. Then she sprang toward 
Mr. Sefton. 

" 'Oo want me, Missa Seffon ? " 

"Yes, my child," he said gravely, and held out his arms to her. 
She clambered up to his shoulder and put up her little mouth to 
be kissed. The mother clinched her hands. 

" 'Tonia," said Mr. Sefton, " I want to know what you wish to 
do. Your mother is going away. Will you go with her, or with 
John Hunter, who wants you too, or will you stay with me ? " 

The negro came forward. " Missy Tony come wif John an' 
she hab good times. Marse Sefton, lemme hab her an' I'se a good 
man. I'se keep straight 'nuff ef she come 'long wif me. Tony 
gwine ter come ? " And the negro displayed his ivories in another 
good-natured smile. 

'Tonia smiled, glanced from the negro to Mr. Sefton, and then 
slowly shook her head. The mulatto heaved a sigh of intense 
relief. The " nigger," at least, should not have her child. Her 
face still wore its intense, strained look, and her voice was nerv- 
ously husky as she stepped forward and said, " 'Tonia, come to 
mammy ! " 

The child buried her face on Mr. Sefton's shoulder and made 
no answer. Rosa came nearer. There was pitiful entreaty in her 
broken voice : " 'Tonia, won't you come to mammy ? " 

The little girl raised her head and looked gravely at her mother, 



1891.] ' TONIA. 659 

then her baby voice said, very gravely and decidedly : " Tonia 
'fraid of mammy ; 'Tonia stay wif Missa Seffon." 

There was silence for a moment. Mr. Sefton put the child 
down and solemnly kissed her. He laid his hand for a moment 
caressingly on her head. " You shall stay with me always, 
'Tonia," he said, " but now run away for a while." 

John Hunter, grumbling loudly at the child's decision, was 
ordered back to his work. Rosa still stood, silent arid motionless. 
Mr. Sefton looked at her very sadly and pitifully for a moment. 
When he spoke his voice was very gentle. 

"Rosa, I am sorry for your grief; but the child has decided, 
and I trust it will be for the best. I solemnly promise you to love 
and cherish her as if she were my own. Now, will you sign this 
paper?" 

She took the paper mechanically and read : " I solemnly pro- 
mise never henceforth, in any way, to attempt to hold communica- 
tion of any kind with my daughter Antonia, who is hereafter to be 
known as the daughter of Charles Sefton, superintendent Warham 
Penitentiary." Mechanically she took the pen and wrote in a 
firm, legible hand, ." Rosa Corsini." She reread the paper, seeming 
for the first time to realize its meaning. A strange light came 
into her eyes. She drew a long, deep breath, regained her com- 
posure, and, rising from her chair, handed the paper to the super- 
intendent. 

" Now I am ready to go," she said slowly. 

" You must first go and say good-by to 'Tonia," said he gently. 

" No, I do not want to see her again. Now I can go. I could 
not consent to leave her if I were to look at her again." 

"As you think best," he replied. " But tell me what you are 
going to do now that you are free again ? " 

He spoke very kindly, but her face hardened at his words. 
She gave a short, scornful laugh as she answered : " Do ? What 
do you think an ex-convict can do ? Is there any honest livelihood 
open for a woman who has served a year in the penitentiary ? 
Do you think there is one home in this city ready to employ me 
as servant ? Oh ! there are plenty of charitable people, Mr. Sef- 
ton, in this big city, but their charity draws the line at the in- 
mates of the penitentiary." 

" You are too .bitter," said Mr. Sefton. " You do not consider 
how few inmates the penitentiary has who are at all desirous to 
do well when they are free. I am sure you will do your best 
for the sake of your child, and I am sure you will succeed in 
earning an honest living. Come, I am going to give you a ' char- 



660 'TONIA. [Aug. 

acter ' that may help to get you a place in some respectable 
family." 

He went to the desk and wrote, with a slightly humorous- 
smile on his thin lips : 

"This is to certify that Rosa Corsini is a neat, competent, and 
conscientious servant. CHARLES SEFTON." 

Rosa took the paper, read it with a faint smile, and put it 
carefully in her pocket. Mr. Sefton took out his purse, counted 
out two ten-dollar bills, and put them in her hand as he cordially 
shook it. " This may help you a little," said he. " Remember 
that you have always my best wishes for your success. Good- 

by." 

She turned to thank him, but he had quietly slipped out of the 
room. She put the money in her pocket, picked up her small 
bundle, and noiselessly left the office. In a few moments the 
heavy door of the penitentiary had opened and closed upon her. 
Rosa stood upon the stone flagging leading to the high gate in 
the great wall that surrounded the penitentiary and gave a last 
look at the white walls and grated windows of the dreary building 
that for a year had been her home. As she stood there the doors 
of the workshop in the rear of the enclosure swung open and a 
long line of convicts, marching with the prison lock-step, each 
man's hands upon his leader's shoulders, filed slowly from work. 
The dingy stripes of their ill-fitting garments, the tread so sug- 
gestive of shuffling chains, gave a spectator the impression of a 
serpent writhing past. Rosa shuddered as she looked at them, and 
hurried from the place. In her face the gray and hopeless look 
had deepened and intensified. 

II. 

We hear often of children's " laughing eyes," but I think we 
very seldom see them. There is generally a sweet seriousness in 
a child's innocent eyes. It seems almost as if seriousness were 
part of innocence. It is only when the first wandering conscious- 
ness of the glory and delight of the wide heaven and earth above 
and about has passed away that the carelessness of laughter and 
amusement takes its place and twinkles even from the soul's fair 
windows. So perhaps it was not so strange a thing as Mr. 
Sefton fancied that Tonia's great black eyes bright, gay, active 
child though she was should have been very serious and earnest. 
She was a remarkably beautiful child, in whose face it would have 



1891.] ' TONIA. 66 1 

been difficult to trace either Indian or negro trait, excepting that 
her soft black hair fell in straight masses around her head and 
that her lips were too full for the delicacy of her other features. 
Her complexion was a clear olive, her hands and feet were finely 
formed. 

Fortunately a child's remembrances fade quickly. At the end 
of a few weeks Tonia had grown used to " mammy's" absence, and 
soon had ceased to talk of her. She grew accustomed to Mr. 
Sefton's caresses and constant attention, and she learned to lisp 
"father" very prettily. She was a gleam of constant sunshine 
for the lonely man who had made her his daughter. He felt that 
since the death of his wife his heart had been frozen, but had sud- 
denly been thawed back into life. All his plans now had reference 
to 'Tonia; his last thought at night was of her. Throughout the 
penitentiary the child had always been a favorite. The fact of her 
adoption by the superintendent seemed to make her even better 
liked. She loved to spend hours in the workshops, fascinated 
by the whirr of the machinery, watching with deep interest the 
long lines of busy, silent men. None were too abstracted, how- 
ever, for a kindly glance, a smile, a half- whispered word for the 
child. Her influence was great even with these lawless characters ; 
for in spite of the fact that a face of the Nero type, or of that of 
the utter sensualist, is not infrequent among them, there are 
more countenances that display weakness of will or good-natured 
irresoluteness in the penitentiary inmates than faces which show 
complete and hardened depravity. No man possessing a spark 
of goodness is insensible to the influence of a sweet and in- 
nocent child. Besides her mere unconscious childhood Tonia 
possessed the beautiful gift of song, most Godward-drawing of 
all God's gifts, and as she ran along the corridor outside the 
tiers of cells both men and women alike felt their hearts strangely 
moved by the unconscious trills and lilts of melody that fell in 
bird-like warblings from her lips. 

One day, about six months after his adoption of 'Tonia, the 
superintendent found an official-looking envelope among his mail. 
It proved to be the announcement that a distant cousin, whose 
only surviving relative Mr. Sefton was, had recently died in Eng- 
land, making him sole heir to a very large fortune. A little 
while before this news would have left Charles Sefton quite un- 
moved, for he was an unambitious man, fond of work, and quite 
contented with the very moderate means that provided for his few 
personal wants. Now the case was different. It gave him keen 
pleasure to realize that his power of doing for 'Tonia had sud- 



662 ' TONIA. [Aug., 

denly become almost unlimited. The final settlement of the 
affairs of his deceased relative demanded his immediate presence 
in England. Consequently he at once resigned his position, 
began his preparations for departure, and engaged a good mother- 
ly woman as nurse for Tonia. In a few weeks they were set- 
tled in London. His business did not detain him long, but he 
decided to remain in England till 'Tonia's education was far 
enough advanced to enable her to derive due benefit from 
the long course of travel he determined to give her. He took a 
charming little house in a fashionable quarter of London, en- 
gaged a small staff of servants, and began to live in every respect 
as became an American of taste and means. He was a man of 
a good deal of native tact and cleverness, and he had a quick 
power of observation, an insatiable desire to know whatever was 
best worth knowing, that, joined to his very evident wealth and 
his easy natural manner, soon made him a favorite in several 
circles of desirable and cultured society. 

Somehow possibly because little 'Tonia bore no resemblance 
to her American father the legend originated with Sefton's new 
friends, and was by them transferred to newer acquaintances, that 
he had married a beautiful Italian girl who, dying when their 
child was but an infant, had left him ever afterwards mourning 
her memory and absorbed in its only living reminder. Sefton 
never openly contradicted this story, and when, with various em- 
bellishments, it reached the ears of his adopted child, she impli- 
citly accepted it, for she had quite lost all recollections of the 
real facts of her infancy. To her grief, however, she discovered 
that she was never to learn anything more definite of her beau- 
tiful Italian mother than her nurse's romantic conjecturings and 
imaginings could supply. When she asked her father some ques- 
tions on the subject he gave her a short and sharp answer, and 
bade her never repeat the queries. They grieved him, he said, 
and it was his earnest desire that her mother should never be 
mentioned between them again. 'Tonia obeyed him, but her 
thoughts dwelt often on the dead mother ; whose face must have 
been like her own, " only much more beautiful " ; whose voice, 
too, must have been like hers, "only much sweeter and lovelier." 
So this ideal mother, always sweet and gentle and beautiful, 
dwelt in the little maiden's heart, bringing with it, as does every 
generous ideal, the spirit of peace and content. 

From the first Mr. Sefton resolved that Antonia's education 
should be broad and unconventional. All the instruction she re- 
ceived had for its object to develop her every latent power to 



1891.] 'TONIA. 663 

its fullest capacity. Strength he wished for her characteristic. 
Tonia should be a strong woman ; that was his summary of all 
that he wished for her in brain and heart and body. As for 
her soul, that he left pretty well to her own management. He 
professed no religion himself; she was to follow her own prefer- 
ence in the matter. A chain of circumstances, the first being 
the belief that it must have been her Italian mother's faith, led 
her to Catholicity just as she was growing into womanhood. 
Her father applauded her choice. " You have chosen the strong- 
est of all religions, my dear," said he. 

Antonia's exquisite voice received the best training her father 
could procure for her. More than one enthusiastic master wished 
to train her for concert or opera, where her success, they prophe- 
sied, was certain. Mr. Sefton invariably refused to entertain the 
idea. " If Providence has put a nightingale in her throat," said 
he, " it shall have every chance to fully develop its divine melody ; 
but not for the benefit of a mere money-paying, pleasure-seeking 
public." 

So there was no thought of a public career in the young girl's 
enthusiastic and painstaking devotion to her music. Perhaps the 
thought that was most active in spurring her on to increased ex- 
ertions in every line of culture was the wish to please the good 
man who so freely placed unrivalled opportunities in her reach. 
Each year that sped on left father and 'daughter more closely and 
entirely devoted to each other. 

III. 

In the little alcove of a crowded drawing-room a tall young 
man, of about six or seven-and-twenty, stood chatting pleasantly 
with a bright young English girl. He was rather a good-looking 
young fellow, though there was nothing remarkable about his ap- 
pearance, unless it were -the harmonious brown of his hair, eyes, 
and moustache, or the quiet air of thorough breeding that seemed 
to envelop him. He was a wealthy American, of an honorable 
New England family, who spent a good deal of his time abroad 
and had a circle of friends in most of the European capitals. He 
was clever and intellectual, and amiable enough to be excellent 
company when it pleased him to exert himself. His greatest fault 
was an intense dislike of the commonplace. Only people and 
things out of the common excited his interest, and, as is the case 
with most mortals, it was seldom his fate to meet with them. He 
privately pronounced existence to be " agreeable enough, but some- 



664 'TONIA. [Aug., 

thing of a bore." His name was Seymour Blaire. The young lady 
with whom he was conversing was Miss Travers. They had been 
friends for a long while and, as they had not met for several 
months previously, their talk had been particularly animated. The 
occasion was the first reception for the season of one of London's 
most famous society leaders. , The rooms were crowded and very 
warm. Mr. Blaire plied Miss Travers's fan vigorously for a few 
moments and then announced his intention of departing. 

"Oh! you are not going yet," she said. " I particularly want 
you to meet a very dear friend of mine who is to be here this 
evening, though I haven't caught sight of her yet. She has been 
on the Continent with her father for the past three years and only 
returned to London a few weeks ago. This is her first season and 
she's bound to be the rage before long." 

" You have a delightfully flattering opinion of your friends. 
\Vhat are the most shining qualities of this one, and what's her 
name, by the way ? " 

"You are just ready to laugh at me, I know. I've a great 
mind to tell you nothing about her." 

" You know you are dying to talk of her." 

Miss Travers closed her lips defiantly. 

" Come ; I admit myself curious. Tell me all about her. Af- 
ter all, it's a great point in her favor to be your friend." 

Miss Travers smiled and relented. 

"Well, I'll tell you her name, at any rate. Oh! there she is. 
Don't you see that tall, gray-haired man standing at the door of 
the music-room ? That's her father. She is just beside him. I 
declare, they have induced her to sing ! She is going to the piano. 
I am so glad you are going to hear Antonia sing." 

"So her name is Antonia. It has a classical sound jthat seems 
in keeping with the young lady herself. I don't think I'll wait to 
hear her sing, though. I'll just slip away before she begins. Fve 
heard so many young ladies sing, you know. They're all very 
much alike not half bad, of course, for amateurs, but rather tire- 
some. Good-by, Miss Travers. I'm so glad I met you this 
evening ! Tell your mother that I mean to persecute her on her 
Thursdays this season as much as ever." 

A gloved hand was laid on his arm. " My dear Mr. Blaire, I 
shall never forgive you if you don't wait, and I promise you you 
will never forgive yourself." 

"The thought of the first penalty," said he, "is more than 
sufficient to make me listen to a dozen young ladies singing. As 
for the second ," he shrugged his shoulders, and cast a second 






1891.] TONIA. 665 

look at the young lady, who stood turning over a pile of music 
at the piano. There was a distinction about her appearance that 
pleased him. The simplicity of her soft, trailing white gown and 
her low- coiled black hair suited his critical taste. She turned with 
a smile to the young man who was to play her accompaniment. 
With the smile a wave of animation swept over her face. After 
a word or two, she handed him the sheet of music she had 
selected and stood, tall and lithe as a young pine, waiting to sing. 
Seymour Blaire noted Her attitude with involuntary admiration. 
" Her face is like a beautiful cameo," he thought. Then his 
moment of enthusiasm subsided. As the first chords of the piano 
sounded Miss Travers exclaimed in a rapturous whisper : " She is 
going to sing that exquisite little thing of Rubinstein's, ' Du bist 
wie eine Blume 7 " 

The young man frowned slightly. The song was a favorite 
of his, but he had a theory concerning it. In his opinion it could 
only be well rendered by a singer who was at once a perfect artist 
and a pure-souled woman. He wished this beautiful girl had 
chosen something else. 

After her first full, pure notes the low buzz of whispered 
voices ceased. The rooms were filled with eager listeners, who 
broke into enthusiastic applause when the last notes of the ex- 
quisite voice died away. On every side admiring comments, 
stupid or appreciative, were heard. But I think it was only a 
young man with abstracted brown eyes who said to himself : " It 
is as if a field of lilies had suddenly found voice ! " 

A little ripple of laughter recalled his thoughts. " Why, Mr. 
Blaire," said Miss Travers, " you look as if you had become a 
dweller among the stars. Did Antonia's singing bore you very 
much ? " 

" My dear friend, be merciful to me a Philistine ! " he answered, 
with an attempt to shake off the gravity that had fallen upon 
him. " I owe you a thousand thanks for a few moments of in- 
tense enjoyment." 

" That is very pretty. I think I must reward you for the nice 
things you can say, when it pleases you to try, by presenting you 
to Miss Sefton and her father." 

" I should like it of all things," answered he meekly. 

So in a few moments Seymour Blaire was talking to Antonia 
and her father as if they were old friends whom he had fortunately 
encountered after a long absence. He unconsciously exerted all 
the charm and fascination of manner he possessed as he chatted 
with these two who were, he realized immediately, so clever and 



665 'TONIA. [Aug., 

so unaffected, so broad in view and experience. For the first 
time he had met a woman whose conversation afforded him at 
once complete intellectual satisfaction and a feeling of grateful 
repose. On the other hand, Mr. Sefton and his daughter were 
most favorably impressed with him. When they parted, the father 
gave him a cordial invitation to call on them. " My daughter is 
always at home on Tuesdays," said he, with a laugh, "and I am 
there whenever she is." 

The invitation was acted upon as promptly as a due regard 
for appearances would permit, and the acquaintance thus estab- 
lished developed speedily into a comfortable intimacy. When 
Seymour Blaire did not meet Antonia and her father at a dinner 
or reception or ball and as they were in the same circle of the 
social "swim " it generally happened that their engagements were 
identical he spent a quiet and delightful evening with them at 
home. Miss Travers proved a true prophet. Antonia was indeed 
before long "the rage." Nature and education had made her that 
rare but not impossible combination, a woman of beauty, of rare 
gifts, of sound sense. Whether her face or her wonderful voice 
won her most popularity, or whether the last quality above men- 
tioned was a help or detriment, I do not know. I know only 
that she was much in demand, that everybody was aware of the 
fact that she would one day be a very rich woman, and that this 
consideration may have had something to do with the shower of 
bleeding hearts that seriously afflicted her during the early part 
of the season. She confided to her father her opinion that mere 
friends were very desirable, but that would-be lovers were extremely 
tiresome. That was the nicest thing about Mr. Blaire ; he was 
so friendly, so entirely free from any nonsense. She felt the great- 
est friendliness for him and wished to display it. Somehow she 
was never quite content with the result of her endeavors. She did 
not know why the mantle of reserve seemed to be always gathered 
around her when he was near. As for him, he loved her. He was 
happy when he was with her, happy when he thought of her, miser- 
able when he meditated telling her his love. She was pure and cold 
as a snow maiden. How could any man have the impertinence 
to dream of being loved by her? He was very grateful for the 
gracious friendliness though there was a bit of reserve about it- 
with which she always treated him. What right had he to ask 
any more ? 

One day he received a cablegram from his younger brother. 
It read : " Mother ill nothing Serious but wants you. Come at 
once. Doctors think your presence necessary." 



[891.] 'TONIA. 667 

Young Blaire was very fond ol his mother, so he lost no time 
in setting about his preparations for departure. After securing a 
state-room on a Cunarder that sailed in two days, he completed all 
arrangements for a probably long absence. One or two intimate 

friends had to be seen for a moment or two. Then he would go 

t> 

to the Seftons' and make his adieux. " After all," he reasoned, 
trying to drown an unreasonable pang that would make itself 
felt, " it is better to have an end of it. She will never be more 
than my friend. She is too cold to ever care for me. I can never 
even tell her that I love her." 

He had argued himself into much propriety of thought and 
feeling when he made his farewell call. Mr. Sefton was out driv- 
ing, he was told, but Miss Sefton was at home. In a few minutes 
she joined him in the drawing-room. After a few indifferent 
remarks, he said, in a carefully casual manner : " I have come to say 
good-by, Miss Sefton. I am going home in a day or two, for a 
visit of indefinite length." 

A shade of surprise crossed her face. Involuntarily she raised 
her eyes and gave him a glance in which he read amazement 
and something more. It is one of the many responsibilities of 
Mother Eve & Co., this glance in which a woman unconsciously 
proclaims to the man her heart has chosen for its liege lord her 
willingness to swear vassalage and fealty unto him. There are 
divers ways of reading and misreading such a glance. In this 
case the man acted with more composure and common-sense than 
most men when such a revelation unhoped-for as it is delightful 
comes upon them. He tried to collect his thoughts for a moment 
with small success. He picked up a dainty bit of carving and 
seemed lost in its critical examination, while he said, very slowly : 
" I fear, Miss Sefton, my absence will be of no consequence to 
you." 

No answer. He steadied his nerves, replaced the bit of carv- 
ing on the table, and tried again. "I mean, Miss Sefton, I wish 
that it were of some consequence to you. May may I hope 
that it is ? " 

He felt that he was unwarrantably bold, whatever her look 
had seemed to say. Antonia rose and half-extended her hand. 
Now was the time to display her friendliness, she thought; to 
give him a hearty handshake and a cheerful, sincere God-speed 
for his journey. Somehow she did neither. She only said two 
faint little words, " You may." 

They were sufficient for the hearer. They were encouraging 
enough to open the floodgates of his eloquence. There was a 

VOL. LIU. 43 



668 ' TONIA. [Aug., 

good deal said on both sides after that, and with so satisfactory a 
result that, half an hour later, when Mr. Sefton came in from his 
drive, Seymour Blaire announced himself a candidate for the 
honor of being his son-in-law elect. 

Mr. Sefton had a cordial liking for the young man. He knew 
that his character was irreproachable, his family connections and 
worldly prospects excellent. The union was in every sense desir- 
able. Therefore his manner was very genial as he heartily pressed 
the young man's hand. " My dear fellow," said he, " if 'Tonia 
loves you I have nothing to say. I have no wish but her hap- 
piness, and if she thinks you are the man to secure it, why, I 
think so too." 

After making a few remarks about his intended journey and 
assuring them that he would do his utmost, if his mother's illness 
were not much more serious than he fancied, not to protract his 
absence beyond a month, Mr. Blaire took his departure, prom- 
ising to dine with them on the morrow, which was to be his last 
day in London. 

At dinner the next day the conversation turned on the last 
novel of a brilliant young writer whose stories were the topic 
of the hour. The book is the history of a lie which makes the 
happiness of several lives that would have been made desolate by the 
true facts of the case. They were all agreed upon the cleverness 
of the writer, and, from general comments on the book and its char- 
acters, they passed to a discussion of the main fact contained in it. 

" It is wrong to teach such a lesson," said Antonia decidedly. 

" But whatever makes for happiness makes for final good/' 
remarked Seymour Blaire. 

" I'm afraid, my dear Blaire, that your own individual feelings 
at present are sufficient excuse for any obliquity of view you may 
express. I think 'Tonia is right. The author teaches a harmful 
lesson in its general application, that is. Of course there are 
always individual instances where it would be wiser that the 
whole truth should not be known. Truth is sometimes very ugly, 
my dear," said Mr. Sefton, smiling across the round table at his 
daughter. 

"That is so, father, and yet I think in every case it is better 
known. The facts of a man's life belong to him. No human being 
has a right to deceive another in what is so vital a concern to 
that other. ' The fool's paradise ' cannot be cried out on too often. 
Every honest man or woman ought to prefer, a thousand times, 
a truth that brings unhappiness to an illusion or deceit that gives 
happiness." 



1 8g i.] y TONIA. 669 

The young man's brown eyes kindled as he looked at the 
girl's earnest face. When she paused he bent towards her and 
raised her hand to his lips. 

" Antonia," said he gravely, " I promise you that in our life 
together I will give you always truth and happiness, too, I 
hope." 

She smiled her thanks. Then her earnest mood passed away. 
Both tried to forget the impending farewell, and each tried to 
outdo the other in gayety. With an effort Mr. Sefton shook off 
the shade of trouble that had settled over his face and tried to 
join in their liveliness. He felt that his sparkle was ineffectual, 
and wondered if they noticed it. He might have made his mind 
easy. For the first time in her life Antonia failed to observe every 
change in her father's face or voice. Another face and voice 
demanded all her attention. 

When they adjourned to the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. 
Sefton remarked : " I am going out for a bit of a stroll while 
you young people make the most of your last evening. I suppose 
it will be a whole month, at least, before you have another 
evening together. Well, 'Tonia, do you think your old father will 
be able to comfort you ? " 

A kiss was the response. Mr. Sefton, looking quite content, 
went out. His stroll seemed to bring him very little comfort 
The troubled look came back to his face as he paced slowly up 
and down. A hard decision lay before him. Was it or was it 
not his duty to tell 'Tonia the true facts of her infancy ? Her 
chance remark had awakened thoughts that had not been in his 
mind for years. It quickened into intense life the one treasure 
he prized higher than even 'Tonia's happiness his honor. His 
heart swelled with pride in the girl that she, too, should cherish 
truth and honorable dealing above all else. He decided to tell 
her everything. As he re-entered the house there was no longer 
any trouble in his face or in his thoughts. To- morrow he would 
tell her. After all, what difference could it make ? 

IV. 

Three hours had elapsed while Antonia Sefton sat quietly 
by the open window of her pretty little sitting-room. She had 
scarcely moved from her position in the soft lounging-chair, and 
yet over her face had passed the shadows of many conflicting 
emotions. In her soul a battle had been fought jand gained. A 
great desire to forget and ignore the facts of her childhood that 



6/0 ' TONIA. 

Charles Sefton's honorable nature had compelled him to make 
her acquainted with, a terrible temptation to leave Seymour Blaire 
ignorant of what must for ever change their position to each other, 
had raged passionately in her heart. Her keen sense of honor, 
her love of truth, gained the victory at last. With victory came 
the steady current of strength that a conquered temptation gener- 
ally brings. The afternoon sunshine had gathered into the blaze 
of sunset and faded gradually into dusk when she rose from her 
chair. In the fading light the soft hangings, cushions, and rugs 
of her luxurious little apartment lost their rich colors, the outlines 
of chairs and couches were blurred and indistinct, but over her 
desk, at the opposite side of her room, the last faint ray of light 
still showed with some clearness a beautiful little painting of some 
Italian-faced Madonna which Mr. Sefton had given to Antonia 
on her last birth-day. There was in the sweet face a faint sug- 
gestion of Antonia herself, and she had hung the picture where 
it might be always in her view because it was to her the portrait 
of what her dead mother must have been. 

The loss of an illusion is always a painful wrench. To Anto- 
nia, as she faced the picture, there came a moment of intense 
physical agony. Then she was overpowered by that torrent of 
grief that can only overwhelm a cold and self-contained nature, 
by way of establishing a balance, once or twice in a lifetime, with 
the habitual self-control. She flung herself passionately on the 
floor. Her whole frame was convulsed with sobs. In a moment 
every hold she had upon life had slipped from her hands. Her 
father, whom she loved with the most intense devotion, was not 
her father. The dead mother, whose beautiful image she had 
cherished for years, was a myth the reality a mulatto, an ex- 
convict ; Heaven knows what she had become, if she still lived! 
Her lover, who alone of all the men she had known was worthy 
to rank with her father, must be nothing to her hereafter. She 
clinched and unclinched her hands fiercely ; she bit her lip till 
the blood came, and the same question rose in her breast that 
sooner or later rises in every heart when the inevitable anguish 
comes upon it: "Why must I, who am strong and vigorous, de- 
serving of and anxious for happiness, endure this misery." It is 
the question that was asked and answered one night, long ago, 
under the olive-trees of a garden in Judea. Every soul, when 
suffering particularly unmerited suffering comes upon it, is com- 
pelled to accept this answer or be left desolate. 

At last Antonia roused herself and rose slowly to her feet. 
She still trembled from the violence of her grief. She lit the 



1891.] 'TONIA. 6/1 

lamp that stood upon her desk, and stood for a long while gaz- 
ing earnestly at the pictured Madonna which, a few hours be- 
fore, had represented her mother. Out of her mind the vision 
and remembrance of her ideal mother seemed to fade as she 
stood there. In its place there rose the image of the loveless, 
lonely, hunted life of the poor mulatto. A great wave of pity 
surged over her heart. She went to the mirror and looked 
steadily at the pale, sorrowful face, the heavy, tear-laden eyes 
before her. The grotesque thought came to her that she had 
become, even in appearance, a veritable negro. She looked at 
her long, slim fingers, and fancied she saw a dusky tinge under 
the nails. A thousand invisible cords seemed drawing her to the 
despised mulatto woman. 

Finally she drew a long sigh ; a firm look came over her full, 
red lips and into her deep eyes. Her conclusion was reached, 
and, as she seated herself at her desk and drew towards her pen 
and paper, it seemed impossible that she could ever have dreamed 
of resolving otherwise so true it is that only by taking hold of 
the unendurable do we learn endurance. 

She wrote rapidly for a few minutes, then threw down her 
pen and read the brief lines she had penned. They did not sat- 
isfy her. It seemed cruel to say to the man who had hoped to 
make her his wife : " Circumstances have arisen since we parted 
that render our marriage utterly impossible. It is equally im- 
possible for me ever to see or hear from you again." 

There was truth but too much austere pride in so cold a dis- 
missal. Now, truth and humility are very near neighbors, and 
perhaps they were not altogether separated in the letter she 
finally completed with more comfort to her aching heart. In 
this she said : 

" MY DEAR SEYMOUR : When you asked me to marry you 
you thought me the daughter of a man with whom any one 
might be proud to ally himself. To-day I have learned many 
things, and my life's horizon has become very different. I am 
not the daughter of Charles Sefton, but was adopted by him at 
the expiration of my mother's term of imprisonment in an Amer- 
ican penitentiary, of which he was then keeper or superintendent. 
I was then three years old. I have absolutely no recollection 
of my poor mother, of whom nothing has ever since been heard. 
She was a mulatto, married to an Italian of good class who died 
when I was a year old. Her father was a French half-breed. 
You perceive, rrty friend, what an impossibility your marriage 
with a woman of such parentage is. Family pride, even in you 
who are so free from every mean prejudice, must absolutely for- 



672 ' TONIA. [Aug., 

bid it. Even if you wished otherwise, after what I have told 
you, I know I could now never be happy as your wife. God 
knows what it costs me to lose you ! But I realize, and you, 
too, will realize it for me, that there is but one thing for me to 
dc to spend my life, if need be, searching for my unhappy 
mother, and if I succeed in finding her still alive, no matter 
where or how, to devote myself entirely to her. That much, at 
least, I owe to her. I have only one request to make you, that 
you will permit me to drop out of your life and not allow my 
memory to sadden you. I do not* ask you to forget me en- 
tirely, but I wish you to remember me as one gone for ever 
from your sight, whom you honored by your affection, and who 
gave to you her whole heart. ANTONIA." 

The letter folded and addressed, Antonia felt that the first 
and most painful step had been taken. It was with a sense of 
relief and of returning energy that she made her way to her 
father's study. He sat at his table, his white head buried in his 
hands. He looked up as she entered, the light in his eyes that 
her presence never failed to bring ; but a great sadness came 
over his face when he saw the traces of the long afternoon of 
suffering upon her countenance. 

He rose from his chair and went to her. He took both her 
cold little hands in his and, stooping, kissed her brow. u My 
Tonia!" said he. 

She smiled a wan, dreary little smile it was and returned 
his caress. " Yes, father, always your 'Tonia. I have just been 
writing to Sey Mr. Blaire. Will you read the letter, please ? " 

His quizzical glance met no responsive twinkle, so he sat 
down, turned up his reading-lamp, put on his eye-glasses, and 
gravely read the letter. As he replaced it in the envelope he 
said deprecatingly : " My dear, why should it make a difference ? 
You cannot help but be always my daughter." 

The girl put her arm about him and bent her head till her 
lips touched his silvery hair. " My father, I am always your 
daughter. But I am also the daughter of the poor mulatto, who 
needs the love and care of the girl whose father has given her 
such a bright and happy life." 

"You feel it right, my child, to go to her?" 

" I can do nothing else." 

" Very well, my dear ; I shall not thwart your wishes. Eigh- 
teen years ago, when I adopted you as my own, it was of your 
own free choice you came to me. I have often- wondered what 
your life would have been had you chosen otherwise. If you 
had chosen the negro you might have been his salvation 




1 89 1.] 'TONIA. 673 

he was not a bad fellow at heart but what a life you would 
have led ! If you had gone with your mother you might have 
been an angel guiding her to good, or she might have been 
weak enough to drag you into the wretched ways of sin with 
herself. I hope all is best as it has been. You have made a 
lonely old fellow very happy, 'Tonia. And he ends by making 
you miserable." 

" He ends by showing me my duty, by teaching me truth 
and honor as he has always taught me. Now, tell me, what is 
the first thing to be done to find my mother ? " 

" I think, if she is still living, she is probably in Warham. I 
will write to the superintendents of the various charitable insti- 
tutions in the city and try to obtain news of her." 

" But that is so slow. Can we not go to Warham ourselves ? " 

" If you wish it, child," he answered gently, u we will close 
the house and go immediately. It's high time we had an Amer- 
ican tour, anyway." 

She put her slim, brown hand softly on his gray head. " You 
are so good, dear," she whispered. 

V. 

On a bright September morning a cab drove rapidly through 
the streets of Warham. Mr. and Miss Sefton had arrived that 
morning in the city, and immediately after breakfasting at the 
hotel had begun their quest. Institution after institution was 
visited without result. The books of neither hospital nor alms- 
house showed the name of Rosa Corsini. The poormaster knew 
nothing of her. If she were still in the city there seemed but 
one other place to seek her. The same thought was in both 
minds as Mr. Sefton gave the order, " To the penitentiary ! " 

A few pencilled words on his card at once admitted Mr. 
Sefton and his daughter to the superintendent's private office. 
As one in a dream Antonia listened to the apologies, brief ex- 
planations, casual remarks that followed. She gathered only that 
a search was being made among the records for the name of the 
woman they were seeking. The compression of her lips alone 
told how intense was her emotion as she watched the superinten- 
dent rapidly turning over page after page. 

" Ah ! " said he finally, fixing his broad thumb upon the last 
page of the big book before him, " here we are. ' Rosa Corsini, 
mulatto, ten days for vagrancy.' I rather think that's the 
woman who was brought here a few days ago, and who seemed 



6/4 'TONIA. [Aug., 

to be in the last stage of consumption. Her place is in a hos- 
pital, not here. It often happens that people are brought here 
who are much fitter subjects for the almshouse or hospital or 
insane asylum. It's doubtful, however, if that woman has many 
days to live anywhere. Two nuns who come here regularly to 
see the prisoners, and who accomplish much good by their efforts 
among them, were with her this morning. I think they men- 
tioned that the Catholic chaplain had prepared her for death. 
Would you like to see her?" And he looked curiously at his 
visitors. 

" Yes," replied Mr. Sefton. " A family matter gives me a deep 
interest in the affairs of this unfortunate woman. My daughter 
and I are most anxious to give her any assistance in our 
power." 

" Then, sir, we will go to her at once, if you and the young 
lady will come this way." 

As they were mounting the iron stairway they met the two 
nuns descending. The superintendent greeted them courteously, 
and said : " This lady and gentleman are anxious to get some 
information concerning the mulatto woman, Rosa Corsini. I 
know that you ladies have a way of obtaining the confidence 
and affection of our prisoners that we, their official guardians, 
never even dream of. Therefore I think, if you will have the 
goodness to come to the library with us, you will be able to 
satisfy them far better than I. First permit me, Sister Hilde- 
brand, Sister Alphonse, Miss Sefton, Mr. Sefton." 

The two religious bowed, smiled, murmured an assent, and 
the party entered a square, bare-looking room at the top of the 
first flight of stairs. It contained a couple of half-filled book- 
cases and half-a-dozen wooden chairs. 

As they entered the room Antonia impulsively grasped the 
hand of the younger of the nuns, Sister Alphonse, a cheerful, 
sweet-faced little woman, and, drawing her away from the others, 
exclaimed : " Sister, come over here and tell me all you know of 
this poor woman. I must know everything. I am deeply in- 
terested in her." 

" My dear Miss Sefton," answered the nun gently, a slight 
look of surprise crossing her serene face, " I shall be very glad to 
tell you all that I know. I am delighted to see so benevolent an 
interest taken in one of the poor souls here, many of whom 
never would be here were there a helping hand stretched out to 
them in the need and privation that lead them into the wretched- 
ness of sin. This Rosa Corsini has been a very unhappy wo- 



1891.] 'TONIA. . 6/5 

man. Even yet one can see in her traces of great natural re- 
finement and some education. Although she has served several 
terms here for theft or vagrancy, she seems always to have pre- 
served a certain amount of self-respect that, joined to the grace 
of God, kept her from greater evils. She had a child her 
' singing-bird,' she called her who was adopted by a wealthy 
gentleman of this city. After serving her first term of imprison- 
ment she resolved to lead an honest life. Through a written 
' character ' given her by the superintendent she obtained an 
excellent situation as housemaid in a wealthy family, where 
she was treated with the greatest kindness till they discovered, 
from the chance remark of a caller who had once visited this in- 
stitution during Rosa's term of imprisonment and who remem- 
bered her face, that their invaluable housemaid was an ex-con- 
vict. One hour after the discovery Rosa was again a homeless 
and hopeless woman. After that she lost all ambition. She 
worked when she had the chance, but she did not attempt to 
obtain another permanent, respectable situation. Once or twice 
chanty saved her from starvation, oftener theft. She led a dreary, 
lonely life. She had neither friends nor relatives, and, as she 
said to me when she told me her story, ' when a woman is once 
spotted by the police there's no chance for her.' Unable to 
work any longer, she was found on the street the other day in 
an apparently dying condition and brought here as a vagrant. 
Oh ! my dear young lady, I hope there is room in heaven for 
these poor vagrants, since it is only a prison-cell we can give 
them on earth ! " 

The nun's bright eyes filled with tears and her voice was tremu- 
lous. After a pause, she continued : " Poor Rosa has been pre- 
pared for death and seems glad to have done with life, though 
she is constantly talking of her child. The doctor says she can- 
not last through the day. I think she would die happy if she 
could only have some news of her child." 

Antonia had listened eagerly to the sister's narrative, her face 
pale, her eyes full of tears. When it was ended she started from 
her chair and, earnestly pressing the nurse's hand, said : " Thank 
you, sister, for all you have told me. In return let me tell you 
that Rosa shall die happy, for I am bringing her news of her 
child." 

Sister Hildebrand had been giving the same details to Mr. 
Sefton. He, too, was strangely affected by the story. Antonia 
said, as he came forward, "Father, let us go to her at once." 

They bade the two religious good- by, the superintendent 



676 ' TONIA. [Aug., 

again led the way, and in a few moments Antonia stood out- 
side the grating serving as door and window for the cell that 
separated her from her mother. One glance showed her the 
bare floor, the one wooden stool, the tiny shelf on the wall con- 
taining a few bottles of medicine, the comfortless cot on which 
rested a woman's motionless fprm. One thin hand lay on the 
coarse coverlid ; the face was prematurely aged, but suffering had 
sharpened and spiritualized the features ; the closed eyelids were 
suggestive of, peace. 

Mr. Sefton winced as he noticed, or thought he noticed, a 
startling resemblance even yet between mother and daughter. 
For an instant Antonia's thoughts reverted to the dream-mother 
she had so long believed in ; then her whole heart was submerged 
in passionate tenderness for the dying woman before her. The 
superintendent turned the key and opened the grating. Mr. 
Sefton turned to his daughter and said in a low voice : " There 
isn't room for more than one visitor in that cupboard, so I'll 
stroll up and down the corridor, 'Tonia." 

Mother and daughter were alone. The noise of the opening 
door had disturbed the mulatto's slumber. She moved uneasily ; 
then her eyes opened, and she murmured in a husky whisper, 
"Who said "Tonia?' Was I dreaming again?" 

She caught sight of the beautiful, tall young lady bending 
over her bed. Her own dim eyes grew wistful as she looked 
into the eyes so full of love and pity. Antonia's warm hands 
clasped the thin, cold hands that were nervously playing with 
the coverlid. She forgot the discretion she had meant to exercise. 
She bent and kissed her mother's lips. " Mother," she whispered 
in a tremulous, low voice, " don't you see I am your 'Tonia ? " 

A look of glad surprise crossed the mulatto's face. " It is 
such a beautiful dream," she gasped. 

Antonia's strong arm encircled her mother's wasted frame, her 
fingers smoothed the gray hair with a soft, caressing touch as 
she answered, "It is not a dream." 

" Then this is heaven," murmured the feeble voice. " I have 
dreamed so often, so often, that I had her again my little singing- 
bird whom I gave away. Sometimes she comes and pulls my dress 
and calls ' mammy,' just as when she was a little toddling child, and 
sometimes she takes my hand and we walk away off along a great, 
dusty road ; but I never get tired, for she smiles into my face with 
her sweet eyes and sings all the time like a little canary bird." 

" Shall she sing to you now, mother ? " 

There is only a faint, incredulous smile for answer. Antonia 



! 



1891.] 'TONIA. 677 

holds her mother's hand in a closer clasp, and, standing erect, 
begins to sing a quaint old hymn to the Virgin of Sorrows, each 
stanza of which ends with the refrain, " Virgin, full sorrowful, pray 
thou for us ! " 

At first the tones are very sweet and low, then the exquisite voice 
rings out in more powerful melody. The mother listens as one in a 
trance. Never in a fashionable drawing-room, before the most cul- 
tured and appreciative audience, did Antonia sing so well. The 
pathos, the sweetness of her notes, surprise even her father, who is 
pacing the corridor outside. All along the tier of cells the calico cur- 
tains are drawn back from the gratings and eager faces peer into the 
corridor. Antonia does not know into how many wretched hearts 
her tones are sinking as her wonderful voice breathes the last invo- 
cation, " Pray thou for us ! " She feels only that she is voicing the 
plaintive heart-cry of the dying woman, whose eyes are streaming 
with tears while she listens. 

Suddenly she raises herself, in bed and looks intently at An- 
tonia. " 'Tonia," she whispers, " you are not a little girl any 
longer. How beautiful you have grown ! Your voice is like an 
angel's!" 

" No, mother, only like your little singing-bird." 

Rosa smiles faintly. Her breathing grows more difficult. Finally 
she gasps, " Tonia, if this isn't a dream, may I " the voice is very 
humble " may I kiss you ? " 

Antonia kneels at the side of the cot and raises her face as 
she puts her arms about her mother. The dying woman, gather- 
ing all her remaining strength together, bends her head and kisses 
her daughter on brow and cheek and lips. Then she sinks back 
exhausted. Once or twice she struggles to speak, but no word 
leaves her lips, only a gasp ever fainter and feebler. A convul- 
sive movement goes through her frame. In a moment Antonia 
realizes that the end has come. But on the dead face there is 
a smile of infinite peace and content. 

MARIE LOUISE SANDROCK. 



6; 8 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [Aug., 



THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 

'III. 

THE different sciences justly claim for themselves their distinct 
autonomies, and the liberty of investigation on their own proper 
principles by their own methods. Catholic authority does not 
interfere with this liberty, or assume to overrule strictly scientific 
teaching by a higher scientific doctrine derived from revelation. 
Such a doctrine does not exist in the Sacred Scriptures, the only 
source from which it could have been derived, if the sacred 
writers had been inspired to disclose truths in this order. There 
is no royal road to knowledge in astronomy, geology, and 
similar things, for ecclesiastics, to be obtained by the study of the 
Scriptures. Ecclesiastics, doctors of the church, theologians, are 
on the same level with other men in this respect. The same is 
the case in regard to all the branches of human learning and 
art, politics, civil and social culture. 

The history of Christian civilization is consequently a history 
of development and progress, like the history of all humanity. 
And, in this development, the two factors of conservatism and 
innovation are always at work, conditioning each other and 
modifying the rate and direction of progression in all lines of 
movement. Theology and philosophy, like other human sciences, 
develop in the same way, and under the same counterbalancing 
influences of conservatism and innovation. In so far as they are 
connected with other sciences, and obliged to follow methods of 
inductive reasoning from data furnished by the investigations of 
these sciences, their advancement is dependent on the course 
and the results of these investigations. 

The resistance which discoverers in science, which innovating 
theories finally turning out to be true or at all events so prob- 
able as to merit general acceptance, have had to encounter from 
churchmen, is not to be exclusively referred to theological 
prejudice. To a great extent this resistance of Catholic author- 
ity was the effect of a conservative reaction of the dominant 
philosophy and science of the time against innovation. It was a 
struggle between old and long established scientific theories, and 
new, as yet merely hypothetical views, not entitled to be re- 
ceived as truth, but only as guesses at truth. Moreover, there 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 679 

was a great deal of pseudo-science, of charlatanism, in the form 
of alchemy,' fortune-telling, astrology, necromancy, demonology, 
etc., prevalent in the middle ages. Suspicion was cast on men 
who deviated from the routine of the dominant schools for this 
reason, although in the case of genuine investigators it was un- 
just. The adepts in occult science and soothsaying were like 
the faith-curers, Christian-scientists, spiritists, and theosophists of 
our own day. Even religious and truly scientific men might 
sometimes try experiments in the borderland which had the 
appearance of dabbling in magic. Perhaps this was one reason 
of the quarrel between Roger Bacon and his superior which 
caused his imprisonment The superior may have been in great 
part or entirely in the wrong ; but this is no proof that the 
Franciscan Order was in principle opposed to science. The pro- 
hibition of medical studies and practice by Franciscans and 
Dominicans was because they were foreign to the religious 
vocation. 

It would have been a miracle, considering the existing con- 
ditions during the period before the modern scientific revolution, 
if there had been no collision between Catholic authority and 
novel scientific theories. It was necessary that both theology and 
science should make great strides in their development before 
their real harmony could become evident. The Vatican Council 
has declared that : " The imaginary appearance of contradiction 
between them arises chiefly from this source, that the dogmas of 
faith have not been correctly understood and exposed, or that 
futile opinions have been mistaken for dictates of reason " (Const, 
de Fide, c. iv.) Imperfect theology and imperfect science coming 
together on common ground are liable to collision. It is the 
right and duty of Catholic authority to watch against the intro- 
duction of errors contrary to faith and the invasion of the proper 
territory of theology, under the disguise of scientific theories. But 
when there are not sufficient theological and scientific data at 
hand to determine, in a manner which is final and will never 
need to be reformed, some particular question of error and in- 
vasion, an undeserved censure may be pronounced. There is no 
recourse possible to divine revelation and inspiration. There is 
no supernatural insight into scientific truth. The prerogative of 
infallibility cannot be brought into play at will to meet every 
emergency. Ordinary discipline in respect to doctrinal matters 
depends on the judgments of theologians, on inferior tribunals, 
on the Roman congregations, which are a perpetual congress of 
theologians and, under the presidency of the Pope, form a papal 



68o THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [Aug., 

tribunal which is not the Cathedra Petri and whose decisions are 
therefore not ex-cathedra. 

There is no case of contradiction between any irreformable, 
infallible decision of Pope or (Ecumenical Council and any certain 
conclusion of inductive science, or even any probable theory. In- 
deed, there are very few instances of collision between science 
and the disciplinary authority of the Holy See.* 

One case which is often cited turns out on examination to be 
only imaginary. It is that of Pope Zachary, the Bishop Virgil, 
and the Antipodes. 

Virgil was an Irish monk who went to Germany and labored 
as a missionary under St. Boniface. He was educated in an ex- 
cellent school, and was acquainted with the fact that navigators 
had gone as far as Greenland, and even to our North American 
coast He taught his scholars the rotundity of the earth and the 
existence of the antipodes which were inhabited by men. Some 
persons complained to St. Boniface that he was ventilating 
strange, unheard-of opinions, which as reported to the archbishop 
seemed to him contrary to the faith. St. Boniface wrote to the 
Pope on the subject, at the same time informing him that Vir- 
gil was making claim to a bishopric on the faith of a promise 
received from the Pope during a visit which he had made to 
Rome. The Pope replied that he was not aware of any such 
promise, and that he would exact from Virgil an account of his 
doctrines, and then determine what was to be done in the matter. 
Here the history of the case ends. There is no account of the 
communications which passed between the .Pope, Virgil, and St. 
Boniface respectively. From the fact that Virgil was afterwards 
made Bishop of Salzburg we may infer that he convinced the 
Pope of his orthodoxy, and he was after his death canonized 
and highly venerated among the people of the country where 
he had labored. 

On the strength of Pope Zachary's letter to St. Boniface he 
is accused of having censured the opinion of the existence of 
antipodes, implying, of course, the rotundity of the earth, as a 
heresy. The words of the Pontift are as follows : 

" Concerning his perverse and bad doctrine, by which he has 
spoken against God and his own soul, if it is made clear that he 
has professed that there is another world under the earth, with 
other men having another sun and moon, let him be expelled 

* On the distinction between the infallible and disciplinary authority of the Holy See, see 
two articles: "The Divine Authority of the Church" and "Human Authority in the 
Church," in THK CATHOLIC WORLD, vol. xlii., November and December, 1885. 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 68 1 

from the church by a council and deprived of the honor of the 
priesthood." 

There is no question here of the rotundity of the earth or 
the antipodes in our sense of the word. The censure falls upon 
the opinion that there is another race of men in the opposite 
hemisphere. The inhabitants of this opposite hemisphere are 
called antipodes in the ancient authors, and not the hemisphere 
itself. Why was the assertion that such a race existed denounced 
as contrary to the doctrine of the Scriptures ? Because it was 
supposed to be contrary to the doctrine of the unity of the hu- 
man race, which pertains to the Christian faith, inasmuch as it is 
an essential dogma that all men fell in Adam and are re- 
deemed in Christ. Now, the ancient Greeks, who had discov- 
ered the sphericity of the earth, supposed that the habitable 
regions opposite to their own were separated from them by an 
impassable burning zone, or by one of ice, or of water. This 
notion was transmitted to the Christian generations. So long as 
it prevailed there was no room for regarding the antipodes as 
descendants from Adam, who had colonized the opposite hemi- 
sphere from Asia. Hence, to assert their existence was equiv- 
alent to a denial of the unity of the human race. But, as soon 
as it was discovered that all parts of the globe are accessible 
and can have been peopled by descendants of Adam, the appa- 
rent contradiction between the assertion of the existence of anti- 
podes and the doctrines of the faith disappeared. Virgil may have 
convinced Pope Zachary that he was right, a very probable conjec- 
ture which accounts fully for the fact that the impeachment of his 
orthodoxy was quashed, and that he was promoted to the epis- 
copate and canonized. 

The fathers of the church, whose language about antipodes is ex- 
plained by what has gone before, did not generally reject the spheri- 
city of the earth, much less condemn it as contrary to the Scriptures. 
Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes do not represent the patris- 
tic doctrine, and even they do not certsure the doctrine of the 
sphericity of the earth on the score of dogma. Origen, Ambrose, 
Augustine, Hilary, Gregory Nyssen, Gregory Nazianzen, James of 
Edessa, Isidore of Seville, and Ven. Bede either treat the ques- 
tion as one which is open to free discussion, or speak, respec- 
tively, with more or less of a leaning to the cosmographic system 
of Ptolemy.* 

* See the article of Professor Gilbert, " Le Pape Zacharie et les Antipodes," Rev. des 
Qu. Scientif., vol. xii., p. 478; Aug., De Genesi ad litt., lib. ii. c. g. ; Orig., Periarchon, lib. 
ii. c. 3; Ambr., In cxviii. Psalm.; Semi. xii. Hexaemeron, c. vi. ; Isid., Etymol. libri tres., 
cap. xxxii., xxxiii., lix.; Bede, De natura rerum; Patrol. Latin. Migne, t. xc. col. 193, 
437-8, 453- 



682 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [Aug., 

As for Pietro d'Abano and Ceccho d'Ascoli, there is a great 
obscurity and uncertainty in regard to the alleged reasons for the 
persecution which overtook them. It may be that it sprang from 
passion and malice and was wholly unjust. But it had nothing 
to do with the antipodes,* or any matter of genuine science. 

Giordano Bruno was a disreputable character, who no more 
deserves the name of a martyr of science than the anarchists 
hanged at Chicago deserve the name of martyrs of liberty. 

The case of Galileo is the one signal instance of the con- 
demnation of a true scientific theory by ecclesiastical authority. 
It is not at all requisite for my purpose that I should make a 
plea in justification of the Roman tribunal which censured the 
doctrine of this illustrious astronomer and obliged him to profess 
a retractation. The only point I aim at, is to show that in the 
Catholic Church, and in the exercise of her authority by defend- 
ing the faith against errors under the garb of science, there is 
no hostility in principle to science or the scientific liberty re- 
cognized by the Council of the Vatican. 

At the time of the censure on Galileo and his theory the helio- 
centric doctrine was not science, but hypothesis. There was no 
evidence of its truth except its fitness for explaining all the astro- 
nomical phenomena. There were objections to it which were 
insoluble in the then state of science. The geocentric theory was 
held by the whole scientific world, with few exceptions. In 
accordance with this common consent, the ecclesiastical judges of 
Galileo's case regarded his theory as scientifically false and absurd. 
The motive for pronouncing a theological censure upon it was, that 
it contradicted the literal sense of many passages of Holy Writ, 
and the interpretation of these passages by the common consent 
of the Fathers. By degrees the entire status of the heliocentric 
theory, and the prevalent view of its relation to theological doc- 
trine, were changed through the progressive advance of science. 
Scientific discoveries removed the difficulties out of its way. 
Gradually an indirect demonstration of its truth was gained, 
which after the lapse of one hundred and fifty years was 
completed by Sir Isaac Newton. Since then direct proofs have 
been accumulating, as, for instance, by the discovery of the parallax 
of some fixed stars since the year 1838, and they are increased 
almost every day by astronomical observations. 

According to Cardinal Bellarmine's principle of interpretation, 
as soon as the theory of Galileo became a scientific truth it became 

Tiraboschi, Storia della Lit, Ital., vol. v., book xi. cviii.-xviii. ; Bernini, Isloria di 
Tuttt / Eresie, vol. iii., sec. xiv., Eivvana xxii. 



1891.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 683 

necessary to abandon the literal interpretation of those texts of 
Scripture in which the inspired writers had been supposed to 
affirm the geocentric system as absolutely true, and to depart from 
the patristic comments in the same sense. It became manifest that 
the inspired writers spoke in accordance with the appearances 
which are presented to the senses, as is, even now, our custom- 
ary method. As the philosophical and scientific prejudice of the 
old Aristotelian and Ptolemaic school waned before the rising sun 
of the Copernican system, theological prejudice gradually disap- 
peared. The prohibition of the Roman congregations passed into 
desuetude. 

" In 1664 the prohibition still remained officially in force. 
But the higher and higher position which the system of Coper- 
nicus gained among the learned necessarily induced a certain prac- 
tical tolerance, and many Catholics had little scruple of professing 
it. ... In the Congregation of the Holy Office of the loth 
of May, 1757, under the pontificate of Benedict XtV., an impor- 
tant step was taken : they resolved to erase from the Index the 
article which prohibited works treating of the immobility of the 
sun and the mobility of the earth. 

" In France, Germany, and Italy the Copernican astronomy 
was taught, and works openly advocating this system were pub- 
lished with the approbation of the ecclesiastical censors, these 
works containing also the theories of Kepler and Newton. 
Cardinal Polignac and Muratori declared themselves distinctly 
in favor of these doctrines. F. Troili, S.J., published in 1772 
a treatise on astronomy in which he refuted the 'system 
of Ptolemy and showed decisive reasons for adopting that of 
Copernicus, In 1755 Boscowich, in his memoir on the meas- 
urement of the arc of the meridian and in his other writings 
speaks absolutely as admitting the rotation of the earth. The 
astronomer Manfredi did the same. In 1790 the Abbate 
Guglielmini, assisted by a prelate of the household of Pope Pius 
VI., made a remarkable series of experiments at Bologna in order 
to demonstrate the rotation of the earth, by the deviation of bodies 
freely falling to the earth. I have before my eyes a MSS. course 
of astronomy given at the University of Louvain in 1786 by Van 
Lempoel, in which the superiority of the system of Copernicus 
over those of Ptolemy and Tycho, the proofs which sustain it, the 
nullity of the objections against it derived from the Holy Scrip- 
tures, are presented with a freedom and clearness which show that 
for many years these doctrines had been professed at Louvain. 
It is evident, then, that the prohibitions of 1616 and 1634 gave 

VOL. LIII. 44 



684 Tff WARFARE OF SCJEA T CE. [Aug., 

no one any uneasiness, and it is an exaggeration to say that the 
condemnation of Galileo had paralyzed the progress of astrono- 
mical science among Catholics." * 

In 1820 a circumstance occurred which brought this famous 
and much discussed affair to its termination. Canon Settele, 
a professor in a Roman college, applied for an imprimatur for 
his Elements of Optics and Astronomy, which was refused by 
the Master of the Sacred Palace, notwithstanding an order from 
the Pope to give it. The imprimatur was given by another pre- 
late authorized by the Pope, and a decree was passed by the 
Congregation of the Holy Office .formally permitting to the 
author the teaching of the Copernican system. Finally, Sep- 
tember 11, 1822, a similar decree was published, and the works 
of Galileo, etc., which had remained on the Index were ordered 
to be erased from its pages. 

The wonderful development of astronomical science has been 
accompanied and followed by a similar development of other 
sciences. Some of these sciences, and the theories and hypothe- 
ses connected with them, are, by their nature, in a vicinity to 
theology and interpretations of Scripture which have been in 
vogue. There have arisen controversies, in which theories and 
opinions on the two sides have come into conflict, and also 
various efforts of both scientists and theologians to bring about 
that conciliation which is so desirable. The Roman congrega- 
tions have not interfered in these discussions by decisions hav- 
ing a disciplinary authority, but have left the adjustment of the 
relations between theology and the sciences to theologians. 

In the question of cosmogony there is the same opposition 
between the conclusions of geology and the literal interpretation 
of the hexaemeron of Genesis, that exists between the Coperni- 
can astronomy and the literal interpretation of the respective 
texts of Scripture. Some theologians have steadfastly adhered, 
and a few still adhere, to this literal interpretation. The domi- 
nant sense of the majority is, however, that a sufficient latitude 
must be given to the interpretation of Scripture, to give full 
liberty to all those theories of geologists which are based on 
the data of genuine science. Evert our opponents do not ven- 
ture to censure this position as unorthodox, and Catholics enjoy, 
in this regard, a perfect scientific liberty. One word will suffice 
for a very famous and favorite theory, the nebular hypothesis of 
Kant and Laplace. This theory makes no claim to be more 
than a probable hypothesis. Yet, as there is no difficulty on 

* Prof. Gilbert in the Rev. des Qu. Scientif., April, 1891 



1891.1 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 685 

the score of faith in admitting the long series of geological ages, 
embracing millions of years, neither is there any in respect to 
the preceding period of che development of the solar and 
stellar systems. This theory, in fact, is as generally favored by 
our eminent Catholic authors as by any other class of learned men. 
The theory of evolution, in its application to the origin and 
development of the flora and fauna of the earth, is far too wide 
and deep a question to be treated in a cursory manner. There 
is no universal consent of scientific authorities on this head, and 
among evolutionists themselves there are serious divergencies of 
opinion. In my judgment, there is sufficient Catholic authority 
for the position, that it is a matter of purely scientific and 
philosophical investigation and discussion, in which theology is 
not directly implicated. 

Anthropology, and the numerous questions connected with it, 
open up a field for inquiries into the human period of the 
earth's history and its earliest events, full of interest and replete 
with serious difficulties. The antiquity of man, the chronology 
of the period between Adam and Abraham, the peopling of the 
earth, the extent of the Noachian Deluge in respect both to the 
surface of the globe and to the race of mankind, the rise and 
progress of civilization, these are some of the numerous questions 
alluded to above. I must content myself, at present, with a ref- 
erence to a series of articles in the fortieth and forty-fourth 
volumes of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, entitled " Scriptural Ques- 
tions." Those who are at home in the German language will 
find it much to their advantage to consult the able and thor- 
oughly scientific Apologie des Christenthums by Professor 
Schanz of Tubingen, and also the Weltgeschichte of Professor 
Weiss of the University of Gratz. The first volume of Dr. 
Schanz's work, in which the antiquity of man, the deluge, and 
kindred topics are treated, has already been published in an Eng- 
lish translation. 

There is no warfare of Catholic authority on any of these 
parts of the domain of science against liberty of investigation, or 
any of those certain conclusions which deserve the name of 
science. Conjectural and extravagant hypotheses do not deserve 
this name. These may be in opposition to faith, and also to 
sound philosophy, to genuine science, to history and common 
sense. Scientists, even some who are eminent in their particular 
branches, may invade the domain of philosophy and theology, 
and broach the most erroneous and destructive errors. When 
they avow themselves to be unbelievers in Christianity or Theism, 



686 THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. [Aug., 

we have a right to designate them by the names which denote 
their particular phase of unbelief or scepticism. Catholic authority 
has the right to condemn their errors and does a service to the 
cause of truth by waging war against them. 

Moreover, we must be allowed, with all due respect for the 
physical sciences, to give religion, ethics, philosophy, history and 
letters, a place of higher importance in general education, mak- 
ing the proper exceptions in respect to some of these for pro- 
fessional specialists. Above all, we must insist on the para- 
mount importance of religion in education, which for us Catholics 
means simply and exclusively the Catholic religion. If there 
are shortcomings in the courses of our educational institutions 
in respect to the sciences, we will endeavor to remedy the 
deficiency. So far as ecclesiastics have been behindhand in this 
regard the entire influence of Catholic authority, even the highest, 
is actively exerted to stimulate them to improvement and progress. 

Authority and rational liberty are not in principle opposed 
to each other. Nor is the principle of authority a specific dif- 
ference of theology. It is an universal principle, existing and 
necessary in every department of human development in the 
rational and moral order. This is eminently the case in the 
domain of natural science. A signal instance is presented in 
the defiant assertion of Judge Stallo that no answer has been 
given to the arguments of his famous book on the contradictions 
and unproved assumptions of prevalent scientific hypotheses, ex- 
cept an appeal to the consent and authority of scientists. The 
remarks of F. Kent in an excellent article on " The Office of 
Reason in Theology " are so much to the point, that I will 
conclude this paper by quoting them at length : 

" The tone of superiority assumed by so many writers of 
the day is hardly in keeping with facts. We are told, how- 
ever, that earlier ages were distinguished by a credulous and 
blind trust to authority, whereas the present lives by reason and 
proof. But is this the case ? Do men nowadays make better 
use of their reason than in the ages of faith ? Take, for in- 
stance, the general acceptance of the teaching of science. Does 
this rest on severe and formal reasoning or actual experience of 
the facts which are admitted ? Undoubtedly a large number of 
facts in natural science have been ascertained with certainty, 
and many of its conclusions are proved to demonstration. Yes, 
but for whom is this proof? For all who accept the teaching? 
Surely not. Very few of the thousands who receive it without 
qualms, who take the word of Huxley and Darwin as gospel 
truth to measure heaven and earth withal, could give any proof 



1 89 1.] THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 687 

of their teaching. Nay, there are many quite incapable of ap- 
preciating the force of t'he arguments when these are placed be- 
fore them. Science, like religion, has its ecclesia discsns and 
its ecclesia docens. Authority, after all, has more influence 'in 
our lives than we are aware of more, maybe, than we care to 
acknowledge. Even in matters which are susceptible of strict 
proof most of us are content to go by faith. We accept the 
teaching of those who are masters of their several subjects, and 
go by reason only in so far as practical reason tells us that we 
do well to take their authority. 

" Now, there is no reason to complain of the acceptance of 
scientific teaching on the authority of competent men. It would 
be the height of folly to reject and disbelieve all science which 
we have not proved for ourselves. Reason itself condemns 
such a course. For it is not only in strict proof and formal 
investigation that the voice of reason is heard. It is in the 
office of reason to weigh the credentials of an authority, and 
form a practical judgment as to its trustworthiness ; and this 
reasonable belief is and must always be one of the most effec- 
tive means of arriving at the truth. There is thus what may 
be called an element of faith in the wide-spread acceptance of 
modern physical science. Unhappily, credulity and superstition 
follow in its track. 

" Because a man has made important discoveries, or has done 
other excellent work in the field of physics, he is practically taken 
as a guide and teacher, not merely on those matters on which 
he can claim to speak with authority, but on the higher subjects of 
philosophy and religion. No doubt there are some men who 
have been carried into the trackless desert of scepticism and 
unbelief by doubts and difficulties of their own. But it is likely 
that the number of those who have thus gone astray through 
the disordered workings of their own minds is not by any 
means considerable. The hosts of fashionable Free thinkers and 
Agnostics, and Positivists and Atheists, are really led by the 
influence of others. They may talk of reason and smile at the 
simple credulity of darker ages, yet they are themselves the victims 
of a singular delusion, and afford one of the most striking exam- 
ples of credulity and unreasoning faith that, the world has seen. 
What, after all, is the ultimate basis of their assent to the form 
of unbelief which they affect? It is the word of some eminent 
man who has no claim to authority but his achievements in 
physical science, or the charm of his literary style. Popular Ag- 
nosticism is really a creed, or rather a system of credulity. 

" In all this we see the natural result of the perversion of 
reason from its true office. The revolt against the just sway 
of lawful authority has ended in the tyranny of usurpers."* 

The miracles of St. Francis Xavier will form the topic of the 
next article. AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT. 

* Irish Eccl. Record, May, 1891. 



688 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug., 



THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 

THERE is an old house on, the Rue Royal about five minutes' 
walk from the garden of Monseigneur the Archbishop a house 
that once seen would never be forgotten. That there are a hun- 
dred other hpuses in New Orleans as likely to impress themselves 
on one's memory does not detract from the special uniqueness of 
the "Rose and Sword." Once its bricks were yellow; they are 
now a creamy white, and the suns that bleached them have peeled 
the paint from the heavy oaken portal and the great Venetian 
blinds. Each pair of windows and each of the two upper floors 
has two pairs has its own balcony ; and the balustrade of each 
balcony has for balusters swords about which twine rose-branches 
all wrought in iron. Again, above the lintel of the portal 
is a great oaken shield on which is repeated the device of the 
Rose and the Sword ; and from the base of the shield is thrust 
out another rose-twined sword, the lantern-bearer from which 
has hung no lantern since the year the then government 
ordered that, to show our happiness, we celebrate Mardi Gras 
as of old. Whether it was that there was so little of happiness 
to show, or what, there was no celebration of Mardi Gras, 
but much inspection of houses to know why we were sorrowful 
when the State of Affairs would have us glad. They came to 
Aunt Marie's room on the top floor, from the balcony of which 
one can see the broad banana leaves waving in mo'nseigneur's 
garden. They wished to know why no candle had been lit. 
Aunt Marie did not tell that we had no candle, but paid the tiny 
fine that, tiny as it was, left us without a picayune. 

That was our first year in the house of the Rose and Sword. 
After the great war mother and Aunt Marie had tried to hold 
on to the few acres of plantation still 'theirs. They held on 
for nearly five years. Then mother died. I was fifteen at 
that time. What can a girl of fifteen do ? Aunt Marie was 
brave enough, as the good God knows ; nevertheless she said 
to me : "I cannot keep the land for you, and I would but 
kill myself as your mother did if I tried. We will go to New 
Orleans ; bread cannot be less scarce there than here, and we may 
f inc i vve must find a market for our embroideries and artificial 
flowers." It was well Aunt Marie decided on this, for presently 
the State of Affairs appropriated our house and little field. I think 



1891.] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AXD SWORD. 689 

this was the time her heart broke. But before the representatives 
of the State of Affairs she was cheerful, even gay. 

So we came to the house of the Rose and Sword. Aunt Marie 
knew the house. She had in the old time often visited the St. 
Juliens. Not that they still owned it. Oh ! no ; if any of them 
lived they were like ourselves. It was now a lodging-house, and 
Aunt Marie rented a room on the top floor from Madame Dous- 
saint she who leased the house. This was in 1870. 

How did we live ? Well, in truth it was hard. Aunt Marie 
could make from bits of paper, or silk, or velvet, and out of 
feathers, the most exquisite flowers, that, in all save the perfume, 
came near to rival those of the good God. She could embroider 
too. As for me, my sewing it was excellent. But there was so 
little sale for these things The good fathers at the cathedral and 
at the college bought from us. They could buy but little, for the 
city was full of women poor as Aunt Marie, and there was little 
with which to help us all. Aunt Marie always prophesied better 
times, always laughed and chatted cheerfully with me, and we 
often sang together. I know now that she did all this to give 
me heart. And she succeeded, for, though I was often hungry, I 
was not unhappy. No, not even when I thought of my father 
and mother and my brothers ! Why should I be ? They are in 
Paradise. 

Once Aunt Marie did break down. That was in '72, when 
the tax was laid on the white artificial-flower makers and em- 
broiderers. Aunt Marie laughed when she told me of it ; but I 
cried. I was so young, and I was frightened, not knowing what 
would become of us, for we had no money to pay the license or 
the tax. But when Aunt Marie chided me and said, " Little 
one, suppose the State of Affairs knew of your tears ? " I cried 
no more. She went on, however, to remind me of how poor 
our dear Lord was, and of the wounds of his sweet Heart, and 
I wept again, softened tears that made me hope. 

What made the tax particularly hard on us at the moment 
was that Monseigneur the Archbishop had given Aunt Marie 
an order for flowers that would bring us a clear profit of at 
least ten dollars. I went with Aunt Marie to explain how it 
was that we could not make the flowers. Monseigneur listened 
quietly until she had finished telling him of our new trouble ; 
then he opened a desk and, having taken a twenty-dollar gold 
piece from it, he said: "Madame, you must not refuse the 
church. You can," he continued after a pause, ''present your 
flowers to her ; the State of Affairs still permits us to give and 



690 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug , 

to accept gifts." At this Aunt Marie wept as I have never seen 
one weep. She wept the pent-up tears of years, and the tears, 
too, rolled down the old cheeks of ' Monseigneur the Arch- 
bishop. 

We stayed long that evening in the ancient cathedral ; we 
were in thankfulness so drawn to the good God. As we went 
away I was glad to see the sunlight so bright on the tomb of my 
great-great grandfather, the Chevalier de 1'Isle, who is buried 
there. I said to Aunt Marie that it was a good omen, and 
she was too content to reprove me for my superstition. 

That evening, as we sat partly in the room, partly on the 
balcony, Aunt Marie said : " Rose, I have thought of some- 
thing, now that we can no longer make flowers except, of 
course, those for monseigneur; they are sacred. We are to 
make our fortunes ! " 

I smiled in doubt. 

"Ah! infidel, you laugh," she cried, herself smiling. "Lis- 
ten : we will make rice-cakes." 

At this I laughed out so loud that Aunt Marie clapped her 
hand to my mouth. " You will attract the passers-by," she re- 
proved. I blushed, and when I said it was so droll in her to 
say we would become rich by making rice- cakes I spoke in a 
whisper almost. 

" Not by making them, but by selling them," she returned. 
I objected that I did not know how they were to be sold. " I 
shall tell you," she replied. " I shall carry them to the offices 
of the men in business. The clerks will buy my delightful cakes, 
Rose." 

I was too amazed to speak. As noble as is her heart is the 
appearance of Aunt Marie. She to be a merchant of the ban- 
quette, to peddle cakes in the offices on Canal Street ! She 
joked ? No, no ! it was in all sincerity that she spoke. We had 
to live ; and we made cakes of rice early the next morning, and 
when they were ready, her thick white hair drawn back under 
her close black bonnet, Aunt Marie went out to sell them. 

She would not return, she had told me, before some hours, 
and I was feeling very lonely over my sewing, when Madame 
Doussaint came in with some oranges for me and a great piece 
of news. She had rented her first floor that had been vacant so 
long. She was in high good humor, and insisted on my guess- 
ing the name of her lodger before she would tell me that he 
was a young lawyer named Eraste St. Julien, the last of the 
family that had once owned the Rose and the Sword, and the 



1891.] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 691 

great Bellechasse plantation in Tangipahoa parish. We both 
thought it very sad, and madame talked long of the elegance of 
M. St. Julien's manner and of his handsome appearance. 

Aunt Marie came home late, her cakes sold ; but she looked 
badly and much fatigued. The cup of coffee I had ready en- 
livened her and set her to talking ; but she told me nothing of her 
day's experience save that the city was swarming with women 
and children from the parishes in as hopeless a plight as our- 
selves. Tired as she was, Aunt Marie got to work at the flowers 
for monseigneur, and whilst she fashioned branches of lilies, I 
sewed and told her of Madame Doussaint's new lodger. The 
only remark Aunt Marie made to my news was, " I don't know 
but what I ought to claim his acquaintance, I knew his mother 
so well." 

The next morning was Sunday, and as we returned from 
Mass a young man passed us whom I had noticed praying before 
the altar of the Holy Virgin. ''It is Eraste St. Julien," whis- 
pered Aunt Marie. " He has changed very little from when I saw 
him as a boy." I was about to remark that Aunt Marie must 
have a good memory for faces to so well remember one she had 
not seen for nigh twenty years, when the clank of arms and the 
heavy tramp on the banquette of a body of the militia of the 
State of Affairs advancing behind us made me forget everything 
in my desire to reach home, which was in sight. I clung to 
Aunt Marie's arm, and we started at a trot for the Rose and 
Sword, followed by the laugh of the militia. In my eagerness to 
reach home I did not perceive that we had gained on M. St. 
Julien, who, seeing two unprotected women and the advancing 
militia, bowed and asked permission of Aunt Marie to accompany 
us home. 

" We are there in a moment," said Aunt Marie, making a 
little motion with her hand to point out the house of the Rose 
and Sword. 

"How fortunate!" he exclaimed. " I too live there." 

We had now reached the house, and with a grave courtesy 

.unt Marie thanked M. St. Julien and we passed on to our room, 

saving him standing in the hallway. I was a little disappointed. 

found that I had built on Aunt Marie's old friendship for M. 

>t. Julien's family. She was very silent all that day, and I was 

ibashed to speak of him to her. 

Every day Aunt Marie went out with her basket of cakes, and 
time she had so increased her custom as to be able to em- 
)loy one Carl, who possessed a hand-cart, to deliver our cakes at 



692 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug., 

a number of private houses and to the families of the troops that 
garrisoned the city. One of the officers had showed to Aunt 
Marie much kindness. " It was Captain Fletcher who gained me 
the custom of the garrison," she said to me. " Do not forget 
him in your prayers, little one." Things went well with us till 
August ; so well that Aunt M^rie spoke to Madame Doussaint of 
the possibility of her renting the second floor of the Rose and 
Sword. And to me she said, half-laughing, half-crying, her arms 
about my neck, " What say you, little one, to one horse and 
wagon, so little, and Carl to drive ? " 

How we laughed and chatted 'and sang that evening! We 
had had much of happiness in the house of the Rose and Sword, 
but that evening we could scarce contain ourselves. And to 
make us merrier, if possible, Madame Doussaint came to join us 
at supper, bringing with her a little kettle of freshest red-fish 
court-bouillon. " Eat, eat ! " she cried to me at table ; " he bring 
the color to your cheek so blanche, and the sparkle to your 
eye." 

" She was my little angel, yes," murmured Aunt Marie, 
feigning to frown, and then crying out in a burst of laughter, 
" Gourmet! gourmet ! " 

About a week after this Aunt Marie met with the accident 
that came near to ending her good life. She was on St. Claude 
Street, passing a dwelling that was being torn down, and a falling 
beam struck her leg, so that, as you know, she limps to this day. 
For more than a month she was unable to leave her bed, and it 
rested on me to keep up our trade in the rice-cakes. With the 
help Madame Doussaint gave me I could have done this, had not 
Carl deserted me to go to a man who would pay him more than 
I could afford to give. This desertion would have taken the life 
out of me had I had the time to spend in idle thought. Merci- 
fully there was much for me to do, and while I worked I formed 
my plan, and then communicated it to Madame Doussaint 

" You will go out with one basket as did the woman, your 
aunt, of the grand -soul?" she said, knitting her brows in thought. 
" You will wear the close bonnet and the veil?" she continued, and 
I said I would, though I had not thought of them. Then she 
implored me to give up my idea.- She was in no need of money 
for the room, and if we needed anything she could let us have it. 
I knew, however, that she was as poor as myself. She had 
rented none of her rooms save the one Aunt Marie and I lodged 
in and the two occupied by M. St. Julien. And, though madame 
never told me so, I felt that he was very poor and that he could 



1891 ] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 693 

not pay her regularly. Perhaps I had been led to believe this 
last by my having learned that he cooked his meals himself, and 
I very seldom perceived the odor of meat proceeding from his 
apartment. 

" Aunt Marie must not know I have gone out," I said to 
madame when, my basket on my arm, I was preparing to leave 
in the morning. " Let her suppose I am resting in your room " ; 
and madame said yes, yes, she would, and kissed me on either 
cheek. 

As I went through the hallway I met M. St. Julien, who 
stared at me, astonished, then bowed and looked confused. 

From hearing Aunt Marie speak of them, I had a tolerably 
correct idea of what places to take my cakes, and everywhere I 
went I found that our cakes were known, and from feeling 
afraid to offer the contents of my basket I passed to the pos- 
session of a strong sensation of pride in our cooking. I was 
helped to this by the courtesy shown me, and the occasional 
inquiry after my aunt, quietly put, and the expressions of 
sympathy uttered concerning her misfortune. My basket was 
emptied early in the day, and I was crossing the plaza op- 
posite the city hall on my way home when I saw M. St. 
Julien advancing towards me. I had been stopped before 
by purchasers, and I began to dread that he wished to buy 
of me. He passed me without a bow or recognition of any 
kind, and I felt that he knew I did not wish to be noticed by 
him. 

I was so overcome by this little encounter and so tired, for 
the day was very hot, that I paused to rest myself on one of 
the benches under the shade-trees. I had not been seated long 
when a man came up to me and said something in the negro 
French of the plantation which I could not understand. He was 
rough-looking and I rose hastily to escape him, when he caught 
me by the arm. Not in a loud voice, for I was weak from terror, 
I called out the name of the only man I at all knew, M. St. 
Julien. Helpless as I was from fright, I saw that the grove 
of trees prevented me from being seen by the passengers in 
the street, and I saw by the man's eyes that he had perceived 
as much. 

He had loosened his grasp of my arm and was again 
speaking his jargon, when I uttered a shrill cry and sprang 
from him to run against an officer in the uniform of a cap- 
tain in the Federal service. At sight of the uniform the fel- 
low was about to take to his heels when the loudly-shouted 



694 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug , 

" Halt ! " of the officer caused him to turn about and mutter, 
" I wasn't doin' no harm, boss." 

" Lady," said the officer, uncovering, " this fellow has 
annoyed you ? " I nodded my head, and he continued : " You 
wish to make a complaint against him ? " 

''No, no!" I denied eagerly, alarmed at the thought of 
appearing in a court-room. 

Then, in no measured terms, the officer bade the fellow begone. 
He gazed irately in the direction the man had taken, then turned 
to me and said : " I regret that this has happened, and I beg 
you to believe me when I tell you that we soldiers have no part 
whatsoever in the present miserable state of the city." 

I stammered something in French to the effect that I was 
not at all discomposed, and stooped to pick up my basket, which 
had fallen to the ground. He, too, stooped, begging my pardon, 
and in the confusion my veil fell back, and I saw that my defender 
was not only a stalwart but a very handsome man of about forty. 
And I saw that his face flushed and that he looked much sur- 
prised. 

" Mademoiselle," he said, uttering the French title of compli- 
ment with difficulty, "you will pardon me in the present state 
of the city you should not be abroad alone. My name is Fletcher. 
I am old enough to be your father. Permit me to see you safe 
home. Your family should not have permitted you to come out. 
Don't they know the state of the city ? " 

Though he spoke with much indignation, there was no mis- 
taking the respect he showed me. In spite of this respect I, 
too, felt indignant that Aunt Marie should be so condemned, even 
though the condemnation was indirect. I broke out in a white 
heat to defend her, telling him of her accident, and how it came 
about that I was abroad, and that I was not afraid the men of 
my people would molest me. 

It did not cool me to see him smile, and I winced a little 
when he said : " So the bakeress of the Rose and Sword is un- 
well ! We have missed her cakes, I can assure you. And you 
are her niece, mademoiselle ? " 

Only then J remembered what Aunt Marie had told me of 
a Captain Fletcher's kindness to her, and now I felt a little 
shy of him. Instead of answering his last question, I reverted 
to his first. " I thank you," I said, " but there can be no dan- 
ger for me on the banquette, and the Rose and Sword is not 
far off." 

"As you will, mademoiselle," he said. "But may I beg an- 



1891.] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 695 

other favor of you ? I have a sister staying here on a visit ; may 
she call on you ? " 

The expression " call on you" was new to me, and he must 
have perceived that I did not understand, for he explained : 
" May she visit you ? " 

I drew my veil closer about my face as I said, "We do not 
receive visitors now we have no place " 

I stopped short, and he said gravely : " Mademoiselle, this 
foolish pride of your people I may tell my sister to call 
on you ? " 

I think I shook my head in affirmation, though, as I walked 
rapidly away, I repeated in French that we could not receive 
visitors. 

I hurried, almost ran home, and as I ascended the steps of 
the Rose and Sword I saw M. St. Julien a few yards off, watch- 
ing me as if on guard. 

Fortunately I had not been missed by Aunt Marie, who had rested 
quietly all morning under the impression that I was in the little 
garden of the Rose and Sword ; and this impression was confirmed 
by my taking to her a bouquet of roses that had been gathered 
by Madame Doussaint On the same evening I was sitting by 
the half-closed blinds when Madame Doussaint came on tiptoe 
to the open door. In order not to disturb Aunt Marie, who 
slept, she put her finger to her lips and beckoned me "out into 
the corridor. " Mademoiselle Rose," she said, " I have a message 
for you from M. St. Julien " ; and she offered me a folded 
piece of note-paper. 

" Should I receive a message from him ? " I asked, hesitating 
and feeling that the piece of paper I now held burned my fingers. 

"Surely," asserted madame ; "he writes for your good." 

" You know what he has written ? " I faltered. 

Madame signified by a nod of her head that she did, and then 
I opened the billet of M. St. Julien; and this is what I read: 
" Addressed to Mademoiselle Rose de 1'Isle, September the 
eleventh, 1872 : Daily a revolt of our people against the State of 
Affairs is looked for. M. St. Julien most humbly and with great 
respect does entreat mademoiselle not to leave the house of the 
Rose and Sword for the week to come. He petitions with rever- 
ence that mademoiselle consult with the respectable Madame 
Doussaint of these concerns." 

Yes, I remembered it all, every word. I have it still in my 
escritoire. 
. Even in the seclusion in which we lived rumor of a rising had 



696 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug., 

reached us, and we longed for it to take place and we dreaded 
it. " He will take a part in the revolt, madame ? " I asked. 

" Is he a man, that you ask me that ? " she flashed. Then she 
drew me to her and petted me. " You weep, my angel," she 
said ; and when I had become quieted, questioned, " What shall 

1 tell monsieur? " 



" Tell him I thank him, and tell him I remain within," I said. 

" And no more ?" chirped madame. 

I looked at her, and I saw that her eyes had guessed my 
secret. My face hid in my hands, I said as I turned to go to 
Aunt Marie, " Tell him, if you wish, I pray for him." 

" Good ! " called madame after me in a whisper, " that will 
make him most strong." 

On the morning of the thirteenth of September Aunt Marie was 
able to sit up for the first time in many weeks. Madame Dous- 
saint helped me to arrange a couch for her by the balcony, where 
she could refresh her eyes with a view of the garden of monseig- 
neur and have a glimpse of the great river rushing to the far-off 
Gulf. The street had an unusually deserted look. Opposite, the 
shops of the dealers in old books and antiques, the shop of 
Madame Sylvanie with its faded bonnets in its window, were 
desolate, and the old man Simon, who owned the Cafe Reine at 
the corner, was the only human being in sight. 

" You should have seen Rue Royal when I was young," sighed 
Aunt Marie, partly to me, partly to the cardinal bird gazing into 
the ivory cup of a magnolia blooming on the tree, the branches 
of which stretched out to the balcony. 

I pressed her thin hand and sat thinking of the warning -given 
me in M. St. Julien's note, and wondering when the revolt would 
come. Ignorant of my thoughts, for I had concealed from her 
all knowledge of M. St. Julien's admonition, fearing to alarm her 
and so retard her recovery, Aunt Marie began to tell me of the 
gay parties that she had accompanied to the French Opera, when 
suddenly she was interrupted by the clatter of a pair of horses and 
a carriage that drove up to the house of the Rose and Sword. 

" Ah ! our equipage for the promenade on the beach road to 
the lake ! " exclaimed Aunt Marie, smothering a laugh in the folds 
of her handkerchief. 

I was too intent on watching a woman, all in black silk from 
head to foot, who descended the carriage steps and then disappeared 
under the heavy shadow of the portal, to answer. Conscience 
put me a question that was answered in the affirmative by 
Madame Doussaint, who brought me a card on which was printed, 



1891.] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. '697 

" Miss Letitia Fletcher." My heart beat hard as I handed the 
card to Aunt Marie, for had I not kept it a secret to myself, my 
meeting with Captain Fletcher ? What a relief it \vas when she 
said, after having read the name: "Will my Rose go down to this 
lady ? She has come to see why I have not served her for so long. 
Let her know, and, my Rose, remember that she and hers have 
been very kind to me." 

I said that I would, and, directed by Madame Doussaint, I 
went to the salon on the second floor, where I found the Miss 
Letitia gazing out of the window. She turned about abruptly, and 
the cold look she gave me was penetrating. 

" You are Miss de 1' Isle's niece, I presume ? " she questioned. 

I answered that I was, and in the mode taught me by Aunt 
Marie I offered her a chair. She stared at me, then burst into 
a laugh that made her fair white face something beautiful, and 
reminded me of her brother. 

" You will be seated, mademoiselle, I entreat," I said. 

For answer she dragged the chair I offered to the middle of 
the salon, seated herself, and asked, " What is your given name ? " 

I did not understand her question, and answered feebly that 
I did not know; then- a sudden perception came to me that she 
wished to know my Christian name, and I said, " My name is Rose 
Marie de 1'Isle." 

" Well, Rosemary," she questioned, " how is your aunt ? 
Captain Fletcher has told me all about her accident. Does she 
still send you out to peddle cakes ? " 

I protested in a torrent of words, French and English, that I 
had gone out without the knowledge of Aunt Marie, and that she 
was unaware of my mishap in the plaza. 

When I paused from fatigue, Miss Letitia asked: 

" Well, are you through ? " 

Under the circumstances it must have appeared droll, for again 
Miss Letitia laughed when I bowed in assent as I had once seen 
Aunt Marie bow to a representative of the State of Affairs. 
Suddenly, however, her face straightened, and she reproved 
me, saying, " Do you know that you have done very wrong ? 
You have been acting a lie." 

I stood up, and my eyes were big. " A De 1'Isle does not 
lie, mademoiselle, ' I said, my voice low and strong. 

She stared at me and commanded, "Rosemary, sit down!" 

I was like a little child. I obeyed her; I sat down. 

For quite five minutes she scolded me for my sinfulness. " Now, 
Rosemary," she finished, " I hope you are repentant." 



698* THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug., 

With the sensation of having been scored by whips, I thanked 
Miss Letitia, and I believe I gave her the impression that I 
thought her charming. 

" Well," she went on, " now that we have come to an under- 
standing, I'll see your aunt. I want to speak to her about settling 
you. How would you like to have charge of a little girl, Rose- 
mary, to teach her to read and write ? " 

" Mademoiselle," I entreated, " you will pardon me, but ma- 
demoiselle, my aunt, does not receive to-day ; and, mademoiselle, 
you do me much honor, but I am one incapable." 

" Don't you know how to read and write?" she demanded. 

" Yes, yes, but I will speak to my aunt," I stammered. 

" You will do nothing of the kind ; you are a pair of imprac- 
ticable persons," declared Miss Letitia. " I shall speak to her 
mysdf." 

What I would have said to this I do not know, for at that 
moment Madame Doussaint entered the salon with a message 
from Aunt Marie to ask Miss Letitia to her room. 

She looked as if she had caught me in another prevarication. 
" Will you lead the way to your aunt ? " she demanded, and I 
went quickly on the way upstairs, followed by her. 

44 Well, Marie," she began, and then stopped short ; for my 
aunt, in her old-fashioned robe and her thick white hair visible, 
was very different from the withered woman in the close bonnet 
and veil. " I was grieved to hear of your accident, madame," she 
continued, stiffly, but with a grace that was peculiarly her own. 

It was not long before Miss Letitia entered into the subject that 
brought her to the house of the Rose and Sword. I cast my eyes 
upon her to move her to pity, but she was implacable. She told 
of my deceit, the story of which made Aunt Marie to weep and 
caress me. And she called me her angel guardian, and made a 
grand heroine of me ; persisting to do so even when reproved by 
Miss Letitia, who accused her of being my ruin. I think that Aunt 
Marie, as well as myself, was angry with Miss Letitia; but how 
changed we were when she went on to tell us that her brother 
had lost his wife some years before, and that he had a little girl 
of five years whom, if I would be a governess to, we would have 
money sufficient to make it not necessary to sell our cakes on the 
banquette. 

" Now, my dear friends," said Miss Letitia, " let me be your 
friend. I know what it is to be poor, and I know what it is to 
be in trouble. When I was a young girl out West I worked hard 
with my mother, cooking and doing chores for a score or so of 



1891.] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 699 

farm hands, and I say it in no spirit of boastfulness, but to let 
you know that I can understand what you have gone through. I 
earned enough to school me, and then I fell in love with a young 
farmer, who must needs go in the army, and one of your people 
killed him. Now, I an't bearing malice for that, neither am I 
heaping on coals of fire. I just want you to know, and that there 
is a deal to forgive on both sides. And may He forgive us our 
trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." 

I was no longer afraid of her. I kissed her, and she called 
me a good little soul and stroked my hair. I think her heart 
was hungry. These people of the cold exterior often have warm 
hearts. I think it is like good wine that is set in ice ; the ice 
does not kill its fire. 

The little girl she spoke of lived in the North, and I would 
have to go to her. This made it very serious, and we said we 
would do as Miss Letitia advised. We would think it over. 

After Miss Letitia left us neither Aunt Marie nor I spoke of 
her or of the proposition she had made for me. Rather, we strove 
not to think of it, although we felt that I must go, and I could 
not help but wonder what M. St. Julien would say if he were to 
know that I was going away from the house of the Rose and the 
Sword. 

Before another twenty-four hours would pass enough was to 
happen to make us forget that my going away had ever been 
spoken of. About two of the evening Madame Doussaint, Aunt 
Marie, and myself were taking our bouillon, when we heard the 
tramp of many feet in the Rue Royal. We looked at one another 
instinctively, and madame, thinking it best, told Aunt Marie of 
the threatened revolt. She crossed herself in silence, and took up 
her beads. 

Madame and I hurried to the blinds, and saw going up the 
banquette on the other side, taking the direction of the Place 
d'ArmeSy a long line of men. They marched two by two, shoulder 
to shoulder, with even tramp ; these youths and old men so grave, 
with intent looks upon their faces. 

" He is not there, madame," I said. 

" He will be there," said madame resolutely. 

No other body of men passed in the Rue Royal that even- 
ing, but occasionally two and three together, all with the intent 
look upon their faces. Early, before five, Madame Sylvanie and 
her little girl came out to put up the shutters of their shop to 
hide the faded millinery that no one wished to buy. A little 
later the old bookseller and the dealer in antiques gathered to- 
VOL. LIU. 45 



700 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD [Aug., 

gether their wares and fastened their doors. And M. Simon, 
having drank a cup of coffee on the banquette, looked up and 
down the desolate street, shrugged his shoulders, and, having 
passed within, he closed the Cafe Reine for the night. So still 
was it, I could hear the clank of the chain with which he fas- 
tened its door; so heavily still at sunset, that I could hear the 
boom of the evening gun out by Chalamette. 

You who only know New Orleans with its laughter and 
bustle, and jingle of bells and perpetual blare of brass instruments, 
as if its world were but a circle .of fete days, can scarcely realize 
the oppressive silence of that night of the thirteenth and four- 
teenth of September, in 1872. Neither Aunt Marie nor myself 
feigned to sleep. I sat in a low chair by her couch, the couch 
we had prepared for her in the morning, my hand held in hers. 
We did not speak, only when the cathedral gong let us know 
the hours of the night her hand held mine more tensely. 
Twelve o'clock; one, and two, and three, and so on till the hot 
sun made yellow the edges of the slats of the blinds, and then 
the silence broke. 

Tramp tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; TRAMP TRAMP, TRAMP, 
TRAMP, TRAMP ; tramp tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp the foot- 
steps died away in the distance to where is the Place d'Armes. 

I looked up at Aunt Marie; her cheeks glowed, her eyes 
burned. 

Some one was knocking at the door, and I opened it to let 
in Madame Doussaint, carrying a tray. " I have come to break- 
fast with you, my dears," she said, and sat down the tray. 
" There is coffee, and biscuit, and endive that is heavenly Ah ! " 
she cried, interrupting herself as she caught a view of Aunt 
Marie's face, "she is adorable"; and she threw her arms about 
Aunt Marie, who called her friend. 

" Now, my angels," said madame, returning to herself, " we 
will make to ourselves strength of the coffee, and cool our 
tongues with the endive of paradise." 

We had breakfasted and I was assisting madame to put 
away the cups and plates, when we heard afar off an angry roar 
and the report of rifles, that approached nearer and hearer till 
the air was torn to rags with the yells and shrieks of a mob, 
and the explosion of powder. 

Madame and I ran to the blinds, and from our coigne of van- 
tage we could see a multitude of men run into the Rue Royal 
from out the Rue Canal. Some few bore flags, all carried pistols 
or rifles ; some were wounded and bleeding ; anon one fell to the 



1891.] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 701 

ground, to be trampled under by the rushing feet. Some would 
turn to* fire at their pursuers, and to shriek and yell their im- 
precations ; and some cried for mercy. And behind the multitude 
came, shoulder to shoulder, the men of the intent look, silent and 
merciless, to avenge great wrongs through the cruel muzzles of 
the rifles that were cold and glittering in the flaming sun. I 
heard, as it were in my sleep, the woman at my side, the wo- 
man who you know has so loving a heart, count coldly the 
death of seventeen. 

" Rose ! madame ! what is it?" cried Aunt Marie; and it was 
madame who said, solemnly, " Mademoiselle, give thanks to 
heaven ! the State of Affairs is dead." 

I did not answer, for among the men of the intent look I 
saw M. St. Julien, and every bit of my body was one prayer 
alone for his safety. And whilst I prayed I saw him fall a little 
beyond the house of the Rose and Sword, and the mob and 
their pursuers turn into the Rue Toulouse. 

Madame, too, saw this, and when I had looked in her face 
our thoughts were as one. She took my hand and said, " Little 
one, come with me." But first I went to Aunt Marie to tell 
her that M. St. Julien lay in the street wounded or dead, and 
that madame and I would go to bring him in. She said it was 
good, and kissed my cheek with her hot lips. 

We found other women in the streets caring for the wounded, 
but we did not pause till I knelt by his side. He was not 
dead, but blood poured from a wound in his side like wine from 
a down-turned bottle. Madame tore off the muslin 'kerchief that 
she wore crossed on her bosom and tied behind, and bound up 
the wound, and, helped by the bookseller and Madame Sylvanie, 
we got him into the house and laid him on his bed, the only 
piece of furniture in his inner room. 

Madame went to search for a surgeon, and while she was gone 
I held my hand tight to the wound, which somewhat stopped the 
flow of blood. But I make confession that I was a little sad that 
I could not as well bathe his face with the fresh water, but had 
to leave that to be done by Madame Sylvanie. And I make con- 
fession, too, that I did not think to ask any one to go to Aunt 
Marie, not calling to mind that she was, no doubt, troub^d as to 
the condition of M. St Julien. 

Madame had to go far before she found a surgeon, and when 
at last he came and made to me a compliment because of what 
my hand had done, 1 thought of Aunt Marie and hurried to our 
room. It was time. I found her feverish, her mind wandering. 



702 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug., 

The surgeon prescribed various remedies, but all that day and 
night her mind was gone. She would repeat that the State of 
Affairs was dead, and then she would moan out a hope that the 
tax would be removed from the flower-makers. " For," she would 
say, "it is hard, messieurs, for an old woman, most gentle, to sell 
on the banquette" ; and then the tears would roll down her 
cheeks. 

Mon Dieu, those days, those days ! Monsieur Time kissed me 
on the forehead then, for, as you see, though I am but thirty-two, 
I have the wrinkle on my brow. 

The State of Affairs was not dead. An unwilling army was 
called in to sustain it, and it rose again to see three more revolts 
against its iniquity, and then, by its own weight of wrong- doing, 
it fell, and we returned to our own. Before this was to be five 
more long years were to pass. 

Yes, I repeat, those were hard, hard days, the remainder of 
September and the whole of October. There was ruin and beggary 
for all in the house of the Rose and Sword, and for two of us, M. 
St. Julien and Aunt Marie, it was a coquetting with death. The 
time came when by turns we took it Madame Doussaint and I 
stood in line with those who went to the gates of the good mon- 
seigneur to receive the dole of bread for the well, the little flask 
of wine for the sick. We hid all this from Miss Letitia, who visited 
Aunt Marie every day, and from the captain, her brother, who I 
came to know as a friend through the attention he showed M. St. 
Julien. 

The day came, however, when I was obliged to tell Miss Leti- 
tia our secret. Through the love of the good God for us, Aunt 
Marie recovered fast, but M. St. Julien did not mend. I could see 
him failing before my eyes, and it pained me that I could not 
procure for him the little things that the doctor said were so 
necessary. When she was able to descend the stairs, Aunt Marie 
accompanied me on my visits to him, and she, too, saw that he 
failed, although he was always gay and cheerful in our presence. 
Madame Doussaint told us that he mourned in secret at being a 
burden. "You tell him that he is not a burden?" I asked. 

" I tell him, rny angel, that we rejoice to serve him/' returned 
madame, pressing my hand. " But," she added, " that does not 
console him." 

Poor madame ! she also had a secret that she never revealed 
till the danger had passed. Her lease of the house of the Rose 
and Sword was almost run out. 



1891.] THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 703 

One day when the doctor had been in to see M. St. Julien he 
called me aside to speak to me. " I see that my prescriptions for 
M. St. Julien are not followed out," he said, his voice hard and 
severe. " If I perceive any more of this carelessness I shall abandon 
his case unless he procure a capable nurse. I will not have him 
die on my hands ! " 

I was a worm abased to the earth. I crawled upstairs to 
madame's salon, and there fell on my knees and covered my face 
with my hands. 

" Well, child ! what is the matter ? " called Miss Letitia. I 
had altogether forgotten that I had left her in the salon when I 
went down to see the doctor. " Is St. Julien worse what is it, 
Rosemary ? " she cried, holding me at arm's length and gazing 
into my face. 

" I have killed M. St. Julien," I said, and my voice sounded to 
me as if it were some one else who spoke. 

She drew me down into a chair by her side and asked me 
what I meant. I did not spare my words ; if I could have done 
so, I would have exaggerated our wretchedness. I told her how 
we had done all that we could, and I implored her, for the sake 
of the good God, to save M. St. Julien. 

From that day Miss Letitia and Aunt Marie took charge of the 
house of the Rose and Sword, and of all who were in it. It 
was Miss Letitia who told us what to do, and no one questioned 
her bidding. Whatever she chose to do for us, and she chose 
to do much, we acquiesced in, for she never made us feel her 
kindness. What she did that was best for us, for it made us inde- 
pendent, was to get us the making of the dresses of the officers' 
wives and daughters. Our prosperity overflowed to the house of 
Ma'dame Sylvanie in this way : one of our lady customers dis- 
covered madame's tact in the manufacture of bonnets, and told 
her discovery to others, who came and were pleased to be 
bonneted in the French mode. Even the old bookseller and the 
dealer in antiques had their trade increased by these same ladies, 
who could not fait to see their treasures as they passed in and 
out of the house of the Rose and Sword. 

Now that M. St. Julien had recovered I saw but little of 
him. He was shy of me, and I was very shy of him. Ingrate 
that I am, I believe truly that, in spite of the prosperity in which 
he no longer shared, I was happier when he had to be cared for. 
Madame Doussaint would look from one to other of us when we 



704 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug., 

met him on the stairs, and he and I had so little to say ; and 
she would sigh when he left us and fall to talking of Captain 
Fletcher, as if she wished to distract my thoughts from M. St. 
Julien. 

Captain Fletcher came frequently with Miss Letitia to visit 
Aunt Marie, and it was he whp told me that M. St. Julien was 
going away from the house of the Rose and Sword to a little 
property in the parish of Tangipahoa which had been left him by 
a cousin who had died lately. 

" It is well," I said with nonchalance ; " he is too impracticable 
to be a lawyer ; he will be better in the field." 

" He is a solidly good fellow," laughed the captain ; " but, 
as you say, mademoiselle, he is not practical.*' 

" Yes, but he is a little," I demurred. " Think to yourself how 
all of himself he studied the law. I think you do not comprehend 
the Creole, monsieur." 

"I do not, no ! " he returned; and eyed me sc curiously that 
I blushed an angry red. 

The next morning I heard M. St. Julien talking with Madame 
Doussaint in the corridor, and I wished that I were a man that 
I might go out and talk with him, and, perhaps, help him to 
pack the trunk I now heard him drag from out the storeroom. 
Presently I heard madame begin to sing, and I caught the refrain 
of the ballad : 

" Tu fais, sous ton empire, 
Le doux martyre " 

which she cut short to call down the stairs to M. St. Julien, that 
she would take his message to the Mademoiselle de 1'Isle. 

"Caught!" she cried, clapping her hands as she burst into 
the salon t and I drew back, red in the face. "Ah! my angel," 
she went on, now wringing her hands, " I am disconsolate ! I 
lose my friend, the best of men : M. St. Julien, he leaves my 
house." 

" I know," I replied. 

" He has told you ? " 

" No, the captain, he told me." 

"The captain, the captain, always the captain; always, always, 
mademoiselle ! " cried madame. " You love the captain, eh ? " 

" Madame ! " I exclaimed, and called her most cruel, most 
wicked. 

"I am one demon!" agreed madame; "one demon most 



THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. 705 

vile. I deliver my message, which is : M. St. Julien will do him- 
self the honor to make his adieux to the Demoiselles de 1'Isle, 
and I disappear." 

I motioned for her to remain, but she said she had to call 
down my aunt So, he was coming now. 

After a short time aunt came to the salon, and, almost im- 
mediately following, I heard M. St. Julien's footsteps in the 
corridor. My aunt caught my arm so hard that she hurt me. 
"Courage, little one, courage!" she whispered. 

We three had little to say, and that little was almost all said 
by my aunt. He told us that he was going to a little place in 
the country that had become his, and Aunt Marie asked if it 
were near Bellechasse ; and when he said it adjoined it, she said 
what a delight it was for him to be near the home of his father, 
and how adorable is the country. I think he would have re- 
mained longer had he not heard Miss Letitia talking to Madame 
Doussaint in the corridor. Then it was that he rose from his 
chair and said to me : " Mademoiselle, I shall ever hold in my 
heart the devotion of yourself, and you, mademoiselle " he bowed 
to Aunt Marie " when I was ill in the room that was desolate 
till you visited it." He bent over my hand and kissed it, and 
left the room. 

" Aunt Marie," I said, my back turned to her, " Miss Letitia 
is coming; I would escape her." We could still hear her voice, 
now speaking to M. St. Julien. 

" You will meet her if you go into the corridor ; it is best 
that you remain." She was cold, but she was doing what was best 
to keep me from breaking down. 

We sat apart, waiting for Miss Letitia, the fresh wind blowing 
in sweet smells from the pots of jessamine in the balcony ; the 
time going slowly. 

At last she came in, her fair face flushed, her whole body ani- 
mated as I had never before seen her. " I am simply and totally 
disgusted ! " she exclaimed. " I don't know what to make of 
you people ! You let things go wrong, you let yourselves be 
wronged, you let all manner of troubles come along, and you say 
nothing, do nothing, and I suppose you call it sublime patience. 
You do explode sometimes, I don't deny it. But your explosions 
do no one any good, not even yourselves. Here is St. Julien 
going ofif without a word to Rosemary; and I saying nothing 
further of Captain Fletcher's child, because I have been expecting 
every day to hear of their marriage." 



706 THE HOUSE OF THE ROSE AND SWORD. [Aug., 

"You have been our savior, but " began Aunt Marie. 

" Be quiet ! '' interrupted Miss Letitia. " I will listen to 
your pretty speeches when I get through, not before. I ask St. 
Julien if he has spoken, and he says no ; and I find out that he 
thinks my brother is in love with Rosemary, and because he 
has befriended him, St. Julien says, he was bound in honor to 
stand aside ; and I have not ftie least doubt, though his tongue 
is as smooth as a pat of butter, for a word he'd blow my 
brother's brains out, and he'd call that honor, too. Well, I tell 
you both, for fear you may have notions in your heads, my 
brother does not care a button for Rosemary at least not in 
that way. Now, listen to me. I am going to send St. Julien to 
you. I don't want to know, Marie, what you think about it ; 
you're a child for all your fifty years " She paused, and then 
went on quietly, '' I suppose I am abrupt, but, my dear friends, 
it 'is because I love you, and I can't bear to see people un- 
happy." 

It seemed but a moment after Miss Letitia ceased speaking 
till Eraste held my hand and asked, " Is it true, Rose ? " 

" My friend," I whispered, and again he kissed my hand. 

You ask if we have prospered ; and you see the five angels 
the good God hath sent us ; you see Aunt Marie, so rosy, so 
content ; and then, besides, is not Bellechasse again our own ? 
You are so droll, monsieur! 

HAROLD DIJON. 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 707 

LIFE OF FATHER HECKER.* 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
THE PAULIST PARISH AND MISSIONS. 

IN serving the parish, the Paulists, led by Father Hecker, en- 
deavored to utilize the individual qualities of each member, as 
well as the advantages of a com-nunity, so as to bring them to 
bear as distinct forces upon the people. What George Miles had 
said of them as missionaries, as quoted in a previous chapter, 
applied to them as parish priests, and told accordingly in results. 
Their personal excellences found free room for activity, without 
any lack of oneness of spirit and without interfering with harmony 
of action. 

The missionary makes an efficient parish priest. Accustomed 
to severe labor as well as to very moderate recreation, he pours 
the energy of apostolic zeal into parochial channels. A high order 
of preaching is often the result, combined with tireless application to 
visiting the sick, hunting up sinners, and hearing confessions. On 
the other hand, the experience of regular parish duty is of assist- 
ance to the missionary when he returns to his " apostolic expe- 
ditions," as Pius IX. called them ; he is all the better fitted to 
plan and execute his proper enterprises from having obtained a 
fuller knowledge of the ordinary state of things in a parish. 

It will not be expected that a detailed account of the parish 
work of St. Paul's will here be given, or more than a brief sum- 
mary of that of the missions. These latter were kept up with 
vigorous energy from 1858 till the close of the war in the spring 
of 1865. On April 4 of that year Father Baker died, and the 
missions, which had been a grievous burden to the little band, 
now became an impossibility. They were suspended till 1872, 
excepting an occasional one, given not so much as part of the 
current labor of the community, as to retain their sweet savor 
in the memory and as an earnest of their future resumption. 
But up to Father Baker's death this small body of men had 
preached almost everywhere throughout the country, getting away 
from the South just before the war blocked the road. Eighty- 
one missions had been given, hundreds of converts had been re- 
ceived into the Church and many scores of thousands of confes- 

* Copyright, 1890, Rev. A. F. Hewit. All rights reserved. 



/o8 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

sions heard. Numerous applications for missions were refused for 
want of men to preach them. Scarcely a city of any size in 
the United States and Canada but knew the Paulists and thanked 
God for their missions. 

The Fathers conducted them in the same spirit as when they 
were Redemptorists, and followed, as the community still con- 
tinues to do, substantially the same method. It is not easy to 
improve on St. Alphonsus. But they did not fail to bring out 
the qualities and call for the peculiar virtues demanded by 
Divine Providence in these times. Their preaching was distin- 
guished by appeals to manliness and intelligence, as well as to 
the virtues distinctly supernatural. The people were not only 
edified by their zeal and religious discipline, but the more ob- 
servant were attracted by the Paulists' freedom of spirit, and by 
their constant insistence on the use of the reasoning faculties to 
guide the emotions aroused by the sermons. The missionaries 
were men of native independence, and their religious influence 
was productive of the same quality. Great attention was paid to 
the doctrinal instructions. As to special devotions, the Paulists 
have never had any to propagate, though competent and willing 
to assist the pastor in his own choice of such subsidiary religious 
aids. Non - Catholics of all classes were drawn to hear the con- 
vert missionaries, and the exercises usually received flattering 
notices from the secular press. An unrelenting warfare was car- 
ried on against the dangerous occasions of sin peculiar to our 
country and people, and the Fathers were from the beginning, 
and their community is yet well known for particular hostil- 
ity to drunkenness, and to the most fruitful source of that de- 
testable and widespread vice, the saloon. Their antagonism to 
drunkenness showed their appreciation of its evil supremacy 
among the masses, and the condemnation of the saloon was a 
necessary result. 

This attitude of the missionaries was often a bitter-sweet morsel 
to the pastors, nearly all of whom at that time had been trained 
in the Old World. They were glad of the good done, yet sorry 
to see their liquor-dealers put to public shame. One pastor is 
recorded as saying : " The only people that have looked sad at 
this mission are the first men in my parish, the rum-sellers." 
The following is a piece of evidence worth publishing, though it 
is but one of very many which could be produced. It is found 
in the Mission Record in Father Baker's handwriting : 

" A Catholic one evening, on his way to the mission, stopped 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 709 

in a grog-shop and took a glass with the proprietor. ' Won't you 
go with me to hear the Fathers?' said the guest. ' No,' said 
the other, * these men are too hard on us. They want all of us 
liquor-dealers to shut up our shops. If we were rich we could 
do it ; but we an't we are poor. These men are too high and 

independent ; Father wouldn't dare to speak as they do. 

But after all/ continued he, 'they are good fellows; see the effect 
of their labors.' Then, taking out of his pocket a crumpled let- 
ter which he had received through the post-office, and which 
was badly spelled and badly written, he read as follows : ' SIR : 
I send you three dollars which I received by mistake three years 
ago from your clerk. And now I hope that you will stop sell- 
ing damnation, and that God may give you grace to stop it. 
Yours : A Sinner.' " 



Whatever may have been the misgivings of some, the op- 
position of the Paulists to the liquor-traffic was approved by the 
most enlightened and influential prelates and priests of the 
country, as is shown by the number of cathedrals and other 
prominent churches in which the missions were preached. It 
should be added that this antagonism to drunkenness, to convivial 
drinking, and to saloon-keeping, not only received the unanimous 
applause of the Catholic laity, but edified the non-Catholic pub- 
lic, and brought out many commendations from the secular press 
as well as from the police authorities of our crowded cities. A 
mission is a terror to obstinate evil-doers of all kinds, but to 
habitual drunkards and saloon-keepers it is especially so. The 
attitude of the Church in America on this entire subject, as 
officially expressed by the decrees of the Third Plenary Council 
and by its pastoral letter, fully justifies the action of Father 
Hecker and his companions. 

As soon as the church in Fifty-ninth Street was opened the 
community exerted itself to make the surroundings attractive. The 
building occupied but a small part of the property, the rest of 
which was laid out in grass-plats and gravel walks; many shade- 
trees and some fruit-trees were set out, and a flower and vegetable 
garden planted. It was Father Hecker's delight to superintend 
this work, and to participate actively in it when his duties al- 
lowed. The grounds soon became an attractive spot, to which in 
a few years church-goers from all parts of the city began to 
make Sunday pilgrimages. They came in considerable numbers 
every Sunday to assist at Mass or Vespers in St. Paul's quiet, 
country-like church. Meantime the residents of the parish, not 
very numerous and nearly all of the laboring class, formed deep 



;io THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

attachments for their pastors, and an almost ideal state of unity 
and affection bound priests and people together. 

Nearly the entire region was covered with market gardens, varied 
with huge masses of rock, and groups of shanties. Very many 
of the parishioners of that early period lived in these nondescript 
dwellings, of which they were themselves both the architects and 
builders, a fact which added not a little to their quaint and 
picturesque appearance. The sites upon which these " squatters' ' 
homes were placed, and over which roamed and sported their 
mingled goats, dogs, and children, are now occupied in great part 
by blocks of stately residences and apartment houses ; but we 
know not whether the grace of God abounds more plentifully now 
than it did then At any rate, whoever heard Father Hecker in 
those primitive days call his parish " Shantyopolis," could see no 
sign of regret on his part that he had a poor and simple people 
as the bulk of his parishioners. 

Much attention was given to the preparation and preaching 
of sermons, with the result of a full- attendance at High Mass on 
Sundays. Beginning with 1861, a volume of these discourses was 
published under Father Hecker's direction each year, till a series of 
seven volumes had been completed. These were very well re- 
ceived by the Catholic public, and were bought in considerable 
numbers by non- Catholic clergymen. They had an extensive 
sale, though when their publication was first proposed it was 
feared that they would not succeed. They are almost wholly of 
a strictly parochial character, brief, direct in style, abounding in 
examples from every-day life, and plentifully illustrated with 
Scripture quotations. Although Father Hecker preached regularly 
in his turn, only a few of his sermons were contributed to these 
volumes, but his suggestions and encouragement greatly assisted 
the other Fathers in preparing theirs, as indeed in all their duties, 
parochial and missionary. Some years after the series was ended 
two volumes of Five- Minute Sermons were published, providing 
short instructions for Low Masses on Sundays. 

The Paulist Church also became well known for the attention 
paid to the public offices of religion, as well as for rubrical ex- 
actness in ceremonies, the greater feasts of the year being cele- 
brated with all the splendor which a simple church-building and 
limited pecuniary means allowed. 

Father Hecker was from first to last strongly in favor ot 
congregational singing, and assisted to the . best of his power in 
introducing it. It began in our church in rrodest fashion back 
in those early days, and was fostered zealously at the Lenten de- 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 711 

votions and society meetings. It never failed of some good re- 
sults, and has finally attained a flourishing state of success in 
this parish. His attention to the children was constant. No 
matter who had charge of the Sunday-school, as long as his 
health permitted Father Hecker was there every Sunday that he 
was at home, asking questions, talking to the teachers and chil- 
dren, enlivening all by his encouragement and cheerfulness. 

He was a martinet on one question, and that was cleanliness, 
and its kindred virtue, orderliness. He was never above working 
with mop, broom and duster indoors, and shovel and rake in the 
garden ; and this trait added much to the appearance of things 
as well as to the comfort of all concerned in the use of the con- 
vent and the church. 

Though assiduous in every parish duty, his favorite task was 
the relief of the poor. They multiplied in number in undue 
proportion to the increase of the parish, drifting out this way 
from the overcrowded quarters down town. Father Hecker en- 
listed the best men and women in the congregation in the work 
of caring for them, organizing a conference of the St. Vincent 
de Paul Society, in whose labors he joyfully and energetically 
participated. 

The death of Father Baker was, humanly speaking, a loss to 
the community beyond all calculation, and was the great event 
of the first period of the Paulist -community. Father Hecker had 
the very highest estimate of his holiness, and mourned him with 
the mingled sorrow and joy with which saints are mourned. 
The reader should get Father Hewit's Memoir of Father Baker 
if he would know his virtues. Father Hecker was often heard to 
say that few men understood his ideas so clearly as did Father 
Baker and had so much sympathy with them. And his death 
was the signal for an impulse whose power plainly indicated its 
supernatural origin. Up to that time there had been but two 
priests added to the community, and those who had offered 
themselves as novices and been rejected, were, as a rule, little cal- 
culated to inspire hope. But from 1865 onwards good subjects, 
mostly converts, applied in sufficient numbers, and in a few years 
the missions were resumed. But what was of even more impor- 
tance, the apostolate of the press, started in the publication of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD the month in which Father Baker's death 
occurred, assumed a national prominence, and together with the 
Catholic Tracts and the Catholic Publication Society set the Paulists 
at work in their primary vocation, the conversion of non-Catholics 
to the true religion. To this, and to Father Hecker's lectures, we 



THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

now turn. Of course we might dwell longer on the parish and 
the missions, about which there are many things of interest left 
untold, but only the lapse of time can sufficiently dissociate them 
from living persons to allow of their being made public. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

FATHER HECKER'S LECTURES. 

THE suspension of the missions, if it was the result of 'neces- 
sity, was yet an aid to Father Hecker in devoting himself to 
public speaking in the interests of the Catholic faith. Between 
missions, it is true, he seized every favorable opportunity to 
address audiences on controversial topics, often doing so in public 
halls, as well as in churches. Meantime he could still further 
mature his plans, and, testing his methods by experiment, secure 
for future occasions a course of lectures fully suited to the end 
he had in view. More than ever "did he study to fit himself 
for his apostolate. How, he asked himself, shall the living word 
be framed anew for our new people ? How shall religious teaching 
be suited to the special needs of this age without detracting from 
the integrity and the venerable antiquity of the truth ? He 
sought to answer these questions by recalling his own early difficul- 
ties, and by opening his soul to the voices of struggling hu- 
manity uttered everywhere around him. What men outside the 
Church were yearning for in matters social and religious was his 
incessant study. He read every book, he read every periodical 
which promised to guide him ever so little to know by what 
road Divine Providence was moving men's minds towards the truth. 
His eyes were ever strained to read the signs of God's provi- 
dence in men's lives. And his conclusion was always the same: 
proclaim it on the house-tops that no man can be consistent 
with his natural aspirations till he has become a Catholic ; 
preach it on the street- corners that the Catholic religion elevates 
man far above his highest natural force into union with the 
Deity intimate, conscious, and perpetual. 

As to systematic preparation for discourses to non- Catholics, 
Father Hecker had his own peculiar equipment. As the reader will 
remember, God had led him in no way more singularly than in 
his studies, and had led him straight. The doctrines of the Church 
were familiar to him, for they had quenched his soul's thirst. 
And he had preached them on the missions, the instructions on 
the Creed and the Sacraments falling to his share. He had given 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 713 

these waters of life to other souls, and knew their value. He was 
a close student of the dogmatic side of religion. He had, it is 
true, little taste for the refinements of theologians, unless they 
touched the questions of human dignity and the scope of the grace 
of Christ, which were vital ones to himself. He viewed religion 
with wide-sweeping glances, trying to discover every hill of vision 
or stream of sanctity. He had plain truths to teach, and he needed 
none other. He knew the organism of the Church in clergy and 
in people, for he had seen it both from without and within. He 
had felt the grip of authority fixed in his soul. He had agonized 
under the brand of punishment as it burnt into his flesh, and he 
had seen it changed into the badge of approval. Within and 
without he knew Catholicity, loved it daily more and more, and 
was daily more and more anxious to proclaim it to the world. 
It was not from labored preparation of his lectures that success 
came to Father Hecker. Even those which seemed the most 
elaborately prepared he did not write out word for word. His 
verbal memory was not trustworthy, and he had to confide in his 
extemporizing faculty, which was very good, and which became in 
course of time quite reliable, giving out sentences clear, gramma- 
tical, and fit to print. " I have to produce a sermon for next Sun- 
day," he once wrote to a friend. " For me a sermon is always 
a spontaneous production ; I cannot get one up. The idea must 
arise and grow up in my own mind. It is usually hard labor for 
me to produce it outwardly and give it suitable expression." But 
the effort did not appear in the delivery, for his style, although 
emphatic, was easy and familiar; his delivery, if not altogether 
according to the rules of elocution, nevertheless gained his point 
completely. No word of his was dead-born. His voice was not 
always clear, as he often suffered from bronchial troubles, but it 
was not unpleasant, and had a penetrating quality, being of that 
middle pitch which carries to the ends of a large auditorium with- 
out provoking the echoes. His appearance was very dignified, 
his tall frame, his broad face and large features showing with 
striking effect. His action was simple and not ungraceful, though 
frequently exceedingly energetic. As he never sought emotional 
effects his power may be known by his unfailing success in hold- 
ing his audience perfectly attentive throughout long argumentative 
discourses. Energy of conviction was one of the strongest forces 
he possessed, and it took the shape of a gentle constraint with 
which his positive utterances of Catholic principles compelled 
assent. Sincerity of belief and liberty of soul were admirably 
blended in his manner. He never appeared in public without 



714 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

attracting many representatives of the mottled sectarianism of our 
population ; and this pleased him much, for he loved them, 
felt at home with them, and was full of joy at the opportunity of 
addressing them. 

He was chagrined at the apathy he sometimes met with 
among Catholics concerning 1;he American apostolate. He found 
priests who would devote much labor to collecting money for the 
propagation of the faith among distant heathen races, but very few 
who would make a serious effort for the conversion of their 
American fellow- citizens. Are Americans of less worth in God's 
eyes than pagans and Buddhists ? he would ask. He thought no 
differently of the people of the United States than St. Paul did 
of the Corinthians and Macedonians, groaning and travailing 
with them to bring them forth members of Christ ; or than St. 
Francis Xavier did of the Japanese. 

If asked how he was going to convert people, he would answer : 
41 1 am a Catholic, and I know that I am right. I can prove that 
I am right. What more do I want than this, and honest men and 
women who will listen to me ? " The confidence he had in the 
strength of the Catholic argument was absolute, and this he showed 
by his zeal. His sole study was how to transmute this force 
into missionary form. Of all the wonders of the intellectual world 
he felt that the greatest is the faith of Catholics, and he knew 
by the lesson of his early life that it is but slightly appreciated by 
the non- Catholic mind. That Catholics permit this ignorance to 
continue was a puzzle to him. And it was all the more annoy- 
ing because any single one of them can multiply his influence 
indefinitely by his union with the most perfect organism ever 
known the Catholic Church. The quiescence of a body of men, 
sincere and intelligent, infallibly certain of the means of obtain- 
ing eternal happiness, living in daily contact with other men 
ignorant and inquiring about this unspeakable privilege, and yet 
not taking instant measures to impart their knowledge, was to 
Father Hecker almost as great a wonder as the divine gift of faith 
itself, especially as Catholics are well furnished with leaders and are 
organized to spread the truth as one of their most sacred duties. 

Mr. Wilfrid Ward, a Catholic philosophical writer of distinc- 
tion, has explained in a brilliant little volume the influence upon 
controversy of what he styles The Clothes of Religion race, 
political traditions, education, physical temperament. He puts 
into his instructive pages the sense of the great scholastic max- 
im, Quidqui'd recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur 
Whatever is received, is received according to the mode < v or 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 715 

character) of the recipient. The national character, the tendencies, 
the antecedents of the people addressed, the relative power of 
thought and of emotion in their mental activity ; all these are 
not, indeed, the souls of men but the clothing of them, their 
armor and their weapons ; and Father Hecker felt that such things 
must be taken into account in dealing with people, and that 
with the utmost discretion. His view about controversy with 
non- Catholics was indeed aggressive that we had reached the 
point in the battle at which the legion, having cast its javelins, 
rushes on with drawn swords to closer conflict. But the com- 
batants should be well trained, the captains should know the 
ground to be traversed, should understand thoroughly the weak- 
ness and strength of the enemy. It was not a new thing to 
bring Protestantism into' court at the suit of human liberty. But 
it was a novelty to attack Protestantism as the very torture- 
chamber of free and innocent souls, and to do it in such a way 
as to draw thousands of the best Protestants in the land to 
listen. Such sentences in the morning papers as " An overflow- 
ing house greeted Father Hecker," " The immense hall has sel- 
dom been so completely filled," " Representative men of all creeds 
and of none were scattered through the large audience," had a 
tremendous meaning when the lecturer was known to be the 
most fearless assailant of Protestantism who had appeared for 
many a day. 

Father Hecker well knew that the non- Catholic American 
aspires to deal with God through the aid of as few exterior ap- 
pliances as possible. To come near God by his own spiritual 
activity without halting at forms of human contrivance is his 
spiritual ambition. His religious joy is in a spiritual life which 
deals with God directly, His inspired Word, His Holy Spirit. 
Father Hecker longed to tell his fellow-countrymen that the 
Catholic Church gives them a flight to God a thousand times 
more direct than they ever dreamed of. They think that the 
authority of the Church will cramp their limbs ; he was eager 
to explain to them that it sets them free, clears the mind of 
doubt, intensifies conviction into instinctive certitude, quickens 
the intellectual faculties into an activity whose force is un- 
known outside the Church. 

It was not with the truths of revelation alone that Father. 
Hecker dealt in his lectures. The first principles of natural re- 
ligion were the background of all his pictures of true Christiaa- 
ity : that God is good, that men will be punished only for their 
personal misdeeds, that men are born for union with God and. 

VOL. LIII. 46 



;i6 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

in their best moments long for Him, that they are equal, being 
all made in the Divine image, endowed with free will and called 
to the one eternal happiness such were the great truths with 
which he would impress his audience first of all, using them 
afterwards as terms of comparison with Protestant doctrine. 
This plan he followed rather than institute a comparison of 
historical claims or of Biblical credentials, the well-trodden but 
weary road of ordinary controversy. To him Protestantism was 
more an offence against the integrity of human nature than 
even against the truths of Christian revelation. And he would 
place Catholicity in a new light, that of reason and liberty. 

The revolt of Protestantism was not more against God's ex- 
ternal authority among men than it was against the equal 
brotherhood of the human race. Well done, Luther, Father 
Hecker would say, well and consistently done ; when you have 
proclaimed man totally depraved you have properly made his 
religion a Cain-like flight from the face of his Maker and his 
kindred by your doctrine of predestination. Father Hecker 
deemed- it plainly unwise to forego the advantages of attacking 
such vulnerable points as the Protestant errors of total depravity 
and predestination for the sake of dwelling on the Biblical and 
historical credentials of Church authority. He knew, indeed, 
that extravagant individualism is to this day a fundamental Pro- 
testant error, but the waning power of its doctrinal assertion 
has deprived it of aggressive vigor. There is less danger of its 
assault upon the Church, Father Hecker thought, than of its 
sceptical tendency upon its own adherents. To emphasize the 
obligation of organic unity, in such a condition of things, was 
not good tactics ; it was to revive the spirit of resistance with- 
out arresting the evils of doubt. Authority in religion has 
high and undoubted claims; but it is nevertheless true that the 
normal development of man is in freedom. Man is fitted for 
his destiny in proportion to his ability to use his liberty with 
wisdom, and Father Hecker endeavored to set non-Catholics 
themselves to work removing the obstacles to true spiritual 
liberty which Protestantism had planted in the way. 

An appeal from Luther and Calvin to the standards of ra- 
.tional nature, to human virtue, to human equality, rather than to 
exclusively Catholic standards, was certain of success in a large 
.class of minds. And this but led to the consideration of the 
Church's claims to elevate rational nature and natural virtue to 
that divine order which is above nature, and which is organic in 
.the Catholic Church. Moral rectitude is a simpler test of truth 






1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 717 

than texts from a dead book, whose original tongues and whose 
perplexed exegesis are quite unknown to the vast mass of man- 
kind. And Father Hecker recognized that the elementary truths 
of reason and the aspirations of humanity for better things are 
not unknown to any man or woman ; these are everybody's per- 
sonal means of testing truth. To pass them by in order to 
apply the remoter test of revelation is either to admit that 
Protestantism is not against the dictates of reason and man's 
aspirations, or to commence the argument against it at the 
wrong end. 

In a letter to Cardinal Barnabo written in July, 1863, Father 
Hecker gives an account of how he went to work to secure and 
interest a non-Catholic audience : 

" For several years past it has seemed to me that some more 
effectual means should be taken to reach the Protestant com- 
munity. This last winter I ventured with this view upon an experi- 
ment. In three different cities I gave, in a large public hall, a 
course of conferences on religion, one every evening from Sunday 
to Sunday inclusive. The expense of the hall was paid by the 
priest of the place, the lectures were all free, and addressed ex- 
clusively to Protestants. The halls were crowded at each place, 
and that my audiences might be such as I desired to address, 
I begged Catholics to stay away. At the close of one of my 
lectures there were present twenty-five hundred persons, chiefly 
Protestants. 

" My method was as follows : In treating any doctrine of 
our holy faith with a view to convincing my audience, I consid- 
ered first what want in our nature it was related to, and to 
which it addressed itself. This want being discovered, I devel- 
oped and illustrated it until my hearers were fully convinced of 
its existence and importance. Then the question came up, Which 
religion recognizes this element or want of our nature, and meets 
all its legitimate demands ? Does Protestantism ? Its answers 
were given, and found either hostile or incomplete. Then the 
Catholic Church was interrogated, and she was found to recog- 
nize this want, and her answers adequate and satisfactory. These 
answers were then shown to be supported by the authority of 
Holy Scriptures. 

" The interest shown by my audience was remarkable, and 
the effect of this method was equal to my hopes. My experi- 
ence convinces me that, if this work were continued, it would 
prepare the way for a great change of religion in this country, 



7i 8 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER, [Aug., 

more particularly at the present time, when the public mind is 
favorably disposed to consider the claims of the Catholic Church." 

The " want in our nature " appealed to was often in the 
political order, such as the love of liberty or man's capacity for 
self-government. This he dwelt upon at considerable length in 
the opening part of his lecture, viewing it as a philosopher 
would, and extending its application, as far as possible, to men 
generally. He thus chose his criterion for comparison of the two 
claimants in the religious world. His triumph was, therefore, often 
in an arena only semi-religious, or rather in that of natural re- 
ligion. The effect was wonderfully good, though doubtless due 
in great measure to the manner in which his plan, so simply 
sketched in the letter above quoted, was developed before the 
audience. The entire doubting body of intelligent men was en- 
listed in varying degrees in favor of the Catholic teaching of 
man's relation to God and to his fellow-men, and against Protest- 
antism. Americans could not help feeling disgust for doctrines 
which were condemned by the maxims of the Declaration of In- 
dependence. 

Although there was nothing positively new in the method 
something like it had been used by Archbishop Hughes against the 
Presbyterian champion, Breckenridge yet the public was taken by 
surprise. The style of controversy universally in vogue was that of 
setting up texts of Scripture and bowling them down with other 
texts. But here comes an American Catholic and arraigns Protestant 
doctrine at the tribunal of American liberty. The thick-and-thin 
Protestant was thrown into a rage, and became abusive and often 
incoherent in his reply. The easy-going Protestant claimed that 
the doctrines assailed were obsolete, as his church had, at least 
implicitly, changed them. " Then change your church," said 
Father Hecker ; " if you have come back to the right doctrine, 
why not come back to the true Church ? " As to the average 
intelligent inquirer, he was uniformly influenced by these lectures 
against the Reformation and its entire teaching, with its dreadful 
effects of doubt and division among Christians. 

Father Hecker had an intuitive perception of the peculiar diffi- 
culties of the American people, and ever showed the utmost 
readiness and skill in meeting them. He had a matchless power 
of laying bare the wants of the human heart, and an equal facility 
of pointing out the light and strength of Catholicity for their 
supply. His immense sympathy for an aspiring and guileless 
soul deprived of the truth, was most evident ; he always looked 






1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 719 

it and spoke it and acted it before his audience. To do so was 
no effort on his part. He told of the promised land not as a 
native of it, but as a messenger sent into it, and now returned 
with such tidings as should hasten the steps of his brethren still 
wandering in the desert; and this sympathetip interest em- 
braced the civil as well as the religious side of human nature. 
He claimed everything really American for the Catholic faith, and 
this was joy and gladness to many a weary heart drawn to the 
Church by her charities, or her beautiful symbolism, yet hindered 
by the phantom of absolute authority and the dread of losing 
the integrity of free citizenship. Incivism will Catholic apologists 
never learn it ? is the heaviest stone flung at the Church in 
all free lands to-day. Father Hecker's blood fairly boiled that 
the Church of Christ, the very home of Christian freedom, and 
the nursing-mother of all civil well-being, should be thus assailed, 
while Calvin's and Luther's degrading doctrines should be paraded 
as alone worthy of a free people. 

To say that Father Hecker " Americanized" in the narrow 
sense would be to do him injustice. The American ideas to 
which he appealed he knew to be God's will for all civilized 
peoples of our time. If fundamentally American they were 
not for that reason exclusively American. His Americanism is 
so broad that by a change of place it can be made Spanish, or 
German ; and a slight change of terms makes it religious and 
Catholic. Nor had form of government essentially to do with it ; 
human equality cannot be monopolized by republics ; it can be 
rightly understood in a monarchy, though in such a case it does 
not assume the conspicuous place which it does in a republic. It 
was this broadness of Father Hecker's Americanism that made 
him acceptable to the extremely conservative circles of Rome, 
in his struggle there in the winter of 1858-9. Many men in 
the monarchies of the Old World may doubt the advent of re- 
publicanism there, but what sensible man anywhere doubts the 
aspiration of all races towards liberty and intelligence ? 

Father Hecker's repertory covered the entire ground between 
scepticism and Catholicism. In refutation of Protestantism the 
principal lectures were: The Church and the Republic / Luther and 
the Reformation ; How and Why I became a Catholic, or A Search 
after Rational Christianity ; and The State of Religion in the 
United States. On the positive side his chief topics were : The 
Church as a Society, Why we Invoke the Saints, and the Sacraments 
of Penance and Hoi)/ Communion. Others he had against mate- 
rialism, spiritualism, etc. 



/2o THE LIFE OF FATHER BECKER. [Aug., 

As may naturally be supposed, some of his lectures succeeded 
better than others. One of those he personally preferred was The 
Church and the Republic. He opened by affirming-, as the funda- 
mental principle of the American nation, that man is naturally virtu- 
ous enough to be .capable of self-government. He developed this in 
various ways till his audience fek"that it was to be the touchstone of 
the question between the churches. He then exhibited the Protes- 
tant teaching on human virtue and human depravity, quoting exten- 
sively from Luther and from Calvin, as well as from the creeds 
of the principal Protestant sects, until the contrast between their 
teaching and the fundamental American principle was painfully 
vivid. There was no escape ; doctrinal Protestantism is un-Amer- 
ican. He then gave the Catholic doctrine of free will, of merit, 
of human dignity, and of the equality of men and human brother- 
hood. The impression was profound. Great mountains of 
prejudice were lifted up and cast into the sea. The elevating 
influences of the Church's faith fixed men's eyes and won their 
hearts. To have it demonstrated that Catholicity was not a gigan- 
tic effort to combine all available human forces to maintain a 
central religious despotism in the hands of a hierarchy, was a sur- 
prise to multitudes of Protestants. To not a few intelligent Cath- 
olics the style of argument was a great novelty. Father Hecker's 
success proved that the claim of authority on the part of the 
Church could be established without much difficulty in men's 
minds, if it were not associated with the enslavement of reason and 
conscience, and if shown to be consistent with rational liberty. 
He insisted upon the positive view of the subject. He proclaimed 
the purpose of Catholic discipline to be essentially conservative of 
human rights, a divinely-appointed safeguard to the liberty and 
enlightenment of the soul of man. He further proclaimed 
that the infliction of penalties by Church authority was an acci- 
dental exercise of power provoked by disobedience to lawful 
authority. 

Luther and the Reformation excited widespread remark, and yet 
to one accustomed to old-time controversy it seemed but a frag- 
ment of an argument. The lecture proved that Luther was not 
an honest reformer, because, having started to reform inside the 
Church and as a Catholic, he finished by leaving the Church and 
therefore the real work of reform. At the outset Father Hecker 
proved that Luther was but one, and by no means the most im- 
portant one, of the great body of Catholic reformers of his time. 
These set to work to remedy abuses which had grown to such 
an extent as to have become intolerable. The genuine reformers, 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 721 

led by the Popes, went right on and did reform the Church most 
thoroughly, ending by the decrees of the Council of Trent. All 
this the lecturer proved by citations from numerous high authori- 
ties, all of them Protestants. Why did Luther leave the company 
of the true reformers ? or, as Father Hecker puts it, " Why did 
Luther change his base ? " Whatever reason he had for leaving 
Catholicity, it was not, as a matter of fact, on account of zeal for 
reform. The lecture concluded by emphatically and, in different 
terms, repeatedly denying to Luther the name of Reformer and to 
his work the name of Reformation. Such was the line of argument 
in a lecture which entertained the general public and enraged 
bigoted Protestants more, perhaps, than any of the others. The 
secret of its success was that it overturned the great Protestant 
idol. 

With humanitarians, rationalists, indifferentists, and sceptics 
Father Hecker's lectures were popular, and such were his 
favorite audience. If he so much as aroused their curiosity 
about the Church, he deemed that he had gained a victory ; 
this and more than this he always succeeded in doing. Re- 
gular " church members" he did not hope much from, 
though they came to hear him and he sometimes made con- 
verts even among them. The lecture system, then far more 
in vogue than at present, gave him hearers from all classes 
of minds, and especially those most intellectually restless and 
inquiring. He took his turn in the list which contained the 
names of Wendell Phillips, Beecher, Emerson, and Sumner, and 
found his golden opportunity before such audiences as had 
been gathered to listen to them. Thus into the drifts of 
thought and into the intellectual movements around him, into 
the daily and periodical press, into the social and political and 
scientific groupings of men and women, his lectures enabled 
him to breathe the peremptory call of the true religion, sure 
to provoke inquiry in all active minds, and in some to find 
good soil and bear the harvest of conversion. He searched 
for earnest souls ; and his confidence that they were every- 
where to be found was rewarded not only in many particular 
instances, but also by the removal of much prejudice through- 
out the entire country. 

The writer of these pages saw Father Hecker for the first 
time on the lecture platform. He was then in the full tide 
of success, conscious of his opportunity and of his power to 
profit by it. We never can forget how distinctly American 
was the impression of his personality. We had heard the 



722 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

nation's greatest men then living, and their type was too 
familiar to be successfully counterfeited. Father Hecker was 
so plainly a great man of that type, so evidently an out- 
growth of our institutions, that he stamped American on every 
Catholic argument he proposed. Nor was the force of this 
peculiar impression lessened by the whispered grumblings of a 
few petty minds among Catholics themselves, to whom this 
apostolic trait was cause for suspicion. Never was a man 
more Catholic than Father Hecker, simply, calmly, joyfully, 
entirely Catholic. What better proof of this than the rage 
into which his lectures and writings threw the outright enemies 
of the Church ? Grave ministers lost their balance and foamed 
at him as a trickster and a hypocrite, all the wo^se because 
double-dyed with pretence of love of country. 

For the Protestant pulpits felt the shock and stormed in uni- 
son against this new exposition of Catholicity and against* its 
representative. In some cases, not content with one onslaught, 
they returned to the charge Sunday after Sunday. All this 
was not unexpected. The secular press, however, were very 
generally favorable in their notices, excepting some of the 
Boston dailies. As a rule, the lectures were very fully re- 
ported and sometimes appeared word for word. 

To reply to one's assailants after one has left the field of 
battle is no easy matter, and for the most part Father 
Hecker trusted for this to local champions of Catholicity ; 
and not in vain. But it happened on one occasion that after 
he had lectured in a large town in Michigan, and had 
journeyed on to fulfil engagements farther West, he was at- 
tacked in a public hall by a minister of the place. On his 
return East Father Hecker stopped over and gave another 
lecture in the town, and not only refuted the minister but 
covered him with ridicule. In fact there was no great need of 
defence of Father Hecker's arguments, they were so simply true 
and so readily understood. Not one of his antagonists compared 
well with him for frankness, good humor, courtesy ; and they 
almost invariably shirked the issue and confined themselves to 
stale calumnies against the Church. 

At Ann Arbor, Michigan, Father Hecker lectured in the Meth- 
odist meeting-house, then the largest hall in the town. The 
Michigan State University, at this town, had at the time about 
seven hundred students, nearly all of whom came to the lecture. 
The subject chosen was Luther and the Reformation. As it 
was announced, the audience loudly applauded Luther's name, and 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 723 

some one called for three cheers for him, which were given vo- 
ciferously, especially by the students. Father Hecker smiled, 
waited till the noise was over, then bade them give him a fair 
hearing; which, of course, they did. Before he had concluded, 
his audience seemed won to his view of the question in hand, 
and showed it by the names and the sentiments applauded. At 
the end some one called out "Three cheers for Father Hecker! " 
and they were given most heartily. 

There seems nothing like a new discovery, as we have already 
said, in Father Hecker's controversial matter, or even in the 
method of its treatment. But joined with its exponent, blended 
into his personality, as it was, by the sincerity of his conviction, 
it was a discovery ; flavored and tinctured by him, this wayside 
fountain had a new life-giving power to both Catholics and non- 
Catholics. Bishops, priests, and Catholic men and women in the 
world heard him with mute attention. Some Catholics, it is true, 
were stunned by his bold handling of those traditional touch-me- 
nots of conservatism reason and liberty; and such drew ofif sus- 
picious. But multitudes of Catholics felt that he opened up to 
full view the dim vistas of truth towards which they had long been 
groping ; these could agree with him without an effort. A few 
had reached his stand-point before they knew him, and hailed 
with rapture the leader who, unlike themselves, was not kept back 
by either dread of novel-sounding terms or by the impotency of 
private station. But here and there he met Catholics as dead-set, 
against him as the Judaizing converts had been against his pa- 
tron, St. Paul. Their only love was for antiquity, and that they 
loved passionately and in all its forms, even the neo-antiquity of 
the controversy of the Reformation era. On the other hand 
many, when they heard him, said, " That is the kind of Catholic 
I am, and the only kind it is easy for me to be." Non-Catholics, 
earnest men and women, were often heard to say, " If I were 
quite sure that Hecker is a genuine Roman Catholic I think that 
I could be one myself" ; and this some of them did not hesitate 
to publish in the newspapers, so that Father Hecker might have 
said with Job : " The ear that heard me blessed me, and the 
eye that saw me gave witness to me." 

Father Hecker felt that he was a pioneer in thus dealing with 
rationalized Protestants. His eye was quick to see the signs of 
the breaking up of dogmatic Protestantism, and he was early out 
among the vast intellectual wreckage, endeavoring to catch and 
tow into port what fragments he could of a system founded on 
doubt and on the denial of human virtue and human intelligence. 



724 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

" I want," he said on one occasion in private, " to open the 
way to the Church to rationalists. It seems to me to be now 
closed up. I feel that I am a pioneer in opening and leading 
the way. / smuggled myself into the Church, and so did 
Brownson." And now he wanted to abolish the custom-house, 
and open the harbor wide and clear for the entrance into the 
Church of all men who had been forced back on reason alone for 
guidance. The words above italicised were uttered with powerful 
emphasis and with much feeling. He quoted the following saying 
of Ozanam with emphatic approval: "What the .age needs is an 
intellectual crusade"; and he affirmed that Leo XIII. had done 
very much to aid us in preaching it, and that Pius IX , rightly 
understood, had led the way to it. "The Catholics I would help 
with my left hand, the Protestants with my right hand," he 
once said. And non-Catholics, all but the bigots, liked him, 
for he was frank and true by every test. He was neither an 
exotic nor a hybrid, and they felt at home with him. He much re- 
sembled the best type of public men in America who have 
achieved fame at the bar or in politics ; indeed, as we have al- 
ready intimated, he really belonged to that type, for all his 
studies and all his training in the Catholic schools and convents, 
which had given him more and more of truth, more and more 
of the grace of God, had not changed the kind or type of man 
to which he belonged. He was the same character as when he 
^harangued the Seventh Ward voters, or discussed the Divine 
Transcendence at Brook Farm. Scholastic truth sank deep into 
his soul, but scholastic methods stuck on the surface and then 
dropped away. " And David having girded his sword upon his 
armor began to try if he could walk in armor, for he was not 
accustomed to it. And David said to Saul, I cannot go thus, 
for I am not used to it. And he laid them off. And he took 
his staff which he had always in his hands, and chose him five 
smooth stones out of the brook." 

If his duties in the Paulist Community and parish had allowed, 
Father Hecker could have lectured to large audiences during the 
greater part of the year, and been well paid for his labor. He 
soon became the foremost exponent of Catholicity on the public 
platform in the United States. From the close of the war till his 
health gave way in 1872 he was much sought after for lectures, 
and spoke in the different cities and very many of the large towns, 
besides being obliged to refuse numerous applications, constantly 
coming in from all parts of the Union and from all sorts of socie- 
ties, secular, Catholic, and even distinctly Protestant. Meantime 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 725 

he was frequently called on to preach on such occasions as the 
laying of corner-stones of churches and their dedications. He 
also gave one of the sermons preached before the Second Plenary 
Council of Baltimore. 

The following is the introductory paragraph of a long charac- 
ter sketch of Father Hecker from the pen of James Parton, the 
historian. It is taken from an article entitled " Our Roman Catholic 
Brethren," published in the Atlantic Monthly for April and May, 
1868. The entire article is full of admiration for the Catholic 
Church and of yearning towards her, though written by a typical 
sceptic of this era : 

" As usual with them [Catholics] it is one man who is working 
this new and most effective idea [the Catholic Publication Society] ; 
but, as usual with them also, this one man is working by and 
through an organization which multiplies his force one hundred 
times and constitutes him a person of national importance. 
Readers who take note of the really important things transpiring 
around them will know at once that the individual referred to is 
Father Hecker, Superior of the Community of the Paulists, in New 
York. . . . It is he [Father -Hecker] who is putting . American 
machinery into the ancient ark and getting ready to run her by 
steam. Here, for once, is a happy man happy in his faith and in 
his work sure that in spreading abroad the knowledge of the true 
Catholic doctrine he is doing the best thing possible for his native 
land. A tall, healthy-looking, robust, handsome, cheerful gentle- 
man of forty-five, endowed with a particular talent for winning 
confidence and regard, which talent has been improved by many 
years of active exercise. It is a particular pleasure to meet with 
any one, at such a time as this, whose work perfectly satisfies 
his conscience, his benevolence, and his pride, and who is doing 
that work in the most favorable circumstances, and with the best 
co-operation. Imagine a benevolent physician in a populous hos- 
pital, who has in his office the medicine which he is perfectly 
certain will cure or mitigate every case, provided only he can get 
it taken, and who is surrounded with a corps of able and zealous 
assistants to aid him in persuading the patients to take it! " 

Mr. Parton having given us a picture of Father Hecker as 
he appeared to Protestants, the following exhibits him as Catho- 
lics saw him. It is an extract from Father Lockhart's clever 
book, The Old Religion ; the original of Father Dilke is Father 
Hecker : 

" The day after our last conversation, having an introduction 

to the Superior of the Fathers in New York, my friends 

agreed to accompany me. I was particularly glad of this because 



726 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Aug., 

Father Dilke was one of the most remarkable men of our Church 
in the States. Himself a convert, and a man of large views and 
great sympathies, no one was better able to enter into the scru- 
ples and difficulties of religious Protestants on their first contact 
with Catholic doctrines and Catholic worship. 

" On sending in our names we had not long to wait in the 
guest-room before the good lather made his appearance. There 
was a stamp of originality about him ; tall in stature, not exactly 
what we are used to call clerical in appearance, with a thoroughly 
American type of face, and with the national peaked beard in- 
stead of being closely shaven as is the custom with our clergy 
generally. I had met him before, without his clerical [religious] 
garb, on a journey on board a steamboat. At first, I remember, I 
had set him down as a Yankee skipper or trader of some sort ; but 
when by chance we got into conversation, I found him a hard-headed 
man, shrewd, original, and earnest in his remarks ; but when 
our conversation turned to religious topics, and got animated, I 
shall never forget how all that was common and national in his 
physique disappeared. And when he spoke of the mystery of 
God's love for man, his countenance seemed as it were trans- 
figured, so that I felt that an artist would not wish for a better 
living model from which to paint a St. Francis Xavier, making 
himself all things to all men amidst his shipmates on his voyage 
to the Indies." 

From what has been said of Father Hecker's aptitude to win 
non-Catholics to hear and believe him, it should not be thought 
that in order to do so he was obliged to leave off any sign of 
his priestly character. He was distinctly priestly in his demeanor, 
though, as already observed, not exactly what one would call a 
thorough " ecclesiastic." He ever dressed soberly. When he 
arrived at a town on a lecture tour he always put up at the house 
of the resident priest, if there was one, and, if he stayed over Sun- 
day, preached for him at High Mass. He invariably corresponded 
beforehand with the pastor of the town t o which he was invited by 
a secular lecture society, requesting him to send complimentary 
tickets to the leading men of the place lawyers, doctors, minis- 
ters, merchants, and politicians. And when he appeared on the 
platform it was always in company with the priest. He loved 
priests with all his might and was ever at home in their com- 
pany. It is not very singular, ther efore, that some of his most de- 
voted friends and most ardent admirers were priests, secular and 
religious, born and bred in the Old World among them some of 
the most prominent clergymen in the country. 

Father Hecker often met non-Catholics in private, being sought 
out by prominent radicals, sceptics, unbelievers, and humanita- 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE 70 RELIGION. 727 

rians. What they had heard from him in public lectures, or read 
of him in the press, drew them to him, or they were brought 
to see him by mutual friends. And here he was indeed power- 
ful, overbearing resistance by the strength of conviction and the 
simple exhibition of Catholic truth. The sight of a man any- 
where, whom he could but suspect of aptitude for his views, was 
the signal for his emphatic affirmation of them, sometimes lead- 
ing him to controversy bordering on the vociferous on cars 
and steamboats. In such circumstances, and in all his other 
dealings with men, you saw his prompt intelligence, his fine sen- 
sibility, his lofty spirit, his forceful and occasionally imperious 
will to hold you to the point; but the quality which, both in 
public and private discourse, outshone all, or rather gave all 
light and direction, was an immense love of truth joined to an 
equal admiration for virtue. 



THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 

V. THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF IMMORTALITY. 

WHAT are the most formidable questions which human 
thought can put to itself? They are these, I imagine: " Is there 
knowledge with the Most High ? " and, " If a man die, shall he 
live again ? " The first is that on which all controversy about 
Theism hinges. The second is the problem of immortality. 
Unless both receive an answer in the clear affirmative, I see 
no place whereon religion may plant the sole of its foot, no 
ark into which, from the wide ocean of despair, the heavenly 
wandering dove may be taken. What a courage and confi- 
dence in itself must not the reason possess that dares to solve 
these problems of eternity? And yet, solve them it will and 
ought, unless the daily life, its aspirations, longings, pro- 
phetic dreams, and duties from hour to hour, shall be counted 
more vain and delusive than the idlest fancies a poet ever nour- 
ished. The experience, not of one age or nation, but of all men, 
has surely proved that when we cease to look beyond the grave 
our existence is at once stripped of its meaning because it is 
denied a reasonable aim. . It can henceforth devise no task 
equal to its powers, nor imagine a purpose worthy of them. 
\V hen the agnostic reflects, he becomes a pessimist. " Once 
youth is over," said James Mill, " there is little to make exist"- 



728 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Aug., 

ence desirable." And his son tells us in the most thoughtful 
pages of that sad volume, his Autobiography, how, when he 
himself mused on the time to come, and pictured the fulfilment 
of his great hopes for the world they were earthly and utili- 
tarian, bounded by the tomb a voice asked him, " Should you 
be happy when your desire was given you ? " and he could not 
but answer, with an accession of the deepest melancholy, " No, I 
should not." 

It is the " witness of a soul naturally Christian," naturally 
immortal. Providence has not abandoned these vital truths 
to the exclusive keeping of the syllogism, or to such meta- 
physical insight and subtlety as not one in a thousand has 
ever possessed. The short way into the reality of things is by 
instinct, Man feels that he is destined to live hereafter. Upon 
that feeling 'he acts, with the carelessness and confidence of a 
child who takes it for granted that to-morrow will come when 
to-day is past. We shrink from the pain of dissolution ; we 
shudder even at the fancy while we reject it that the time can 
ever arrive when we shall be no more ; but so little do we 
think to be annihilated, that, as Bacon observed, " there is no 
passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters 
the fear of death." If, like the brute creation, we did not ap- 
prehend its coming, our want of fear would be no argument. 
But to look forward, and then to look beyond, taking death as 
if a mere stage in our journey, is, I cannot help believing, a 
sign that we have in ourselves the answer of life ; and that our 
very innermost essence, the spirit from which we could not be 
divorced without wholly ceasing to be, has uttered its infallible 
and unshaken judgment, Non omnis moriar. 

Yet I am far from scorning the metaphysical proofs of an 
Hereafter. They appeal to me ; they convince me. I do not 
say that clouds and darkness are wanting round about the 
soul's pavilion, any more than about the footsteps of the Eternal 
Wisdom, whose pathways in the mighty deeps of existence are 
seldom known to us, and often only to be guessed at. Let us 
cherish, in the presence of the primal mysteries, which are at 
the same time pillars of smoke as of fire, that shame and rever- 
ence we owe them. It is not by glib and ready reasoning that we 
enter into truths so vast ; nor is speech equal to silence, pro- 
vided only our silence be an affirmation and not a denial or an 
excuse to doubt. The stern and pensive teachers of mankind, 
Dante, Pascal, Carlyle, have bidden us hope for immortality and 
labor as in eternity ; but they believed with trembling, they 



1891 ] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 729 

were not high-minded. Their faith, vexed by the storms of life, 
shone like a beacon in the wild and windy night, with flicker- 
ings to and fro, as blown violently yet as never to be quenched. 
The immortal creature is weighed down by its burden of flesh ; 
and, musing upon many things, looks round the walls of its prison, 
bewildered sometimes, knowing that it shall escape, yet down- 
cast with the long confinement. If a man die, shall he live 
again ? We answer that he shall ; but these tender-hearted Stoics, 
fretting themselves in the absence of the eternal prospect which 
they desire, are wistful and abound in difficulties, writing their 
deep mournful thoughts as with a pen of iron, singing as in the 
subdued minor key, their Divine Pilgrimage through the worlds 
invisible, and hoping, but, as one of them often said, " with des- 
perate hope," for the vindication of the ways of God to men. 
They behold the truth, according to the word of Augustine, in 
ictu trepidantis oculi, as in the lightning flash of tempests. 
Surely we must respect their griefs and perplexities, which I 
know are shared by many who have neither the wit nor the 
occasion to publish what they think in their hearts. For my- 
self, however, I cannot refuse to acknowledge how greatly I am 
borne up by the multitude of facts, and the majestic ascending 
order of laws, which the modern sciences, not only physics but 
biology even more than physics, have brought to light, or in 
manifold new aspects have made to bear upon the question of 
man's future. Call the arrangements of uniformity, law ; and let 
the ever-expanding scheme of things be, as I have indicated 
in my previous articles, neither possible nor conceivable unless 
it is controlled by purpose. Look at man as a part of the 
universe, by all means ; but lay to heart the revelation which" 
comes when we perceive that the universe is a system of 
Thought, and that Matter is the garment, the symbol, and 
the effect of Mind. Understand by the very harmony and 
subordination of means to ends which makes the chronicle of 
our solar system, of our planet, of our geological succession, and 
of the present stage whereunto the orders and species of liv- 
ing things have arrived, how true it is that the visible has come 
forth from the invisible, and but serves as an instrument of that 
design which is perpetually unfolding to larger issues. Whether 
we reason backwards or forwards, it needs only to admit the 
idea of purpose, and from the past we can deduce the present, 
as from the present we explain the past. What I affirm in 
these words is not rhetoric, not sentiment, but proved and cer- 
tain science. New orders of being rise out of the bosom of the 



730 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Aug., 

old ; and still the laws which govern them do not suffer repeal. 
In this sense the uniformity of law is no less demonstrable than 
the conservation of energy, or the indestructibility of matter. 
And since effects do not create the purpose which they subserve, 
but only obey and manifest it, the conclusion is forced upon our 
minds I ask the reader who , doubts me to make the trial for 
himself that directing Thought must have preceded each and 
every system of reality, infinite or infinitesimal, throughout the 
universe. Nature without purpose would be simply unreason, 
and a contradiction in terms. But grant an intellect which has 
designed the whole and the parts according to a pattern, to ex- 
press and incarnate its own Ideal, and we shall behold the same 
Nature wrapped in a blaze of light. 

Now go a step further. All that we see is but appearance. 
The reality lies beneath, and we comprehend it with eyes not of 
flesh but of spirit. To the sense, our earth is solid and immovable, 
and the sun turns round it. To science, nothing whatever is solid ; 
the earth is a projectile whirled through space ; and the sun 
moves, not round the terrestrial globe, but in a descending flight 
towards the constellation Hercules. Conceive matter how we may, 
it is ruled by invisible, intangible, and imponderable forces. Every 
solid mass consists of millions upon millions of atoms which our 
microscopes cannot detect, which do not touch, and which are in 
perpetual motion. Our body is a rush of particles changing from 
instant to instant, never the same absolutely for two minutes to- 
gether, and renewed in all its tissues every few months, if not even 
more rapidly. What is it that abides, then ? The form of the 
organism ? Not so. There was a time when the organism had no 
form ; when the most searching scrutiny could not have told, from 
the mere inspection or analysis of the visible, what form would 
emerge in due course ; when the matter was not organized at all. 
We must look elsewhere than to matter, formed or unformed, if we 
would account for the process which has resulted in the living, 
thinking, self- determining man. " That which makes the essence of 
the human being," says M. Flammarion, " that which organizes it, 
is neither protoplasm, nor the cell, nor those wonderful and fertile 
combinations of carbon and hydrogen, of oxygen and azote ; it is 
the invisible and immaterial Force of the soul. That Force it is 
which groups, directs, and keeps in their fitting order the molecules 
beyond reckoning, out of which is built up the admirable harmony 
of the living frame." As there was Thought before the. making of 
the worlds, or never a world could have been made ; so there was 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 731 

Life before organization, or the organism would for ever have been 
impossible. The body did not make the soul, but the soul the 
body. 

If Life existed when the organism had not begun, it may con- 
tinue to exist when the organism has perished, or has dissolved 
away into its particles. Science declares that the formative principle 
is fixed, the matter fleeting. Atoms are indestructible ; force per- 
sists under an endless variety of combinations. Why should not 
that life which fashioned the body out of the lowliest elements, 
and continues so to fashion it day by day, persist when the rush 
of particles has gone by ? Because, you object, we have no 
ground for thinking that it can energize without some form of mat- 
ter to act upon ? Well, I answer, suppose, for argument sake, that 
it cannot ? And let us prescind, as I am doing throughout these 
papers, entirely from Revelation. Is there anything to hinder the 
monad from drawing to itself out of the boundless realms of force, 
and according to law, those materials of which it may stand in 
need ? I have not affirmed that Life exists apart from atomic com- 
binations. My statement, founded on the evidence of the micro- 
scope, is that Life creates organism, and therefore is its cause, not 
its effect. And again, that since the body is ever changing, the 
base and centre of stability is not that falling Niagara which sweeps 
over the brink and is whirled onward to the Ocean, but is the real 
and active force, the monad, or self-determined energy, by virtue of 
which alone the visible endures. If it follows hence that the monad 
requires a vehicle or instrument for its activities, I shall simply con- 
clude that, as it was equal to the production of a first, so neither 
will it be at a loss to find a second. 

We know already, in fact, that the soul has persisted through all 
the astounding changes of embryonic life, and has traversed 
childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. Did none of 
these destroy that primordial force ? Then what can or 
will ? Each transformation involved a crisis and the emer- 
gence or disappearance of marked and peculiar faculties. Yet 
the same being which was at first now is ; and its physical and 
even mental present sums up, includes, and, as great authori- 
ties declare, may be said literally to photograph the multitudinous 
changes through which it has passed. I see here an argument 
for the continual upward course of a life which was once uncon- 
scious and little by little came to the knowledge and government 
of itself. But I see none to suggest a degradation of the vital 
essence. It has during a long journey discarded many visible 
VOL. LIU. 47 



732 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Aug., 

wrappings, thrown aside instruments, and outlived experience. 
The body is ever dying, and at last it dies altogether. What 
shall be my inference, reasoning from analogy? What except 
that it has now discarded the visible in all its earthly forms, and 
is become, to men in the flesh, a denizen of the unearthly and 
the invisible ? But not that it has undergone annihilation. 
Science refuses to believe in annihilation. That which was, is; 
that which is, shall be. There is not a single instance in which 
we can affirm the absolute destruction of atoms, forces, powers, or 
realities of which science has ever taken note. The atom is a 
centre of indestructible force. The monad we call soul or spirit, is 
a sanctuary of life without end. 

That miraculous instrument, the spectroscope, has told us 
more about the substance and make of the universe than a hun- 
dred years ago the wisest of scientific students would have 
dreamt it possible to know. Every light from the abysses im- 
measurable of space reveals its own constituents ; it comes to us 
with a message which is read off in the laboratory as though on a 
prearranged alphabet. Astronomy, taking a long step forward, 
is now become sidereal chemistry. But, as yet, it is only inor- 
ganic, and concerned with metals and non-metals, with va- 
pors and flames and gases, in which no life subject to earthly 
conditions may be imagined to exist. Can we doubt, how- 
ever, that amid the endless systems of star-clusters, with their 
attendant planets, the " chemistry of the carbon compounds " is 
not sufficiently advanced to match or to exceed the phenomena 
we are acquainted with on our own globe ? In other words, 
does not the analogy of science forbid so improbable a supposi- 
tion as that the organized life we know is the only life ? And, 
as we have transformed our conception of matter by lifting it up 
into a dynamic system, must we not, arguing from the spectroscope, 
acknowledge that wherever the physical basis of life is given, there 
life will appear and will move along the cycle of evolution until 
man yes, and more than man comes upon the scene ? Then 
there is a universe of conscious no less than of unconscious exist- 
ence, and life is, at all events, as enduring as matter and force. 
What follows ? you ask. This, I reply : that we are not the crew, 
shipwrecked upon a lonely island, surrounded with the illimitable 
main, of which Littre has spoken ; .but that in our Father's house 
there are many mansions, and we, being even now tenants of the 
sky and dwellers in Heaven, may look upon ourselves as holding 
due .rank in that great hierarchy. Our life is not an exception or 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 733 

an accident, but is under law. The old geocentric notion where- 
by earth was unlike all things else has long since been discarded. 
Earth is a planet, and the sun a star. But astronomy warns us 
that we must put away the equally absurd notion that life is 
geocentric, or is a solitary miracle going forward on our globe in 
the midst of a dead mechanical universe. It signifies nothing to an 
ever- springing succession of worlds and ages whether intervals 
occur during which organized life is not yet, or has ceased to 
manifest itself, in this or that nook amid the. constellations. Let 
us grant there may be seasons in the very star-clusterings, and a 
winter of rest in the endless world-formations, which does but 
lead in a more abundant harvest. But the sidereal visions are 
bringing home to the heart of science what was once the unimag- 
inable truth that life is the purpose of matter and spirit its crown 
and scope. What Carlyle in Sartor Resartus lamented over as 
" the gloomy Golgotha and Mill of Death," is now shown to be 
the blossoming world-tree Igdrasil, whose roots go down into 
the eternal deeps, and whose leaves are planetary systems teeming 
with life. Only thus, said the metaphysician from of old, as he 
looked into the laws of thought, can matter and motion, sound 
and light and color, have a meaning or perhaps even a reality. 
Now comes the man of science with his tubes and glasses, to de- 
monstrate the conditions upon which organisms arise out of the 
hydrogen cloud, and to assure us that if the human faculties 
depend for their exercise upon sulphur, carbon, and phosphorus, 
there is no lack of them in the mighty systems of Orion, and 
Cassiopeia, and the Seven Stars. 

But even while the prerequisites of vital chemistry are discov- 
ered millions of leagues away from earth, and life is seen to be pos- 
sible in the galaxies of the everlasting abyss, science here at hand 
takes up strange and old-world superstitions to melt gold out of 
them in its crucible. What I must describe as the allotropism of 
the soul is becoming daily manifest, not simply to Christians, who 
have at all times believed in abnormal powers (both for good and 
evil, be it observed), but to physicians concerned only with health 
and disease, with the brains or the nerves of their patients. No 
philosopher would deny that our five senses might be supplement- 
ed, much to our advantage, by others, some of which even like 
the instinctive perception of magnetic or electric currents, and the 
conscious performance of functions now carried out blindly in our 
organism might be sketched beforehand. The power of the 
will, again, to influence other minds and feelings, is real though 



734 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Aug., 

excessively obscure. Prevision of the future by instinct and not 
by reasoning is an undoubted faculty of some, perhaps of all, the 
lower animals. Why should it not find a heightened analogy in 
man himself? The particles of matter which affect one another 
incessantly do not touch ; therefore it is plain that they act at a 
distance, or that we must give a peculiar meaning to the word 
presence when applied to them. May not the spiritual energy of 
man overleap intervening space, even as these do ? Lastly but I 
could much extend my catalogue of possible powers since a va- 
riety of substances exist, without changing their nature, in forms 
which manifest quite different attributes, as for instance oxygen in 
the common form which was first discovered, and likewise in the 
form of ozone, or carbon as graphite and diamond, what is to 
hinder the human personality from existing in the like allotropic 
conditions ? Of course we know that it does. Every man passes 
from waking to sleeping by a normal revolution which corresponds 
on the whole to that of the earth round its axis. We spend one- 
third of our existence in sleep ; and the laws of that state, both 
physical and psychic, are of a kind which we could never, with- 
out experience, have so much as conjectured. 

But science now admits a third state, partaking of the char- 
acters which mark these, and very aptly denominated sleep- 
waking. It does not appear to be diseased, like madness or 
lunacy ; it discloses extraordinary powers of knowing, feeling, and 
acting. Whether as energizing or as merely receptive, it is sui 
generis. And the universal condition which it seems to exhibit 
in all those subject to it, is freedom from the trammels of the out- 
ward senses, resulting often, when it is carried to a certain height, 
in striking developments of the moral Ego, accompanied with 
intuitive knowledge which is denied to the waking state. 

It will be seen that I accept, as proved, the leading and 
characteristic phenomena of hypnotism. I put forward no theory; 
and I am mindful, even while I omit to dwell upon them, of the 
difficulties which surround the whole subject. But the evidence 
of fact is such as no scientific man would now refuse to enter- 
tain ; and for me it is sufficient as bearing out my contention, 
viz., that the dependence of the spirit on the organism is neither 
so close nor so confined as materialists have been wont to take 
for granted. We behold, if I may say so, in these phenomena, 
the butterfly V angelica farfalla, to quote Dante's phrase unfold- 
ing its wings from the chrysalis in which it has been imprisoned ; 
fluttering, though as yet unequal to flight. Significant, also, I 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 735 

think, is it that in the state of sleep-waking all fear of death 
vanishes. It will return when the senses unclose again ; but, like 
the fever which has been suspended in trance, it seems to be a 
disease of the less exalted condition, and mere weakness. Death, 
I conclude, holds of the phenomenal ; it is an instrumental cause, 
not a fixed state; and belief in its reality is "the great delusion" 
which Amiel understood in a less reasonable sense. Death is the 
name, not of cessation, but of change ; and we die from moment 
to moment only that we may live. The individual persists by 
constant change of his material environment What staggers 
man in the hour which he calls death is the total disappearance 
of vitality into the invisible. But he should remember that the 
principle of vitality never was or could be visible itself. It 
bound the molecules of gas and carbon together in a tangible 
form ; now, it binds them no longer and they are dispersed to all 
the winds. Why should that event destroy the spiritual monad, 
any more than the demagnetizing of an iron bar destroys the mag- 
netic force which dwelt in it ? You cannot destroy force. Neither 
can you destroy the soul. It existed before the organism ; what 
is to hinder it from surviving when that has ceased ? 

I have thrown out these few suggestions on the most momen- 
tous of all subjects, and I would invite the reader to weigh them 
candidly. In my opinion, they point to the beginnings which 
science has now made of a true and verifiable induction, founded 
upon facts, concerning the soul's natural and physical destiny. So 
far I have not dealt with moral considerations; my theme has 
been chemistry or biology, not ethics. But surely it is of the 
first importance to lay down a firm standing ground in nature, 
in the reality of the objective world, from which to argue for a 
life after the present. If immortality can be proved by reason 
and I believe it can we must secure a physical basis, a principle 
in the universe which now is, whereby to mount up along the 
ladder of existence and show how the future is rooted in to-day, 
in this very hour and moment in which I write. Astronomy 
comes, then, to our aid, and exhibits the universal possibility of 
life. The conservation of energy forbids us to think of atoms or 
forces as ever being annihilated. Organic chemistry reveals the 
need of a stable power, a self-determining monad, to govern 
and control the flux of the material particles which make up 
the body. Medical science allows or affirms a triple state of 
existence, each differing widely from the other in faculties and 
attributes, while the spirit itself persists, unaffected in substance 



736 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Aug., 

by these wonder-working transformations. Biology records a 
series, still more disparate and astonishing, of changes through 
which the individual man climbs upwards from embryonic life 
to old age, where all the conditions of existence have varied, 
the conscious succeeding the unconscious, and the intellectual 
rising above the sensitive, yet by means of it as an instrument 
and a vehicle. What a long and romantic story, what enlarge- 
ments of hope, what possibilities for the future ! It is the 
ascent from life to life. Experience collects, registers, engraves 
upon the soul and the brain ; but science is bold enough to declare 
that it can never lose one atom or one particle of those effects 
of energy which, dating back through millions upon millions of 
years, are yet photographed in every flying mote that shines in 
the sunbeam. Nothing is lost; nothing wasted. Even though 
we speak of degradation of energy, it is not meant that the present 
stage of any world merely sinks back into its past. Questions of 
transcendent difficulty confront us here ; for the universe to which 
we belong flies onward through the pathways of space, bearing 
with it the whole visible scheme in which we are entangled. To 
what goal ? And when shall it arrive ? These are problems con- 
cerning which we must lay our hand upon our mouth. They 
are too high for us. But science, seeing and measuring, has given 
us the noblest, the most cheering of assurances. It affirms that 
no spark of energy can ever be put out ; that all realities are 
immortal, and the soul of man along with them. 

WILLIAM BARRY. 



1891.] PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 737 



PROFESSOR BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION.* 

" THERE are," says Dr. Briggs, "historically three great 
fountains of divine authority the Bible, the Church, and the 
Reason." Such a statement as this coming from a great leader 
in the Presbyterian Church is worthy of attention from Catholics. 
We cannot help sympathizing with one who enunciates such a 
truth as this (for rightly understood it is a truth), no matter by 
what means he has reached it. And although it is not possible 
for us to sympathize with his methods, which are largely those 
of the so-called " impartial and critical school," who attempt to 
explain divine facts in a purely human way, we may recognize 
some of the results for truth which his investigations have pro- 
duced. In the present article I propose to consider his develop- 
ment of this remarkable preposition. 

In his treatment of the question of Church Authority, which 
he discusses merely as an introduction to that of the authority 
of Holy Scripture, Dr. Briggs arrives at the following conclusions : 
The majority of Christians from the apostolic age have found 
God through the church. Their experience was not pious illu- 
sion and delusion. We have in Newman, says Dr. Briggs, the 
example of a sincere Protestant who, striving never so hard, 
could not reach certainty through the Bible or the reason, but 
who did find divine authority in the church. " The church is a 
seat of divine authority, and multitudes of pious souls in the 
present and the past have not been mistaken in their experience 
when they have found God in the church '' (p. 26). " Protest- 
ant Christianity builds its faith and life on the divine authority 
contained in the Scriptures, and too often depreciates the church 
and the reason " (p. 28). " Those who question the fact that 
the church and reason are sources of divine authority go in the 
face of history and the creeds of the church " (p. 86). I am, 
says Dr. Briggs, a Protestant, and " I believe the Scriptures of 
the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and the 
only infallible rule of faith and practice," but I think " the neg- 
lect of the church as a means of grace retards the use of the 
Bible itself as a means of grace, and dulls our sensitiveness to 
the presence of God " (p. 65). " It is one of the greatest faults 

* The Authority of Holy Scripture. An Inaugural Address by Charles Augustus Briggs, 
D.D., Professor of Biblical Theology in Union Theological Seminary. New York : Charles 
Scribner's Sons. 



738 PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. [Aug., 

of modern American Presbyterianism that it has become so un- 
churchly and takes such a low view of church and sacraments. 
Why do we use the sacraments ff God does not make them by 
his divine presence and authority real means of grace to our 
souls ? Why do we engage in the worship of the church unless 
we hope to meet God and his Christ, and feel in our souls the 
influence of the Holy Spirit ? "' (pp. 86, 87). 

All of the above conclusions in regard to the authority of the 
church he deduces from the Presbyterian standard, the West- 
minster Confession, and in support of them quotes the follow- 
ing passages from it : 

"The visible church, which is also catholic or universal 
under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before, under 
the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess 
the true religion, together with their children ; and is the king- 
dom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out 
of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Unto the 
catholic, visible church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles, 
and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the 
saints in this life, to the end of the world ; and doth by his own 
presence and Spirit, according to his promise, make them effec- 
tual thereunto." 

" The grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments, rightly 
used, is not conferred by any power in them ; neither doth the 
efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of 
him that doth administer it, but upon the work of the Spirit, 
and the word of institution, which contains, together with a pre- 
cept authorizing the use thereof, a promise of benefit to worthy 
receivers." 

" Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible ele- 
ments in this sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really 
and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally, but spiritually, re- 
ceive and feed upon Christ crucified, and all the benefits of his 
death : the body and blood of Christ being then not corporally 
or carnally in, with, or under the bread and wine ; yet as really, 
but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, 
as the elements themselves are, to their outward senses." 

" The Lord Jesus, as king and head of his church, hath 
therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers, 
distinct from the civil magistrate. To these officers the keys of 
the kingdom of heaven are committed, by virtue whereof they 
have power respectively to retain and remit sins, to shut that 
kingdom against the impenitent, both by the word and censures, 
and to open it unto penitent sinners, by the ministry of the 
gospel, and by absolution from censures, as occasion shall re- 
quire." 



1891.] PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 739 

The modern Evangelical, and in many instances the modern 
Presbyterian, doctrine on the church, is widely different from 
that set forth by the Confession, as Professor Briggs plainly shows. 
The common teaching of most Evangelical divines now is, that 
the church is invisible, that it exists independently of all or- 
ganization, and that neither Christ nor the Apostles did more 
than teach general principles of organization and establish a few 
rudimentary forms of association. Professor Briggs laments over 
this departure in doctrine, and is earnestly seeking to recall his 
brethren to the church idea of early Presbyterianism, because he 
sees the impossibility of establishing the doctrine of church 
authority in any sense without restoring the belief in a visible 
church. An invisible church cannot speak. 

Now the question arises, What does Dr. Briggs mean by the 
divine authority of the church ? This question, if it can be an- 
swered at all, must be considered with reference to his concep- 
tion of the visible church, which I will endeavor to describe in 
his own words. In the first place, he emphatically denies that in 
the church there is any central ecclesiastical authority having di- 
vine right of government. The Church of Rome, he says, is 
" a true church," but only " one of the many branches of Chris- 
tendom." The doctrine of papal supremacy has been " the 
mother of discord in Christendom. Until this barrier has been 
broken down the union of Christendom is impossible. The de- 
struction of popery is indispensable to the unity of the church. 
The papacy is not the only form of ecclesiastical authority that 
has produced discord. . . . Protestant princes have been set up 
a's little popes ; kings and queens have usurped ecclesiastical author- 
ity. Any ecclesiastical government that usurps divine authority is 
tyrannical and schismatic from the very nature of the case " 
(Whither? p. 229). 

With such views as these of governmental authority in the 
church, it may be asked, On what grounds does he hold that 
there is divine authority in the church? His answer to. this 
question is [I] " believe that God inhabits his church and guides 
it in its official decisions, not inerrantly in every utterance, but in 
the essential doctrines in which the universal church is in concord" 
(P- 63). " In some doctrines the church has reached definite 
conclusions that will abide for ever" (Whither? p. 226). "It is 
noteworthy that there is agreement with reference to a single 
officer [in the church] the pastor of the congregation. All 
Christian churches have pastors, and they cannot do their work 
without them. Here is a basis for union. It is agreed that he 



740 PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. [Aug , 

should be a man called of God to his work, and endowed with 
the gifts and graces that are needed for the exercise of his min- 
istry. It is also agreed that he should be ordained either by the 
imposition of hands or some suitable ceremony. This presbyter- 
bishop of the New Testament is found in all ages of the church 

and in all lands. Herein is the true historical succession of the 



ministry, in the unbroken chain of these ordained presbyters. 
Herein is the world wide government which is carried on through 
them. This is one form of church government that bears the 
marks of catholicity, that is semper ubique et ab omnibus" (Whith- 
er? p. 230). "Christendom might unite with an ascending series 
of superintending bishops that would culminate in a universal 
bishop, provided the pyramid would be willing to rest firmly 
on its base, the solid order of the presbyter-bishop of the New 
Testament and of all history and all churches" (Whither? 
p. 238). 

From the foregoing statements it would seem that divine au- 
thority in the church, as Dr. Briggs understands it, is not a living 
voice, but a scientific abstraction which he calls " the consensus 
of Christendom." Now, it will be seen at a glance that such an 
idea of church authority is radically different from the traditional 
one. The visible church, according to his conception of it, is an 
imaginary aggregation of all religious organizations called Chris- 
tian, without regard to their differences in doctrine, discipline, or 
worship. Unity is desirable, and might be reached, he would 
say, if all would make the concessions necessary, and he never 
questions the right of all to amend their constitutions for this 
end. We can only say that he, by this theory, reduces the 
church to the level of all human societies, and, according to it, 
the consensus of which he speaks, if it were attainable, could be 
only a human result. Divine authority in the church is, there- 
fore, manifestly an impossibility according to his theory of the 
church. 

Protestantism, as every one knows, has from the very start 
practically repudiated the idea of church authority. Theoretically 
in the region of cloud and mist some have pretended to find it. 
Private judgment, under the name of historical criticism, has 
sometimes formed an ideal church in the early centuries, with an 
authority in the abstract ; but nowhere outside of the Catholic 
Church has church authority ever been found in actual con- 
crete form. 

Second in the order of the sources of divine authority Dr. 
Briggs places Reason, not because he exalts it above Holy Scrip- 



1891.] PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN- RELIGION. 741 

ture, but because he considers it, next to the authority of the 
church, necessary to be known for the better understanding of 
the subject of his address ; which, it must be remembered, is 
the Authority of the Bible. Reason, he says, he uses in the 
broad sense embracing the metaphysical categories, the conscience 
and the religious feeling. " Here," he affirms, " in the Holy of 
Holies of human nature God presents himself to those who seek 
him." Unless, he says, God speaks in the forms of reason the 
whole heathen world is lost for ever; unless God's authority is 
to be found in the modes of reason only external revelation 
would be possible, the inspiration of Holy Scripture could never 
have been, the church could not be. Without this divine au- 
thority in the modes of reason the inward work of the Holy 
Ghost cannot be explained. u It is impossible," he declares, " that 
the Bible and the church should ever exert their full power until 
the human reason, trained and strained to the uttermost, rise to 
the heights of its energies and reach forth after God and His 
Christ with absolute devotion and relf-renouncing love " (p. 66). 
In the above statements concerning reason, if it is viewed in its 
proper relation to external authority, he is correct. Such doc- 
trine is in accordance with the principles of true philosophy and 
theology, and is favorable to the development and progress of 
Christian knowledge. And he is the more to be admired for re- 
cognizing in this way the authority of reason, because other theo- 
logians of his church have so generally ignored it. But unfortu- 
nately he does not stop here, but attempts to make of reason 
a wholly independent and adequate source of authority. " The 
Christian Church," he say, " is divided into three great parties 
Evangelicals, Churchmen, and Rationalists." * This view of the 
one visible church consisting of different conflicting parties car- 
ries with it the idea of three sources of divine authority, contra- 
dicting each other, which is manifestly absurd. According to it 
Rationalism is just as true as Catholicism or Orthodox Protes- 
tantism. I think that Professor Briggs has been led to this broad 
church doctrine through his conviction that there must be a way 
of salvation for all who are in good faith, and his desire to re- 
concile this opinion with the Westminster doctrine that out of 
the visible church there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. 
Catholic theologians have solved this difficulty in a rational way 
by the well-known distinctions of soul and body of the church. 
But Dr. Briggs's solution of it destroys the belief in any external 
authority in religion, either church or Bible. 

* Art. " Theological Crisis," North American Review for July, 1891. 



742 PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. [Aug., 

The Holy Scripture, that source of divine authority which 
our author professes to hold as his " only infallible rule of faith 
and practice," now claims attention. 

The Holy Bible, he maintains, has suffered from the obstruc- 
tions heaped about it by the Christian Church ; popes, councils, 
fathers, schoolmen, and theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, 
have, he affirms, by their ecclesiastical decisions and dogmatic 
systems substituted for the authority of God the authority of their 
particular rules of faith. These he calls " the barriers of divine 
authority in Holy Scripture," of which he specifies six, viz., su- 
perstition or the use of the book as a sacred object, the theory 
of verbal inspiration, the maintenance of the traditional authen- 
ticity of its books, the claim of its inerrancy, the belief that the 
miracles recorded in it were departures from the law of nature, 
and the belief in the minute fulfilment of its predictions. Biblical 
criticism has, he declares, removed these barriers and opened the 
treasures of Holy Scripture to all mankind. If this be true then 
the higher criticism is the greatest boon that has ever come to 
mankind. But has Dr. Briggs shown this ? Let us examine and 
see, and with this object we will turn to his controversy with 
the conservatives of the Presbyterian Church. 

In his book, Whither? he heads one of his chapters " Shifting," 
and a very appropriate title it is. The conservatives of the Presby- 
terian Church, as they are called, whose chief representatives are Dr. 
Alexander, Dr. Hodge, Dr. Green, and President Patton, of Prince- 
ton, and Dr. Shedd, late of Union Theological Seminary, are very 
severe on Dr. Briggs for his Neo-Roman and Rationalistic tendencies; 
and he vigorously retorts by censuring them for abandoning the 
old Westminster line of defence of inspiration, viz. : internal evi- 
dence solely ; and he, falling back upon this and uniting with it 
modern higher criticism, carefully elaborates the proofs of Scrip- 
ture inspiration and right interpretation which he so confidently 
expects will bring the nineteenth century to its knees before the 
Bible. Shifting, however, is something of which he cannot, as the 
assault which he has made upon the six barriers shows, proclaim 
himself guiltless ; and if by it he has brought men to their knees, 
there is, I fear, no assurance that they will continue in that attitude. 
It is a difficult position to keep, and my experience of human 
nature leads me to think that a book relating supernatural facts, 
which only proposes itself and offers therewith the conclusions 
which the higher criticism passes upon it, will not hold men in its 
subjection very long. I think that a divine messenger with cre- 
dentials as valid as those of the authors of the Sacred Books them- 



1891.] PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 743 

selves is the only power which can do it. I do not believe in the 
competency of human science to explain divine facts, but can 
believe that a divinely-established authority with perpetual divine 
assistance can do it. 

Moreover, the t Catholic Church, with the laurels of nineteen 
centuries upon her brow, is seen to-day advancing with giant 
strides into regions where a few years ago she was unknown, 
seeking men out, sending her ministers often to the most unattrac- 
tive places, building her temples in the slums and filling them with 
people, erecting her cathedrals in the centres of fashion, pushing 
her fearless priests before the muzzles which soldiery are aiming at 
the starving and frenzied poor, alluring the proud and rich to serve 
the lowly and needy, carrying peace and comfort to the miserable, 
and with the Bible in her hand, proclaiming it to be her written 
constitution, her Book of which God is the Author ; and her claim 
to this Book accredits itself, because we know her sincere love for 
men's souls, her hatred of deception, and her supernatural wisdom 
too well to doubt her word. She manifests herself as the ideal 
church as far as she can be with men and women, such as we are, 
for her representatives. Her decrees, therefore, concerning inspir- 
ation, canonicity, and interpretation, we conclude, ought not to be 
questioned, because she is a standing miracle herself. We find, 
however, that mere human authorities, though their intentions 
have often been the best, have sometimes obscured the Bible and 
erected barriers that have hidden its treasures ; but if the ques- 
tion arises whether the divinely-commissioned church by her 
decrees has done so we must answer never. The higher criticism 
which Dr. Briggs so extols is, I know, at best only human, and 
will never make the Scriptures more potent than the church has 
made them. A certain philosopher once met in the desert an 
old hermit, who before his conversion had enjoyed wealth and 
luxu'ry among men. " What brought you here ? " he asked. The 
old hermit held up a much-worn copy of one of the Holy Gospels 
and said: "That Book" " Man is fallible,' 7 says Dr. Briggs. 
True, and the sooner man finds out that he is not wiser than 
God s Church the better for him. Such a book as the Bible 
may well present difficulties which no one can explain, but our 
inability to solve them is not proof that they are insoluble. I can 
imagine and accept many solutions except one, viz. : that the Bible 
is not inspired. On this point the Catholic Church has solemnly 
defined that the entire books of the canon in all their parts were 
divinely inspired and have God for their Author. 

Having stated the general principles by which Catholics are 



744 PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. [Aug., 

guided in their investigations of the Bible, I will now consider 
in detail the author's views of what the higher criticism has done 
with 'the Bible. He maintains that it has proved the falsity of 
the theory of verbal inspiration. Certainly we cannot object to 
this conclusion. Very few, if any, modern Cajtholic theologians 
maintain it. " The doctrine* of inspiration approved by the 
church and Catholic theologians extends the divine authorship to 
all the sacred books, and to each part of the Scriptures, but does 
not affect the material form of the words, which are the writer's 
own expression, depending upon his individual style, genius, or 
culture. The assistance of the Holy Ghost is, however, such that 
the words chosen by the writer shall sufficiently and faithfully 
express the divine mind."* 

In regard to the authenticity of the books, Professor Briggs 
maintains the higher criticism has proved that "the great mass of 
the Old Testament was written by authors whose names or con- 
nection with their writings is lost in oblivion " (p. 33). I am not 
aware that such a statement as the above is either directly or 
indirectly against Catholic faith, but it is certainly very bold, 
and is, I think, calculated to undermine belief in the Scripture in 
many minds. The demands of the higher criticism are surely not 
small. It would have Christian scholars surrender the Bible to it 
unreservedly and let it make a new interpretation of its con- 
tents, such as it can approve. 

Professor Briggs has much to say about the teaching of theolo- 
gians on the inerrancy of Scripture. He thinks that the higher 
criticism has proved that there are errors in the Scripture, but 
that these errors are in the circumstantials, and not in the essen- 
tials. What he means by this is difficult to understand. He is 
certainly walking boldly on dangerous ground. The extent of 
inspiration from the Catholic standpoint has, I think, been well 
described by Father Hewit in his article on The Warfare of 
Science in the last number of this magazine : " Whatever is con- 
tained in the inspired books which is not doctrinal, ethical, or 
of the nature of dogmatic fact is accidental. All of science and 
history which is transmitted with the divine tradition of religious 
and moral doctrine, but only accidentally connected with them, 
has more or less of obscurity and ambiguity, and admits of more 
than one interpretation. It is that which is certainly' revealed, 
certainly understood in its true authentic sense, attested and 
proposed by. the church in her ordinary magistracy, or by 
solemn definitions, which is the matter of Catholic faith." 

* Lecture, The Bible in the Catholic Church, Mgr. T. S. Preston. 



1891.] PROF. BRIGGS ON AUTHORITY IN RELIGION. 745 

The traditional explanation of miracles, or the claim that 
miracles disturb the laws of nature, is, according to Professor 
Briggs, an obstacle to faith in the Bible. " The miracles of 
the Bible," he says, " were the work of God, either by direct 
divine energy or mediately through holy men, energized to 
perform them ; but there is no reason why we should claim 
that they in any way violate the laws of nature or disturb 
its harmonies. We ought not to be disturbed by the efforts 
of scholars to explain them under the forms of divine law, in 
accordance with the order of nature. If it were possible to 
resolve all 'the miracles of the Old Testament into extraordin- 
ary acts of Divine Providence, using the forces and forms of 
nature in accordance with the laws of nature ; and if we could 
explain all the miracles of Jesus, his unique authority over 
man and over nature, from his use of mind cure, or hypnot- 
ism, or any other occult power still I claim that nothing 
essential would be lost from the miracles of the Bible. . . . 
Christian men may construct their theories about the miracles 
of the Bible with entire freedom, so long as they do not 
deny the reality of the events themselves as recorded in Holy Scrip- 
ture. The study of the miracles of the Bible has convinced me that 
they may be explained from the presence of God in nature in va- 
rious forms of Theophany and Christophany, for where God is 
present we may expect manifestations of divine authority and 
power" (pp. 37, 38). This attempt to naturalize miracles, I think, 
rather increases than lessens the difficulty of believing in the re- 
ality of the events recorded. For to suppose that such unknown 
laws by which they can be accounted for exist, would imply that 
the laws of nature, as we ordinarily understand them, are not con- 
stant. Moreover, such a theory would destroy the character of 
miracles as divine evidences of revelation ; we ought, as our Lord 
declares their purport, to be led by them to believe in the super- 
natural doctrines which they substantiate, because we recognize 
them as events which the forces of nature of themselves could 
not have produced. But the notion, says Professor Fisher, that 
miracles are repugnant to nature, that the supernatural is anti- 
natural, should be banished from our minds.* It is a misrepre- 
sentation of the teachings of orthodox theologians to say that they 
hold that miracles are ''violations of the laws of nature." 

On the whole, I conclude that Professor Briggs's treatment of 
the question of authority in religion is very unsatisfactory, and 
shows that he recognizes very little actual authority either in 

* The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 465. 



746 Six C. GA VAN DUFFY s LIFE OF THOMAS DA vis. [Aug., 

Bible or church, but very much in the higher criticism. Would 
that he had the light of the Holy Spirit to understand the three 
sources of divine authority as realities, each having its own sphere 
of action, and all of them united able to satisfy every soul in 
quest of an eternal and immutable certainty, instead of regarding 
them as forms which are so mixed with the human and imperfect 
that he must try to 'get behind them to understand their mean- 
ing ! When the sun is over the hills why, we ask ourselves, 
should one grope as if in the dark ? However, it is encouraging 
to know that Professor Briggs has caught glimpses of the divine 
operations in ways which seem to be unknown to 'most of his 
brethren. Let us hope that he and others whose glances have 
turned outward in the right direction may yet behold the full 
light of God's revelation in all its splendor. 

H. H. WYMAN. 



SIR C. GAVAN DUFFY'S LIFE OF THOMAS DAVIS. 

ANY book from the pen of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy must of 
necessity be interesting and command a large share of public at- 
tention. He always writes well and gracefully, and brings to his 
subject the fullest possible knowledge. This is especially the case 
with his Memoir of Thomas Davis, * a book which we have long 
been promised and which fully realizes the expectations formed 
of it expectations which were necessarily high because of the 
reputation of the writer and because no man living was more 
fitted to undertake the task. He was one of Davis's most inti- 
mate friends and co-workers, and had in his possession many 
valuable private papers and letters without which such a biogra- 
phy would be incomplete. These letters (some of which have, it 
is true, seen the light before) contribute in no small degree to the 
interest of the book, showing as they do the unaffected modesty 
and earnestness of Davis's character and the lovableness of his 
nature, qualities which endeared him to all with whom he came 
in contact, and which drew around him that brilliant circle who 
afterwards came to be known as " Young Ireland," whose head- 
quarters was the Nation office, and whose bond of union was 

* Thomas Davis. The Memoirs of an Irish Patrwt 1840-1846. By Sir Charles Gavan 
Duffy, K.C.M.G. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co. 1890. 



1 89 K] Sf* C. GA VAN D UFF r' s LIFE OF THOMA s DA vis. 747 

their proud attachment to their friend. " It is very safe to say," 
wrote one of them, " that to the personal influence of Davis, to 
the grandeur of his aims, to his noble tolerance, to his impassion- 
ed zeal, and the loving trust which all generous natures were 
constrained to place in him, the Repeal Association was indebted 
not for Smith O'Brien only, but for Dillon, MacNevin, Meagher, 
O'Gorman, Martin, and Devin Reilly ; and to the same influence 
they were indebted for their fate. . . . Yes, to them and hun- 
dreds more, he was indeed a Fate ; and there is not one amongst 
them still alive but blesses the memory of the friend who first filled 
their souls with the passion of a great ambition and a lofty purpose." 

These words were a noble tribute to a noble character, and 
if proof were needed of their truth we have it here in this me- 
moir, which makes its appearance nearly half a century after its 
subject had been laid in his grave. " He was," says Sir Charles, 
" the most modest and unselfish of men, as well as the greatest 
and best of his generation." 

To inspire noble ambition and heroic devotion was Davis's 
great power. That he should have exercised such an immense influ- 
ence for good in Ireland was remarkable considering his ancestry. 
The posthumous son of an English Tory gentleman who married 
an Irish lady of Cromwellian descent, Thomas Osborne Davis was 
born at Mallow, in the County Cork, the I4th October, 1814. His 
youth was passed amidst the strictest Tory surroundings, and 
having received a good education he passed to Trinity College, 
Dublin, where he graduated in 1836. Two years later he was 
called to the bar, but he never practised at his chosen profession. 
He had not been long at college until he showed that he had 
emancipated himself from the traditional politics of his race, and 
began to develop signs of independence of thought not quite char- 
acteristic of the old school of conservatism. His address to the 
Historical Society, Trinity College, Dublin, delivered in his capa- 
city of president when he was only in his twenty-sixth year, was 
marvellous in the depth of thought and wide range of reading 
which it manifested; and was a fitting prelude to the brilliant 
(though alas ! short) career which followed. " He did," says Sir 
Charles, " much greater and more striking things than can ever 
be realized"; but, in truth, it was not so much what he did as 
the self-respect, self-reliance, manliness, kindliness, and tolerance 
which he practised and inculcated that have left his name as a 
precious legacy to his countrymen, and which brought " a soul 
into Ireland." 

VOL. LIU. 48 



748 SIR C. GAVAN DUFFY'S LIFE OF THOMAS DAVIS. [Aug., 

" It is the sure fate of a feeble fire," says Sir Charles, " to 
go out and be forgotten, but Davis's reputation has gone on gath- 
ering increased light and heat for nearly half a century." 

The unhappy condition of Ireland at the time when Davis en- 
tered on public life might well have daunted the stoutest heart, 
but Davis was not one to be easily dismayed or to let obstacles 
stand in his way. He deplored the state of the country and the 
debasement of the people, and determined upon instituting a new 
order of things. Accordingly he, in conjunction with Charles 
Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, established on the I5th of 
October, 1842, the Nation newspaper, " to direct the popular 
mind and the sympathies of educated men of all parties to the 
great end of nationality." 

The Young Ireland party regarded English rule as the pri- 
mary cause of the political degradation and social misery- of their 
country ; but they had no fanatical hatred of Englishmen, and most 
of them earnestly admired English political institutions, and en- 
tertained high respect for the great qualities, moral and intellec- 
tual, of the English race. Of the want of some of these qualities 
amongst their own countrymen they were fully conscious, but they 
also believed them to possess in rich abundance the germs of 
great national qualities, to develop and cultivate which was the 
ardent wish and hope of those who gathered round the Nation : 
to help " to create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and make 
it racy of the soil." They used these words as the motto of the 
paper, for, in their view of things, public opinion had to be 
''created." That which was called public opinion seemed to them 
a sorry sham. With the Protestants it meant the tenacious cling- 
ing to every shred of the old ascendency; with the Catholics an 
entire submission to O'Connell. Davis wanted both Catholics and 
Protestants to unite in the struggle for nationality. The Young 
.Irelanders fully recognized O'Connell's great abilities and noble 
services ; but Freedom's temple is a goal to reach which men must 
be united, and Davis and the others felt that an ignorant, dis- 
tracted people, torn by factions and arrayed in two hostile camps, 
embittered against each other by both political and sectarian hate, 
could neither win nor retain independent existence. 

The two primary duties, then, of an Irishman who loved his 
country were to educate and to conciliate ; and, under the guid- 
ance of Davis, the Nation essayed to do this. The new paper 
had been announced under auspices calculated to insure its suc- 
cess ; but its unexpected ability, the ground it broke in the na- 



1891.1 Ss# C. GA VAN D UFFY'S LIFE OF THOMAS DA vis. 749 

tional policy, and the vast intellectual resources it developed, 
eclipsed the prestige under which it had been deemed necessary 
to usher it into existence. Every variety of literary talent was to 
be found represented on its staff, " from grave to gay, from lively 
to severe." It was particularly strong in the light artillery of 
wit and banter, but nothing coarse or vulgar was ever admitted 
into its pages. The effect it produced upon Irish society was 
electric. It penetrated even the most exclusive Protestant and 
Tory circles, and everywhere found responsive echoes. It was at 
once a proof of greater powers than the country had yet wit- 
nessed, and a prophecy of a different fate from what she had 
hoped for. 

The work done by Davis in connection with the Nation re- 
presents but a small portion of his literary labors, and yet it is 
not possible to refer the reader to any masterpiece of literary 
effort. " Literature," for its own sake, he almost despised. What- 
ever he wrote was written for some immediate or remote effect 
which he sought to produce ; it was, in fact, the writing of a jour- 
nalist. " But there is enough of it," said his friend Wallis, " to 
make men love him, and guess at him and what more can the 
best of readers do with the supremest writer, though he lived to 
the age of Sophocles or Goethe." 

His prose writings are characterized by a nervous vigor which 
was peculiarly his own, combined with perfect simplicity and direct- 
ness of expression. Of no writer could it be said with greater 
truth that the style was the man. What graces of style his writ- 
ings possess are the products of genius and truth. Davis the poet 
will ever be dear to the Irish heart. For poetry, previous to the 
Nation, he had shown no capacity whatever. As a matter of fact 
he had never written even a line of poetry until about three years 
before his death ; although the warmth of his affections, and his 
intense enjoyment of the beauties of nature and art, ought early 
to have marked him out as one destined to sing as well as to 
think and to act. He attempted versification without any con- 
sciousness that he possessed the gift of song, and solely because 
he was full of the idea of its importance and power as a means of 
iwakening popular emotion. The result was a collection of songs 
and ballads which number amongst them some of the most stirring 
vigor, and others of the utmost grace, tenderness, and beauty. 
The chief characteristic of his poetry may be briefly described as 
passion no false or sickly sentiment, but the genuine outpourings 
of a nature which could feel intensely and love deeply. The 



750 5/J? C. GA VAN DUFFY'S LIFE OF THOMAS DA vis. [Aug., 

verses which Sir Charles has included at the end of the volume 
are excellent examples of his pure and tender melody ; linked with 
the name of the lady with whom he had hoped to link his life, 
they are alike worthy of the poet and their subject. 

To determine Davis's exact position in the poetical firmament 
is no part of our present purpose, nor are we aware that any- 
thing would be gained by our attempting to do so. His poetry 
is unequal, and must be judged by a reference to his aims, and 
his mode of life. The greater, and by far the best, portion of it 
was written and published within a single year (1844), and that 
the most active of his short life. Had he lived, and been enabled 
to give the world the perfected fruits of an unincumbered leisure, 
we feel that he was capable of great things ; as it is, none of his 
works, prose or verse, can be taken as an adequate expression of 
his creative power. The creation of an Irish literature, of which 
the justly celebrated " Library of Ireland " formed the nucleus, 
was the work of Davis. He was the soul which gave life to the 
thoughts and desires of every true Irishman ; teaching them to 
rely upon themselves, and by their own labor to produce that 
of which they stood in need. To this end he himself spared no 
labor, working with an industry that was simply marvellous, 
and taking no credit to himself for anything he did. As an in- 
stance of his modesty in this respect, Sir Charles tells us how, 
when he had finished the collecting and editing of Curran's 
Speeches, he asked Maddyn to write a biographical sketch for it, 
and to have the volume published with his (Maddyn's) name on 
the title-page. 

It was not in the nature of the man to lead a life of literary 
leisure. "Patriotism," as he himself said, " once felt to be a duty 
becomes so." And into the cause of Irish nationality he flung him- 
self with all the ardor of his intensely ardent nature. That the 
movement which has left such an indelible mark on the page of 
Ireland's history owed its inception, organization, and achieve- 
ments to Davis is undeniable, and had the lines he laid down 
been followed it is not too much to say that his ideas and aspira- 
tions were in a fair way to be realized. To quote the words of 
his biographer: "He had set himself the task of building up a 
nation a task not beyond his strength had fortune been kind." 
But fortune did not prove kind; on the contrary, he saw the 
powerful organization in which he had trusted gradually weaken- 
ing and lowering its tone until it ceased to be respected. The 
disappointment was too much for Davis ; he who had been the 



1891 ] Sf C. GA VAN DUFFY" s LIFE OF THOMAS DA vis. 75 1 

most hopeful of them all grew despondent ; the struggle against 
adverse influences wore out his delicate frame ; and, in the very 
bloom of his manhood, death cut short his labors. The chapters 
which Sir Charles has devoted to the conflict with O'Connell 
and the new departure which followed, are, notwithstanding his 
previous contributions to this portion of Irish history, extremely 
interesting. "Without knowing the history of a time we cannot 
accurately comprehend its philosophy." What the destinies of 
Ireland might have been had Davis lived we can only conjecture. 
Speculations upon what might have been are idle, and not infre- 
quently tinged with regret ; let us, therefore, rather hope that 
the future of Ireland may be all that Davis himself would have 
wished for her. 

For the rest but little remains to be said. In the course of 
the ten chapters into which the book is divided Sir Charles 
Gavan Duffy has traced Davis's career with a loving and sympa- 
thetic faithfulness. Never had a biographer a better subject, for 
there was nothing to conceal, nothing to be condoned. He never 
betrayed a friend or maligned an enemy. His private life was as 
blameless as his public life was praiseworthy and of how few can 
that be said ! There were no intrigues, social or political, to lay 
bare. Himself the very soul of truth and honor, Davis had an 
intense scorn of everything base or mean, and an earnest admira- 
tion of all that was elevated and pure. A stranger alike to the 
schemings of ambition and the rancor of faction, he was truly 
entitled to the name of patriot. 

P. A. S. 

Dublin. 



752 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Aug., 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 

THE strike of the Londo'n omnibusmen and its success af- 
ford a few lessons not unworthy of notice. The first of 
these is, that the chief condition of success is that the cause 
should be ' such as to enlist the sympathy of the public. 
Such was the case with the omnibusmen, for their hours of 
labor were from fourteen to eighteen each day. This was felt 
by all to be intolerable. The next lesson is about a condi- 
tion almost equally important, but circumstances do not make 
it always feasible. It is that the public must not be put to great 
inconvenience by the strike. Some inconvenience it is neces- 
sary to inflict, otherwise attention would not be excited. But 
great inconvenience the public is too selfish to tolerate. Of this 
the Scottish railway strike was proof. Now, the London public 
felt the want of the omnibuses, but not to a very unpleasant de- 
gree, for cabs and railways were at hand for long distances 
and short distances could be walked. It was due to these 
favorable conditions that the principal claims of the men were 
conceded. 



Not, however, without a fight, nor without the intervention 
of distinguished outsiders. The Lord Mayor acted as intermed- 
iary and negotiated the terms of settlement. Cardinal Manning 
wrote, and the Marquis of Ripon spoke in support of the laborers' 
claims. Mr. G. F. Watts, the artist, has given the best expression 
of the views of thoughtful onlookers. In a letter sent by him 
to the organizers of the strike he says : " While I cannot pretend 
to understand how the business arrangements of firms and com- 
panies should be carried out, I feel that it is a monstrous 
thing to exact even as many as twelve hours' labor from any 
man. I fear in taking shares in companies the idea is always to 
secure as large a return for investments as possible, irrespective 
of every other condition ; a principle, I believe, to be unworthy, 
unwise, and unsafe. The worship of Mammon, so universal in 
this age, has gone far to destroy our character as a noble people, 
and will, I believe, undermine the very existence of the nation. 
It must be understood that I am professing no socialistic prin- 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 753 

ciples, or any principles except those of justice and consideration 

for others." 

* * * 

In fact, the root of the present evils is to be found in the 
universal desire which pervades every rank and class of society, 
high and low, rich and poor, to give as little as possible, whether 
in wages or in payment for goods to buy always in the cheap- 
est market. It is the public that is the sweater the public which 
runs to the cheapest stores and gives the lowest wages. Fine 
sentiments are very pretty, and indignant exclamations at the 
wrong-doings of employers sound very grand, but this kind of 
philanthropy is very cheap and, we fear, worth very little. It 
would be more satisfactory to all concerned if people in general 
would bear in mind an elementary principle of Moral Theology, 
that it is as much a sin against justice to pay too little for an 
article as to ask too much for it ; that the face of the poor may be 
ground down as much by economical housewives as by tyrannical 

capitalists. 

* * # 

Nor is it the rich alone who are guilty of injustice : of this 
the strike above referred to affords an example. The drivers 
and conductors formed the majority of the strikers, but they were 
assisted by the horse-keepers, who form a large body of men. 
In the settlement, however, the latter's claims were entirely dis- 
regarded. The drivers and conductors having secured what they 
demanded, declared the strike at an end and left their humbler 
coadjutors to shift for themselves. This is not the only instance 
during the past month in which the claims of fellow- workmen 
have been set at naught by their comrades. At Newcastle the 
engineers in the shipping trade, because in their opinion the 
plumbers were encroaching upon their sphere of work, went out 

Ion strike, and on account of this action some 25,000 men stood 
in danger of loss of employment. .And so while in general we 
extend to the working-man our sympathy in their struggles, it 
must not be a blind sympathy ; for the fact cannot be over- 
looked that acts of injustice are not seldom committed by work- 
ing-men in their dealings with each other. Is it not within the 
limits of possibility, too, that the employers may sometimes be 

right ? 

* * * 

The great grievance of the omnibusmen was the long hours dur- 
ing which they were required to work. Yet they were themselves 



754 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Aug., 

not without responsibility for this state of things. For the 
strike synchronized with the adoption of a ticket system which 
effectually prevented a long standing habit of peculation. 
Some time before it took place the managers of the compa- 
nies had proposed to adopt this ticket system, but in defer- 
ence to the wishes of the men the old method was allowed 
to continue, the men being willing to work more hours in 
order to have a longer time to carry on their depredations, 
and the employers conniving for the sake of securing their 
services at lower wages. It is hard to conceive a more de- 
moralizing system for all concerned, both masters and men. 



The international character of the labor movement of our 
times has been strikingly exemplified in these omnibus strikes. 
It was in Paris that the first took place. Its success seems to 
have moved the London men to emulation. Hungary next be- 
came the scene of conflict ; here, however, it was not the men but 
the masters who struck, moved thereto by certain onerous police 
regulations. Success attended their efforts. Then the movement 
returned to France, and first Lyons and then Bordeaux and Mar- 
seilles witnessed similar conflicts. Lyons and Bordeaux were the 
only places in which anything like rioting took place. In Bor- 
deaux, however, there was somewhat serious trouble. 



A more satisfactory exemplification of internationalism is 
found, however, in the action of many European legislatures. 
The Berlin Conference, far from proving fruitless, as many anti- 
cipated, is moving several countries to take measures for the im- 
provement of the working classes. Its influence has been deci- 
sively felt in Great Britain with .reference to child labor. In 
other respects, as is well known, the laws for the protection of 
operatives were, at the time of the conference, more satisfactory 
there. than elsewhere. In the matter of child labor, however, the 
rest of Europe was in advance of England. The conference 
fixed the age at which a child was to be allowed to begin to work 
at twelve; in England it was lawful to begin at ten. The gov- 
ernment bill for the Regulation of Factories and Workshops, as 
introduced by them, made no alteration in this respect, although 
the recommendation of the conference had received the express 
approval of Lord Salisbury. More than that, to an amendment 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 755 

for raising the age to twelve the government offered strenuous 
opposition. Strange to say, in doing this they acted as they say 
and as seems really to be the case according to the wishes of 
the parents most nearly affected. These parents, it appears, find 
it hard to relinquish the earnings of the children under twelve. 
The government would not even give its assent to a compromise 
proposed by a conservative member by which the age was raised 
to eleven. The feeling, however, in favor of this was so strong 
that on a division the government were beaten. And so Eng- 
land, although she has not fully realized the recommendation of 
the conference, has been induced to. take this step toward it. 



In other countries there is more zeal. France has gone be- 
yond the recommendation of the conference ; for a law has been 
made by which the age for the legal employment of children in 
some thirteen specified industries has been raised to thirteen. 
One exception is made, rendering it lawful for children who are 
above twelve to work on condition that they have passed the 
required school examination. In other respects, too, legislation is 
probable. The Minister of the Interior has introduced a bill for 
the relief of destitute and deserving workmen. According to the 
provisions of this bill a workman may voluntarily agree to have 
certain deductions made from his wages with the view to the 
ultimate enjoyment of a pension. To the fund for paying this 
pension both the state and the employer will contribute, it being 
made obligatory upon the employer to pay the share required of 
him. In this way from three hundred to six hundred francs 
yearly will be secured for the workman after the lapse of thirty 
years. The cost to the state, should the five and one-half mil- 
lions of working-men insure, is estimated at one hundred millions 
of francs a year. 



France has given yet another proof of her regard for the 
laborer's welfare. A law was passed in 1848 by which the hours 
of labor for all persons employed in state and municipal establish- 
ments were fixed at twelve. This law has now been extended 
to all engine-drivers, stokers, switchmen, omnibus-drivers, and 
conductors, and other persons employed in transport companies 
having concessions from the state or from local bodies. If the 
Boulangists could have had their way this extension would have 
included all day-laborers, miners, factory hands, and assistants in 



756 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Aug., 

large stores. But this was further than the Assembly was pre- 
pared to go. 

* * * 

Nor is our chronicle of labor legislation yet complete. In the 
Austrian Reichsrath the Ministe^ of Commerce has introduced a 
bill " for the creation of institutions tending to facilitate conciliation 
between employers of labor and their workmen." The bill provides 
for the appointment of workmen syndicates and for the establish- 
ment of boards of conciliation. Trade corporations among the 
mining operatives are also proposed. These are so far only 
projects. The German emperor, however, in his speech on the 
prorogation of the Prussian Parliament, expressed his satisfaction 
that a law had been passed by which the taxation which bore 
hardly on the poorer classes had been more equitably adjusted. . 



The only conflict between labor and capital in which the dis- 
tinctive principles of the " new " unionism formed the only direct 
issue has taken place, not in the Old World but in one of Great 
Britain's dependencies Queensland. This contest brings into view 
several interesting points. First of all, it shows, although not for 
the first time, in one of the most recently settled and organized 
of modern countries, the elements of strife exist as fully developed 
as in the over-populated countries of Europe. Another thing to 
be noted is the attitude of the purely democratic government of 
the colony toward the working-men. The conduct of the strikers 
called for active intervention. They formed themselves into camps, 
from which parties, mounted and armed, rode about the country 
intimidating those who were willing to work. Trains were 
wrecked, many deeds of personal violence committed, property 
was destroyed. The strikers were some 10,000 in number, and as 
the movement progressed talk of "social war" and the "Austra- 
lian revolution" began to be heard. The government, however, 
did not flinch. Some of the more outspoken and imprudent of 
the leaders were arrested, and have since been convicted and 
sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. 



The ordinary police force proving too weak to cope with the 
strikers, it became necessary to call out the military. In the colony 
there are no regular troops. The only military organization possessed 
by the state consists of what is called the Defence Force, formed 
of men who, as a rule, are engaged in civil occupations, and only 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 757 

liable to service in an emergency and for a limited time. Half of 
this force was called out. The men had to serve at long distances 
from their homes, to make long marches in a district where there are 
no railways, and to undergo many hardships and much fatigue ; and 
this was done to protect " blacklegs " or " scabs." The govern- 
ment and people of the colony were led to make these sacrifices 
by the determination to maintain the right of men to work on 
their own terms, even though those terms were not union terms. 
There was no question of wages by the admission of the men these 
were amply sufficient. Union of masters was pitted against union 
of men and the union of masters has won. For, according to the 
last news the strike has been declared at an end. It seems clear 
that the determination that men shall be at liberty either to join 
or not a union is as strong in Australia as recent events have 
proved it to be in England. 



The Labor Commission appointed by the English government 
has at last got to work. It has taken a long time to organize itself 
and to prepare its plan of operations. Perhaps it might not be 
wrong to speak of it as three commissions, for it has been divided 
into three committees, and among these the subjects of inquiry 
have been distributed. The first committee deals with the mining, 
iron, engineering, hardware, ship-building, and cognate trades; the 
second with shipping, canals, docks, railways, tramways, and agri- 
culture ; the third with the textile, clothing, chemical, building, 
and miscellaneous trades. In this way the vast field under inves- 
tigation will stand a chance of being covered in time for a report 
before the general election. But, irrespective of this report, which 
will give the judgment of the commissioners, the facts given in 
evidence from day to day will form a mine of information acces- 
sible to all and simply invaluable. We hope to be able to lay 
before our readers the most important and interesting of the facts 
elicited. 



Mr. Chamberlain's plan for providing pensions for the aged 
poor is making headway every day and taking more definite 
shape. Lord Hartington, the leader of the Liberal- Unionists, by 
no means a Radical, in a speech recently made includes it among 
the measures which his party have in contemplation. The com- 
mittee for elaborating the plan and working out its details num- 
bers sixty-six peers, and members of Parliament of all parties. 



758 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Aug., 

Many points have yet to be decided, but that there is to be no 
compulsion placed on working-men to effect the proposed insurance 
seems to be generally agreed. It has also been resolved that in 
case the insurer die before the attainment of the pension age 
the amount of money actually deposited by him may be with- 
drawn. How much the state 'will pay, at what age the pension 
will commence, and many other points remain to be settled. But 
from the attention the plan has excited, the amount of support it 
is receiving, and the state of political parties, we shall not be rash 
in concluding that a measure of this kind will pass through Parlia- 
ment next session. 



For the first time since the passing of Mr. Forster's Act in 
1870 the system of elementary education established by it is 
being subjected to fundamental revision. As our readers are 
doubtless aware, there are in Great Britain two parties diametri- 
cally opposed to each other on the school question. One party 
warmly defends and supports the giving of religious education 
in the elementary schools. This party is made up of the de- 
fenders of the Establishment, of the Catholics, and until quite re- 
cently of Wesleyan Methodists. The latter, however, have lately 
abandoned the cause. The other party wishes to have all the 
schools secularized, and finds its leaders and guides in infidels like 
Mr. John Morley, and, strange to say, derives its strength from 
the Nonconformists, Baptists, Congregationalists, and now the 
Methodists. The first party supports and maintains the voluntary 
schools, and seeks in Parliament all the help which national funds 
and laws afford them. The other party act, of course, in the 
opposite sense, and especially seek to extend the school boards, 
or, failing that, to bring the voluntary schools under public control. 



When education was made compulsory in England, that it 
should become free became only a matter of time. The advo- 
cates of purely secular education were looking forward to 
this as the fitting opportunity for bringing all the schools into 
the power of the state, on the principle that he who pays 
should control. The present government, which is friendly 
to religious education and the voluntary schools, has brought 
in its Free Education Bill in order to frustrate this plan. The 
measure leaves the management of each school unchanged, 
shillings yearly is given for each child in average attendance. 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 759 

is perhaps inaccurate to call the bill a Free Education Bill, for 
it does not secure, and is not meant to secure, one dead-level of 
absolute freedom. The ten-shilling grant is calculated upon the 
basis of a three-penny fee for each child per week. As a 'matter 
of fact, the fees charged range from one penny to nine-pence per 
week. Consequently some schools will receive more than they 
have hitherto received in the way of children's pence, others will 
receive less. The schools which have hitherto received more will 
be allowed under this bill to charge the difference between the 
former fee and the three-pence given by the government, pro- 
vided that a sufficient number of free places are found for those 
parents who wish for them. It is also left to the option of each 
school to accept or to reject the government grant. 



Such are the main provisions of the new measure, which it is 
hoped by the government will settle the question permanently and 
settle it in favor of religious education. Whether this hope will 
be realized no one can tell. All we can say is, that the authors 
of the bill are sincere friends of the voluntary schools, and seem* 
to have acted for no other purpose then to strengthen and preserve 
them. Only ten out of the six hundred and seventy-two mem- 
bers of Parliament voted against the second reading of the bill. 
In the course of the debate Lord George Hamilton, a member 
of the cabinet, paid a tribute of praise to supporters of Catholic 
schools in England, which will interest our readers as showing 
what English Catholics have done out of their poverty. " In the 
case of the Roman Catholic schools," he said "that subscrip- 
tions amounted to seventy-eight per cent of the fees payable. 
That showed the subscriptions were high and the fees low, and 
that the subscribers were prepared to make sacrifices for their 
schools. In the case of the Wesleyan schools the statistics were 
reversed, the subscriptions amounting to only seventeen per 
cent." And speaking of the schools themselves, he said " the 
Roman Catholic schools were extraordinary in their efficiency, 
considering the small resources at their disposal." This is the 
spontaneous testimony of an impartial non-Catholic. 



The fair treatment meted out to religious schools in Scotland 
is illustrated by the following case. The school board at Crieff, 
wishing, it would seem, to supplant neighboring Catholic and 
Episcopal voluntary schools, asked the Scotch Education Depart- 



760 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Aug., 

ment what arrangements they required in regard to the religious 
teaching in public schools in order that the grants to the Epis- 
copal and Roman Catholic schools in Crieff might be withdrawn 
and refused. To this the department replied, that where parents be- 
lieved that religious instruction ought to be imparted to their chil - 
dren at school, it could not be said that sufficient provision, ac- 
cording to the terms of the Education Act, existed for the chil- 
dren in schools where no religious instruction is given, or where 
it is of a kind of which parents disapprove. From this reply it 
would appear that the Scotch Education Act as interpreted, at 
all events, by its present administrators gives a statutory right to 
parents to have their children taught their own religion at the 
expense of the state, even in places where the school board sup- 
plies sufficient secular education. If this is the case, religious 
education is more favored in Scotland than in England. 



One or two further proofs of the fair treatment accorded 
to the chur9h in Great Britain may not be out of place. 
"Some little time ago the ministers of the Establishment, 'as- 
sembled in convocation, made loud complaints that in many 
workhouses, while Catholic chaplains were appointed and re- 
ceived salaries, no provision was made for Episcopalian chap- 
lains. And a few days ago the London Times, commenting 
on the opposition in Canada to Sir John Thompson being 
made premier, said: "Sir John Thompson is a Roman Cath- 
olic, and on that ground is denounced by some of the Pro- 
testant members of the Conservative party. ... It is 
much to be regretted that Dr. Douglass, whose eighty years 
give him great authority among the Wesleyan Methodists, 
should have set the evil example of religious bigotry. Happily, 
more liberal views are entertained by other men of light and 
leading in that body." 



We are unable, unhappily, to chronicle any marked advance of 
the temperance movement ; in fact, hoped-for steps onward will 
be delayed for another year. The Welsh Local- Option Bill has 
been withdrawn, owing to the state of parliamentary business. 
Possibly the Irish measure may even yet be put through ; but 
owing to the opposition of certain Irish members, of which we 
have already spoken, the likelihood of this is very small. But 
that the position of the publicans is beginning to be looked 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 761 

upon as very insecure, on account of the legal decision of which 
we have already spoken, is shown by the fact that a company 
has been started to insure against loss of license, in the same 
way as against loss by fire. Those who insure in this company 
will receive the compensation which the law refuses. Doubtless 
one good effect of this will be to remove the scruples of mag- 
istrates and make them more willing to take away licenses. 
That public-house property, notwithstanding the temperance 
movement and the legal decision, is still of enormous value is 
proved by the fact that a public-house with only eighteen years 
of lease to run sold a short time ago for sixty years' purchase 
twenty-five years' purchase being the average price paid for land 
in England ; seventeen years in Ireland. 



A most important event for the future of Europe took place 
quietly at the end of June. This was the formal renewal for six 
years of that alliance between Germany, Austria- Hungary, and 
Italy which is known as the Triple Alliance. Unless the un 
foreseen should happen, this renewal will secure the peace per- 
haps we should rather call it the armed truce of Europe for 
six years to come. Every one must feel gratified at this pros- 
pect of the postponement of war, and even hope against hope 
that in the breathing-space given some man will arise great and 
powerful enough to bring about a disarmament. 



That Germany and Austria would renew the alliance was 
never a matter of doubt. Strong opposition, however, arose in 
Italy. As is well known, the country is groaning under taxa- 
tion far heavier than it had to bear in the old days ; the 
strongest desire of every Italian is to get rid of some portion of 
his burden ; the Alliance requires the keeping -its army up to a 
very high standard of efficiency. The fall of Crispi, it was thought, 
would lead to a change of policy. The Marquis di Rudini, 
however, has followed in the steps of his predecessors and has 
again pledged Italy to the Alliance. How he will at the same 
time carry out the economies which are the raison d'etre of his 
ministry remains to be seen. The deficit for the financial year 
1891-92, just announced, is no less than 5,424,096 lire. The 
way of trangressors is hard. 

* * * 

But should not the Triple Alliance be called the Quadruple 



762 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Aug., 

Alliance ? Is not Great Britain a secret party ? This is the 
question which has been warmly discussed in France during the 
past month, and French newspaper writers profess themselves 
convinced of the affirmative. There can be no doubt that the 
present English government is friendly to the three allied powers 
and to their policy. It may eve'n be the case that Italy would 
not have entered into the alliance unless it had received an as- 
surance of that friendship. That it has received such an assur- 
ance is all that can be said. That there is no formal treaty 
binding England to take action is clear to any one who is at 
all familiar with the English methods. As to France and Russia, 
the powers against whom the Triple Alliance is made, it seems 
clear that no tormal treaty has been made between them. Des- 
potism and the principles of '89 find it hard to blend. What is 
certain, however, is that the unity of interests is sufficient to 
produce unity of action when the time comes. 



Meanwhile the French Republic seems to be taking firm root. 
M. de Freycinet's cabinet has remained in power for the long 
period of sixteen months. The president was received with en- 
thusiasm during his recent tour through the south. Cardinal La- 
vigerie's policy seems to be gaining ground. One of the bishops 
most opposed hitherto to the established form of government, 
Monseigneur Fava, of Grenoble, has publicly declared : " We 
accept the form of government which exists to-day in France 
namely, the republic." The Orleanists, the Bonapartists, and even 
Legitimists supporters, that is, of Don Carlos, " King Charles 
VII., of Spain, and XL, of France" have held meetings and 
made speeches ; but very little attention is accorded to them. 
It seems probable that France is now secure in the possession of 
the first requisite for civilization a stable form of government. 



On the fifth of June Cardinal Richard consecrated the Church 
of the Sacred Heart, which has been in course of erection for 
many years on Montmartre. It has been built as an act of ex- 
piation on the part of the nation for the sins which brought about 
the disasters of 1870 and 1871. Five millions of dollars have been 
subscribed since 1873, when the movement was inaugurated by the 
late Cardinal Guibert. Another sign of the activity of French Cath- 
olics is the formation of the " Union of Christian France." It is 
understood to be a further result of Cardinal Lavigerie's appeal, 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 763 

although there is no open renunciation of the monarchy or adop- 
tion of the republic. Its object is to take political action for the 
obtaining of religious liberty of teaching, of chanty, and of as- 
sociation, and for the revision of all that in educational, military, 
or fiscal legislation constitutes a violation of this liberty. Its 
programme embraces also the passing of laws to secure the ob- 
servance of Sunday as a day of rest, and legislation for the es- 
tablishment of institutions for the amelioration of the workmen's 
lot. We hope that the upshot of all will be more than the issue 
of a programme, and that French Catholics may be really moved 
to act in defence of their own interests. 



Long months of hard work on the part of the representatives 
of all the European powers, and the sanguine expectation 
that the way had at last been secured for effectually putting an 
end to the slave-trade, have all been defeated and rendered use- 
less by the action of the French Assembly. The Brussels Con- 
vention, of which we have given an account in former numbers, 
has been rejected by 439 votes to 104. The ostensible reason 
was the alleged revival of the right of search ; but as no right of 
search was given, only a simple verification of the identity of ves- 
sels, the real reason must be found in something else. Possibly 
the utter failure of the convention may be averted. If it is for- 
bidden to the Congo Free State to impose import duties, it is still in 
its power to impose export duties ; and the other powers may 
carry out the provisions, leaving France in isolation, until from 
very shame she may fall into line with the rest of the civilized 

world. 

* * * 

In Prussia the bill for restoring to the church the revenues 
withheld during the Kulturkampf, together with interest, haj 
passed through both houses and has become law. By the retirement 
of the minister of public works, the emperor finds himself surround- 
ed by entirely new men, only one of the old emperor's coun- 
sellors being left to emphasize the situation. Honors are being 
bestowed on those who have defended the youthful sovereign 
against one whom he describes as " an ungrateful vassal." The 
emperor has resumed his round of visits, Holland, England, and 
Norway being included in the first trip. 

* * * 

In Austria most of the exceptional provisions against Socialists 
VOL. LIU. 49 



764 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Aug., 

and anarchists have been abrogated, the authorities, in view of 
the more reasonable and pacific dispositions manifested by the 
working classes, being of opinion that they are no longer neces- 
sary. A closer alliance between Count Taaffe and the German 
Liberals is looked upon as probable. This would involve the 
abandonment of the Nationalist, policy of the last twelve years, 
and a return to the work of liberal and constitutional develop- 
ment which went before the adoption of that policy. The peace 
secured by the Triple Alliance requires an increase of the war credits 
in the Austrian budget, and the arming of her soldiers with a 
cuirass impenetrable by bullets will, we hope, be a further safe- 
guard against war. 



The Balkan States, where the rivalry between Austria and 
Russia finds its sphere of action, present but little worthy of notice. 
That little consists in the rumor that a confederacy is being 
formed of the States which are under Russia's influence Servia, 
Montenegro, and Greece against Bulgaria, which enjoys the sup- 
port oi Austria. But little importance is, in our opinion, to be 
attached to these rumors. The uncertain status quo of these quar- 
relsome nationalities will, we think, remain in its uncertainty for 
a long time to come. 

* * * 

The long- standing dispute between Great Britain and Portugal 
has at last been settled, to all appearances permanently ; and this 
little kingdom will now be able to devote itself to the readjustment of 
its finances and to the development of its long- neglected colonies. 
There are, indeed, among Portuguese statesmen some who by the 
sale of these colonies would find the means for effecting a finan- 
cial equilibrium. If glory and prestige could make way for what 
would really be beneficial to the country this proposal would with- 
out doubt be carried out ; but as things are it is scarcely to be 
expected. The new finance minister is a man of energy, skill, and 
experience, and is full of confidence that means can be found for 
effecting the necessary readjustment. In Spain, also, financial 
legislation is that which is of most pressing importance. Its char- 
acter is of too technical a nature to be of general interest. A thing 
worthy of notice, however, is that in this, as in so many other 
countries, the legislature is interesting itself in behalf of the 
working-man. The securing to all in the employment of the state 
the rest of Sunday is the limit, however, of the present proposals. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOCKS. 765 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 

As it was inevitable that a life * of Laurence Oliphant would 
be written, there seemed at first glance an obvious propriety in 
the fact that the work wa*s to be undertaken by a kinswoman who 
was in so many ways qualified for the task. It is possible that 
this propriety was less real than it appeared, and that his bio- 
grapher's defective sympathy with what was, after all, the essen- 
tial thing in Oliphant and the true reason why a life of him 
finds buyers and readers, may prevent hers from being accepted 
as a fully satisfactory account of his career. But though this 
were certainly the case, and we feel persuaded that it is so in 
some measure, it would remain true that the first volume of this 
biography, which carries its hero through his first thirty-six 
years, could not well be improved. Mrs. Oliphant is very sensi- 
tive to the strong and peculiarly close affection which bound 
Laurence to his parents, and to the deep religious feeling he in- 
herited directly from them, as well as to that side of his many- 
sided nature which kept him always a man of the world in a 
strict sense, even when he was most startlingly unworldly. Hence 
nothing could be better in its way than her presentation of him 
in these aspects. 

Oliphant was born of Scottish parents in Cape Town, South 
Africa, in 1829, and though sent to England for his schooling, 
returned to his family without entering either of the universities 
a fact to which his biographer is inclined to attribute many of 
his later eccentricities of thought. Be that as it may, there is 
something very charming in her account of the "education by 
contact" of this gay, impetuous, and brilliant youth, who at 
nineteen had entered into quasi-public life at Ceylon as secre- 
tary to his father, then chief-justice there. He became a barrister 
soon after, and had been engaged in twenty-three murder cases 
before he was as many years old. He never had much love for 
the law, however, and doubtless was glad of the very unlooked- 
for opportunity given him in 1851 to vary the routine of the 
courts by a tiger-shooting and elephant-catching expedition 
through Nepaul, in company with Jung Bahadour, on the return 
of the latter from his embassy to England. Oliphant was 

* Memoir of the Life of Laurence Oliphant and of Alice Oliphant, his Wife, By M. O. W. 
Oliphant. New York : Harper & Bros. 



766 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Aug., 

twenty- one at the time, and from the notes he made of his ob- 
servations and adventures he prepared his first book the follow- 
ing year. It was brought out in London, by Murray, in May, 
1852, and ten days after its publication Laurence wrote to his 
father that two thousand of the three thousand copies forming 
the first edition had been sold, artd that he had received "long 
and favorable notices from the Athenceum, Economist, Examiner, 
and Literary Gazette" His reception from the reading world 
was from that time assured, but it was not until thirteen years 
later that he used his pen except to record his experiences of 
travel. When, in 1865, he brought out his first novel, Picca- 
dilly written at the suggestion of Mr. John Blackwood and 
issued as a serial in his famous magazine he had already set 
foot in the singular and little -frequented road he was thencefor- 
ward to travel until death. The novel is a curious production, 
full of sharp and brilliant satire on society, " the wholly worldly " 
and " the worldly holy," and yet interpenetrated by a certain 
longing and vague mystic assurance of better things in store 
for the world, sure to perplex as to their drift any reader who 
should take it up in complete unacquaintance with its author's 
career as happened to the present writer some half-dozen years 
since. 

The interval between the production of these two books had 
been packed with a succession of varied and unusual experiences. 
Now one finds Oliphant doing missionary work in London 
slums in company with parsons and society ladies; now on a 
sporting expedition in Russia, or a diplomatic mission to Wash- 
ington and Canada in the train of Lord Elgin in 1854; and, 
again, in the following year, declining " a small governorship in 
the West Indies," in order to go to the Crimea and try to en- 
gineer a diplomatic mission of his own concocting with Schamyl 
in Circassia. There was plainly no lack of excitement and ac- 
tion in this life. It was also varied by the usual distractions of 
an English gentleman to whom society is invariably cordial, and 
by the less common introspection and study of his interior at- 
titude towards God, begun early in life as a matter of filial duty, 
and persevered in later through filial affection. His letters 
to his mother were constant from all quarters of the world 
whither he was led by a mercurial disposition, curiously harnessed 
to and held in check by a thoroughly Scotch and canny re- 
solve to carve out a desirable place for himself in life. He made 
money readily, but he was no spendthrift ; he loved pleasure 
and society, but he was always coming to book with his con- 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 767 

science and confessing himself in an artless, if not very contrite, 
way to his mother, who must have found a good deal to please 
as well as plenty to trouble her in the epistles which Mrs. Oli- 
phant quotes so freely. Thus he writes her from Washington 
concerning a diplomatic dinner he had attended with Lord 
Elgin : 

"We then adjourned with a lot of senators to brandy-and- 
water, champagne, and cigars till twelve, when some of us were 
quite ready to tumble into bed. Now I have no doubt you are 
perfectly horrified, and picture to yourself your inebriated son 
going to bed in a condition you never thought possible ; but, on 
the contrary, yesterday was a most profitable day to me. In the 
first place, though I did not restrain myself, I did not in the 
slightest degree exceed. I did ,not touch anything else but cham- 
pagne, and stopped exactly at the right moment. I felt all through 
that I was in a position not of my own seeking, and that if it 
was agreeable to me it was because I myself was at fault " 

And, again, when his innocent attentions to the French girls 
in Quebec distress him with a fear lest he is not keeping up to his 
standard, he writes : 

" Lord E. says he never knows what I am at ; at one moment 
going to the extreme of gaiety, at another to that of disgust and 
despondency. All he wishes is in a good-natured way to amuse 
people ; and he therefore can hardly sympathize with my reac- 
tions every now and then, which arise from my being too well 
amused myself." 

It was always the latter reflection that bothered him. 

" I am called upon to join in everything," he says, " and my 
conscience would not in the slightest degree twit me for doing 
so, provided I was all the time bored instead of pleased. The test 
of the thing is whether I like it ; and though I cannot say I do, 
I very soon would." 

Later on, his religious introspection, which had hitherto been 
of the scrupulous and emotional character, began to be varied with 
doubts and speculations which afflicted the mother, from whom 
he made no effort to conceal them, more than his previous pec- 
cadilloes had done. He took to reading Theodore Parker, and 
then to philosophizing on his own account, but always with a 
certain practical turn which was characteristic of him. His diffi- 
culties concerned practice more than doctrines, and that not his 
own practice so much as that of "professing Christians," among 



;68 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. L Au -> 

whom he did not class himself as yet. If he once accepted the yoke, 
he thought he would feel bound to carry it more decorously than, 
for instance, a bishop whom he met in Shanghai when he was 
there in Lord Elgin's train in 1858 : 

"The bishop and his wife are .becoming dabs at billiards," he 
tells his mother, " but the other night when the missionaries were 
dining he would not allow the billiard-room to be lighted, though 
he is generally the last to leave it. Woe unto you Evangelists 
and Puseyites, hypocrites ! " 

" But Laurence," says Mrs. Oliphant, " was little favorable to 
missionaries in general, and felt with many others that the good 
incomes, good houses, and worldly comfort of men who are sup- 
posed to be sacrificing everything for Christ's work, were jarring 
circumstances, to say the least." It was not alone in the spirit of 
self-sacrifice that he found them deficient, but in that of humanity. 

" Like Lord Shaftesbury," he says, " they are truly English, 
and grumble at our not having murdered Yeh and given Canton 
over to pillage and slaughter. As a general rule, one thinks that 
justice ought to be tempered with mercy; but they would have 
vengeance tempered with justice ! " 

He speaks also of the contempt he feels (with a parenthetical 
acknowledgment that the feeling is wrong) 

" for professors of a creed which has no power over them, but 
all the dogmas of which I am blamed for not subscribing to. When 
men who keep harems go to church regularly, and blame me for 
not going with them, I am apt to confound the faith with the 
individual, and swear at the whole concern. And so, because I do 
not confess to a good deal that seems to be hollow in the practice 
of a popular theology, I am put down as being without religion, 
and so lose any influence which, did I retrain from this, I might 
have, besides giving a totally wrong impression of my real con- 
victions." 

Here was plainly the stuff for a " comeouter " and practical 
enthusiast, if only the ground for thorough-going action should 
once seem solidly established beneath his feet. At the same 
time it was at least equally plain that this basis, were it found, 
would prove unusual, if not bizarre : 

" I certainly do not understand God's dealings with men," he 
writes to his mother, " nor am I so presumptuous as to suppose 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 769 

I ever shall ; but if I did not exercise my reason there would be 
nothing to prevent my accepting the Koran or any other system 
of theology my fellow-creatures might assure me was right, and 
deny me the privilege of judging for myself. You say you would 
be glad if I could give up my career for God's service. I would 
willingly go into a dungeon for the rest of my days if I was 
vouchsafed a supernatural revelation of a faith ; but I should con- 
sider myself positively wicked if upon so momentous a subject 
I was content with any assumptions of my erring and imperfect 
fellow-creatures, when against the light of my own conscience. 
. . . I would sooner go to the stake than do violence to what 
I believe to be the yearnings and whisperings weak and imper- 
fect, no doubt of my divine nature." 

It was not long after this two or three years, at most, per- 
haps that Oliphant became convinced he had come upon the 
traces of the revelation he was seeking. More than that, he had 
persuaded his mother to be of the same mind, and they had be- 
gun, though not openly as yet, to follow it together. He who 
had criticised the action of certain of his friends who became 
Catholics, on the ground that such a step implied weakness of 
will and judgment, and a desire to be dictated to on points of 
faith, was about to submit his whole life and conduct, in its most 
intimate and sacred relations, to a relentless scrutiny and arbi- 
trary rule almost without a parallel, and to do so in the full per- 
suasion that the man to whom he thus submitted exercised his 
sway by divine inspiration. Grant that persuasion and it must 
be granted to a man of Oliphant's transparent candor and what 
followed was only what might be expected from his power of 
self- devotion. One may wonder at the end, but the means to it 
are logical enough. It is difficult to give in a sufficiently con- 
densed form an adequate idea of what it was that engrossed 
Oliphant's mind, so keen and practical, in the ordinary sense 
of those epithets, on one of its sides, and so mystical on an- 
other that, as has been said already, even his most extraordi- 
nary actions become practical and inevitable when judged from 
his own point of view. To him, at least, it was clearly a ques- 
tion of " What shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? " and 
the answer he made is one of those which must be left to Him 
who is the only judge of consciences so delicate and lives so self- 
denying as his. 

It was in 1860 that Oliphant first met the man to whose influ- 
ence he so long allowed absolute sway over his external life, and 
whose teachings he never rejected, even after he had resumed his 
personal freedom of action. This person, whom Mrs. Oliphant 



770 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Aug., 

describes at one time as " the obscure Swedenborgian preacher, 
the uncultured American who assumed over him the authority of 
God Himself," and again as "the prophet or wizard, magician, 
as it seems fit to call him in the light of that tremendous indict- 
ment " (she alludes here to Oliphant's novel Masollam, written 
after he had shaken off his physical but not his spiritual bonds) was 
Thomas Lake Harris. Whatever view he may have taken of Har- 
ris's conduct in after years, Oliphant continued to his latest day 
to believe that his original message had come direct from God 
as is sufficiently evident not only from Sympneumata, the singular 
and almost incomprehensible joint production of Oliphant and his 
wife shortly before the latter's death, but from Scientific Religion, 
the equally curious but more comprehensible volume whose publi- 
cation was almost coincident with Oliphant's own death. Harris 
was, briefly is, perhaps, would be the better word, as he is still 
living a Swedenborgian seer who claimed to have received a com- 
pletion and correction of the revelations of the Swedish mystic. 
His initiation was into the "celestial sense" of Holy Scripture, 
Swedenborg having been " intromitted " into the spiritual one 
only. His doctrine, based upon the literal text, is both in terms 
and meaning more orthodox than that of Swedenborg, especially 
in his teachings on the Trinity and on heaven and hell. He aban- 
doned, for example, that notion of " equilibrium " by which Sweden- 
borg sought to demonstrate not only the eternity of both, but 
their absolutely inevitable sequence from the possession of free will. 
According to him, heaven must be based on hell, not merely 
here, but in any conceivable world occupied by rational creatures 
capable of choice which is substantially the conclusion reached by 
Von Hartmann when he reluctantly abandons the suggestion of 
universal suicide as a refuge from the ills of conscious existence, 
on the ground that " the Unconscious," by the very law of its 
being, would be compelled to begin anew the same miserable 
round man knows too well already. 

Like Swedenborg, Harris claimed to have visited in spirit not 
only the " third heaven " to which St. Paul was caught up, but 
various earths and suns of the universe, where he indeed found a 
state of things externally like that described by the Swedish 
seer in identical localities, but capable of another interpretation, 
which Swedenborg, on account of inherited and acquired pre- 
judices, was incapable of receiving or transmitting. He received 
" according to his mode," is Harris's explanation. He thought he 
saw sin and disorder and punishment everywhere, chiefly be- 
cause he had excogitated that very doctrine of " equilibrium," 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 771 

and carried it with him as a medium of vision. This explanation, 
as the reader of Father Hecker's " Life " may remember, is not un- 
like one suggested by him, before his conversion, in the case of 
Swedenborg and other mystics. Harris taught, on the contrary, 
that our earth is the only one in which sin has established an in- 
version of celestial order, and hence the only one in which pain and 
unhappiness are known. In every world, however, he found God 
worshipped in the divine humanity of Jesus Christ, and in many 
of them the knowledge that He had descended in it to our earth, 
suffered, died, and risen again for the redemption of those who 
would receive Him. Harris had a great natural flow of picturesque 
language and a poetic imagination, and his visions took a far 
more readable shape than those of Swedenborg; which, to be 
sure, is not giving them excessive praise. He included in them, 
however, a practical doctrine concerning a new descent of the 
Spirit of God, and certain consequences flowing from the belief 
that the sexes, separated by the fall, would be reunited in the re- 
generation. So far as one can make out, it was the latter teach- 
ing, with the practical conclusion from it, that each soul has its 
own counterpart and predestined mate, whose existence may be 
certainly known, a priori as it were, and a posteriori also, accord- 
ingly as one proves faithful to the grace of God and his highest 
aspirations, which took that deep hold on Oliphant which he 
never shook off. Having found his counterpart, as he believed, 
in the beautiful and noble woman who is commemorated with him 
in these volumes, he married and lived with her in unbroken con- 
tinence, thus striving for, and confident of having attained, a union 
far more close than that of ordinary marriage ; one, too, that, 
in the case of the survivor, sensibly outlasted death. Oliphant 
was in no sense a spiritualist; perhaps it would be truer to say 
that his attitude towards mediums, induced hypnotic states, and 
endeavors to peer into the future was identical with that of Catho- 
lics. He thought they were works of the devil, sure to be 
dangerous, and likely to be fatal to the souls of those who prac- 
tised them. And it was not by seeking for anything of the sort, 
but much to his surprise, as one must infer from the account 
given to his wife's mother in a letter, that within a week after 
her death he found himself again in conscious union with her. 
"There is no analogy with mediumship or spiritualism," he says, 
" for I am never more conscious of her than when all my facul- 
ties are on the alert." He misses " her sweet companionship," 
and at first the work to which they had given their lives and 
the common object for which they had labored, " and which 



772 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Aug., 

formed a tie transcending any which could arise from natural 
marriage," seemed suddenly checked. 

" But now all that is passed. Henceforward I live in her, as 
she will, if I am faithful to my highest aspirations, live in me ; 
we are indissolubly bound to all eternity more firmly wedded 
now than we could ever be below." 

Perhaps we have given too much space to beliefs and ap- 
prehensions such as these. But in a time when the vast ma- 
jority of minds outside the Church are going astray in so much 
more dangerous directions ; when their spiritualism leads to the 
ghastly pessimism of Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann, and 
their materialism to the conception of a mechanical universe to 
which nothing is wanting but a supreme Mechanician ; and when 
one sees the result of their teachings on all sides in a world 
which is denying God, and going bodily over to the devil by a 
natural sequence, one recognizes with relief any aspiration to- 
wards what is good and pure, any faith, however formally er- 
roneous, whose direct object is the Word Incarnate, and any 
hope which looks, through Him, for a blessed eternal life as the 
reward of patience and well-doing here. As to the special case 
Of the Oliphants, there are several theories which may be ad- 
vanced. Some may think that their singular intercommunion of 
life and sympathy, uninterrupted even by the death of one of 
them, is a pure delusion ; to which view, often suggested, is 
opposed the unanimous testimony of all who knew them, that 
in the affairs of ordinary life this pair showed perfect sanity 
and exceptionally good judgment. Diabolical agency may be 
suspected, and at once admitted as a not improbable factor, al- 
though it must also be owned that peace, purity, unselfishness, 
absence of pride, hope in God and faith in Christ, which they 
seemed to possess, do not usually accompany Satan's persistent 
interference. It is not incredible that some of the phenomena 
which the Oliphants believed in and experienced may belong to 
the arcana of nature itself, to those " things in heaven and earth 
not dreamt of in our philosophies," but concerning which so 
much has been learned in these days of man's rapid advance in 
knowledge. And if it be objected that all their hopes and beliefs 
co-existed with the gravest formal errors, and notably with an 
aversion from Catholicity, it may be replied that the Church her- 
self allows us to hold that many belong co her soul who are not 
of her visible body. " All the baptized are mine," said Pius IX. 
to the Emperor Wilhelm. At any rate, one may hope that so 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 773 

much unselfish devotion to high ideals, so much purity, such 
charity in word and deed as these two showed, were rewarded 
by a gleam of supernatural light and joy. 

From Shadow to Sunlight* is a very silly little tale, badly 
constructed, and for the most part written in a worse style than 
should be pardoned even to a semi-royal author. No one but the 
Marquis of Lome, at least, at any stage of dinner, ever saw an 
American girl's " flashing eyes and pearly teeth shining between 
her lovely lips " either with or without " surprise." His hero is 
always delightful ; in his solemn asseveration that he " would die 
for his sovereign," the present Empress of India and mother- 
in-law of the author, as well as in his account of the gradual open- 
ing of his eyes to the craft and duplicity of the Jesuits after his 
conversion and ordination to the priesthood in their order. He 
writes this all down, "just how it was," in the letter containing 
his proposal to marry the young lady whose eyes occupied the 
abnormal position above referred to ; and when she 



:< retired to her room to read it ... her prevalent feeling 
ivas expressed when she concluded in the words ' What a horrid 
shame ! ' He came to receive his sentence next morning, and was 
unanimously acquitted by the judge and jury. He certainly would 
lever have feared another earthly tribunal so much as he did that 
^f the Wincott party, and I doubt if even the General of the 
Jesuits could have infused into him a tithe of the fear that secretly 
possessed him as he approached the door. To judge from his 
'ace, when he left the door, the grand inquisition within had not put 
him to the torture." 



So Mary married him, " and now speaks with a very British 
iccent," says the marquis, and after she became Mary ChisholnV 
' has never since the day we quoted her as using the expression 
iver again said * that she felt badly.' ' With a British property, 
i British accent, and a British ex-priest for a husband, how could 
>he ? Perhaps she has even been presented at court, and so her 
x>or little American cup now runneth over. 

A very good little story.f from the French of Emile Riche- 
>ourg, is Le Million du Pere Raclot. It is both innocent and en- 
:ertaining, like the Abbe Constantin of Halevy a combination too 
nfrequent in French novels chosen for translation. 

* From Shadow to Sunlight. By the Marquis of Lome, G.C.M.G. (Authorized edition.) 
<cv. York: D. Appleton & Co. 

t Old Raclot' s Million. Adapted from the French of Emile Richebourg by Mrs. Benja- 
nin Lewis. New York: Cassell Publishing Co. 



774 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Aug., 

Not so entertaining but equally innocuous is Mrs. Clara Bell's 
translation * from the Dutch of Van Lennep's Story of an Abduc- 
tion. It has the further advantage of being strictly historical, if 
that be considered a great advantage when the incidents narrated 
are of no special importance that one can discover to humanity at 
large. There are a good many people who, like the late William 
George Ward, would care as little for Caesar's crossing the Rubicon 
as for John Smith's crossing the street, considered purely in them- 
selves. To such we do not pressingly recommend this tale of 
the abduction of Catharine d'Orleans, amusing as it is in parts 
more especially as any interest they may take in the final dispo- 
sition of the heroine will be thwarted by the fact that this be- 
longs neither to history nor fiction. 

Miss Bacon's book f is full of interesting and suggestive details 
concerning Japanese women from their cradles to their graves. 
She has been qualified to give them by a long residence in 
Japan, where she enjoyed unrestrained intercourse, both as teacher 
and friend, with the girls and women of whom she writes. Her 
sympathy, too, is intelligent and generous. We cannot but think 
she has done a wise and womanly thing in pointing out with 
such a firm hand the heaven-wide distinction between the East- 
ern and the Western woman's ideal of personal virtue, and insist- 
ing that the memory of it shall be kept in mind when the tales 
of certain travellers are told. The Japanese girl-child of every 
rank, she says in brief, from the possible empress down, is trained 
solely with a view to making her the always amiable and abso- 
lutely obedient servant of the men of her family ; her father, her 
husband, her son rule her in turn ; and she is taught that no 
service is too menial, and no sacrifice too great, to be offered by 
her if they require or can be benefited by it. For her obedience 
and loyalty are the supreme virtues, to be preserved if neces- 
sary at the cost of all others. For the good of father or husband 
she must brave any danger, endure any dishonor, or perpetrate 
any crime. She is responsible to no one except on this score. 
The Japanese maiden, says Miss Bacon, grows to womanhood 
as pure and modest as our own girls ; but, she adds, it is not ex 
pected of any woman in America " that she exist solely for the 
good of some one else, in whatever way he chooses to use her, 
during all the years of her life." To this observer the sense of 
duty seemed to be so strongly developed in the Japanese women 

* Story of an Abduction in the Seventeenth Century. By J. Van Lennep. New York : W. 
S. Gottsberger & Co. 

t Japanese Girls and Women. By Alice Mabel Bacon. New York and Boston : Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 775 

that neither fear, shame, nor dread of. ridicule will excuse them 
in their own eyes from performing what is demanded by it. On 
the other hand, the Japanese husband and father, who is to his 
women the objective centre of duty, finds his own in the will of 
his rulers. Neither one nor the other recognizes any personal 
identity apart from their function as part of the social or- 
ganism. 

Miss Bacon's account of the exquisite manners, the polish and 
refinement of social intercourse among the Japanese, which threaten 
to become things of the past under the influence of our ruder 
Western civilization, is very pleasant. One wonders in reading 
it, however, if-" modern " instead of " Western " would not be the 
better adjective. There was surely a time within the memory of 
some of us when even American children were taught manners and 
reverence for age and a time, too, when something like the still- 
existing Japanese distaste for "anything suggestive of trade or 
barter," which makes them rank merchants lower in the social scale 
than farmers and artisans, might have been found without going so 
far to look for it. The difference is not so much geographical as 
temporal ; the modern man, having become to a greater extent a 
worshipper of Mammon, has put most of his pride as well as certain 
of his virtues in his pocket, as a necessary preliminary to filling 
that receptacle with more tangible possessions. Miss Bacon's 
volume is, we believe, the pioneer one in its special field, and 
though it hardly exhausts the subject, it is unlikely that it will 
soon be superseded. 



I. THE MASS.* 

This little book, of one hundred and twenty-two pages, is 
well printed on excellent paper, but' it is to be regretted that the 
illustrations were not better chosen, especially those of the last 
chapter, which, far from being artistic, are in several cases quite 
incorrect as to the position and attitude of priest and server : as, 
I for instance, the celebrant is made to stand on the gospel side of 
i the altar for the introit and collect ; while for the latter the server 
I is made to kneel upon the predella directly in front of the un- 
veiled chalice ; also the illustration marked Consecration should read 
The Elevation, and that reading Ife, missa est should be TJie 
i Blessing. 

However, while The Holy Mass Explained cannot be com- 

* The Holy Mass Explained. By the Rev. F. X. Schouppe, S.J. New York and Cincin- 
i'r. Pustet & Co. 



776 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 

pared to Canon Oakeley's. most valuable and exhaustive work on 
the same subject, it will probably be read with great profit by a 
great number of people to whom the great English churchman's 
work would never be known, and we must thank Father O'Hare 
most warmly for ^the labor he has undergone in adding to the 
list of Catholic publications, which now, thanks be to God, is fast 
becoming a long one and a valuable one to America. 



2. KATERI TEKAKWITHA.* 

Charlevoix, Parkman, Clark, Kip, Schoolcraft, Shea, and a host 
of others have told in glowing periods the heroic deeds of thos 
members of the Society of Jesus who " endured with a superhi 
man endurance " all that savage cruelty could inflict on them ii 
their endeavors to draw the North American Indian to Christ. Ii 
the works of these historians of a. race of martyrs mention, oftei 
frequent, is made of the Indian maid Catherine, " the lily of th< 
Mohawks," "the Genevieve of New France"; but this is the fii 
complete life of the saintly maiden the church is now petition* 
to raise to the honor of her altars that we have in English. 

Miss Walworth, in her very modest preface to this excellei 
work, says : " If this book, embodying the result of my n 
searches, should fail to interest the reader, it will not be for 
lack of enthusiasm on my part, or of kind encouragement an< 
competent assistance from others." 

We cannot conceive that any one, even the most blase 
novel- readers, would find the book pall on him. As a story 
is exquisitely told ; as a history it is full of deep research, and if 
of a learning that may be styled profound. The pictures of Ii 
dian life and Indian customs are exceedingly well transcribed an< 
are of much interest. The chapter which contains the account 
of the baptism of Catherine is a fine piece of word-painting, and 
a genuine piece of realism. We commend this chapter in par 
ticular to those who fancy that to be realistic is to be photo- 
graphic. 

It is, however, as a veritable history of a saintly heroine, of a 
people and time that our English-speaking readers know most! 
from non- Catholic sources, that the book has its greatest value 
We owe much to those not of the household who have well tolc 
the story of Catholic heroism in North America, but we o\v< 

* The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakimtha, the Lily of the Mohawks. By Ellen H 
Walworth. Buffalo : Peter Paul & Brother. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 777 

more to Catholics like Miss Walworth and Shea, whose percep- 
tion of the supernatural is keen because of their gift of faith. 



3. THE PHOTOCHRONOGRAPH.* 

An interesting account of the most promising use yet made of 
photography in the observation of transits. The idea of recording 
transits photographically, so as to get rid of what is called the 
"personal equation" of individual observers, as well as to secure 
greater accuracy, is not absolutely new, but the method employed 
by Fathers Hagen and Targis is in various respects original and 
remarkably simple and ingenious. 

It is hardly to be expected that the photographic method will 
ever entirely supersede the usual one, as it seems to be neces- 
sarily time-consuming in comparison ; but it will be very service- 
able for the brighter and more important stars, and will also fur- 
nish one of the best means for determining the amount of the 
personal equation in just the kind of phenomena in which it is 
desirable to know it. An application also of the method which 
would seem to be of special value is that in the telegraphic deter- 
mination of longitudes. There is little doubt that in this, as in 
various other ways, the new method, with the further improve- 
ments to it which will no doubt be devised, will become a regu- 
lar adjunct to astronomical observation in all parts of the world. 

Georgetown College Observatory : The Photochronograph and its Application to Star Transits. 
Washington, D. C. : Stormont & Jackson. 



778 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Aug., 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

ALL COMMUNICATIONS RELATING TO READING CIRCLES, LISTS OF BOOKS, 
ETC., SHOULD BE ADDRESSED TO THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION, NO. 
415 WEST FIFTY-NINTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. 

A SHORT time ago the writer of these notes had the pleasure 
of meeting two of the leading minds connected with the Catholic 
Reading Circles of Boston. The conversation was directed chiefly 
to one topic, viz., the results secured and the practical advantages 
gained by the members. The information given showed that under 
the guiding influence and encouragement of the Reading Circles 
many remarkable instances of latent talent had been developed, 
and that undeniable proofs attested the growth of a taste for studi- 
ous reading, not only among graduates of academies and high 
schools, but also among those who earn their own living. An- 
other testimony of the progress made in Boston comes to us in 
writing : 

" The circles in Boston are all prospering and seem to main- 
tain the interest of the members. There is one circle that has 
not resumed this year, on account of the transfer of the Rev. 
Director. The young ladies have not had the courage to ask for 
another, lest he might be withdrawn also, and they do not desire 
to continue the work by themselves. This is, of course, an unwise 
action on their part, as the work they did last year was so well 
planned and so excellently carried out that there is no reason 
why it should not continue. I wish very much to have a reunion 
of all the circles of Boston and vicinity this year, as it was too 
late when proposed last year. I feel that the results would be, to say 
the least, satisfactory. While it is possible that I may 1 be expect- 
ing too much, still I do not think. there will be any harm done. 
The enthusiasm of the people would be aroused with all the mate- 
rial at hand. Accept my best wishes for long- continued success 
of all the circles throughout the land, and the assurance of my 
active desire to assist the good work as far as is possible." 

We have steadily urged the advantages of local option in ar- 
ranging programmes for the meetings of Reading Circles. In no 
other way can the work be adjusted to suit the needs of differ- 
ent localities. The question box has proved to be a useful de- 
vice for eliciting the practical topics which members wish to have 
explained. We are very much pleased to get the following account 
of the St. Agnes Reading Circle, which was established in con- 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 779 

nection with St. Ignatius Church, Baltimore, Md., early in Sep- 
tember, 1890: 

" The chief aim of the circle is improvement in using our 
best judgment to determine what to read and how to read. 
The plan of our work is to take some book as Fabiola and 
study it with care. To do this, four members are appointed each 
month to take several chapters and analyze them, bring out the 
pith of the work, and lay it before the members in an epitomized 
form. These papers, so prepared, are each limited to five min- 
utes. Those who do the work improve themselves in analyzing 
and learn how to read any other work to the best advantage, as 
well as help others to do the same. But in order to make it a 
pleasure to learn our meetings are relieved of dryness and tedi- 
um, being diversified with recitations and musical selections. 
Each meeting is looked forward to as a pleasant recreation, in 
which study, improvement, and pleasure are combined. Our 
members are required to belong to a Sodality of the Blessed Vir- 
gin, or of the Sacred Heart, in any Catholic church in the city, 
and to pay one dollar a year, in advance or quarterly, as the 
member desires. 

" There are two divisions : the workers and the listeners. 
When a lady becomes a member she decides whether she will 
be merely a listener and participator in the good things prepared 
by the workers. By this means all are reached, even those who 
have had but few opportunities ; and in course of time some 
who entered as listeners feel themselves prepared to take a place 
among the workers. 

"The money buys books which are selected to suit the scope 
of the book under study. These are not simply historical, but 
consist of stories relating to the period under consideration. Thus 
we get a pleasurable novel and learn history at the same time.. 
In order to circulate these books, the names of members, arranged 
in order of nearness of residence, are printed, and each one is 
furnished with a copy. A member is allowed two weeks to read 
the book, and- then passes it to the next on the list. And to keep 
these books in order they must be reviewed by the librarian at 
each meeting. 

"At our first meeting, president, secretary, librarian, treasurer,, 
etc., were appointed ; also a committee on reading, whose duty 
it is to prepare a programme and map out the work to be done 
each month, and a committee on questions. These questions are 
placed in a box by any member who desires to have some diffi- 
culty solved, and may embrace any subject. They are read to 
the circle, and those which require searching in encyclopaedias, 
etc., are distributed among the members of the committee, and 
the answers returned at the next meeting. If they meet with the 
approbation of the circle they are copied into a book kept for that 
purpose, where they may be reviewed when occasion requires. 

VOL. LI, I.- 50 



780 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Aug.. 

The question which is occupying us at present is the Inquisition. 
One member studies up the Protestant view, and another gives 
the Catholic view. It will be likely to give us* entertainment and 
food for thought for several meetings. We also have short 
sketches of American authors and selections from their works. 

" After we finish the analysis of Fabiola, an historical novel, 
we propose to have a paper Qr two on the spread of the church 
up to that time ; one also on the geography of Rome ; one on 
the Coliseum and another on the Catacombs ; others on the ideals 
of true womanhood, maidenhood, etc., as set forth in the person 
of Pancratius, mother of Fabiola, etc. None of these papers are 
to occupy over five minutes, if possible. 

4< I will give a programme of one of our meetings, which will 
outline the whole. We begin with music, and then the secretary 
reads the minutes of the last meeting. Then a sketch of our au- 
thor, Cardinal Wiseman, after which the written selections on Fa- 
biola. A recitation or reading follows. We have had Father 
Ryan's ' Song of the Mystic,' Longfellow's ' Golden Legend,' a 
selection from Ben Hur, etc. ; then a vocal solo, after which our 
questions are answered or discussed, and new business transacted, 
as receiving new members, exchanging books, etc. The meeting 
closes with music. We have spent from one hour to one hour 
and a half pleasantly and profitably, and we retire wishing the 
next meeting were not a whole month away." 

A correspondent in Ottawa, Ontario, is diffident about express- 
ing his opinions on matters pertaining to the Columbian Reading 
Union. He asks : 

" What can I say that has not been already and much better 
said by men and women whose opinions on such matters are of 
much weight ? The removal of the woeful apathy of the Catholic 
body in regard to distinctively Catholic literature is certainly a work 
of crying necessity ; and that your plan is a most important move 
in that direction mast be patent to all who have given the ques- 
tion a moment's consideration. But, without in the slightest degree 
underrating the immense influence for good of your Reading Circle.-; 
in other spheres, it seems to me that Catholic institutions of learn 
ing should be the most hopeful fields for your labor. For if the 
great object of education be to create an appetite for knowledge, 
surely the developing of a taste for the wholesome mental food 
which Catholic writers serve up for Catholic readers should be 
an important feature of Catholic school work; and what more effi- 
cient means for the development of such a taste could be devised 
than those afforded by the Columbian Reading Union ? The ob- 
ject of Catholic schools is the turning out of sterling Catholics. 
But how can their graduates resist the evil influences which will 
in after-life surround them if they have not, during the years in 
which .the mind takes on its permanent character, acquired a taste 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 781 

for good reading ? How often and how speedily the work of the 
schools is nullified by the reading of books that by unseen degress 
warp the conscience, create false ideals, and mad form the character. 
As Charles Dudley Warner has truly said : " When one has learned 
how to read and not what to read, he is in great peril.'' If in 
every college and convent and advanced school there were in 
operation one of your Reading Circles, so many of the young 
men and maidens who go forth on commencement days with a 
display of oratorical fireworks would not ' be drawn into the cur- 
rent of fashion until they can scarcely be distinguished from their 
non-Catholic friends and acquaintances.' There would be a greater 
demand for Catholic books. The subscription lists of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD and other first-class periodicals would grow 
rapidly, and Columbian Reading Circles and Catholic Truth So- 
cieties would spring up all over the land. It is too bad that you 
have met with, as you tell us in the April CATHOLIC WORLD, 
such scant encouragement in these quarters, whence co-operation 
should have come without special invitation." 

This is the opinion of a man well informed on the needs of 
the day, and holding an official position which keeps him in 
close contact with the busy world. He represents a class of men 
from whom we hope to receive many communications, showing 
how Catholic literature may be utilized as an educational force 
in school and out of school. The academy should not be a barrier 
to any good educational influence. While it is desirable to have 
the .protection of sacred walls for young people, their future work 
as Catholics in society must not be forgotten. As an aid to faith 
it is by far better to have a knowledge of Catholic authors and 
the noble thoughts they have adorned in beautiful language, than 
to spend valuable time on trying to paint grotesque imitations of 
flowers and in endless thumping on the piano. We have leasned 
on reliable authority that in one of our Catholic colleges the 
dangerous stories of Charles Lever, which ridicule many Catholic 
doctrines, are in constant circulation among the students. In that 
library, and perhaps this is not the only case of the kind, the 
best recent works of fiction by Catholic writers are not to be 
found. 



The Directors of the Catholic Educational Exhibit for the 
World's Columbian Exposition, to be held in 1893, were called to- 
gether for a meeting on July I, at Chicago. A communica- 
tion was read in behalf of the Columbian Reading Union to the 
effect that it would be generally acceptable to the managers of 
educational institutions to see at the Columbian Exposition an 



782 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Aug., 

exhibit of books suitable for school libraries, giving special promi- 
nence to the works of Catholic authors. Exact information 
should be obtained concerning each book, as to cost and adapta- 
bility to scholars according to age. It should not be merely a 
collection of text-books, but should represent the best we have in 
Catholic literature, graded to s,it the needs of young folks from 
ten to twenty years of age. This plan would rigorously exclude 
the bulky subscription books which are to be seen they are not 
made to be used in so many Catholic homes on marble-top 
tables, unsightly monuments of bad taste and abominable printing. 
It is high time to call a halt to this wasteful expenditure of 
money by our Catholic people for ponderous articles in the shape 
of books which are rarely opened to the children, lest the cari- 
catures of sacred subjects, called pictures, might be soiled. Pub- 
lishers doing a legitimate trade in books that are worth buying 
will no doubt gladly co-operate with the plan suggested to the 
directors of the Catholic Educational Exhibit We propose this 
subject for discussion in the Reading Circles after vacation, and we 
hope the members of our Union and others will send us a state- 
ment of their opinions. 



The New Orleans Morning Star and Catholic Messenger has 
published a letter from a correspondent at Memphis, Tenn. It is 
one of the best letters on the subject of Catholic Reading Circles 
which has yet appeared. We hope the writer will continue the 
good work in Tennessee, and send us an account of the prospects 
in that locality : 

" One of the most pleasing evidences of the progressive char- 
acter of Catholic thought in our day, and one that betokens a far- 
reaching influence for good both within and without the pale of the 
church, is the plan of forming Reading Clubs or circles in the interest 
of literary culture in general, and for the specific purpose of bring- 
ing Catholic readers into a more intimate acquaintance with the 
works of our standard Catholic authors. 

" Until quite recently it was a subject of just reproach that 
even our best-read brethren of the laity were unacquainted with 
the varied productions which Catholic genius has contributed to 
the literature of our time. But, thanks to the efforts which have 
been made within the past few years, the day is not far distant 
when the Catholic young man or woman who cannot claim acquain- 
tance with the novels of a Christian Reid, a Kathleen O'Meara, 
the delightful volumes of a Georgiana Fullerton, a Mrs. Sadlier, 
or an Eliza Allen Starr, will be looked upon as occupying an 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 783 

anomalous position among the well-informed of their faith. To 
the Paulist Fathers, .always alive to the highest welfare of our 
Catholic people, belongs the credit of having been the first to 
suggest the formation of Catholic Reading Circles. THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD, ever on the alert, has entered upon the practi:al solution 
of the objections, imaginary and otherwise, raised by well mean- 
ing but captious supporters of the scheme, and by its timely and 
wise counsel has done noble work in behalf of the New Crusade. 

" The ' Columbian Reading Union of New York/ which owes 
its formation and efficiency to the above-mentioned magazine, is 
the nucleus of a large number of Reading Circles, which in turn 
owe their existence to the Union of which they are practically 
the offshoots partaking in all the benefits of aggregation to the 
parent organization. These circles, according to accounts furnished 
by those who should know best, are giving great satisfaction to 
the members composing them, and altogether the prospects are 
most encouraging. The question occurs: What shall we do? 
What are we doing for this most laudable enterprise ? These are 
questions that should be answered in a spirit of generous resolve 
for the cause in question. They are questions that apply to the 
humblest sodality member as well as to the most prominent parish- 
ioner ; all can aid materially in this new undertaking ; ways and 
means may easily be found in every parish to accomplish some- 
thing worthy of the growing needs of the hour ; an interchange 
of books among a dozen or more members of a parish; a contri- 
bution of books to a Reading Club Library ; the reading of stand- 
ard Catholic authors at meetings of sodalities already in existence ; 
in a word, any initial movement looking to the desired end is not 
to be despised ; provided only each one is disposed to help his 
less favored associate in the good work. Of course the scope of 
these clubs will eventually be enlarged ; they will doubtless gradually 
include some, perhaps many, non-Catholics, to whom every facility 
should be granted to share in the benefits of acquaintance with 
Catholic authors. It is strange, indeed, that we have been so slow 
to recognize the merit of so many Catholic writers whose names 
are an ornament to our literature. Philosophy, poetry, history, 
fiction, and science have been enriched by the labors of men and 
women who should have been raised long ago to the rank to 
which their great talents entitle them. It is easy to understand 
that those outside the fold will not be slow to slight the worth of 
Catholic writers when we within are so indifferent to their claims 
upon our attention. 

" Let us hope, however, that the act of justice which has been 
decreed by Catholic opinion in the United States may meet with 
heartfelt sympathy everywhere. An auspicious beginning has 
been made ; who will set limits to the beneficent results that must 
accrue ? We may safely predict a rapid multiplication of the 
standard Catholic authors' works to meet the inevitable increased 
demand of readers. Good reading will no longer be a luxury 



784 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Aug., 

to Cathodes of humble means ; under the new condition of things 
such excellent works as Callista, Fabiola, and the like will not be 
sealed treasures any longer. Readers and authors will share in 
the benefits sure to be derived. An invigorating mental tonic 
will be supplied to those who were wont to excite their jaded 
powers with the highly spiced products of the secular press, 
while a new incentive will be , afforded to the best efforts of the 
best Catholic authors, and encouragement extended to rising tal- 
ent in the literary world. The Catholic press of the land should 
enlist its best energies in the movement and failure will be im- 
possible. In a free and generous advocacy of the new idea Cath- 
olic magazines and newspapers will find themselves benefited in 
no small measure. A consensus of opinion regarding it, it appears 
to me, would be most opportune ; let correspondents speak out 
their opinions ; let one and all aid by voice and pen. It is a 
work in which all can take part It is eminently fitting that all 
who love the Holy Church should make themselves worthy of 
the benediction which her illustrious head imparts to all who as- 
sist in the spread of Catholic literature. It is, in fact, a duty from 
which no one can conscientiously exempt himself in this age of 
rationalism, when the minds of so many are inoculated with the 
poison which distils from a godless horde of depraved writers, and 
the hearts are corrupted by the insidious venom that is filtered 
through the so-called realistic novels of our day. If the law of 
saving charity is imperative let us prove its force by beginning 
with those who are united to us by the bonds of a common 
faith. The ravages already made by the human wolves that lin- 
ger about the sheepfold may be irreparable. Future attacks will 
be warded off by the safeguards which prudence and piety will 
suggest. ' Tolle et lege' ARION." 



One of our tireless members has not forgotten the good work 
even during the hot weather. She writes : 

" I came here to learn of the marked success of a little 

Reading Circle conducted by Sister . She takes a personal 

interest in the members collectively and individually, assists them 
in their essays, has a plan for every week's reading at home and at 
meetings, and makes current events the main topics for consider- 
ation. It is the personality of this religious which insures success. 
I hope we shall yet come to having a lecture bureau and courses 
delivered to each circle about the country. Is the ' Catholic 
Truth Society ' to do this ? I have also felt that the lecture 
on the Madonna in Art, by Father O'Conner, S.J., would be 
most acceptable. 

"There is a lady now residing at this 'place who has organized 
history classes and goes to several adjacent cities during the week. 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 785 

They have been kept up for five years, and though the mem- 
bers drop out, others are waiting to take their turn. Occasion- 
ally she has an entertainment, and the ladies impersonate the 
characters of a period in conversation, quoting largely from the 
writers and in costume. She prepares a series of questions, gives 
her references, writes an essay, and expects her pupils to read, 
study, and talk at class not read aloud at least five minutes 
on the topic of the day. Here is a suggestion for some of our 
Catholic women." 



St. Joseph's Academy at Washington, Ga., has a flourishing 
Reading Circle, which sends us this favorable account : 

" It is some time since we have forwarded a report of our 
circle. Our interest, however, has not abated, and we are more 
and more delighted with the advantages afforded by membership 
with the Columbian Reading Union. We have read Fabiola, 
Callista, and Martyrs of the Coliseum, and will next turn our at- 
tention to The Middle Ages. Our plan is to assign a certain 
number of pages for private reading, and then questions are 
asked upon the matter read. We also give miscellaneous queries, 
and thus enlarge our store of general knowledge. Our meetings 
are very pleasant and tlfe improvement evident. A number of 
our former graduates have joined our circle, and we hope to in- 
terest all pupils of St. Joseph's in true intellectual advancement." 



Before the end of the year 1891 we hope to get at least a 
few lines from every Catholic Reading Circle in the United States. 
For many reasons it will be interesting to ascertain the territorial 
boundaries of the movement, and to what extent the Catholic 
educational institutions are represented among the Reading Circles. 
We shall be pleased to have reports also from parochial libra- 
ries, and from Catholic Young Men's Societies. 

M. C. M. 



;86 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [Aug,, 



WITH THE PUBLISHER. 

As was announced in ouV last issue, THE CATHOLIC WORLD 
will on August I take possession of its new quarters, " The 
Columbus Press," 120 and 122 West Sixtieth Street. The name 
given to its new home is most appropriate. And not only be- 
cause of the approaching centenary, but because the name is 
freighted with significance ; it is another way of telling the pur- 
pose of the magazine. 



# 

# 



For, before all else, Columbus was a Christ-bearer ; his high- 
est purpose was to bring Christ to those who knew him not, and 
modern historical research has abundantly emphasized this fact. 
And this same purpose created THE CATHOLIC WORLD. It has 
a great mission to a great people. It lives and speaks to-day 
as another Columbus, and its history for the past quarter of a 
century is eloquent of its fidelity to its*- mission and of its suc- 
cess. In many respects its history is a repetition of the story 
of that elder Columbus ; of prejudice vanquished, of enemies made 
friends ; of straitened resources, of the dangers of unknown seas ; 
because, pace majorum, when it sailed from its Palos in April, 
1865, just after a great civil war, it was the pioneer over the 
unexplored sea of American Catholic periodical literature. It 
brought to many, and it still brings, Christ to those who knew 
him not, or knew him imperfectly, saw him dimly. Its mission 
fits it for its new dwelling : the name, Columbus, has a char- 
acter as well as a history that fits THE CATHOLIC WORLD. 



Upon this new conquest of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, the pos- 
session of its own home after twenty- five years of all sorts of 
weather, we congratulate the readers of the magazine : they 
have been (to pursue the similitude, and yet not make it quite 
threadbare) the Isabellas of its purpose. The Publisher congratu- 
lates them. There are few, perhaps, who know as well as he 
does how much in the past and the present depended on them. 
There is no one more ready than he to give them the praise 
they deserve. And he would like to have each of his readers 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 787 

perfectly convinced of this truth ; it ought to penetrate to the 
marrow of the bone. Each and every reader of THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD ought to be sensible of the share he or she has in the 
present success of the magazine. It is yours ; it belongs to you, 
and without you it could not tell its glorious story to-day. 



And you are not going to let it end here, are you ? If on 
you so much depends for the purpose of the magazine, and so 
much depends for its future, the glory of the past and the share 
y OU you who are reading these lines have had in it by every 
title of right, you will not cease in your efforts for the future. 
The realization of every possibility associated with the new con- 
dition of things rests largely with you, and the thought gives 
you fresh courage and renewed zeal. There is much you can 
do, and have not done yet. 



# 
* 



You know, for instance, many of your friends, especially those 
who are not of the Church and yet are by no means hostile to its 
teachings ; who are not Catholics for the reason that they do 
not know why they should become members of Christ's fold ; 
who are ignorant of the spirit of the Church, and vaguely imagine 
it to be what you know it is not: un-American, demanding 
slavish service and the thousand and one perverted and unjust 
things that are said of us by the wicked or the ignorant. You, 
dear reader, are going to put THE CATHOLIC WORLD in the way 
of such a one. The Publisher could quote many letters that would 
tell you of the good that has been wrought, under God, through sudi 
means; but you don't need it. You have a conscience, and that 
conscience tells you that you must be a " bearer of Christ " to 
some one ; it tells you, and you know its truth, that this is the 
mission and end of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. 



* 
* * 



But enough; this is becoming something of a sermon, with Co- 
lumbus for a text, and the Publisher will talk of something else. 



* 
* * 



The value of the contributions of Catholic missionaries to science, 
especially to philology, has frequently been noted, and is always 
warmly acknowledged by the scholar. A recent instance of this 



788 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [Aug., 

is furnished by a Zulitkafir Grammar, written by Father Ambro- 
sious, one of the Trappist missionaries in Zululand and printed at 
their missionary station of Mariannhill. The work has been highly 
praised by the German philologists and is commended to all students 
of the Bantu class of languages. A recent letter from Paris tells 
us of the publication by the Ecole speciale des langues orientales 
vivantes of the Account of Persia in 1660 by the Capuchin Father 
Raphael du Mans, a contemporary of Sir John Chardin and Jean de 
Thevenot. 

It may be of interest to some of our readers to learn of the 
early publication of a new volume by William J. Henderson (author 
of The Story of Music), containing a series of essays on Wagner, the 
history of piano- forte -play ing, Schumann's symphonies, and kindred 
topics. It will be issued from the press of Longmans, Green & 
Co., of this city. 

That this is an age of easy ways to difficult things and " air- 
lines " to distant points is illustrated in a recent publication intended 
for dull talkers, called Conversational Openings and Endings. It 
somehow gives the impression that there are people to whom con- 
versation becomes little else than a more or less elaborate game 
of chess, in which commonplaces have a higher rank than pawns 
and the chances of stalemate are abundant. Can artifice go further? 



* 
* 



Ginn & Co., Boston, have in preparation Specimens of the Pre- 
Shakesperian Drama, edited, with an introduction and notes, by 
John Matthews Manly, Ph.D., assistant-professor in Brown Uni- 
versity. The work will be in 'two volumes, the first of which will 
contain Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes ; the second, Roi- 
ster Doister, Gorboduc, and plays of Lyly, Greene, and Peele. 
In no instance will an extract be given ; each play will be print- 
ed as a whole. There will be a general introduction, tracing the 
growth of the drama from the Miracle Plays to Shakespeare ; and 
each play will be provided with a special introduction. The notes 
will be devoted chiefly to the elucidation of the text, and an in- 
dex to the notes will facilitate reference to the subjects treated in 
them. 

The first book to be published by Harper & Brothers undei 
the new copyright law is the life of The Right Honorable Williat 
E. Gladstone, by G. W. E. Russell. This is the fourth volume ii 
the new series of political biographies entitled The Queen's Pnt 
Ministers, edited by Stuart J. Reid, of which the other three ai 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 789 

devoted to Lord Bcaconsfield, Sir Robert Peel, and Viscount 
Melbourne. 

The Worthington Company has just ready Columbia : a Story 
of the Discovery of America, by John R. Musick. This is the first 
of a series of twelve volumes by Mr. Musick which is to cover 
important periods of American history, so that the series will be 
a complete history of the United States in twelve stories, each 
of which, however, will be complete in itself. ' The next volume 
will be entitled Estevan : a Story of the Spanish Conquests. Each 
volume will be fully illustrated. 

The Memoirs of Moltke, shortly to be published in Berlin by 
E. S. Mittler & Sohn, will fill several volumes, and the contents 
promise to be of much interest. They will contain : (i) A family 
history written by the field- marshal, a number of documents 
relating to his youth and travels, his own notes about his life at 
Kreisau, and his confession of faith, written down shortly before 
his death ; (2) several essays written by Moltke ; (3) a brief his- 
tory of the war of 1870-71, written by himself; (4) his corre- 
spondence with friends on private and public affairs; (5) his 
speeches; and (6) remembrances and stories of his life, communi- 
cated by his friends. The different volumes will be published 
consecutively and simultaneously in Germany, England, and 
America. 

Benziger Brothers will publish early in the autumn : 

The Good Christian. Vols. vii. and viii. of Hunolt's Ser- 
mons. 2 vols. 8vo, cloth, net, $5. 

Hand-book of the Christian Religion, From the German 
of Rev. Father Weimers, S.J. I2mo, cloth, net, $i.$o. 

Natural Theology. By Rev. Bernard Boedder, S.J. A 
new volume of the " Stonyhurst Philosophy Series." 
1 2 mo, cloth, net, $1.50. 

Simplicity in Prayer. 32mo, cloth, net, 30 cents. 
They have in preparation : 

Christian Anthropology. By Rev. John Thein, 8vo, cloth, 
net, $2.50. 

General Principles of the Religious Life. From the Ger- 
man, by Very Rev. Boniface F. Verheyen, O.S.F. 
32mo, cloth. 



790 



BOOKS RECEIVED, 



[Aug., 1891,] 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

A HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, Fordham, N. Y. By Thomas Gaffney 
Taaffe. New York : The Ca'tholic Publication Society Co. ; London : 
Burns & Gates. 

THE EPIC OF THE INNER LIFE. By John F. Genung. Boston and New 
York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

THE ISRAELITE BEFORE THE ARK, AND THE CHRISTIAN BEFORE THE AL- 
TAR; OR ? A HISTORY OF THE WORSHIP OF GOD. By L. De Goesbriand, 
Bishop of Burlington, Vt. Burlington ; The Free Press Association. 

THE LIFE OF FATHER JOHN CURTIS, S.J. By the author of Tyborne. Dub- 
lin ; M. H. Gill & Son ; New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 

CURSUS VIT^E SPIRITUALS. Auctore R. P. D. Carolo Josnph Moritio, Con- 
gregationis S. Bernardi. Ratisbon, New York, and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet 
&Co. 

D.EVOTION TO ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA. By the Rev. Clement Deymann, 
O.S.F. San Francisco : A. WaldteufeL 



PAMPHLETS RECEIVED, 



THE CHILD OF MARY : A Melodrama in Three Acts. By the Right Rev. Mgr. 
J. de Concilio, D.D. Jersey City, N. J. : Published by the Author. 

"THE CONTEST BETWEEN THE CIVIL LAW OF ROME AND THE COMMON 
LAW OF ENGLAND." By Martin F. Morris, LL.D., Professor in the Law 
School of Georgetown University. Washington : Printed for the University. 

AGNOSTICISM. By the Right Rev. J. L. Spalding, D,D., Bishop of Peoria. The 
Catholic Truth Society of America, St. Paul, Minnesota. 

REPORT OF THE INTERNAL COMMERCE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR 1890, 
By S. G. Brock. Washington ; Government Printing-Office. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. LIII. SEPTEMBER, 1891. No. 318. 



SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 

THE unique position, as well as the exalted personal char- 
acter of Leo XIII., could not fail to attract world-wide atten- 
tion to the recent Encyclical Letter, wherein he deals with ques- 
tions upon which current opinion is everywhere directed. 

The fact that the Head of so powerful and so conservative 
an organization as the Catholic Church deems it imperative to 
turn the thoughts and efforts of his fellow-believers to the press- 
ing need of discovering some way by which the condition of the 
masses who toil with their hands may be improved, is not mere- 
ly a signal example of the importance now given to the prob- 
lems raised by the New Socialism, but it is also an evidence of 
a desire within the church itself to enter in a more active man- 
ner into the struggles of the modern world to develop a higher 
and more Christian civilization. 

The words of the Holy Father, now before all readers, % are 
distinct and elaborate, and they need no comment. Let us, 
while we study them in a reverent spirit, turn our attention to 
the godlike work in which he asks us to co-operate. The deep 
import of the Encyclical lies in the authoritative pronouncement 
that the mission of the church is not only to save souls, but 
also to save society ; that the earthly and temporal interests of 
men not less than their spiritual welfare are of concern to this 
divine institution, which is Catholic not only in its teaching and 
its organization, but also in its sympathies. To make truth, jus- 
tice, and love prevail, which is the meaning of the prayer, " Thy 
kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth," and which is the 
great aim and end of the church, all human forces should con- 
spire : for " it is with this," says the Pope, " as with the Provi- 

Copyright. VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT. 1891. 



79 2 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

dence which governs the world : results do not happen unless 
all the causes co-operate." 

The interest which all who think take in the laboring classes, 
whether it spring from sympathy or fear, is a characteristic feat- 
ure of the age. 

Their condition seems to be^the great anomaly in our other- 
wise progressive and brilliant civilization. Whether when com- 
pared with the lot of the slaves and serfs of former times that 
of the modern laborer is fortunate, is not the question. He is 
not placed in the midst of the poverty and wretchedness of a 
rude and barbarous society, but in the midst of boundless wealth 
and great refinement. He lives, too, in a democratic age, in 
which all men profess to believe in equality and liberty ; in an 
age in which the brotherhood of the race is proclaimed by all 
the organs of opinion. He has a voice in public affairs, and 
since laborers are the majority, he is, in theory at least, the sov- 
ereign. They who govern profess to do everything by the au- 
thority of the people, in their name and for their welfare ; and 
yet, if we are to accept the opinions of the Socialists, the wage- 
takers, who in the modern world are the vast multitude, are 
practically shut out from participation in our intellectual and 
material inheritance. They contend that the poor are, under the 
present economic system, the victims of the rich, just as in the an- 
cient societies the weak were the victims of the strong ; so that 
wage-labor, as actually constituted, differs in form rather than in 
its essential results from the labor of slaves and serfs. And 
even dispassionate observers think that the tendency of the 
present system is to intensify rather than to diminish the evils 
which do exist ; and that we are moving towards a state of 
things in which the few will own everything, and the many be 
hardly more than their hired servants. In America, they admit 
that sparse population and vast natural resources, which as yet 
have hardly been touched, help to conceal this fatal tendency, 
which is best seen in the manufacturing and commercial centres 
of Europe, where the capitalistic method of production has re- 
duced wage-earners to a condition of pauperism and degradation 
which is the scandal of Christendom and a menace to society ; 
and Leo XIII. but expresses the thought and sentiment of all 
enlightened and generous minds when he declares that " there 
can be no question whatever but some remedy must be found, 
and quickly found, for the misery and wretchedness which press 
so heavily at this moment upon the great majority of the very 
poor." 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 793 

The present condition of labor is the result of gradually 
evolved processes, running through centuries. 

The failure of the attempt of Charlemagne to organize the 
barbarous hordes which had overspread Europe into a stable 
empire was followed by an era of violence and lawlessness, of 
wars and invasions, from which society sought refuge in the 
feudal system. The strong man, as temporal or spiritual lord, 
was at the top of the feudal hierarchy, and under him the weak 
formed themselves into classes. The serf labored a certain num- 
ber of days for himself, and a certain number for his lord. In 
the towns the craftsmen were organized into guilds which pro- 
tected the interests of the members. The mendicant poor were 
not numerous, and their wants were provided for by the bishops 
and the religious orders. 

Then the growth of towns and the development of trade and 
commerce brought wealth to the burghers, who became a dis- 
tinct class, while domestic feuds and foreign wars, especially the 
Crusades, weakened and impoverished the knights and barons. 
The printing-press and the use of gunpowder in war helped to 
further undermine the feudal power, while the discovery of 
America, the turning of the Cape of Good Hope, and the Pro- 
testant revolution threw all Europe into a ferment from which 
new social conditions were evolved. The peasants who had been 
driven from the land by the decay of the great baronial houses, 
and the confiscation of the property of the church, flocked into 
the towns or became vagabonds. The poor became so numerous 
that permanent provision had to be made for them, and poor 
laws were consequently devised. It was the contemplation of 
their misery which caused Sir Thomas More to write the fol- 
lowing words, which sound as though they had been taken from 
some modern Socialist address : 



" Therefore, I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can 
have no notion of all the other governments that I see or know 
than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of 
managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise 
all the ways and arts they can find out ; first that they may 
without danger preserve all that they have so ill acquired, and 
then that they may engage the poor to toil and labor for them 
at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they 
please. And if they can but prevail to get these contrivances 
established by the show of public authority, which is considered 
as the representative of the whole people, then they are ac- 
counted laws." 

VOL. LIII. 51 



794 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

The master-workman who, in the middle ages, employed but 
two or three apprentices and as many journeymen, gave way to 
a class of capitalists, enriched by the confiscated wealth of the 
church, by the treasures imported from America and the Indies, 
and by the profits of the slave-traffic, who at once prepared to 
take advantage of the stimulus to industry given by the opening 
of a vast world market. As late as the middle of the last cen- 
tury, however, manufacturing was still carried on by masters 
who employed but a small number of hands, and had but little 
capital invested in the business ; and the modern industrial era, 
with its factory system, properly begins w r ith our marvellous 
mechanical inventions and the use of steam as a motive power. 
Machinery made production on a large scale possible, and threw 
the whole business into the hands of capitalists, while laborers 
are left with nothing but their ability to work, which they are 
forced to sell at whatever price it will bring. The capitalist's 
one aim is to amass wealth, and he buys human labor just as 
he buys machinery or raw material, at the lowest rate at which 
it can be obtained. It is either denied that the question of 
wages has an ethical aspect, or it is maintained that the compe- 
tition among capitalists themselves, which under the present 
system of production is* inevitable, compels employers to ignore 
considerations of equity. Hence it comes to be held that what- 
ever increases profits is right. The hours of labor are prolonged, 
the sexes are intermingled, children are put to work in factories, 
sanitary laws are violated ; wares are made in excess of demand ; 
and, in consequence of the resulting glut of the markets, wages 
are still further lowered or work is stopped ; and the laborers, 
whether they continue to work or whether they strike, or are 
forced into idleness, are threatened with physical and moral ruin. 
The further development of the system is, in the opinion of 
many observers, towards the concentration of capital in immense 
joint-stock companies and syndicates, whose directors, by buying 
competing concerns and also legislatures and judges, make 
opposition impossible, and render the condition of laborers still 
more hopeless. 

This brief sketch of the history and nature of industrialism is 
sufficient to account for the existence of the various socialistic 
theories and movements of the present day. The word Socialism, 
which first came into use in the early part of this century, 
stands rather for a tendency than for a definite body of princi- 
ples and methods, and this tendency is one of which men of 
very different and even opposite opinions approve : and a Social- 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 795 

ist may be a theist or an atheist, a spiritualist or a materialist, a 
Christian or an agnostic. The general implication is the need of 
greater equality in the condition of human beings. The aim, 
therefore, is to bring about a social arrangement in which all will 
receive a fair share of the good things of life ; and the best way 
to secure this, socialists commonly think, is to render the will of 
the individual more completely subordinate to that of the com- 
munity. The methods by which this may be accomplished are 
not necessarily violent or revolutionary. In the opinion of many 
serious writers, socialism is the logical outcome of tendencies 
which are held to prevail throughout the civilized world. Our 
views of liberty, equality, and fraternity, they say, must necessarily 
lead not merely to the reign of the people, to a universal de- 
mocracy, but must embody themselves in a state which will 
own both land and capital, and will control both production and 
distribution ; for only in this way can all be made free and equal, 
and the brotherhood of the race become something better than 
ironical cant. Already the state has widened its sphere of 
action. It has passed laws to regulate industry, it has taken 
charge of education, and there are many indications that the ten- 
dency is to assume that whatever concerns the health, happiness, 
and morals of the people should be subject to state control. 
The massing of- capital in great corporations is the beginning of 
a movement, it is thought, which will end in the transference of 
all capital to the one sole corporate state. The different labor 
unions and co-operative societies are regarded as schools in which 
the working classes are receiving the education needed to pre- 
pare them for the work of universal intelligent co-operation. The 
Socialists hold, also, that the moral progress of the modern world 
points in the same direction. There is a wider sympathy, a new 
sense of justice, a desire to come to the help of the weak and 
wronged, a consciousness of the responsibility, not of individuals 
alone but of society, which must lead to a readjustment of the 
social order in accordance with the sentiments of the more* hu- 
mane temper which is characteristic of our age. And is not all 
this, in part at least, a result of the teaching and example of 
Christ himself, who came to preach the Gospel to the poor, to 
heal the infirm and to bring relief to the overburdened, and who 
thus gave the impulse which has finally developed into our hu- 
manitarian faith, hope, and love? A large number of Socialists, 
it is true, are atheists and materialists, but the earnest desire to 
discover some means whereby justice may be done the people, 
whereby they may be relieved from their poverty and misery, 



796 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

and the resulting vice and crime, is in intimate harmony with 
the gentle and loving spirit of Him who passed no sorrow by. 

From the general principle that it is the duty of the rich and 
strong to use at least part of their wealth and strength in the 
service of their fellow-men, and first of all in the service of the 
poor and helpless, no good or wi^e man will dissent. Here, then, 
is a common ground whereon all, whatever their philosophic and 
religious opinions and beliefs may be, can meet. Disagreement 
arises only when we come to discuss how this may best be done. 
If, however, the discussion is to be useful, it is necessary that 
we first get a true view of the condition of the classes to whose 
relief we wish to come. 

Are the evils from which they suffer really as great and des- 
perate as the Socialist agitators would have us believe? Are 
laborers worse paid, worse fed, worse clothed, and worse housed 
than, for instance, in the early part of this century? Do they 
labor a greater number of hours, and is their work more severe 
and exhausting now than then? 

Is the tendency of the present system to make them unintel- 
ligent, brutal, and reckless? Is the present economic system an 
organization of the ruling classes to keep the laborers in poverty 
and permanent subjection? Is it a fact, in a word, that we are 
drifting towards a state of things in which the few shall own 
everything and the many nothing? 

If these questions are to receive an affirmative answer, then 
the method of production by private competitive capital should 
be condemned, for it not only, in this case, works injustice to 
large multitudes, but must, if permitted to continue in operation, 
finally lead to social ruin. It is easily intelligible that those who 
believe that private capitalism is essentially vicious, should look 
to Socialism as a ground for hope, and that they should find in 
the supposed tendencies of the present economic developments a 
reason for thinking that the reign of individualism is nearing its 
end.' 

The democracy upon which light is streaming from many 
sources, which all the forces and struggles of society are helping 
to organize more thoroughly, and which is rapidly becoming con- 
scious of its superior power, could not be expected to accept as 
permanent a system which makes of the mass of the people a 
herd of proletarians, dependent upon uncertain wage-labor. Al- 
ready, under democratic influence, the state has assumed functions 
formerly performed by individuals, families, and minor communi- 
ties, and under the pressure of the growing sense of the respon- 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 797 

sibility of society for the welfare of all its members, it tends to 
widen the sphere of its activity and to take greater control of 
the lives of citizens. 

And as it always happens when the stream of tendency sets 
strongly in a given direction, those who oppose not less than those 
who favor hasten the coming of the new order. Events, in fact, 
solve the great problems, and our discussions are but the foam 
that crests the waves. Thus, it is conceivable that the efforts of 
competitive capital to save itself by forming colossal companies 
and syndicates, may be found in the end to facilitate the trans- 
ference of the whole to the collective management of society. 

The era of the small producer, it is plain, has passed away. 
Indeed, the greatest sufferers among laborers, at present, are the 
victims of what is known as the Sweating System, which is an 
unhealthy survival of the method of domestic production. If the 
choice, then, is between the massing of capital in a few hands 
and its complete control by the state, there can be little doubt 
as to what the final decision will be. 

But the question whether the Socialist view of the actual con- 
dition of labor and of the tendencies of the present economic 
order, is the true view, still remains to be answered. 

There are reasons which should lead us to look upon the as- 
sertions of the Socialist agitators with a certain distrust. The 
temper of reformers is enthusiastic, and hence they almost in- 
evitably exaggerate the evils they seek to correct. The crowd 
is fond of reckless statement, and its leaders not unfrequently 
win and hold their pre-eminence by the boldness with which 
they deal in passionate rhetoric. It is well known, too, that 
when patients begin to improve they become irritable ; and this 
is true also of suffering bodies of men. The hopeless become 
resigned. The negro slaves began and ended the day's work to 
the sound of their own melodies ; and when women were treated 
like slaves the indignities they suffered called forth no clamorous 
protests. The discontent and agitation which now exist among 
the working classes are not, then, a proof that their condition is 
altogether evil or that it is growing worse, while the testimony 
of the leaders in the labor-movements is, for the reasons I have 
given, open to suspicion. 

No enlightened mind doubts the superiority of our civilization 
over that of all preceding centuries, and yet when was there 
ever so much fault-finding as now with the evils and shortcom- 
ings of political, social, and domestic life ? 

We have even a literature which proclaims that life itself is 



798 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

worthless ; and there is evidently a number of readers who are 
interested in arguments which go to show that marriage, free in- 
stitutions, popular education, civilization, and Christianity have all 
broken down and failed to bring the good they promised and 
which the human heart craves. 

Our gains seem to have served only to make us more con- 
scious of what we still lack, and in the light of our intellectual, 
moral, and material progress we easily persuade ourselves that 
what has been achieved is little more than the promise of better 
things to be. Then our implements of almost magical power and 
delicacy, and the ease and rapidity with which by their aid we 
are able to overcome mere physical obstacles, have made us im- 
patient. We rebel against the teaching which inculcates the wis- 
dom of making haste slowly, and we imagine that by teaching 
people to read and write, and by proper legislative enactments, 
we may do away with ignorance, poverty, and crime as easily as 
we drain swamps or recover exhausted soil. In this our temper 
is unphilosophic and misleading. Social development depends 
upon laws which legislation can modify only to a limited extent, 
and a prerequisite to all effective and desirable social trans- 
formations is a corresponding change in the character of both 
the masses and their rulers and employers. Now, alterations in 
the character of a people are the result of slow processes, car- 
ried on through successive generations, and hence it is a mistake 

o o 

to suppose that a change in the machinery of government will 
suddenly produce an equivalent change in the -thought and con- 
duct of men. The futility of mere paper constitutions has been 
proven by experiments which leave no room for doubt. Mexico, 
for example, has had republican institutions since the early part 
of this century, but the condition of the masses of its people is 
no better than was that of the slaves in the Southern States. 

Putting aside, then, as impracticable all schemes for bringing 
on an era of universal comfort and contentment by mechanical 
changes in the constitution of society, let us strive to get a 
clear view of the results and tendencies of the actually existing 
system of competitive capitalistic production. 

In the first place, it is a fact that, neither in Europe nor in 
the United States, is there a chasm between the enormously rich 
and the very poor, but there is a gradation of possession from 
the beggar to the great capitalist. Most of what is said about 
the poverty and misery of the working class is applicable only 
to what has been called the social residuum, which may be com- 
pared to the stragglers and camp-followers of an army ; and the 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 799 

social gulf is not between rich men and steady, thrifty laborers, 
but rather between these latter and the crowd of loafers and 
criminals. That the cause of this disparity of condition is moral 
rather than economic, whoever observes may see ; and this fact 
gives emphasis to the great truth that all real amelioration in 
the lot of human beings depends on their religious, moral, and 
intellectual state. Money does not make a miser rich nor its 
lack a true man poor. The most competent authorities, basing 
their opinion upon exhaustive statistical study and careful obser- 
vation, hold that the condition of laborers during the industrial 
period has been one of gradual improvement. In England, from 
1688 to 1800, there was an increase of less than fifty per cent, 
in the number of laborers, and an increase of six hundred and 
ten per cent, in their total earnings ; and from 1800 to 1883 
workers increased a little over four hundred per cent, and their 
income about six hundred per cent. Wages have risen both in 
amount and in purchasing power. The hours of labor have be- 
come fewer and the rate of mortality has decreased. u Taken as 
a whole," says Professor Levi, who is a recognized authority on 
questions of statistics, " the working classes of the United King- 
dom may be said to be stronger in physique, better educated, 
with more time at their command, in the enjoyment of greater 
political rights, in a more healthful relation towards their em- 
ployers, receiving higher wages and better able to effect some 
savings, in 1884 than they were in 1857." And in England the 
conditions are less favorable to the laboring classes than in some 
other countries, far less favorable than they are in our own. It 
is densely populated ; it imports much of its food ; nearly all the 
land is owned by a few thousand families ; its workmen h^ve 
been crippled and dwarfed by laws made in the interest of 
employers ; and production and distribution are regulated accord- 
ing to the principles of free trade, which we here in America, 
at least, are taught to believe has a tendency to lower wages. 
In the United States, it is plain, there is no gulf between the 
very rich and the very poor, but a gradation of widely dis- 
tributed wealth. More than eight million families are land- 
owners, and of the thirteen million families among whom the 
wealth of the country is divided, eleven million families are said 
to belong to the wage-earning class. We have, indeed, a few 
enormously rich men, but it will be found difficult to hold these 
great fortunes together, and if plutocrats should persist in abus- 
ing the power which money gives, the people will know how to 
protect themselves against the tyrants. 



8oo SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

If private property is not a crime, and that it is not even 
radical Socialists admit, then wealth however great, if it be hon- 
estly acquired and justly used, must be respected. Much of the 
material progress of our country is due to the energy and fore- 
sight of men who, if they have grown rich themselves, have 
made possible the comfortably and independent existence of 
thousands. Diatribes against wealthy men oftener spring from 
unworthy passions than from any sense of wrongs inflicted by 
them. Duties and responsibilities are personal, and the poor are 
bound not less than the rich to do what they are able to pro- 
mote the common welfare. The obligation of service is universal, 
and to encourage jealousy and hatred of the rich among the 
poor is to do harm to the interests and character of both. If 
the rich are sometimes selfish and heartless, they are quite as 
often generous and helpful. Like other men, they are conscious 
of the irresistible leaning of human nature to the side of justice, 
and if a sort of all-embracing good-will is characteristic of Ameri- 
cans, we may hope that all efforts to cause class-hatred to pre- 
vail here will prove futile. At all events, the condition of 
laborers under the regime of competitive production, whatever 
grievances they still may have, are not so desperate as to make 
us willing to run the risk of putting in jeopardy the two things 
we have learned to value the most Liberty and Individuality. 
Many of our social arrangements are doubtless provisional only. 
In various ways our age is transitional, and such an age is neces- 
sarily one of exceptional hardship for the weak; but in an era of 
change the last thing the wise will counsel is the rushing into 
visionary and untried schemes of reform ; and such a scheme, 
where there is question of a whole people, the New Socialism 
certainly is. In small communities even the Socialist theory has 
been found impracticable except where celibacy has been made 
a condition of membership. The social order is an organism in- 
finitely complex, the outcome of many forces, whose action and 
interaction, beginning in the obscure and mysterious regions 
where life and mind first manifest themselves, have been going 
on for unnumbered ages ; and ^it has so intertwined itself with 
man's very nature that we may say he is what he is in vir- 
tue of the society of which he is the product. By it our lan- 
guage, our literature, our laws, and much of our religion have 
been developed. To make desirable, or possible even, a radical 
change in this order, such as that implied by Socialism, our na- 
ture itself would have to become other. Until this changes man 
will continue to believe that he has the right to own property, 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 801 

and he will continue to look upon the possession of a home and 
of other things whereby a comfortable existence for himself and 
his wife and children is secured, as among the chief boons of 
life. The owner of the poorest cabin would not barter it for the 
promises of the Socialist paradise. The passion for independence, 
for liberty, which, inborn in our portion, at least, of the Aryan 
race, has been strengthened and intensified by centuries of 
heroic struggles, makes us averse to social schemes which, if 
practical at all, can succeed only by controlling and regulating 
all the affairs of life, by turning the whole nation into an indus- 
trial army, where each one is under orders to keep the place and 
do the duties assigned him. There is nothing we so much dis- 
like as interference we who think it better to be insulted than 
to have even advice proffered. In America we know our politi- 
cians too well to be able to believe that captains of industry, 
under the control of a supreme council, to whom power vastly 
greater than that which politicians and bosses have ever exercised 
would necessarily be given in a Socialist government, could 
safely or wisely be entrusted with the management of all our 
nearest and dearest concerns. 

If, indeed, the root-principle of the New Socialism, as set 
forth by Marx, and before him by Ricardo, that labor is the 
sole source of value, and that therefore capital is robbery, were 
true, it would certainly be a powerful argument against the ex- 
isting economic order, and would drive honest men to look with 
approval upon projects to substitute in its place some method of 
production and distribution which would not be in open conflict 
with the current ideas of morality. Neither religion nor human- 
ity permits us to acquiesce in a system of organized plunder, 
and if this is what competitive capitalism is, the transformation 
of society, if needs be by revolution, is an end for which all 
good men might well labor. If we assume, with the school of 
Ricardo, that all wealth, all exchange value, is the result exclu- 
sively of labor, then to the laborers all wealth rightfully belongs, 
and capitalists have acquired what they possess by the spoliation 
of the true owners ; and the collectivism of Marx, who pro- 
poses to turn all land and capital over to the state, which un- 
dertakes to pay every one the full worth of his work, is a logical 
development. Political economists, however, now generally agree 
in holding that the theory of Ricardo, which makes labor the 
only source of value, is untenable ; for capital, which is required 
for production, must be accepted as a factor in determining 
values, and its owner therefore is entitled to a fair reward for 



802 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

the service his capital renders. It may be said that capital itself 
is the result of labor, but it must be admitted that it is also the 
result of abstinence from consumption. While one man con- 
sumes the equivalent of his entire work, another consumes but 
part, and thus gradually accumulates a capital, which he invests 
in some machine, for instance, t and thereby acquires a right to 
whatever value the machine may add to .manufactured products. 
His machine has become his fellow-laborer, and if large and per- 
fect enough, will do the work of many men. What right can 
the state have to take from him this labor-saving instrument, 
which he has invented or paid for with money honestly earned ? 
The" fallacy of the Socialist assumption lies in attributing to 
labor a value of its own, independently of the worth of its 
product. The labor spent in doing useless things has no value ; 
at least, no social value. He who makes what nobody wants 
has his labor for his pains. The question is not what amount 
of labor an object has cost, but what service can it render. A 
man may devote years to learning to walk the tight-rope, but if 
I do not care for such attainments and exhibitions, I will not 
pay to see him perform. Values, then, cannot be estimated in 
terms of labor, which is nevertheless the task the Socialists have 
set themselves. How shall we determine the worth of the labor 
expended in perfecting a plan such as that which led Columbus 
to discover America? What is the worth of Newton's labor in 
evolving the theory of gravitation, of Shakspere's in writing 
" Hamlet," of Wagner's in composing " Parsifal," of Gutenberg's 
in making his type, or of Watt's in building his steam-engine ? 
Without the genius of inventors and discoverers, without the 
foresight and enterprise of investors and capitalists, there would 
be little for laborers to do, and society would drift into general 
poverty. 

Far, then, from being the sole source of value, labor, to have 
worth, must be provided with the raw materials and forces of 
nature ; must be stimulated and directed by intelligence, and 
must produce things which human beings want ; and capital, 
which is not so much the result of labor as of abstinence from 
consumption, which leaves a surplus of the labor product to be 
invested in profit-bearing enterprises, necessarily shares also in 
the determination of values. The present economical system, 
then, is not, as Socialists affirm, organized injustice, though it 
must be admitted that it often leads to wrongs which cripple 
the lives of multitudes, and produce an incalculable amount of 
physical and moral evil. Indeed, the present inequalities in the 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 803 

distribution of wealth affect the moral sense so painfully that 
we cannot look upon them as irremovable. We may not, how- 
ever, trample on rights to secure greater distributive justice, or 
approve of schemes which if they promise a greater abundance 
of material things to the poor, would lead to a general enfeeble- 
ment and lowering of human life. In a Socialist state, in which 
the universal ideal is that of physical well-being and comfort, 
the sublimer moods which make saints, heroes, and men of gen- 
ius possible would no longer be called forth. If all receive the 
same reward, whatever their labor, spontaneity would come to 
an end and progress cease, and such an equality would finally 
come to be a universal equality in indolence, poverty, and low 
thinking ; while from an ethical point of view, it would seem 
to be unjust that the same reward should be given to every 
kind of labor. 

If different rewards are given for different kinds of work, the 
practical difficulties in determining the social value of the dif- 
ferent kinds of labor appear to be insuperable, especially when 
we consider that in the Socialist state there are to be no special 
payments, no money to serve as a universal standard of value. 
What shall be the basis of comparison for fixing the relative 
value of the work of a carpenter, a nurse-maid, a schoolmaster, 
and a minister of religion ? If it be said that each shall receive 
according to the amount and social utility of his or her produc- 
tive labor, how is this rule to be applied ? Every product is the 
result of the operation of many forces, natural, mechanical, and 
human, and to decide what part of the value is due to the 
labor of any special workman is extremely difficult, if not im- 
possible. If we accept the formula, " To each in proportion to 
the number of hours of his work," which is said to be in the 
strictest sense the theoretical basis of Socialism, then skilled and 
unskilled labor will be paid alike ; and since the acquirement of 
skill is the result of long and painful processes, who would take 
infinite pains when by so doing he would gain nothing ? And 
how shall we apply this time-measure to agricultural labor, to 
domestic service, to woman's work in the family, where she has 
at once the offices of wife, mother, nurse, and housekeeper ? If 
skilled labor receives a greater reward than the unskilled the 
principle of equality is abandoned, while the relative values of 
the two kinds of labor must be arbitrarily assumed. Not only, 
then, is the Socialist theory of the source of value unsatisfactory, 
but the methods by which it is proposed to bring about a more 
equal distribution of wealth are either impracticable or, if ap- 



804 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

plied, would lead to greater evils than those from which we 
actually suffer. There would, indeed, have to be a radical 
change in man's moral nature before it would be safe to entrust 
to any body of men such power as the managers of the Social- 
ist state would inevitably acquire. It is with power as with 
money those who love it ne,ver have enough ; and in fact if 
the whole economic management of society, together with the 
education of the young, were turned over to a special governing 
and directing class, its power would necessarily have to be 
almost unlimited. The whole people would be marshalled like 
an army, and unquestioning obedience would be demanded and 
enforced. The right of the people to elect their officers gives 
no assurance that their favorites will be worthy or capable. 
What universal suffrage does to bring the best and the wisest 
into power is now well known. The policy and the candidates 
of the people are the policy and the candidates of wire-pullers 
and bosses. They who should once get hold of the vast and 
complex machinery by which it is proposed to govern the Social- 
ist state would most probably remain in power ; and when we 
reflect that all the printing-presses of the country would be 
under their control, and that there would be no reason for the 
existence of political parties, it is difficult to see how they could 
be driven from office. The selfishness which, under the regime 
of competitive capitalism, makes so many employers of labor 
heartless and tyrannical, would assert itself also in the new 
order ; for a change of government is like a change of clothes, 
it leaves the man what he was. It is incredible that the per- 
versity of human passion may be corrected by mechanical ap- 
pliances. Its source lies within, where lie also the aids to noble 
life ; and until there is a universal change of heart, a social 
theory which assumes that every man loves all men as much as 
he loves himself is Utopian. Observant minds, belonging to dif- 
ferent schools of thought, agree in holding that in the modern 
world egotism is more intense than it was in the middle ages, at 
least so far as there is question of the love of money, which 
now is the form all our selfish passions naturally take ; for 
money means power, it means self-indulgence, it means the satis- 
faction of vanity, it means honor and place. Mere intellectual 
training is powerless to correct this vice or to bring about any 
great moral improvement. It tends to change the form of vice 
rather than to make us virtuous ; or, if we should take a more 
hopeful view of what secular education is able to do, the time 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 805 

is certainly distant when the masses can be called educated, in 
any real sense of the word. 

Though we cannot accept the fundamental principles of 
Socialism or Collectivism as true, and though we are persuaded 
that society cannot successfully be established upon them as a 
basis, there are none the less bonds of sympathy between us 
and the Socialists. The desire, which in the case of many of 
them is doubtless earnest and sincere, to come to the relief of 
the poor, to find some means by which their lot may be made 
less miserable, springs from a divine impulse. It is Christian 
and human ; and the anti-religious spirit of modern Socialism 
comes from an unphilosophic and unhistoric view of the forces 
which create civilization and give promise of a better future. 
Atheism and materialism fatally strengthen and intensify man's 
selfish passions, by merging life's whole significance and worth 
into the present transitory existence. If there is no order of 
absolute truth and right, no future for the individual, then 
pleasure is the chief good, and both instinct and reason impel 
to indulgence and to the overthrow of society, if society makes 
the enjoyment of life impossible. Hence the socialism of ma- 
terialists and atheists logically leads to anarchy. Nothing could 
be more sad than that the multitude should be driven to look 
for deliverance from their wrongs and sorrows to leaders who 
deny God, and man's kinship with the infinitely true and perfect 
One, who tell them that there is no living heavenly Father, but 
only an unconscious Earth-Mother, on whose senseless body 
Life and Death play their horrid farce. The grasping avarice 
and heartless methods of employers and capitalists, who gen- 
erally profess to be Christians, are arguments against religio^i 
which the preachers of atheism find effective in addressing the 
victims of our present economic system ; while the decay of 
faith has greatly diminished the persuasive force of appeals in 
favor of patient resignation and submission. They who lose 
faith and hope and love, lose patience too ; and it is futile to 
preach the sacredness of wealth to the poor when their miser- 
able lives are the sad witnesses to the immorality of the means 
by which it is acquired. 

Who can read the history of rack-renting in Ireland, or the 
story of the Sweating System in the Bitter Cry of Outcast Lon- 
don, without feeling that a social order which makes such things 
possible ought to be changed or destroyed ? 

Who can consider the mental, moral, and physical state of 
certain classes of emigrants who land upon our shores by the 



8o6 SOCIALISM AND LABOR. [Sept., 

thousand, without asking ourselves whether the countries from 
which these people come are civilized and Christian ? Has the 
passion of humanity which Christ came to inspire, and which was 
a living principle in his early followers, died in Christian Europe? 
There the very poor certainly are excluded from our spiritual 
and material inheritance, and r .it would seem that the standing 
armies which are kept up by the various powers are maintained 
rather for the purpose of holding the impoverished masses in 
subjection than for defence against foreign aggression. It is as 
though the ruling classes in Europe had entered into a con- 
spiracy to ferment national jealousy and hatred, that they may 
have a pretext for keeping intact their military organizations, 
which, while they overawe the people, help to reduce them to 
still greater poverty and wretchedness. There Socialism may 
have a meaning, and since there are never wanting with us people 
who think it the proper thing to take whatever infection may pre- 
vail in Europe, it was inevitable that certain dilettants and idio- 
syncratics should seek to persuade us that America too ought to 
have its Socialism. We began, however, as the most completely 
individualist people of which history makes record, and our ex- 
perience has not tended to weaken our faith in the power of 
freedom, intelligence, and industry to solve the great social prob- 
lems. Should our plutocrats, instead of making themselves pub- 
lic benefactors, become public malefactors, a modification in the 
laws of inheritance, together with other legal measures which 
would readily suggest themselves, would be sufficient to abate 
the nuisance. For the rest, we are convinced that the great aim 
should be not to provide for all men, but to train and educate 
all men to take care of themselves. The tendency of good gov- 
ernment is to make government less necessary, and the influence 
of the religion of Christ not only creates purer morals and sym- 
pathies, but it also mitigates the conflict between the church 
and the world. 

As men become more enlightened and human, they perceive 
that the aims of the best civil government are not really distinct 
from those of true religion. Man's salvation here and hereafter 
is the end for which all society exists, and hence it is the duty 
both of the church and the state to labor for freedom, knowl- 
edge, and righteousness ; in other words, for humanity. The 
nineteen centuries which have passed since Christ was born have 
put new forces into our hands, which, if we but use them with 
wisdom and in the spirit of Christian love, may teach that the 
Saviour came not to redeem the individual alone, but to trans- 



1891.] SOCIALISM AND LABOR. 807 

form society. We have at our disposal the vast treasure of 
science, which is ever increasing, and which, if we but have un- 
derstanding and a heart, may be made to bless alike the rich 
and the poor with greater knowledge of the causes of physical 
evil, of hygienic and sanitary laws, which shall become more and 
more able to forestall disease. We shall make education univer- 
sal, but we shall educate with a view to health of body and soul 
quite as much, at least, as with a view to sharpen the mental facul- 
ties. We shall gradually come to understand that there is no con- 
flict between religion and science, but that both are manifestations 
of God's wisdom and love, meant to console, strengthen, and 
save man. The minister of religion will love knowledge and the 
man of science will be reverent and devout. When co-operation 
becomes universal not among laborers alone, but when the men 
of wealth and the men of toil, the men of religion and the men 
of science, the spiritual guides and the temporal rulers, all unite 
for the common good of the whole people, a new era will dawn. 
All will then recognize that intelligence and morality are the 
basis of human life ; and that as right intelligence leads to faith 
in God, so is that faith the fountain-head of the generous and 
fervid moods which make righteousness prevail. We shall under- 
stand more thoroughly that the causes of vice and crime are the 
chief causes also of poverty and all other social evils. 

And while this truer view will w r eaken confidence in the 
mechanical appliances and patent remedies of reformers and em- 
pyrics, it will confirm our faith in the efficacy of pure religion, 
of right education, and of whatever else nourishes and strength- 
ens the faculties within. 

Then shall a more perfect society grow round us a society 
complex and various, yet free and orderly, rich in art, vocal in 
literature, strong in sympathy, victorious through the power of 
holiness and love. 

J. L. SPALDING. 

Peoria, III. 



8o8 THE DEACON'S TRIAL. [Sept., 



THE DEACON'S TRIAL. 

A CLEAR, cold November day was drawing to a close, and 
giving promise, through a peculiarly brilliant sunset, of warmer 
weather on the morrow. 

The country roads were seamed with deep grooves worn 
by the heavy wheels of numerous stone-wagons bearing away 
great gray slabs from a celebrated quarry. 

The noise of one of these burdened vehicles almost drowned 
the voices of two men who had stopped on the highway to 
exchange salutations. 

One of them bestrode a fine colt, that he held in check with 
a quiet exhibition of good horsemanship ; the other was an 
elderly man seated in a narrow buggy, hung upon high springs. 
The leathered top was flung half way back, and the large, ruddy 
face of the driver was thrust beyond the cavernous enclosure, 
in order to catch the words of his neighbor. " I do not sup- 
pose," said the horseman, " that the deacon's trial will come 
off before the middle of the month ; Squire Pierson's been 
sick." 

" No, I an't heard no date fixed ; thought maybe there might 
be somebody down to the office to-night that would be likely 
to know. I declare for it, it's hard on the deacon to be fetched 
up afore folks at his age along o' that blamed cow. I never 
see her, but Wells and Walters both say she's a first-rate milker 
and they're .ra/pcenaed to testify that she wa'n't no kicker when 
deacon had her." 

" Yes, I feel sorry for him, very sorry ; but it was a poor 
trade for Mrs. Baldwin. I don't quite understand it. The cow 
Deb, they call her was warranted to be all right, and Mrs. 
Baldwin says she went straight over and told the deacon about 
it ; but he was short with her, and she made up her mind that 
he knew something of the trick before. Going to get our 
Indian summer yet, I guess ; that will help us out on our husk- 
ing. Good-night." 

Mr. Whitridge sat quite still for a moment after his com- 
panion had left him, and then, swinging the reins across the 
back of his pony-built horse, jogged slowly forward. Half a 
mile further on he halted before a big, square frame structure, 
whose front was liberally belettered the most effective decora- 



1891.] THE DEACON' s TRIAL. 809 

tion being the announcement, in large type, that Samuel Tib- 
betts, proprietor, was also " Postmaster of the U. S." 

There was a motley group gathered about the red-hot stove 
within, and as Mr. Whitridge entered some of the men nodded 
familiarly. But a topic of great interest was on hand. Several 
voices were discernible in the dispute, and more than one of 
them rang out in angry tones. 

Ordinarily the distribution of the mail absorbed the whole 
attention of the persons present, and no greater altercation arose 
than might arise over the authorship of a letter allotted to the 
box of a rich spinster ; but to-night this curiosity of the by- 
standers had received a counter-blow. In a moment of com- 
parative sobriety and order in the discussion, a tall, thin man 
with a sallow face and a piping voice strode across the store, 
and, while peering into the square glass compartment supposed 
to contain his correspondence, he said with great earnestness : 
" Cheatin' a woman is a low-down, low-lived trick ; and I don't 
care who does it, I'm for havin' him hung." This bold senti- 
ment provoked a smile, and it w r as a second or two before any 
champion of the abused deacon gathered courage to attack the 
speaker. 

" Nobody denies the meanness of cheatin' man or woman 
'specially a woman but what / say is, that it don't stand to 
reason a man like the deacon is goin' to risk his reputation 
leavin' out his soul for a few dollars." 

" He didn't count on Mrs. Baldwin suing him," said another. 
" You know just as well as I do that Deacon Wilder's as close 
as the bark on an apple-tree, and such folks takes a good many 
chances. For my part, I was always suspicious of the true C9n- 
vertin' of several of our church pillers. Some of 'em are hol- 
low you can stand by that." 

Mr. Whitridge, whose mind inclined toward the innocence of 
the accused, was not a man of independent thought. He was 
rather weakening now in his defence, and as the door opened to 
admit Deacon Wilder he shrank back from the light emitted by 
the glowing stove, and crept into the gloom of the back store, 
whose darkness was intensified by the dingy oil lamp on the 
counter. 

Deacon Wilder came irresolutely into the circle. He was a 
small man, with thick, iron-gray hair and full beard. His head 
was bowed, not by years but habit, as if a continual conscious- 
ness of physical inferiority had humbled him. 

One or two of his defenders rose and shook hands with him, 
VOL. LIII. 52 



8io THE DEACON'S TRIAL. [Sept., 

and he saw fit to lengthen his grave face and speak in a fune- 
real voice ; but no one alluded directly to his misfortune. 

Meantime the postmaster and his wife, whom he had called 
from the dwelling in the rear of the store to assist in distribut- 
ing the mail, had finished their task, and now announced it to 
the assembly by vigorously thrusting aside the " show-winder " 
that shut them off from the view of the public. 

Mr. Whitridge was among the first to receive his weekly 
paper, and was well on his way to the door, congratulating him- 
self that he had not been recognized by the deacon, when a 
woman's hand was thrust outside the square opening, and, as she 
waved it wildly, she cried : " Mr. Whitridge, if you're a-goin' by 
the North road, wi^sht you'd take this postal card to Miss Jones. 
It come yesterday, but none of 'em an't been in ; and as it says 
her mother's comin' to-morrer, I reckon likely she'll want to 
make some extras beforehand." 

He turned slowly around and grudgingly received the card, 
which he deposited in his pocket, and through the stress of the 
uncomfortable circumstances connected with it, utterly forgot to 
deliver ! 

Some of the men lingered to do a little " trading," and among 
these, when the deacon had circumspectly departed, the subject 
of his " counsel " was approached. 

" Mrs. Baldwin '11 beat him sure as yoii live, whoever he 
gets ; for she's goin' to have that young chap from the city, 
Peaseley. They do says he's a buster. He's been to college 
and to law school, and now he's just carryin' everything before 
him." 

This information rather abashed the other side, who knew that 
Deacon Wilder had already put his case into the hands of the 
old town stand-by, John Snell. They contented themselves with 
that comfortable assumption of the triumph of the " right " which 
lends a bold front to many an unpopular cause. 

The little company next decided that it would be far better 
for all concerned to delay the trial until Squire Pierson's health 
would permit him to " sit," rather than let the case fall under 
strange jurisdiction. The cost was canvassed, some present de- 
claring that the losing party would have to fork over to Peaseley 
not less than fifteen dollars and car-fare, while Snell was always 
reasonable in his charges, and possibly his service could be se- 
cured for five. 

" Who's ^/poenaed ? " asked the thin man. " I an't heard 
much about the particulars afore to-night." 



1891.] THE DEACON'S TRIAL. 811 

" Wells and Walters is on for the deacon. They'll both 
swear Deb was all right when he had her." 

"She's that slim-tailed, yallerish brown cow he bought at the 
vandoo over to Lysander, an't she? I bid on her myself, but 
I soon see the deacon meant to have her, so I drew in my 
horns." 

" Lucky you didn't get her ; the suit might 'a' been on your 
hands." 

" No, I don't never law much. It mostly costs more'n it 
comes to, I cal'late." 

The thin man, who had a semi-judicial cast of mind, now 
came forward again, both arms laden with packages, and added : 
"There's one question that pesters me. I'd like to have some 
of you tell me why, if Deb was all right and a good milker, the 
deacon ever come to sell her to Mrs. Baldwin. He an't made 
of the stuff that don't hold on to the good things of this world 
when once he gets 'em. Now, there was a reason somewhere for 
the sellin'. Butter's high ; Deb come in in September, and will 
give her full stint up to Christmas, fallin' off then, perhaps, till 
fresh feed along in the spring. Them as had owned her told to 
the vandoo that she don't dry up but a little while afore calv- 
ing. Them things works in my mind." . 

A dead silence ensued, and it seemed a clear case against the 
deacon until one of his defenders, unable to turn the tide of 
argument, resorted to strategy. 

" Haw, haw ! " he laughed as he shook his shaggy head, "you 
ought to have been a lawyer ; you've got some of their big 
points. You can hint and look mysterious, and wink away a 
good man's reputation without even waiting for the trial to come 
up. Deacon Wilder will clear all this carcumstantial evidence 
away, now / tell ye, when he comes to be put on the stand." 
He then arose and walked off, leaving his hearers as thoroughly 
convinced of the rascality of lawyers in general, and the inno- 
cence of the accused, as if the verdict of the Supreme Court had 
been published in all its length and breadth. 

Mrs. Baldwin, too, had her sympathizers. She was an excep- 
tionally tidy housekeeper, and in the early afternoon sat down to 
complete a garment upon her sewing-machine. Scarcely, however, 
had she filled the bobbin and oiled the driving-wheel, when the 
click of the gate-latch aroused her curiosity, and she looked up 
in time to see the minister's wife hurrying toward the house. 
She smoothed her tightly drawn hair, tied the strings of her 
white apron a little more precisely, and opened the door. 



812 THE DEACON'S TRIAL. [Sept., 

" I do declare, Mrs. Brown, this is kind." 

The visitor, who was a plump little body, with a pale face 
beaming with smiles, and curling hair fast growing gray, did not 
at once reply, but put into the hand of her hostess a large can 
of Bartlett pears. 

"There's just a sample of. what our tree did last year, or 
rather of what the tree and me did together. They an't done 
up pound for pound, so they won't hurt any one." 

Mrs. Baldwin duly admired the gift and complimented the 
well-known skill of the giver ; then she sighed. 

" It does me good to have you come, for I didn't rightly 
know just how you and dominie. would take this lawsuit betwixt 
me and the deacon, but I couldrit do elsewise than sue him in 
justice to myself, for of all the kickin' creatures Deb's the very 
worst." 

" Now don't tell me a word of it," said the cheery new-comer. 
" I told Elisha this morning that I couldn't stan' it another day 
without comin' over, and just speakin' out plain and sayin' that 
I can't possibly understand how such a thing came round between 
two such good folks as you are two worthy soldiers of the 
Cross." 

Mrs. Baldwin interrupted her : " I can soon tell my side." 

" Not a word, not a breath ! " protested Mrs. Brown. 

" All I have got to say is that I believe in you both, and no- 
body can make me think that either of you started out to do 
wrong. There's a misunderstandin' somewhere. Now, Elisha, he 
mourns over the trial comin' on ; for, says he, ' it's a positive 
disgrace to the church ' ; but I tell him, Would you have bad 
feelin's goin' along year after year, breedin' unchristian thoughts 
in secret, when through a public suit the real truth may be 
brought forward, and we shall all see that Deacon Wilder is 
the same good man we always believed him to be, and Mrs. 
Baldwin has only made a very common mistake in prejudgin' 
him. That's what I told him when I was pourin' tea, and he 
quite chirked up. So now, it's all over between us two, and 
we can visit to our hearts' content. 

Mrs. Baldwin was surprised into acquiescence, and they chatted 
away over mite societies and grab-bags, the prevalence of measles 
and the missionary box, until the advent of other callers warned 
the little peace-maker that she might not be able to hold her own 
in face of the enemy's reinforcement, and therefore it would be 
wise to beat a hasty retreat. 

Mrs. Sylvester and Martha Janes, her step-daughter, had no 



1891.] THE DEACON'S TRIAL. 813 

such scruples, as the minister's wife. They entered boldly upon 
the subject close at heart, and as the plaintiff proceeded to state 
her wrongs, with an ardor increased by recent forced suppression, 
they repeatedly expressed their conviction that Deacon Wilder 
was a wolf in sheep's clothing. 

" Nobody'll ever make me believe he could have milked Deb 
twice a day for two months and more, and not found out that 
she was up to tricks. No more do I think, as I told mother 
coming over no, it was whilst we were frying the ham for 
dinner that he won't shy out of it all when he's up before the 
justice." 

" I don't see how he's goin' to git round the actual facts," 
said Mrs. Sylvester in a deep bass voice. " Justice is justice in 
these United States ; tan't as if it was in Germany. Elmiry 
Goodsell was tellin' me, last time I see her, about some of their 
doin's over there, and it beats all ! Harnessin' a woman up with 
a cow to drag fodder ! As for me, I don't want to travel in 
benighted parts. New York State's good enough for the Sylves- 
ters, and the Janeses too I reckon, where a woman's word o' 
mouth can stand law like any man's." 

"You are quite right; but I worry myself awful, sometimes, 
thinking of the trial. How am I going to get up on top of the 
witness-box and tell how mean one of the pillars of our church 
has been, and to a sister in Christ too ? It's a nightmare to me." 

"Well now I wouldn't allow myself to fret over it. Janes 
says you have got a high-up lawyer, one that can pull you 
through if anybody can." 

This point of view was entirely new to Mrs. Baldwin. The 
absolute truth of the statement she expected to make in public 
was to her sufficient warrant for what she was about to do. 
There was nothing else. Deb kicked ; and she had told the dea- 
con about it, and he had refused to make it right notwithstand- 
ing the fact that he had warranted the cow to be a first-class 
animal. The idea of her lawyer "pulling her through" savored 
of corruption. She absolutely blazed with indignation. " Do you 
think I'm goin' to lie over a little thing like Deb, or put the 
deacon to shame just to favor a spleen against him? Why what 
are we coming to? I'd rather be hitched to a cart with kickin' 
Deb than to hurt a hair of anybody's head, let alone bein' 
pulled through." Her visitors were less sensitive beings, and 
marvelled much at any reluctance to " beat " the deacon in 
whatever way it might be accomplished. . To them a verdict was 
like a written character endorsed by the powers that be, and 



814 THE DEACON'S TRIAL. [Sept., 

therefore able to sustain one through life. They, felt uncom- 
fortable in Mrs. Baldwin's presence after her outburst, and with 
many assurances of good will they departed, leaving her a wiser 
but far less contented woman. 

She had entered upon the lawsuit from a firm conviction 
that she had been imposed t upon " cheated," as she plainly 
worded it but now there crept into her mind a suspicion that 
there might be those, other than the fierce partisans of the de- 
fendant, who thought it possible for her to be mistaken, or and 
this was still worse those who deemed her action instigated by 
malice. 

While she was yet thinking about the matter a paper was 
served upon her, stating that the trial would come off on the 
" tenth day of December." "Well, I s'pose there's no stoppin' 
it now unless I give folks a chance to think I'm a thief more 
'an ever. And I reckon the best way is, as Mrs. Brown says, 
to let the lawyers get at the truth, and then the public will know 
it." She sighed again and returned to the oiling of her sewing- 
machine, perhaps dimly wishing that the wheels of life could be. 
kept running smoothly with as little trouble. 

The tenth day of December brought the first snow-storm of 
the season. In the early morning Mrs. Whitridge had examined 
all the signs through whose consultation she had established a 
certain local reputation as weather prophet, and she announced to 
her husband at breakfast-time that if he intended going to the 
deacon's trial he had better fix up things at the barn in winter 
shape. 

" I hadn't thought of this bein' more'n a squall," he replied. 

"7 say, two foot o' snow will be on the ground before the 
deacon's free." 

"That an't tellin' we'll be snowed under to-day nor to-mor- 
row," he laughed. "When once a man gets into the hands of 
the lawyers there's no knowin' when they'll let up on him. But 
I reckon you'll see me back before midnight. I'm goin' to get 
Hiram to do my share of the chores, so as not to bother you." 

This arrangement seemed satisfactory, and Mr. Whitridge 
started off soon after nine o'clock with a clear conscience. 

The "justice office" was in a small building detached from 
the Pierson homestead, but standing very close to the old house, 
as if afraid to venture from under the shadow of its progenitor. 
And yet the little structure had a certain independence of its 
own. Its architectural proportions were not at all in harmony 



1891.] THE DEACON'S TRIAL. 815 

with the parental edifice, for it had a flat tin roof bordered with 
an enormous weight of cornice and a " stoop " that dwarfed the 
suggestive little entrance to the large gabled building. This 
stoop was, on this auspicious occasion, tenanted at an early hour 
by men from the far and near farms, grouped under the head 
of "neighbors." They chiefly were dressed in the garments re- 
served for Sundays and holidays, which gave something of a 
festive look to the assembly. 

The door stood open and the squire within was making wel- 
come those who had summoned courage to approach " His 
Honor." 

" Cold day for the deacon," suggested the man who had 
volunteered to "fix the fire." "I hope not, sir," answered the 
justice, quite forgetting, in his perception of the double meaning 
of the phrase, that any suspicion might attach to his reply. Then, 
suddenly remembering his relation to the event, he stammered : 
" Leastwise for neither him nor Mrs. Baldwin, nor none of us, 
since you're fireman." Having thus restored his injured dignity, 
he peered among the people outside and exclaimed : 

"I declare for it, the dominie and Mrs. Brown's a-comin' ! 
Fetch two rush-bottomed chairs the wooden ones sits hard 
and kinder help me to straighten out. I had no idee ladies 
would be here; but this is a case Howd'y do, dominie? 
Coin' to see Mrs. Baldwin through, Mrs. Brown? Well I guess 
it's comin' out right all round. Here's a couple of seats engaged 
for you reserved seats, as I might say." 

His embarrassment was great, and he sought to relieve it by 
being as jocular as possible. The minister misinterpreted his 
humor. 

" Ah ! it is true, then, the story I heard last night that the 
parties in the case have come to an agreement ; that is well." 

" No, no, no ! Suit's called in ten minutes. Here comes the 
plaintiff and her counsel now." 

When Mrs. Baldwin entered Mrs. Brown whispered .to her 
husband and he politely offered the lady his chair, his wife urg- 
ing it upon her with the suggestion : " You will feel more like 
home having a woman next you." 

Mrs. Baldwin smiled a very forced smile, and bethought her- 
self to introduce her lawyer to the minister. 

" I am glad to know you, Mr. Peaseley," said the latter grave- 
ly. " But I regret that it should be under the present circum- 
stances." 

The other, who was quite young, well dressed, and with abun- 



8i6 THE DEACON'S TRIAL. [Sept., 

dant self-possession, made answer pleasantly : " We lawyers do 
not regard our duties so seriously. Indeed, I feel that we are 
virtually peace-makers, for oftentimes our clients are simply blind 
to certain facts that are brought out in the trial, and even if one 
party has the costs to pay they are better friends ever after/' 

He moved away and arranged his effects upon a small table 
near the judge's desk. 

Within a moment his example was followed by John Snell, 
an ungainly man, whose slow motions were unequal to the impa- 
tience of the throng that now swept in a disorderly way into the 
little building. 

No one paid any attention to the formal opening of the case, 
so absorbed was the general attention upon the appearance of 
the respondent. He seemed to have aged in the past month, 
and his gray head drooped lower than ever upon his breast. He 
did not even notice the friendly efforts of Mrs. Brown, who con- 
scientiously endeavored to distribute her sympathies without fear 
or favor. 

When, however, Mr. Peaseley had finished his short statement 
and the name of Mrs. Mehitable Susan Baldwin was called, every 
eye was fixed upon the plaintiff. She was a sturdy woman, but 
now it almost seemed as if she would faint, so white and tremu- 
lous did she instantly become. The voice of the justice recalled 
her : 

" Step right for'ard, Mrs. Baldwin ; don't be afeard ; you're 
among friends and goin' to speak the truth." 

Certainly nothing could have inspired her with more daring 
than this illy conceived sally. She walked firmly forward, dropped 
her shawl on the bench beside her, and began : 

" I don't know as there's any call to say beforehand, squire, 
that I'll tell the truth. I an't givin' to lyin'." 

Her counsel interrupted : " One moment, if you please. Mrs. 
Baldwin, after you are sworn, you will kindly say nothing but in 
reply to my questions." 

The oath was administered and the ordinary formula requir- 
ing personal identification. 

"You are an unmarried woman?" 

"No, sir; I'm a widow." 

" You are at present, then, unmarried, and managing the farm 
and dairy on Springhill, where you live." 

"Yes; me and Mr. Smothers." 

" Mr. Smothers rents a portion of your farm. Has he any- 
thing to do with the dairy ? " 



1891.] THE DEACON'S TRIAL. 817 

" No, sir ; I han't got but' two cows besides Deb, and I do 
my own milkin' and churnin'." 

" When did you buy the cow, Deb, from Deacon Wilder ? " 

" On the second day of November last, and I wish to gracious 
I had a-done as I wanted and milked her right afore his eyes." 

" Slowly, if you please. Did Deacon Wilder tell you she did 
not kick ? " 

" I never said he did." 

Visible excitement now amid the spectators. 

"What did he tell you?" 

" He said she was a first-class animal, gentle an' kind, and he 
showed me the mornin's milk with cream on it an' the butter 
she made the week afore ; an' I told him it was about milkin' 
time, an' I'd try her if he'd fetch a pail, an 

" Slowly, madam. What did the deacon say then ? " 

" Why, he said that it wa'n't worth while, since I had my good 
clo's on." 

"Then he did not seem willing to have you milk her?" 

" No, sir, he didn't. I can't say that it wa'n't just goodness 
on his part for my clo's, but it looked kinder strange to me 
when I got home and talked it over with Smothers." 

It evidently looked strange to the assembly also, for they 
whispered and nodded without regard to the deacon's proximity. 

"When you agreed to take Deb there was nothing more said 
about her habits?" 

" Not a word. I had asked all the questions I wanted to ; and 
I will, say for the deacon that he did not stretch it a bit about 
her butter-makin'. She's a first-class animal there." 

"How did you discover that she kicked?" 

" Land alive ! I reckon it didn't take me long to know. Why 
I was jam up agin the fence, and the milk pourin' all over me 
out of the pail, upsot." 

Everybody save the accused began to laugh. Even good 
Mrs. Brown shook behind her handkerchief. 

The justice had leaned back against his tall chair with his 
eyes shut, as he had once seen a distinguished judge in the 
Supreme Court do; but at this point Mr. Peaseley called his 
attention by saying with severity : " I must remind your honor 
that there is too much levity here." 

His honor looked wildly around, and, reaching for his pen, 
stammered : " I'd I'd a-seen that point if there hadn't been 
so much noise." 

Only a few of those present understood why it was a 



8i8 THE DEACON'S TRIAL. [Sept., 

moment or two before the case was resumed. Then the justice 
nodded as if to announce that the objection was noted, and Mr. 
Peaseley went on. " Did you ever attempt to milk Deb again ? " 

" Of course I did. Smothers can't do it ; he's got his own 
chores to 'tend to. 'Tan't pleasant," she added, submissively ; 
" but it's got to be done, and , if a widder woman keeps cows 
she must milk 'em." 

" Did Deb ever kick again ? " 

" Of course she did. I wouldn't have complained to the 
deacon about onct, but she kep' it up. So I reckoned it was a 
way she had." 

" But but " the young city lawyer was a little bewildered 
here " but how could you manage to milk her if she knocked 
you over every time ? " This seemed like improbability, and he 
was nonplussed. Not so the audience, -who laughed loudly at 
his discomfiture. Even the witness was scarcely able to re- 
strain her merriment. 

" Why, I tied her down. I guess you never see a kickin' 
cow ; but if you'll come home with me, I'll show 7 you how to fix 
Deb. I strap her hind legs too." 

" That will do," said her interrogator sharply. 

And now the figure of the deacon was seen edging through 
the crowd. He held up his hand and spoke with decision : " I 
don't know but it's agin the law, squire ; but if you and these 
gentlemen can fix it so as it'll stan', I wisht you would. I 
want to tell my story right here and now, an' leave it to you 
to lay the penalty." 

" Hold on, deacon ! " cried John Snell. " Your turn's comin' ; 
first let them get through with their witnesses." 

" I don't keer for no witnesses. When you hear my statement 
you won't. IVe hated to talk about my folks ; but that what's 
laid on my mind is all gone now. I guess I can tell it straight." 

There was something so pathetic in the whole bearing of the 
speaker that the young lawyer was touched. He leaned over the 
table, and a whispered discussion took place between court and 
counsel. Then Mr. Snell arose and announced, in a wandering 
way, that it had been agreed between the parties to refer the 
case directly to the court without argument or further examina- 
tion of witnesses. The sole evidence to be presented would be 
a verbal statement from the respondent. 

The interest of the spectators was quadrupled. Mrs. Bald- 
win forgot to sit down, and in fact remained standing through- 
out the recital. 



1891.] THE DEACON'S TRIAL. 819 

" I had Deb," said the deacon, slowly stroking his rough 
beard, "just nine weeks afore the plaintiff bought her. Deb'S a 
good cow ; a leetle narvous, three-quarters Jersey, gives six quarts 
to a milkin', and rich at that. I hated to sell her, but (here 
there was a slight movement in the throng) now I didn't car- 
late to tell this, nor to bring Elizabeth Snyder's name into 
court at all. I thought maybe I could manage to answer the 
questions so as to satisfy the justice without that. I didn't know 
nothin' about Deb's kickin', but night afore last I was up to 
Snell's office, an' I see plain enough that it had got to come 
out why I sold her ; an' I wrestled hard to find what was the 
right way for a Christian man to act. At last it was borne in 
on me that I must tell the truth, trie hull truth, an' nothin' but 
the truth." He paused and wiped the perspiration from his 
brow. " You all know somethin' of the way I'm sitiwated. The 
hand of the Lord was laid heavy on me three year ago, when 
he took Sary home to himself ; but I thought I'd be able to 
get along with Elizabeth Snyder's housekeepin' ; but a sister-in- 
law han't like a wife got your interest to heart ; an' I'm bound 
to say mine has got a temper." 

u I should say as much," escaped from Mrs. Baldwin's lips, 
and various nods and winks were exchanged across the room. 

" There han't much money in farmin' onless dairyin', and we 
that is, Sary an' me had laid up somethin' from our cows ; but 
Elizabeth Snyder lately sot her foot down that she wouldn't 
make butter. I tried it after Deb come, but I didn't hev fust- 
rate luck, so I thought to sell off my extra cows, and get along 
the best way I could. And when Mrs, Baldwin come over to 
look at Deb, I hated to hev Elizabeth Snyder tell her how poor 
my butter was, fer she had larfed at me considerable. So I 
kinder told her off all about Deb as fast as I could, an' hurried 
her away, while my sister-in-law was over to the Newells. I 
hadn't no idee Deb kicked. I thought when Mrs. Baldwin come 
to tell me of it, and I think now, it's only because she an't 
used to havin' a woman round her. So I smoothed it over, 
thinkin' likely she never'd have no more trouble ; but if I'd 
been more of a man and not so afraid o' trouble with Elizabeth 
Snyder, I'd told the right reason in the start. And now I'm 
punished enough, an' stan' ready to pay whatever you think is 
right, squire ; that's all I've got to say. Mrs. Baldwin's a good 
woman and a Christian, allowin' her to hev been a leetle hasty 
in goin' to law." 

He went quietly back to his seat, and in the short stillness 



820 THE DEACON'S TRIAL. [Sept., 

that ensued the justice rapidly came to a decision. He struck 
the desk before him with his ruler, and without further ceremony 
of any kind announced : 

"This court has seen fit to hear Deacon Wilder's side of 
the question presented without counsel, and the same now ren- 
ders a verdict in favor of the widow, since the cow kicked, 
whether the deacon knew it or not. I don't think he oughter 
pay her much ; she's got a good milkin' critter, and he'll have 
to settle with the lawyers and the court. I shouldn't wonder if 
an X would make it all right with Mrs. Baldwin." He gathered 
up his papers and somebody opened the outer door. 

The storm had increased and there was a prospect of the 
roads being drifted, so the surprise and sympathy of the assem- 
bled farmers were disposed of in few words, as they wended 
their way to their various vehicles. 

Only the dominie and his wife waited to shake hands with 
the contestants when they had concluded the conversation they 
were engaged in. 

" Deacon," says Mrs. Baldwin, " I'm just ashamed o' myself 
to think of all this pester I've brought. upon you; and I don't 
want to waste no words, but I'll just put it out sharp that I 
won't never touch your ten dollars, an' I just believe every 
word you said. Deb prob'bly never was milked by a woman 
before. I don't know as I blame her for bein' mad about it ; 
'tan't a woman's business." 

"No more it an't," replied the deacon, "an' if you won't 
take the money I don't see no way of recompensin' you, but to 
do your milkin' for you." 

" Oh ! deacon, that's too much trouble ; it's full three mile." 

" Yes, it's a good ways," he answered reflectively ; " but p'raps 
you might think well of fetching Deb and all your belongin's 
over to my house. I feel sure," he added with more spirit since 
Mrs. Baldwin did not resent this " I feel sure we hev the same 
interest to heart, and two pews adjoinin', with each one in it, 
don't speak so well for a lovin' Christian spirit as if we sot 
together." 

S. M. H. G. 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 821 

THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 

VI. CHRIST STANDING IN THE SUN. (Conclusion^) 

I AM now to sum up these fragmentary, yet, as I hope, not 
random or unfruitful thoughts. And I end as I began. The 
universe of matter, of force, of life, and of spirit is one ; not be- 
cause all its elements are identical (for that I should strenuously 
deny), but because they conspire to the same purpose, belong to 
a great harmonious organism, and have been framed on the pat- 
tern of a consistent, however varied, Ideal. In like manner, the 
mind which contemplates reality is one. Many as are the types 
of intellectual genius, disparate as I grant the senses to be and 
the instruments which extend their power and grasp even to 
"the loftiest star of unascended Heaven," I maintain, with the 
voice of all science, that the laws of thought are and must be 
valid throughout the universe. And as science is the necessary 
and normal product of the human intellect, so is natural Reli- 
gion. The one cannot be true if the other is false. To the great- 
est of German philosophers, "the starry Heavens above, and the 
Moral Law within," w r ere equal certitudes. And rightly. For the 
mind which beheld in those constellations innumerable, law and 
order, rhythm and arrangement, self-balancing through countless 
ages, knew by as certain a method, though more secret, that, as 
Plato says, "this is the law of the gods in Heaven the worse 
to the worse, the better to the better, like to like, in life and in 
death, and in every state of being or of suffering."* The world is 
a unity ; the mind has its axioms which cannot be rejected, save at 
the cost of universal scepticism ; and man's nature and destiny, 
being subject to the reason which is in all things, are themselves 
to be interpreted according to reason. 

But, then, let us not be deluded by appearances. " They err," 
again remarks Plato, speaking of natural philosophers in his own 
day, " who know not that the soul is before the body, and before 
all other things, and the author and ruler of them all in their 
vicissitudes. And if the soul is prior to the body, then the 
things of the soul are prior to the things of the body. In other 
words, opinion, attention, mind, art, law, are prior to sensible 
qualities ; and the first and greater works of creation are the re- 

* Here and elsewhere I am quoting Plato's Laws, chiefly book x. 



822 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Sept., 

suits of art and mind." This ancient doctrine, as profound as it 
is satisfactory, derives every day fresh confirmation at the hands 
of inductive science. The " sensible qualities " of things we know 
to be a kind of perspective, not capricious indeed, yet changing 
with the angle of sense (if I may so call it) from which we view 
them. Every creature, great or^small, lives and moves in its own 
sensible world, unshared by another ; and, in strict science, no 
two ever saw the same band of the spectrum, or heard identi- 
cally the same sounds. The realities which make up to our 
senses the material universe, lie in themselves beyond our micro- 
scopes ; and we do not see them, but reason to their existence. 
If " atoms " be assumed as those realities, then it has been shown 
that in diameter they must extend less than one-millionth of a 
millimetre a dimension which no instrument of ours can grasp. 
Yet within this inconceivably narrow space, infusoria may perhaps 
exist with their limbs and organs entire. On the atomic theory, 
that which we call matter is an infinite number, combined in in- 
finite ways, of infinitesimal realities, far beyond the ken whether 
of senses or of microscopes. The visible is made of things invisi- 
ble, that change but never perish. And the solid which we im- 
agine ourselves to see is but an infinite network. 

What determines these vicissitudes without end ? Energy, sci- 
ence answers ; energy, which has neither size nor dimensions, which 
though everywhere present occupies no space, and which as gravi- 
tation is acting every moment in all parts of the universe, yet re- 
quires not the tiniest measured interval to make itself felt from 
shore to shore of the galaxies and the nebulas. And energy, like 
the atoms over which it rules, is indestructible. Still we ask, Does 
energy move itself? Can it change its own direction or suspend 
its activity? What power do we know of that controls energy? 
The .answer comes, we know of such a power, and it is Life or 
Will. The atoms and forces which make up all we see of a liv- 
ing organism are subject to a principle, as real as these are, 
yet neither an atom nor an energy but superior to both of them, 
and distinctly marked by its own characteristics. First, we per- 
ceive it in living protoplasm as the something which makes it 
move, which weaves the tissues and the organs, which transforms 
dead matter into living, 'and which rules the cycle of changes 
called life, returning into itself from seed to fruit, ab ovo ad ovum. 
Next, we are aware of it as self-conscious, as feeling, knowing, 
and choosing, never as an atom, but in ourselves as a Monad de- 
termining its own acts. And thus we learn that the essential 
principle in man is the spirit, while the body is a fleeting stream. 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 823 

The body, like all visible matter, is a mere network, a perspective 
calculated for the senses, an outward form or limit, within which 
the ceaseless rush of particles is hurried along. And even as 
atoms are indestructible, and energies never can fail, so is the 
spirit immortal. Compared with spirit, the body is a phantom, a 
thing woven literally of air, and sun, and carbonic acid gas, but 
having in itself neither stay, nor subsistence, nor coherence. To 
fancy that it is the prime or sole reality is to take the shadow 
for the substance from which it is cast. These things are known 
familiarly to the chemist, the physicist, and the physiologist. All 
three have clear and convincing evidence that the speck of living 
protoplasm did not make itself, and that something else which is 
not protoplasm, nor mere dynamic energy, and least of all dead 
inert matter, does make it live and move and be, while they are 
looking on at the present miracle. 

Take a step farther. The living protoplasm has a past behind 
it, a future in front of it a history and a destiny. On the huge 
rock-tablets of our planet that history may be read, though in 
broken and disjointed fragments. The earth has been part of a 
flaming cloud, then a sun, afterwards a chaos of solid and liquid, 
by and by reduced to a habitation fit for living things to dwell 
in. But life on its surface must be comparatively recent ; and 
consciousness dates from yesterday that is to say, from perhaps 
fifty or a hundred thousand years ago. Evolution, in the sense 
of " orderly succession," is a fact. There is progress, and there 
has always been adaptation. The universe which from one point 
of view is an immense system of energies acting through space, 
from another is a hierarchy of mental laws, and from a third the 
home of life and spirit. While in every stage we observe how 
organisms are fitted to their surroundings, when we turn over the 
leaves of the geological record, we cannot fail to perceive an up- 
ward growth. Viewing, therefore, merely that scene which induc- 
tive knowledge unrolls before us, we shall grant that the move- 
ment of things is from the unconscious to the living, from matter 
to personality, from the lowest to the highest. But we must never 
lose sight of the governing experience, namely, that before the 
visible comes the invisible, before the solid and tangible comes the 
infinitesimal ; and that energy determines all changes. Hence, if 
we pursue the history of protoplasm far enough, we -shall find 
ourselves carried across the boundary of sense ; and knowing that 
" mind and art came first," we shall affirm with confidence an 
Ever-Living by whose act the earthly life was brought into exist- 
ence. How do we know that mind came first ? Because, if it 



824 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Sept., 

did not, this particle of living matter would be adapted neither 
to its surroundings, nor to itself, and the vicissitudes it underwent 
being all at random, it could never result in the organism which 
we see, and which is destined to be the parent of other organ- 
isms in perpetual succession. All protoplasm, whether to-day or 
a million years back, must have., been set up in reason, ordered 
and guided to the issues of life, and kept from dissolving amid 
the cross-currents and unceasing storms of influence that rain down 
upon it from every side. As we cannot eliminate purpose and 
yet explain the individual organism, so must purpose be inces- 
santly at work in the production and development of the species 
to which our individual is assigned. The adaptation of certain 
membranes, liquids, and threads of nerve to the light, and of the 
light to them, will alone give us the satisfactory account we are 
seeking, of the origin of the eye. Repeat this argument, not ten 
thousand times, but ten million times ten thousand, and ask your- 
self what is its cumulative force, when in the single instance it 
is so convincing? Then you will begin to realize that life must 
come from life, and that behind and beneath the myriad exist- 
ences which fill even this tiny corner of space, there is a Life 
abiding and eternal. 

So much for the past. And what shall we predict of the 
future ? That progress .will continue ; that we stand on the 
threshold of eternity ; that the ascension of the spirit, having 
come thus far, cannot pause or be turned back ? Doubtless, it 
is a most warrantable induction. But will the person survive, 
and under what conditions ? Let me ask in turn, Why should 
he not ? Science does not forbid him. Nay more, science 
points out the manner in which' he may survive, and offers him 
a physical basis of immortality. It is science which declares 
that man is the son of his deeds ; that no past is ever anni- 
hilated ; and that the newest creature bears about in its very 
tissues the record and memorial of what it has been. Still more 
significant is the remarkable witness of facts that, as species 
move upwards, the individual becomes in a proportionate de- 
gree single and distinct. In the ascending stages of culture and 
civilization, memory tends to become more vivid, accurate, per- 
sistent, and introspective. High intelligence is lonely and self- 
centred. -Shakespeare, or- Goethe, or Newman, almost fulfils the 
profound and curious dictum of St. Thomas, that " every angel 
is a species." Whether we take the moral, the mystic, or the 
intellectual genius, our truest verdict in each case will be that 
he is unique like himself ; unlike every one else. He is a world 



1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 825 

of his own, and his biography tells us how inevitably he was 
marked off from the beginning to pursue his w r ay through the 
wilderness alone, yet in the company of an Ideal which drew 
him ever onwards, and which made him the strange and won- 
derful creation he at length became. Therefore, personality is 
the scope of evolution. 

If now, excluding Chance or Hazard, and putting mind first, 
science has decided that " the things of the soul are prior to the 
things of the body," it follows that in the spiritual nature of 
man we hold the clue to his destiny. The law of progressive 
adaptation must in every instance imply a certain want of har- 
mony between the capacities of a creature intended to live 
under different forms, and the surroundings in which at a given 
moment it may be found. But in man, the provisional charac- 
ter of his present being, the incompleteness of life, and the 
partial failure which attends ever upon his most notable suc- 
cess, are facts glaring enough to have originated Pessimism and 
to cry aloud for explanation. I see no possible reply to these 
difficulties, no answer which does not speedily drift into the 
wildest unreason, if we restrict man's existence to the cycle of 
time through which he is seen travelling. Clothe the human 
spirit with the idea of purpose, and immortality is the one 
reasonable conclusion. Deny him an. Hereafter, and you make 
of his faculties, achievements, and aspirations a horrible tragedy 
without meaning or denouement. Why does he exist? His 
conscience affirms that there is a Law of Righteousness under 
which he was born, and which corresponds in the spiritual world 
to the law of gravitation ruling over the physical, even as the 
law of contradiction rules over logic and the realm of thought. 
There is an objective Moral Order, revealed to us with unerring 
certitude, " the Moral Law within," as clear to the mind's ap- 
prehension as the sky, and its thousands of starry worlds to the 
outward vision. At this point it signifies little whether men 
say they have discovered the law of virtue by calculations of 
utility, or, as I maintain, by direct insight apart from all reckon- 
ing. Grant me the law which affirms justice, and I will prove 
that it looks forward to judgment. " The good soul, which has 
intercourse with the Divine Nature, passes into a holier and 
better place. The evil soul, in like manner, as she grows worse, 
changes her place for the worse. Thou art not so little that 
thou canst creep into the earth, or so high that thou canst 
mount to Heaven ; but either here, or in the world below, or in 
some yet more savage place, thou shalt pay the penalty." Thus 
VOL. LIII. 53 



826 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Sept., 

Plato once again records the inductions of conscience, adding, 
" This is likewise the explanation of the prosperity of the 
wicked, in whose actions thou seemedst as in a looking-glass 
to behold the neglect of the gods, not knowing how they make 
all things work together and contribute to the great whole." 

" Their relation to the great ^whole." Consider this pregnant 
sentence and meditate upon it. The whole, I have said, is not 
only matter, but is sense, life, and spirit. Can \ve divine its 
scope ? In particular, and as it were by sketching some definite 
plan which it is carrying on to fulfilment, I, for my part, would 
not venture ; such an enterprise is too high for me. But while I 
refrain from impotent guessing, I can never doubt that the pur- 
pose of the whole is some true and lofty ideal of perfection, is 
Righteousness established everlastingly, conscious Being crowned 
with happiness, and a certain magnificent participation of the 
creature in its Creator's bliss. The Final Cause and the Effi- 
cient are one ; and manifestly it is goodness, beauty, and joy 
which have been poured abroad throughout the universe for their 
own sake ; while in no single instance can we discover that Nature 
delights in the mere infliction of pain. Death itself, I have re- 
marked, is not an end but an instrument. Suffering is the con- 
dition of the noblest virtue. And free-will alone can hurt itself. 
In laying down these truths I do not overlook my engagement 
to proceed by induction and appeal to experience. I say these 
things are known to our most intimate and assured experience. 
The incompleteness of the present life is a fact, and progress a 
real principle, and justice the law of the nature of things. From 
all which I conclude that man is an immortal being, destined to 
live hereafter according to the choice he has deliberately made. 
He creates by free-will the light or darkness in which he is to 
abide for ever. 

Here, then, at last, we have united into a system the elements 
which go to make up Natural Religion. For it cannot exist at 
all without such a distinction between its object and its subject 
as shall justify the "transcendent Admiration," the fear and awe, 
which we call worship. Neither is it moral, if justice be absent 
from it ; or holy, unless it cleanse the heart and demand inward 
purity in all who revere its precepts ; or true, if it deny any facts, 
from those of astronomy to the incidents of yesterday's chronicle. 
Its purpose must be union with the supreme All Holy and All 
Righteous; and its end life everlasting. The final outcome is 
personal, self-conscious existence in an ordered world, of which 
the ground and mainstay shall be that enduring Reality which at 






1891.] THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. 827 

the same time is ever an entrancing and attractive Ideal. For in 
no other way can stability be combined with progress, or eternity 
with happiness, or the beginnings of things with their successful 
and triumphant issue in a nobler world. Faith, hope, and charity 
are, therefore, natural virtues. I mean faith in the unseen, hope 
in immortality, and love of the beauty of Holiness. For the con- 
scious union of creature and Creator is love; and this is the true 
meaning of detachment, when the phenomenal and the transitory 
are surrendered for the sake of the eternal ; and when we care 
not for self apart from its perfection, but only for that which 
makes self perfect. This, too, is what some have aimed at in 
their unsubstantial dream of Nirvana ; for perhaps they looked 
to the Divine as that in which they should live somehow, even 
though absorbed and, as it were, annihilated. But science points 
rather to a heightened personality and knows nothing of the 
Nirvana in which substance is swallowed up. Progress means 
more life, not dissolution of the whole into homogeneous parts. 
The movement of things is not a curve returning upon itself, like 
a " serpent of eternity." We must think of it as an ascending 
spiral, in which the present, while it exceeds, does yet contain as 
it exalts the past. 

And so I find myself "alone with the Alone." As I began 
by looking out of my own mind and in its light considering the 
material universe spread before me, so I end by returning into 
the deeps of the spirit and beholding there some reflection of 
the First and Final Cause. At every step I have employed, 
more truly than I have trusted, my intellect. Have I taken any- 
thing else for granted? Does it appear that I have broken with 
the method prescribed to me by induction ? Or that science for- 
bids me to attempt an explanation of man and the world as 
products of an Eternal Mind, rooted and founded in an Ever- 
present Life which bears them up and bears them onward? Or 
is the Ideal of Righteousness shown to be an idle fancy because 
what is best for the whole involves pain and imperfection in 
various of the parts? Can it be denied, again, that unless we 
accept this surely most high and winning philosophy, we are cast 
upon the rocks of Nescience, and our moral being as well as our 
intellectual must make shipwreck there? And is the burden so 
intolerable to a scientific mind, of applying to the whole that 
sane and clear hypothesis which it is ever using to detect the re- 
lation of part with part and order with order? The actual choice, 
we have seen, is Mind or no Mind. A middle term between 
these cannot be imagined, and does not exist. It would be 



828 THE WITNESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION. [Sept., 

held an overwhelming argument for any view that it stands or 
falls with the laws of thought. I have shown, it appears to me, 
that Natural Religion is a chapter, and that the most convincing, 
of inductive science. To the sceptic who denies all certain 
knowledge, science and religion may well seem to be audacious 
affirmations of that which lie^ beyond our ken. But to the 
men of inductive research I say, that if they wish me to believe 
in their science, it is only fair and logical that they should be- 
lieve in my religion. For both are established by the like men- 
tal process ; and he who denies the one should by parity of 
argument reject the other. " Either, then, he shall teach us 
that we were wrong in saying that the soul is the original of 
all things," and banish from the world mathematical order and 
scientific harmony, or, " if he is not able to say anything better, 
then he must yield to us, and live for the remainder of his life 
in the conviction that there is a God." 

Yes, and a just and provident God. Since nothing is plainer 
than that the universe is one ; and all its powers and elements 
conspire to the same end ; and that which is seemingly the least 
turns out to be the most real ; and every slightest movement of 
an eyelid reverberates to the ever-widening horizons of time and 
space. The reign of law cannot be imagined, nor those " exact 
calculations," according to which the Heavens move and all their 
host, be at all comprehended, unless we grant that the Mind 
which is in every particular pervades the whole. And thus, while 
the multitude are apt to think that "those who handle these 
matters by the help of astronomy and the accompanying acts of 
demonstration may become godless, because they see things hap- 
pening by necessity, and not by an intelligent will bent on the 
accomplishment of good," we shall maintain that just the oppo- 
site is the conclusion to be drawn. For mind or spirit is the 
most ancient of realities, and governs all . by its own laws, and 
stamps the universe as with a seal of perfection. And the high- 
est law, which can never be repealed, but is steadfast and 
triumphant whatever betide, is the rule of Righteousness. For 
the inductions of psychology are there to persuade us that, " even 
if a man have health and wealth, and a sovereignty which lasts, 
and is mighty in strength and courage, and has besides the gift 
of immortality, and none of the so-called evils which counterpoise 
these goods, but only the injustice and' insolence of his own 
nature," such a one is miserable rather than happy. Shall we 
not agree with the divine philosopher whom I am quoting when 
he. goes on to say, that to be rich in the goods of fortune but 






1891.] THE WITXESS OF SCIENCE TO RELIGION, 829 

to live without justice and virtue, " is the greatest of evils if life 
be immortal ; but not so great if the bad man lives a very short 
time"? Recompense to an evil soul is by the nature of the case 
retribution ; and so Juvenal : 

" Evertere domus tolas optantibus ipsis 

Di faciles; nocitura toga, nocitura petuntur 

Militia." 

But I am passing, you will say, from science to history. 
There is no real break, I answer. History, too, is a record of 
facts to be interpreted by the axioms of reason and conscience. 
While as an individual I am, and must for ever be, alone, living 
and dying to myself, yet as sharing in the common intellect of 
the species and having a like origin and destiny, I move with a 
great multitude. My religion has been taught me from without 
no less than from within. Does the witness of history agree with 
that of science ? Look up, I say, at the glorious sun of Reason 
shedding its light on the worlds beyond worlds of intellectual 
natures ; and see who stands therein, radiant with heavenly sheen, 
yet like unto the Son of Man. The mightiest and most beautiful 
of all inductions, is that which has been founded on Jhe life and 
the person of Christ. He is at once the measure of the uni- 
verse, arid the ideal, the incarnate Humanity, the rays and glories 
of which in other men are scattered and obscure. In Him all reli- 
gious ideas meet and are crowned. God, Conscience, Immortality ; 
the Resurrection of the flesh ; the taking of Humanity unto the 
Godhead ; the triumph of goodness by suffering, and of love by 
self-sacrifice surely, " the demonstration of all this would be the 
best and noblest preamble of all our laws." But unless Jesus of 
Nazareth lived in vain, and His existence was a mockery, and 
His death the highest achievement of atheism and scepticism 
a scandal which declares that there is no law of justice in things, 
and that the world is a moral chaos He has given us the 
demonstration we were seeking. Science, however, content to 
have led us along the steep until we have attained this fair pros- 
pect, and begin to fasten our gaze upon the revelation of God 
in facie Christi Jcsu, now draws modestly behind, and like Virgil 
when Dante needed his guidance no longer, abandons its disciple 
to better and holier hands : 

" Io vidi gia nel cominciar del giorno 
La parte oriental tutta rosata, 
E 1'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno ; 
E la faccia del Sol nascere ombrata, 
Si che, per temperanza di vapori, 
L'occhio lo sostenea lunga fiata."* 
* Purgatorio, xxx. 22-28. 



830 TEKAKWITHA. [Sept., 

The Incarnation is the centre of man's history, and the pledge 
of his future. It transfigures science. But science in disclosing 
the eternal laws, has shown us how all things are governed by 
"an intelligent will bent on the accomplishment of good." The 
sun of Reason is at once the shrine and the tabernacle of that 
true Christianity in which old and new receive their fulfilment, 
and the Divine Light is tempered to human eyes. 

WILLIAM BARRY. 



TEKAKWITHA. 

OUR readers will hail a new biography now lying on the 
table before us. It is entitled The Life and Times of Kateri 
Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks, 1656-1680, by Ellen H. 
Walworth, author of An Old World as seen through Young Eyes. 
For the production of* this work in print we are indebted to 
the press of Peter Paul & Brother, of Buffalo, an enterprising, 
growing, and pushing firm of publishers. 

We are led to review this book from an early and some- 
what intimate acquaintance with the author and her surround- 
ings, and not a little from a sympathetic interest in Indian 
archaeology, and still more particularly in this Mohawk Lily and 
that beautiful valley where her beautiful life first took root. 
We know the valley well. Many of the localities so vividly 
emphasized in this book are to be counted among the sweet- 
est haunts of our boyhood. We thank the fair author for bring- 
ing them back to us, and for giving us such strong reasons to 
love them better than ever. 

Our first acquaintance with the name and life of Tekakwitha 
dates back as far as 1853 or -1854. In an interview with John 
Gilmary Shea, the historian, then a young man and growing into 
fame, he spoke of this rare Indian maiden in terms so glowing 
that we have never lost sight of her since. He spoke of her as 
a saint who ought to be canonized, and whose canonization was 
even then looked forward to as a probability by many prelates 
both in Canada and in the United States. To our eyes ever 
since she presides over the M'ohawk Valley like a guardian spirit, 
whose prayers at the throne of grace are a perpetual benediction 
to it and to our country. We were impatient to know the exact 
spot where in it her life originated, and where her home was be- 



1891.] TEKA K WITH A . 831 

fore she fled from her wrathful uncle and revengeful tribesmen 
to the new Mohawk mission founded by the Jesuits on the 
southern shore of the Saint Lawrence. We asked Mr. Shea, as 
the man who should know if any one knew. He could not tell 
us. It was somewhere, he thought, on the heights that circle 
Fonda, in Montgomery County; precisely where, no^one could 
tell. It was doubtful if any one would ever know. We consult- 
ed Dr. O'Callaghan with no better results. 

In fine, although memories of Indian wars and trade with In- 
dians, in Tekakwitha's life, hovered over the valley, there was for 
these no special foothold to which we could direct our attention 

and say : 

" It is the spot, I know it well, 
Of which our old traditions tell." 

Battles were fought along the line of this valley of intense 
interest to the American historian and archaeologist, to which 
names were attached and the results known, but these had no 
local habitation. Catholic missionaries had trodden through the 
valley with bleeding feet. Some of these had left mutilated rin- 
gers along its trails, and sometimes their scalps had been hung 
up to dry in the Indian lodges ; but just where, no one could 
tell. Tekakwitha herself, sweet Indian saint, had taken part in 
many tragic scenes. Indian castles had been burnt to the ground 
before her eyes. Mohawk warriors had contended with Mohe- 
gans, Delawares, Andastes, Eries, and other warlike tribes, and 
her hands had supplied lead for the defence of her home and 
water to quench burning palisades. But just where all this hap- 
pened no one knew. In fact, until lately few cared to know. 
Now, however, a great interest has gathered about these matters, 
and many are eagerly asking for information. 

Miss Ellen Walworth steps in opportunely with hands full of 
gathered treasures. It has cost her much time and great labor 
to gather up these things. The preface to her book shows what 
research has been employed, what manuscripts have been de- 
ciphered and transcribed, what libraries have been ransacked, 
what clues have been sought for in conversations with eminent 
historians to furnish her with materials. But this has been only 
a small part of her task. A perusal of the very first chapter of 
her book reveals an intimate acquaintance with Indian habits, 
costumes, industries, tools and weapons, rites and customs, traits, 
of Indian character. These things are not easily acquired or in 
any short time, but they are described by her with an easy 
familiarity. 



832 TEKAKWITHA. [Sept., 

Another thing quite delightful in the book is, that the author 
knows perfectly well the localities which she describes. She has 
been there. She has climbed the hills, forded the brooks, fol- 
lowed the trails. She has gathered trophies from the fields 
where once old wigwams clustered. She has inspected the ash- 
heaps blackening the soil whe/e once old lodge-fires blazed. 
She has visited the corn-fields and counted the corn-pits. She 
has picked up beads, mussel-shells, bones of the wild deer, teeth 
of the bear, thrown aside after Indian festivals ; and she has 
stood where the bones of Indian warriors lay before her, just 
disinterred from their resting places. She has sketched the 
sites of Iroquois castles and villages with an enthusiastic and 
busy pencil ; and when she describes them she gives a life and 
color to the scenery which we could get from no stranger. 

In fine, the "young eyes" which in 1873 looked eagerly 
upon the "Old World," and came home to report to us what 
they saw, are now telling us of old things which they have 
found in this our New World, and which the most of us have 
never seen. What was only prehistoric myth in the hands of 
Schoolcraft, Longfellow, Hoffman, and others is now acquired 
history. Hiawatha is no longer a beautiful dream of a supposed 
Indian bard who, 

"In the Vale of Tawasentha, 

In the green and pleasant valley, 

Sang the song of Hiawatha." 

He is no- longer the great-grandson of the Moon and the son 
of the great West-wind, Mudjekeewis, who pelted his unnatural 
father with vast fragments of rock torn from the cliffs of the 
Rocky Mountains ; he is now simply an historical personage, an 
Onondaga chief, whose epoch is familiar to us and whose dwell- 
ing place we know. He lived on the shores of Cross Lake, an 
expansion of the Seneca River. Minnehaha is no longer a child 
of the Mississippi valley. She was a genuine New-Yorker, and 
her merriest and loudest laughter broke forth when the great 
chief sa--v her leap the rapids of the Oswego River, smiling back 
on him as she glided into Lake Ontario. 

The daughter of Hiawatha was not slain by a marvellous bird 
of prodigious size swooping down upon her on the bank of 
Onondaga Lake, as the legend reads in Clark's "Onondaga," but 
.she was cruelly trampled to death by connivance of another 
fierce eagle, Atotarho, the great sachem and war-chief of the 
Onondagas, who drove their grief-stricken father into exile 
among the Mohawks. Thanks to the researches of Dr. Horatio 



1891.] TEKAKWITHA. 833 

Hale, we know much of the lives of these great chiefs, the prin- 
cipal founders of the Long House, or celebrated League of the 
Six Nations. Miss Walworth introduces us to much of this 
myth-land now turned into history, all in truth that is necessary 
to understand and illustrate the life and times of the Lily of 
the Mohawks, and those who neglect the intellectual feast which 
she offers us in this volume will miss a rare treat. 

The life of Tekakwitha is concurrent with the heroic mis- 
sionary work done in the Mohawk Valley by a succession of 
martyrs and confessors of the Jesuit order. Much of all this is 
introduced in Miss Walworth's narrative. In this same narrative 
are also introduced many other matters of great import. New 
England savages, resisting the entreaties of their missionary, 
Eliot, come rushing into the valley, threatening its inhabitants 
and the work of the blackrobes with ruin. In the midst of all 
this life of missionary labor, of long and persevering privation 
and suffering, frequently crowned with martyrdom ; the marching 
of disciplined soldiery and the light footsteps of Indian braves 
on the warpath ; the smoke of burning villages ; relieved now 
and then by peaceful times devoted to hunting and fishing, still 
almost always a life of wandering, glided the form of Tekak- 
witha. She was a contemplative spirit, shunning society and 
loving the deep silence of the forest, yet destined to become 
more famous and more widely known, both in the United States 
and in Canada, than any of the generals or great sachems who 
once challenged the attention of this western world. In this 
book she comes to the front with all the romance which the 
wild woods can give her, with all that lustre of holiness which 
heroic Christian virtues shed around her a true child of the 
forest, with a spirit as pure and beautiful as any angel of the 
cloister. 

Old Albany knew her footsteps. She came with her tribe to 
the fishing village, at the mouth of the Norman's Kill. Many 
burials took place at this spot. The Kenwood Convent now 
stands built above Indian graves. Her uncle, a warlike chief of 
the Turtles, was also a trader, bringing furs to the Dutch of 
Beaverwyck, and sometimes sitting with them in council as early 
as when Pieter Schuyler, the first mayor, was a boy. Passing 
back again to her forest home, her canoe glided under the 
stockades of Corlaer, now Schenectady. On her flight northward 
from that angry uncle she climbed the heights at Amsterdam, 

now a 

" clattering" factory town 
Where the choked Choctanunda plunges down." 



834 TEKAKWITHA. [Sept., 

This escape of the saintly maiden from the rapids on the Mo- 
hawk to the grander rapids on the St. Lawrence, above Mon- 
treal, took place in the autumn of the year 1677. It introduces 
us to a new epoch in her life. She is no longer a convert 
struggling to maintain her faith in a community of heathen 
savages, but where all around her are striving for Christian per- 
fection she is a leading spirit, marching far before the rest, and 
leading a life which the most zealous of her companions regard 
as marvellous. Here the Lily of the Mohawks wins her new 
title, "the Genevieve of New France." She stands on ground 
destined to take its name from her. It is called the " Cote St. 
Catherine." 

Thus far we have spoken chiefly of the subject of this biog- 
raphy, and such surroundings as are necessary to characterize 
and illustrate it. What these are Miss Walworth has taught us 
herself to understand and appreciate. It would be a sad over- 
sight if we should leave unnoticed the thoughtful method and 
admirable- art with which she has fulfilled her task. She has 
never for a moment forgotten that the life of Tekakwitha, when 
presented with the severest trufh and most scrupulous accuracy, 
is always by sheer necessity a romance in real life. This calls 
for a certain freedom from such conventional rules as would re- 
duce a beautiful history to an elaborated skeleton. During the 
first part of her life, whether heathen or Christian, Kateri is 
made to stand before us a true child of the forest, with her In- 
dian leggings and moccasins on, with the leathern skirt and 
tunic, her dark eyes gleaming from under the usual blanket of 
an Indian squaw. When standing better revealed in the Chris- 
tian sunlight of the mission village of the Sault, surrounded by 
all the practices of Catholic devotion and trained to perfection 
by the best of spiritual guides, her thoughtful biographer is still 
careful to give us the picture of a living and breathing woman, 
and not a saint analyzed into a corpse. We are not obliged to 
read through one chapter on her humility, another on her obe- 
dience, followed by others on faith, hope, charity, and then, last 
and longest of all, a catalogue of miracles, all wonderful to re- 
late, but without a moral. All through, bur Indian virgin has 
breath in her body and life in her soul. Moreover, we are glad 
to notice that the style of the author is also varied with equal 
good judgment. It is not modelled after Caesar's Commentaries, 
always historical with perfect angularity, nor always dancing off 
to gyrate among the clouds and flowers and birds and breezes. 
She does not stop to moralize at given stations. In fine, she is 



1891.] TEKAKWITHA. 835 

about as free from mannerism as can be expected from any au- 
thor. All this enables us conscientiously to recommend this book 
as a most readable composition, well studied and truthful, and 
yet full of life, blood, and color. 

All Catholics in Canada and the United States who have be- 
come interested in this fair flower of the American forest sym- 
pathize with their bishops in solemn council, and with her red 
brethren, who have so earnestly petitioned the Holy Father to 
put the church's seal upon the sanctity of their " Little Sister." 
When the business of her canonization is seriously taken up at 
Rome, that will be the time to catalogue her virtues according 
to the formal methods of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. The 
American public will be glad to look upon that life as it was 
really lived a beautiful whole, a lily with all its life and color 
well blended. So a loving hand has given it to us in the pres- 
ent volume. 

We could very willingly indulge in a much longer and more 
elaborate review of this timely book, but limits of space have 
been assigned to us and we must hasten to a close. 

Near the eastern bank of the little Portage Creek, on the 
southern side of the St. Lawrence, and overlooking the rocks and 
floods of the great Sault St. Louis near Montreal, stands a tall 
wooden cross which can be seen from afar and from many di- 
rections. It marks the grave of Tekakwitha, a spot where she 
loved to pray when living, and where her body was buried. 
Very recently a solid granite monument, in form of a sarcopha- 
gus, has also been placed there by loving hands to her memory. 
An inscription on its upper surface, in the Iroquois language, 
bears this testimony to the beauty of her character : 

ONKWE ONWE-KE KATSITSIIO TEIOTSITSIANEKARON. 

That is: " She is the Fairest Flower of the Red Race." A 
more valuable and a more lasting monument than this, however, 
is the book itself. The granite could only cover a few feet of 
ground where her precious body was laid to rest, but the book 
itself preserves to us the memory of her beautiful soul, her grand 
and noble fortitude, and the sanctity and sweetness which made 
her life so lovely. 

We close this remarkable volume and lay it down with a 
sigh, and have only these last words to utter, which we do with 
all our heart : " She is the Fairest Flower of the Red Race'' 



836 TEKAKWITHA. [Sept., 

NOTE TO THE FOREGOING ARTICLE. 

Bishop Kip, of the Protestant Episcopal diocese of California, in his Early 
Jesuit Missions has reproduced in print a letter from Cholenec, missionary in 
Canada, to his superiors, containing a condensed account of the life of his spirit- 
ual pupil, Kateri Tekakwitha. Kip does not fail to praise, in the preface to this 
book, the zeal and self-sacrifice of the missionaries to whose labors Christianity 
owes this star of virtue and so many tither converts from the American wilder- 
ness. It would have been well if he could have ended this generous tribute in a 
more generous way. Human respect, however, stepped in, as it often does, and 
he blotted a truthful page in deference to the prejudices of kinsfolk in religion less 
generous. He says in his preface : 

" There is one thought, however, which has constantly occurred to us in the 
preparation of these letters, and which we cannot but suggest. Look over the 
world and read the history of the Jesuit missions. After one or two generations 
they have always come to naught. There is not a recorded instance of their per- 
manency, or their spreading each generation wider and deeper, like our own mis- 
sions in'lndia. Thus it has been in China, Japan, South America, and our own 
land. For centuries the Jesuit foreign missionaries have been like those ' beating 
the air.' And yet greater devotion to the cause than theirs has never been seen 
since the apostles' days. Why, then, was this result ? If ' the blood of the mar- 
tyrs be the seed of the church,' why is this the only instance in which it has not 
proved so ? Must there not have been something wrong in the whole system, 
some grievous errors mingled with their teaching, which thus denied them a 
measure of success proportioned to their efforts ? " 

How contrary to actual fact comes in this treacherous after-stab in the side is 
simply marvellous. Caughnawaga on the St. Lawrence, the very mission of 
Mohawk converts to which Tekakwitha fled from the older Caughnawaga in the 
Mohawk valley, contains thirteen hundred Catholic Indians whose faith is an in- 
heritance of two centuries and a quarter, the lasting fruit of the early Jesuit mis- 
sionaries and martyrs commemorated by Bishop Kip. The same may be said of 
the mission at Regis, the majority of Indians there being Catholics, with a Catho- 
lic church and priest. The like is true of the Sulpitian mission at Oka, Lake of 
the Two Mountains. 

It was long before the fruits of the missions among the Iroquois were made to 
disappear from the United States. Two centuries of political intrigue and perse- 
cution and violation of treaties, during the greater part of which it was death by 
law in New York even for white men to be Catholics, have failed to obliterate the 
work of the missions. 

During a Redemptorist mission at Wilmington, Del., Father Alexander 
Czwitkowitz carried the sacraments to a very old and bed-ridden Indian, who had 
fought on the Brandywine under La Fayette. He was an Onondaga and the son 
of a chief. ' About ten years ago an old squaw, said to be 104 years old, died in the 
Catholic faith on the reservation near Syracuse. She, too, was a relic from the old 
Jesuit missions so far as we know, the last one left. The writer of this article 
saw her in her own house, and conversed with her through an interpreter. 

In no sense of the word have the missions in China, Japan, and South America 
been failures. In spite of the unparalleled persecutions of anti-Christian and un- 
Christian governments, the converted tribes of South America never relapsed into 
paganism. They are Catholic to-day. When, after centuries of exclusion, Euro- 
peans were permitted to enter China and Japan, thousands of Catholics were found 
in the former, and in the latter country to the number of 25,000. So far from the 
fruits of the Catholic missions having perished, they appear to be imperishable, 
and the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the church in these lands. 



1.891.] THE MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. 837 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ON THE 
MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.* 

IN a series of articles, entitled " New Chapters in the War- 
fare of Science," The Popular Science Monthly entertains us 
with a chapter or two on Miracles and Medicine. The scope 
of these studies is to present new difficulties against religion 
and Christianity, from the side of those who put their faith 
in Evolution. Miracles, which indicate the interposition of a 
supernatural and divine will in the affairs of this world, happen 
to find no adequate expression in prevalerit scientific formulas. 
Quite otherwise. Indeed, on barely touching them, Science be- 
holds them dissolving into the thin air of legend, and of a 
credulity somewhat pious and somewhat pardonable up to this. 

Among the other estimable parts of the disquisition which 
Dr. A. D. White expends on the miracles of < St. Francis 
Xavier, the very choicest element, as I take it, is that little 
phrase in which he seems to promise " a more extended dis- 
cussion of this subject hereafter." There is some reason to 
believe, and I trust it is so, that this gentle phrase covers a 
more coarsely sounding idea, to wit, that he has not as yet 
studied the subject at all. His tentative article, therefore, is 
naturally inferior to the future extended discussion which he 
promises ; and the few blemishes which mar the present pro- 
duction need not be supposed to attach either to the integrity 
of his purpose or the solidity of his prospective erudition. 

This part of his general discussion on the Warfare of 
Science is^ of a kind which, for the present stage of science 
manifested in it, would dispense an inquirer from consulting any 
other part. The same possibly might* be said whatever chapter 
it was that an inquirer first lighted on ; he would prefer to 
encounter such erudition at a later stage of evolution, when, as 
the writer gently says, " the future extended discussion of the 
subject hereafter " will be in order. For, in the chapter before 
us, his set purpose being to explain away, by a theory of 
legendary evolution, the recorded miracles of St. Francis Xavier, 
he seems to omit everything which, on the face of it, is too 
difficult to explain away ; and on the residue he exercises some 

* The Popular Science Monthly, May, 1891. " New Chapters in the Warfare of Science." 
Part I. By Andrew D. White, LL.D., L.H.D., ex-President of Cornell University. 



838 , THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ON- [Sept., 

ingenuity. The logical instinct at bottom, however little of it 
appears on the surface, is very correct. Every miracle in the 
history of the church has to go. If one remains, it were use- 
less to deny the rest. For one proves as much as a thousand. 
Selecting the history of St. Francis Xavier, whereby all the 
rest shall stand or fall, the waiter contends that the miracles 
recorded of him are a legendary growth ; that, from the small 
beginnings of certain trivial facts, the story of his miracles grew 
with time. To show this he makes selections of his own, which 
he presents in a way of his own. He quotes books which he 
has not read ; for otherwise he could scarcely quote them for 
what they do not contain, nor omit to see what they do con- 
tain. Not only does he cite some books which do exist for 
what is not in them, but he quotes an author and book that 
never existed for what he seems to have read therein. As 
there is a world of testimony regarding the deeds and life of 
St. Francis Xavier, he ventures just once, in the course of his 
article, to take a look askance at the evidence in a juridical 
process ; but, with a scientific instinct, he discharges against it the 
argument of his imagination, and then withdraws promptly into 
the legendary mist. " We can well imagine," he says, with some 
complacency in the conclusiveness of his logic, " what treasures 
of grace an obsequious viceroy, only too anxious to please a de- 
vout king, could bring together by means of the hearsay of 
ignorant, compliant natives through all the little towns of Por- 
tuguese India ! " This is the way that evolution addresses itself 
to facts. We, for our part, need not imagine what the issue is 
likely to be. We have it before us. To discredit anything 
which stands in his way, it is enough for the writer to throw 
out in a note some invidious suggestion, and then refer in 
general to some writer or other whom he does not expect to 
see consulted, for his reference is not distinct. Once, indeed, he 
condescends to apply a Strictly logical criterion for testing the 
authenticity of historical accounts. However, he does so only 
when he has omitted this very criterion at an earlier place, 
where it would have been of use but against him, and he brings 
it forward at a later juncture, where it is of no use whatever, 
but does him no harm, while it lends an air of erudition. Not 
to weary the reader with more generalities, before descending to 
particulars, I will mention in the last place that, as to the mira- 
cles of St. Francis Xavier, he rests the arguments for their histori- 
cal authenticity on such assumptions as show that he cannot 
be assumed to understand either the facts or the law of the case. 



1891.] THE MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. 839 

Let us distinguish two elements in this characteristic piece of 
periodical erudition. One is the manner in which a scientific 
evolutionist goes about demolishing facts. The other -is the 
matter, or the particular edifice, which, on this occasion, he has 
set himself to pull down. I shall first consider the manner of 
this evolutionist philosopher. 

The life of St. Francis Xavier was a public one of the most 
singularly brilliant order, sufficiently honored, in this respect, by 
the marked attention which it has always commanded in the 
non-Catholic world, and non-Catholic literature. In the course 
of his ten years of Eastern ministry he dealt personally with 
millions of people, speaking a variety of tongues, in all the 
countries of Hindustan, Cochin China, Japan. During those 
same years, while he was riveting the eyes of all the East upon 
himself and his movements, Europe too was looking on, and 
was receiving accounts, through public and private sources, of 
the many wonders which he was performing in the sight of the 
nations. Maffei, who addresses Philip II. of Spain in 1588, and 
dedicates to his majesty the History of the East, finished up to 
date from the time of the first Portuguese discovery by sea, 
stops, in the course of his general relation, some three times to 
follow St. Francis Xavier alone, as if the saint summed up in 
himself a part of the general history. Having given forty-eight 
pages in all to the progress of Xavier, and coming to the 
saint's funeral at Goa, the historian apologizes for not saying 
more. " Others," says Maffei, " recounted his infallible predic- 
tions and miracles many more, indeed, than we have touched 
upon, hurrying on, as we have done, to fulfil another purpose."* 

While Xavier's own gift as a letter-writer made him com- 
municate without stint the varied information which he gathered 
concerning the field for religion, and the progress of the faith in 
those new parts, a marked contrast was visible between his 
letters, as far as they concerned himself or his works, and the 
other letters which were transmitted at the same time from the 
religious and official world in the East, as well as from members 
of the Society of Jesus. Orlandini, who was a contemporary of 
the saint, but of a younger generation, notes the contrast 
thus : "He writes about his own affairs sparingly and dryly, 
while at the same time very much is written about him, pro- 
fusely and copiously, both by people in the world and by 
members of the order. "f Particularly at the European universi- 
ties did St. Francis intend to stimulate the activity of apostolic 

* Lib. xv. p. 668, Edit. Cadoni, 1614. f Histories Soc. Jes., lib. viii. n. 129. 



840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ON [Sept., 

zeal ; hence the fulness of his accounts, but not about himself. 
With all his zeal, it cost him little to practise Christian humility. 
Nor does it enter into the idea of sanctity, as conceived by the 
Catholic Church, that a man should extol and advertise himself. 
So prominent, nevertheless, was the miraculous side of Fran- 
cis Xavier's ministry, that during the first thirty-five years after 
his death, the more ordinary persona.1 effects of his life were left 
in the background, and the supernatural wonder-worker was the 
figure before the world. A desire became pronounced to know 
more and more about the intimate workings of his personal 
sanctity. A life was called for which should bring them out 
into greater prominence. This was the reason why Tursellini 
wrote. He says in his preface : " I saw, indeed, that the chief 
events in Xavier's life were inserted with magnificence enough 
in the histories of others ; but I could not help taking it amiss 
that, during more than thirty-five years, not one had undertaken 
to consign to a volume of its own a life adorned with all kinds 

o 

of virtues." Then, modestly undertaking the work himself, at 
the instance of others, Tursellini goes on to affirm "that of the 
literary records which are extant, and which have come to my 
hands, I will select only such facts as have been ascertained on 
certain authority, to wit, from people who have either seen 
themselves what they report, or have received it from those who 
did see." 

With this object, therefore, of showing Francis Xavier him- 
self, and not of recording his miraculous exploits, Tursellini 
writes the life. Yet he cannot omit a fair account of the mira- 
cles. To the well-informed writer in The Popular Science Monthly 
these miracles, as recorded in Tursellini, appear "few and small." 
For once he is right ; but in a sense quite different from what 
he intends. "Few and small" as they are, I will just count 
them up; and, being "few and small," they give us an inkling 
of the world of miraculous exploits which Tursellini does not 
touch, but only classifies here and there in general summaries. 

From book i., chapter x., in which the biographer tells of 
Xavier's arrival in Lisbon, to chapter iii., book vi., Tursellini re- 
cords fifty-one distinct miracles and prophecies, besides summar- 
ies of others, all before Xavier's death. Then, in the following 
chapter, he recounts nine distinct prodigies, besides summaries of 
others, all after death. Among the prodigies distinctly recorded 
by Tursellini are most of those subsequently chosen by the 
court in Rome for juridical examination, on which to base the 

* De Vita Francisci Xaverii, lib. i. praefatio. 



1891.] THE MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. 841 

process of canonization. He describes the raising of four persons 
from the dead ; the loss of the skiff in the storm and its mirac- 
ulous recovery, with that most supernatural wonder of "biloca- 
tion " when Francis was in two places at the same time, both in 
the lost skiff, during the three days of its tossing about at the 
mercy of the storm, and in the ship, among the remaining pas- 
sengers; the famous intimidation of the Badages, by throwing 
himself into the thick of the fight; the curing of a leper; "very 
many sick persons cured, many energumens delivered from evil 
spirits." At the funeral of the saint, about a year after his 
death, Tursellini goes on to recount that 

" Francis was extolled to the skies, and his extraordinary deeds 
were recounted, his prophecies, his miracles, by those who either 
had seen and been witnesses of them, or had received the ac- 
counts from competent witnesses ; all India, as with one voice, 
celebrating the sanctity of Xavier. And now new miracles were 
added to the old. Very many of those who had flocked to the 
spectacle (of his body miraculously preserved before their eyes at 
Goa, whereas he had died nearly a year before off the coast of 
China) affirmed under oath that certain persons came thither, some 
maimed in limb or decrepit, others suffering from various diseases ; 
and that, by merely touching St. Francis Xavier's body, they had 
gone away sound and well." 

All this is from Tursellini, the great authority with the 
writer in The Popular Science Monthly because the miracles 
recorded in Tursellini are "few and small," and therefore he is 
authorized to contradict all later accounts. Perhaps the erudite 
doctor can still reply that personally he does not believe even 
Tursellini and . the sworn witnesses. This will be quite consis- 
tent with the rest of his demonstration, and with the original 
assumption underlying all, which is that we are on no account to 
demur to his own testimony, albeit he is not a witness, nor is 
he sworn to deliver the truth. 

The later editions of Tursellini are fuller than the first one, 
because in the interval a new revelation of matter had become 
available for the purposes of the historian. He can explain the 
matter best himself. In a special Prcefatio ad Lectorem, prefixed 
to the edition of 1596, he thus speaks of the earlier issue, pub- 
lished only two years before : 

" I wrote some years ago the life of St. Francis Xavier with 
all possible fidelity and diligence. It was published in my ab- 
sence ; and when I came to see it I scarcely recognized it, so 
spoiled and overlaid was it with faults in the execution. Nor was 
VOL. LIII. 54 



842 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ON [Sept., 

it less faulty in that respect than deficient in matter.* The rea- 
son of this was that formerly, by command of the King of Por- 
tugal, the Viceroy of India had, indeed, investigated the recorded 
deeds of Francis, and had for the most part communicated and 
sent on the accounts of Xavier's brilliant career within the Por- 
tuguese dominion. But not all of these had been included, only 
such being entered as could be^obtained from competent witnesses 
then within reach ; and as to the rest, particularly as to what he 
had done among the Chinese and Japanese, however memorable 
and illustrious, all this remained for the most part in silence and 
obscurity. Now, however, when this part of his history, as nar- 
rated by those \vho at that time were in China or Japan, came 
at length into my hands, I was not unwilling to translate the rec- 
ords into Latin as soon as possible, and insert them faithfully in 
their own places. . . . Of the new records so great was the 
abundance and brilliancy that, not to expand the original four 
books out of proportion, I had to extend them into six." 

And at the beginning of the sixth book the author returns 
to the same point, dwelling in one entire chapter on the authen- 
tic character of the records, the sworn testimonies, the access he 
has had to them, and other points, regarding testimony, truth 
and fidelity, which it would be quite in harmony with the inter- 
ests of science to bring before the notice of popular writers to-day, 
of vulgarisateurs in magazines, if only they thought it worth their 
while to regard such indifferent matters. But as probably they 
will not, and our space is limited, we pass on. 

We may observe that, up to the date of Tursellini, and much 
later still, there was an evolution going on, not of facts, but of tes- 
timonies and processes a phenomenon so ordinary, in the drawing 
up of authentic history, that we see in our own days new lives 
of Washington, new lives of Charles V., new lives even of Julius 
Caesar, issuing from the archives of history. These characters lived 
a good many generations ago, and we are not aware that judi- 
cial bodies are in session upon the deeds and records which con- 
cern them. In the 'case of St. Francis Xavier juridical processes 
were in order from the day his incorrupt body reached Goa till 
his canonization was an accomplished fact, seventy years later ; 
during which period the eye-witnesses, their children and grand- 
children, were within reach. That these witnesses were thus 
within reach, during the process of investigation, escaped the 
writer in the Popular Monthly. But the moment that their day 
was past, they sail within reach of his ken ; and, with a flourish 
of erudition, not without a flavor of logical taste, he brings in 
the criterion with solemnity. 

*Adeo multis earn mendis inquinatam atque oblitam vidi. Nee mendosa magis quam 
manca prodiit in lucem. 



1891.] THE MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. , 843 

He says : " It must be remembered that Bouhours, writing 
ninety years after Tursellini, could hardly have had access to any 
really new sources. Xavier had been dead one hundred and 
thirty years, and of course all the natives upon whom he had 
wrought his miracles, and their children and grandchildren, were 
gone." So says this writer, with solemnity, acumen, and truth. 
And therefore we resume in his own words, replying : It must 
be remembered that Tursellini, writing ninety years before Bou- 
hours, and only forty years after the death of Xavier, could 
really have had access to new sources ; and the natives upon 
whom he had wrought his miracles, and their children and grand- 
children, were not gone. This scientific writer does not see deep 
enough into his own argument to catch the manifest retort star- 
ing out of it, nor to feel the rebound of a blank argument 
exploding. This is what I referred to before, when I said that 
he omits a strictly logical criterion at an earlier part of his dis- 
cussion, where it would be of use but against him, and brings it 
forward at a later stage, where it is of no use whatever, only it 
does him no harm, while it lends an air of erudition. 

It is of no use whatever as against Bouhours, for we shall see 
that our critic misses the point of the question with this later 
biographer, who, it is true, like other biographers of a later date, 
brings forward new facts, new miracles, wrought through the 
intercession of St. Francis Xavier. They are such as the earlier 
biographers had not mentioned, nor the process of canonization 
contained. But it was for the very recondite reason that the 
miracles in question, the manifold resurrections, had not yet been 
wrought ; they have been going on since ; they are going at 
present, like the standing miracle of the saint's body incorrupt 
to-day at Goa. And, of course, this scientist is not credulous 
enough to imagine that Tursellini should have prophesied, or that 
the Roman courts of canonization should have prophesied, what 
miracles were yet to come ! When he dispenses himself, in truest 
scientific fashion, from verifying matters of palpable fact before 
his eyes ; as, for instance, that of the body remaining incorrupt 
to-day at Goa, which fact is recorded in every one of the docu- 
ments and authors ostentatiously paraded by him a fact which 
is a miracle of the first order, alone sufficient to make everything 
else credible regarding St. Francis Xavier; when science can per- 
form this feat of non-verification, and suppression of a palpable, 
visible fact, it should not be scandalized that men of the sixteenth 
and early seventeenth centuries did not prophesy what miracles 
in the centuries to come St. Francis Xavier was still going to 



844 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ON [Sept., 

work ! Yet, innocently enough, the critic speaks thus : " In the 
time of Tursellini, four cases [of raising the dead to life] had been 
developed; in 1622, at the canonization proceedings, three were 
mentioned ; but by the time of Father Bouhours, there were 
twenty-five." Charming ! As if the twenty-five had evolved out 
of the three! In 1715 the Dumber was not twenty-five but 
twenty-seven, recognized, says D'Aurignac, by the court of Rome 
at that date ; but of the twenty-seven " fourteen had been wrought 
within a few years" previous to this date of 1715. D'Aurignac 
continues, at the same date, 1715, " the Bishop of Malacca had 
authenticated eight hundred miracles in his diocese alone.* Our 
legendary evolution imagines that all had developed out of an 
original small stock, an original suggestion, so to say, of proto- 
plasmic legend. The thought reveals the growth of a system, 
and how the wish is father to the products of this science. 

Meanwhile, the recognized credit of proceedings in the Roman 
courts threatened to deal a fatal blow to the somewhat fanciful 
array of thought and imagination which figures in the pages of 
the Science Monthly. Hence the learned writer must endeavor to 
parry it. He does so, far on in the article, at the end of a long 
note full of references, such as might be readily gathered from 
encyclopaedias or dictionaries. There he throws out this profound 
suggestion : " For some very thoughtful remarks as to the worth- 
lessness of the testimony to miracles presented during the canon- 
ization proceedings at Rome, see Maury, Legendes Pieuses" That 
is all ! Not another word about the Roman processes, their juri- 
dical and protracted examinations, the evidence of eye-witnesses. 
We conclude that the proceedings of the Roman courts must be 
excellent indeed, if this is all that can be said against them. 

He has so little use for evidence of any kind that he never 
once faces it. He is provoked to do so, if ever a writer was, by 
the constant reference made to it in the documents which he 
makes us believe he is using. The bull of canonization is explicit 
on the subject of the juridical processes and investigations. He 
cannot have quoted his page from Cardinal Del Monte's speech 
or Relatio in Consist orio secrete cor am S. D. N. Gregorio Papa XV. 
facta, without having his taste for the evidence keenly whetted. 
Nay, he quotes from Father Coleridge, to the right and the left ; 
but, with a sensitive instinct and a marked agility, he skips over 
the evidence between. Speaking of Xavier's gift of tongues, he 
quotes from Coleridge certain passages which refer to the saint's 
use of interpreters such passages as an intelligence clerk could 

* Histoire de St. Francois de Xavier, par J. M. S. d'Aurignac ; 1862, 8mo, part v. p. 261. 



1891.] THE MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. 845 

have hunted up for him. He leaves out the evidence between 
the passages. Nay, on the very same page to which he refers in 
Father Coleridge, as against Xavier's gift of tongues, he does not 
see this note, only two lines long, and therefore not over-tedious 
to read : " We hope," says Coleridge, " to give a short abstract of 
the results of the evidence as to the gift of tongues, in the case 
of St. Francis, further on (book v. note 2).* The writer in the 
Monthly carefully eschews that note, though he refers to the pages 
there. Indeed, he eschews what is in the pages themselves, or he 
could never have written that unintelligible critique on the gift 
of tongues with which he has filled two of his own valuable 
pages. 

It is to be presumed that a clerk looked up "tongues" in the 
table of contents of Father Coleridge, gave the 'number of the 
page to the doctor, who in due form entered the number, and, 
on the strength of this and other such original work, catalogued 
a list of works in a long note, as if he had consulted them. To 
this he could add with perfect conscientiousness : " In addition to 
these, I have compared, for a more extended discussion of this 
subject hereafter, a very great number of editions of these and 
other biographies of the saint, with speeches, etc." Now, among 
these that he has thus compared, I notice the Life by Vitteleschi, 
1622. He quotes Vitteleschi several times in his text. Who is 
Vitteleschi, that wrote a life of St. Francis Xavier? There is no 
such person and no such life. I cannot identify the work quoted, 
unless it be an edition of the same Tursellini whom he has just 
named. Naturally, the later edition of Tursellini, in 1621, would 
have the imprimatur of a later general, Mutius Vitteleschi, possi- 
bly under date of 1622. If that is the explanation, and it is the 
only one I can find, then the learned writer, supposing he ever 
saw any of the books which he cites, does not see that he is 
comparing the same work with itself, identical in its words. Yet 
he has a brilliant demonstration of legendary evolution, based pre- 
cisely upon the difference between Tursellini in 1596 telling a 
story about Xavier and Vellio, and " twenty-six years later, Vit- 
teleschi, in his Life of Xavier, telling the story " ! He is showing 
how each biographer " surpassed his predecessor in the multitude 
of miracles." And he goes on to prove this broad thesis, in his 
own characteristic way, by a solitary example : " One example will 
suffice to show the process ! " And what is this classic example, 
to show biographer improving on biographer ? Apparently, the 

* Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, by Rev. J. H. Coleridge, S.J., vol. i. book ii. 
ch. ii. p. 173, edition of 1886. 



846 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ON [Sept., 

same biographer and the same page, quoted from different edi- 
tions ; for the difference between the two accounts is so slight 
that we suspect the variable quantity is in the translations, not in 
the originals. However, this scientific writer is none the wiser for 
the ineptitude. He is pleased with the amplitude of his demon- 
stration. And he contributed this logic as " New Chapters in 
Science." 

We might entertain ourselves in like manner with the doctor's 
reference to Maffei's History of India. Says the critic : " Though 
he [Maffei] gave a biography of Xavier which shows fervent ad- 
miration for his subject, he dwelt very lightly on the alleged mira- 
cles." It is novel to be told that, in a history 718 pages long, 
forty-eight pages devoted to the prominent figure of St. Francis 
Xavier is a biography which, by what it does not say, is to dis- 
credit what full biographies do say. And yet, as to Maffei's tes- 
timony about the miracles, nothing could be fuller. I have 
quoted it a few pages above. 

Nor would our literary amusement be inferior if we could 
catechize this scientific writer upon the other names which figure 
in his pages Acosta, Nunes, De Quadros as well as on a little 
history and geography, as to how De Quadros, a missionary in 
the depths of Ethiopia, could be appealed to, in 1555, for evi- 
dence as to what Xavier had been doing in Hindustan up to 
three years before. When did the telegraph or the steam pack- 
ets come into use between Hindustan and Ethiopia ; or even the 
penny-post ? Why run off to Ethiopia for testimony about 
Xavier, when all India was alive with the facts? Why? Pre- 
cisely because all India was alive with the knowledge of the 
facts, and Europe too, that the modern investigator runs off to 
Ethiopia for testimony, and says he does not find it ! 

But there is an assumption underlying all this, yes, and an 
assertion overtopping all, both of which I shall briefly consider, 
and so finish these animadversions on the manner of addressing 
one's self to a scientific question. 

The assumption is that, if St. Francis Xavier wrought mira- 
cles, his own letters should prove them, by the accounts which 
he himself gives of them. The assertion is, that no contemporary 
documents have anything about the miracles except some " fee- 
ble beginning." 

The assumption looks a little weak. To strengthen it, and 
reassure it, he thinks it necessary to have Xavier's own biogra- 
phers accept it. 

Accordingly he passes it off on them in these terms : " // 



1891.] THE MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. 847 

seems to have been felt as somewhat strange at first that Xavier 
had never alluded to any of these wonderful miracles." So he 
fathers the assumption upon the biographers ; that they, of course, 
expected to have the saint preach about his own miracles. Now, 
the doctor's assumption being thus slipped into the question, the 
legendary evolution can go on apace ; or, to use his own terms, 
"the process of incubation goes on." For, at once all the ac- 
counts of Xavier's humility, and his blushing at the very mention 
of his having raised the dead, may come in as " subsidiary le- 
gends." Says the doctor : " Ere long a subsidiary legend was de- 
veloped, to the effect that one of the brethren asked him one 
day if he had raised the dead, whereat he blushed deeply and 
cried out against the idea, saying, ' And so I am said to have 
raised the dead ! ' etc." 

A subsidiary legend ! Let us dissect the critical mind which 
uses those two words in this subject matter. First, " subsidiary " ; 
it so happens that his own Tursellini has this account, at the 
very beginning of the line of biographers ; therefore, neither is it 
a subsidiary element, nor has the doctor read Tursellini.* Sec- 
ondly, " legend "; it must indeed be a legend, for the idea of a 
saint's being humble and modest, if not a legend, must, to a 
mind like this writer's, be a miracle. And of course that can- 
not be. Therefore it is a legend. 

This class of mind, which would invite a clinical study, sinks 
the saints of the Catholic Church, if they are wonder-workers 
like St. Francis Xavier, into the crowd of " Jansenists at the 
cemetery of St. Medard," and " of the various Protestant sects 
at Old Orchard and elsewhere "; if, like St. Vincent de Paul, 
they are devoted to a life of mercy in the walks of civilization, 
it sinks them amid the Florence Nightingales, Howards, Franckes, 
and the rest. It is not strange. In a mist we cannot distinguish 
features. And I suppose the primordial mist wherein the incu- 
bation of evolution goes on is no exception to the rule. All 
colors are alike in the dark. 

Now for the assertion : which is, that no contemporary docu- 
ment has anything about Xavier's miracles except " a feeble 
beginning." This extraordinary assertion rests upon an assump- 
tion of its own that we prove matters of fact by documents. 
Usually, in matters of fact, witnessed with eye and ear, com- 
mon-sense people refer to the evidence of eye and ear ; and 
court-rooms, acting on this common-sense principle, test the 
intelligence and credibility of witnesses. It was in this manner, 

* Vita, lib. ii. ch. x. p. 162, edit. 1614. 



848 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY ON [Sept., 

certainly, that all the investigations had to be rigidly con- 
ducted at Goa, from the time of Francis Xavier's funeral, and 
again at Rome, up to the date of his canonization. Not so 
with this scientific critic of facts. He says : " No account of a 
miracle wrought by him appears either in his letters or in any 
contemporary document." But r first, we may ask, why does he 
never make mention of eye-witnesses until he comes to Bou- 
hours, one hundred and thirty years after Xavier's death ? Is it 
because then he is at a safe distance from them ? Secondly, 
what does he mean by contemporary documents ? Newspapers, 
telegraphic dispatches ? He is not distinct. If he means these 
we need not demur. If he means the self-glorification of sec- 
tarian ministers belonging to Bible societies, we need only refer 
him to Macaulay for an estimate of their work in Hindustan ; 
and Macaulay wrote from personal observation there. But if he 
insinuates that the letters of Xavier's contemporaries, the sworn 
and recorded testimonies of eye-witnesses, the uniform consent 
of whole populations, who without having scientific versatility 
could possibly have native truth and common sense, and could 
see what they saw and say so if he insinuates that all these 
did not testify to an endless number of miracles performed by 
St. Francis Xavier, then we need only animadvert upon this 
writer's frame of mind, by repeating his assertion and entire 
demonstration in all its naked majesty and integrity : " No ac- 
count of a miracle wrought by him appears either in his own 
letters or- in any .contemporary document." We need only 
rehearse the remoter demonstrations thence deduced. For, with- 
out adding any element to this proof, except a faulty enumera- 
tion of contemporaries, one of them being a missionary off in 
Ethiopia, he proceeds to say abruptly, three pages later on : 
" As we have seen, the missionaries of Xavier's time wrote 
nothing regarding. his miracles, and certainly the ignorant natives 
of India and Japan did not commit any account of his miracles 
to writing." " As we have seen ! " To prove nothing and then 
quote it ! That is Herbert Spencer's most approved style of 
demonstration. Finally, since this writer wants contemporary 
documents, we need only turn round on him with an argument 
ad hatmnem, and ask him, Why does he not take account of the 
contemporary documents regarding the actual miracle going on 
of St. Francis Xavier's body remaining incorrupt at Goa, subject 
to inspection and verification ? * 

* The latest solemn exposition of Xavier's body was on December 3, 1890, and continued 
during fifteen days. For an account of the immense concourse, and an indication of the mira- 
cles, see Civilta Cattolica, May 2, 1891, pp. 371-6. 



1891.] THE MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER. 849 

As we cannot suppose that a dignified ex-president of Cor- 
nell University has followed such a manner of scientific treat- 
ment without some adequate occasion or sufficient reason, nor 
that, in undertaking to give this " simple statement" of " the 
evolution of miraculous accounts generally," he has deliberately 
intended to play the part of a partisan libeller of the Catholic 
Church, creed, and saints, we are of necessity thrown back on 
the line of his own reflections, and we must endeavor to explain 
away the discredit which, at first sight, seems to be thrown 
upon him. This can be done in two ways in his own words, 
and in the light of some facts, which we can readily throw 
upon the subject-. 

Adapting his own words, we may benignly understand things 
thus : " It would be utterly unphilosophical to attribute " all 
this "as a whole to conscious fraud; whatever part" infidelity 
and pretrophobia " may have taken in sundry discreditable devel- 
opments, the mass of" evolutionary fancies and " legends grow 
up mainly in good faith, and as naturally as elms along water- 
courses or flowers upon the prairie." And again I adapt his 
words : " It is hardly necessary to attribute to " a scientist of 
this kind " a conscious attempt to deceive. The simple fact is 
that, as a rule, he thinks, speaks, and writes in obedience to the 
natural laws, which govern the luxuriant growth of myth and 
legend, in the warm atmosphere of love and devotion, which 
constantly arises" about a fond idea and a pet theory, " in times 
when there is little care for scientific evidence, and when he 
who believes most is thought most meritorious." These words 
of his own, adjusted to himself, suit the writer in The Popular 
Science Monthly ; hence we may invite him to taste of his own 
condiments. 

In the second place, a few facts would throw light upon the 
evolution of this article ; and go far towards exonerating the 
critic, by showing whence he has taken all this matter. To be 
sure, this matter is given under the head of " New Chapters in the 
Warfare of Science." But that need not prevent me from indi- 
cating where it is all copied from, and how old it is. So we 
shall pass on to what I had signalized for criticism in the second 
place. For, after the writer's manner, I had undertaken to 
criticise his matter. 

THOMAS HUGHES, S.J. 

(TO BE CONCLUDED.) 



850 THE ENCYCLICAL AND AMERICAN [Sept., 



THE ENCYCLICAL AND AMERICAN IRON-WORKERS 
AND COAL-MINERS. 

WHAT is known as the Labor Problem is the puzzle of the 
age. It has taxed the best minds in two hemispheres and the 
highest statesmanship to find an adequate solution. After years 
of close and careful study of the industrial question in its vari- 
ous phases honest men are still widely apart both in theory and 
the practical results of their investigation. And this applies to 
those who have been actual participants, whether on the side of 
labor or capital, in some of the most important labor contests of 
our day, just as much as it does to the looker-on or speculative 
thinker. Writers on political economy are no more agreed in 
their views and the application of their remedies than are the rep- 
resentatives of labor and capital. From the rankest Socialism to 
ultra-conservatism we discover every grade of opinion and doc- 
trine. 

So much disturbance has been created in society by the 
growth of false teaching on this subject and the frequent out- 
break of strikes and lock-outs, that there is scarcely a nation that 
has not found it necessary to fully examine the question. Only 
a short time ago the young emperor of Germany succeeded in 
holding a labor conference in Berlin, which was attended by 
representatives from fourteen different countries. The business of 
this conference was to bring about an amelioration in the condi- 
tions of factory and mining labor. It settled upon five or six 
most important points, such as suspension of labor on Sunday, 
restriction of the work of children to those of a certain age, and 
the limitation of the work of women. In England a royal com- 
mission is at present engaged in investigating the labor question. 
The report of the commission on the eight-hour day and the 
condition of the working-men, especially in the mining and great 
manufacturing centres, will be looked for with much interest. 
Already steps have been taken to hold a general labor congress 
in Chicago during the Columbian Exposition of 1893. This con- 
gress will be arranged with the co-operation of the most distin- 
guished students of labor problems and leaders in the industrial 
world. In its scope and aims there is everything in this move- 
ment to commend it. Its promoters are confident that the best 
results will follow from this labor congress ; that a way may be 



1891.] IRON-WORKERS AND COAL-MINERS. 851 

found by which equal and exact justice will be finally rendered 
to employer and employed ; the wasted possibilities of unorgan- 
ized and unskilled, and therefore unproductive, labor shall be 
exchanged for trained and protective industry, which will no- 
where allow poverty to be a necessity ; and a means found for 
ending the suicidal war which at present threatens the world of 
industry ; in short, that a peaceable and satisfactory solution will 
be reached of the grave questions in controversy and a higher 
and better industrial system established. These are high and 
noble aims. The true friends of the working-man and the capi- 
talist, the students and specialists in industrial topics, and the 
representatives of the various organizations of labor and capital 
should aid in making the proposed congress a success. It would 
be to the lasting credit and glory of the United States, and the 
capacity of our people to solve the most difficult social and eco- 
nomic problems, if this Chicago Labor Congress should succeed 
in what it proposes. 

But the clearest and fullest light comes to us on this vast 
and important subject, the Industrial Question, from that quar- 
ter toward which men's eyes have been anxiously directed. In 
the Encyclical of Leo XIII., On the Condition of Labor, the 
highest expectations of all who looked with interest for it's pro- 
mulgation are fulfilled. It is, indeed, the most important utter- 
ance, most opportunely given, of the Statesman-Pope. And that 
is much to say with the remembrance of his preceding encycli- 
cals on the Christian Constitution of States and Human Liberty. 
Presented to the world in the midst of the religious feast of 
Pentecost, may we not hope that it shall be understood, in all 
languages, with something like the reverence paid to the inspired 
discourses of the Apostles? And may it assist in renewing the 
worn-out and unbalanced machinery of a suffering world ! 

It has been remarked that a century ago, in 1791, the French 
Revolution, by a definitive decree, abolished the corporations 
which formed the base of the ancient industrial order. In 1891 
Leo XIII. promulgates a new economical charter at the very 
moment when industrial society, founded on the Manchester doc- 
trines, tends towards ruin. And for this act of his the Pope re- 
ceives a special message of congratulation from the present 
Republican government of France. Leo has well chosen this 
fateful hour to teach the world the true social gospel. After all, 
men must be brought to see that the Papacy is the only inter- 
national power to-day in existence possessed of sufficient author- 
ity and strength, sufficiently sure of itself, and rich in light and 



852 THE ENCYCLICAL AND AMERICAN . [Sept., 

energy, to attempt the supreme task of reconciling the contend- 
ing forces of society. Across the " tottering thrones and droop- 
ing sceptres," Leo. XIII. notes the rising tide of democracy; he 
sees that the old order must give way to the new ; that the 
twentieth century will be what Cardinal Manning prophesies 
the People's Century. It is Lego's harmonizing the eternal teach- 
ings of the Gospel with the actual necessities of the modern 
world that bestows on this Encyclical the character of a message 
of arbitration and makes it " the truce of God." And all this is 
accomplished with a perfect knowledge of the whole question, 
filled though it is with intrinsic and technical difficulties, with 
varying and constantly changing conditions. The composition of 
the Encyclical presupposes an acquaintance with the whole range 
of the vast literature of the subject of which it treats. This he 
has reduced to a clear and accurate statement of the entire case 
under the most important heads. It is only a master mind who 
could bear this Atlas-burden, and make such a synthesis. 

All Christian tradition is embodied in its teaching. In read- 
ing the Encyclical the mind almost unconsciously reflects on 
the transforming action of the church in the world. It recalls 
the days of those celebrated monasteries where the religious 
became shoemakers, masons, carpenters, laborers, mingling man- 
ual labor with meditation and the chanting of the praises of 
God. It takes us back to the Apostles, who taught the rich to 
make due provision for the wants of the poor, so that " neither 
was there any one needy among them " ; it revives the mem- 
ories of the guilds of former ages ; it suggests a picture of 
the artisan-monk, who in the austere silence of the Trappist's 
life realizes the dignity of labor. Nay, more, it carries the 
mind and heart of the reader back to Him who taught that 
"the laborer is worthy of his hire," and whose example, as 
the Carpenter of Nazareth, has merited for the working-man 
in every land that Christian nobility which constitutes his great- 
ness before man and God. 

What specially strikes one in studying this Encyclical is the 
fatherly tenderness and sympathy that is displayed by the Pope. 
He deals with the problems nearest the hearts of the common 
people : the right of private property in land ; the limits of the 
state's rights in relation to the higher rights of parents ; the re- 
lations of capital and labor ; the sacred rights of the wage-earner ; 
differences between employers and employed ; strikes ; the proper 
regulation of the hours of labor ; and, lastly, working-men's guilds, 
insurance and beneficial societies. 



1891.] IRON-WORKERS AND COAL-MlNERS. 853 

In the first place, he clearly lays down the inviolability of pri- 
vate property, especially in land. For obvious reasons this teach- 
ing is of special interest, since it sets aside as false and contrary 
to sound morals the doctrines of Henry George and the Anti- 
Poverty Society. He shows how it is for the best interest of 
the wage-earner to maintain and stand by the true Catholic doc- 
trine. He considers the methods of cure proposed by the So- 
cialists as utterly futile, or as infinitely worse than the present 
evils of competition. 

Having dealt with the fundamental principle of private pro- 
perty, the Pope proceeds to point out the necessity of religion 
for the solution of the difficulty. 

"It is the church," writes Leo XIII., "that proclaims from 
the Gospel . those teachings by which the conflict can be ended, 
or at least be made far less bitter than it is ; the church uses 
its efforts not only to enlighten the mind, but to direct by its 
precepts the life and conduct of men ; the church improves and 
ameliorates the condition of the working-man by numerous use- 
ful organizations ; does its best to enlist the services of all ranks 
in discussing and endeavoring to meet, in the most practical 
way, the claims of the working classes ; and acts on the decided 
view that for these purposes recourse should be had, in due 
measure and degree, to the help of the law and of state au- 
thority." 

With this object in sight, after denouncing speculators in human 
labor, he urges the state to safeguard those boards of arbitra- 
tion, wherever they exist, that help the workman to secure fair 
wages. 

Let us examine closely the words of the Encyclical on this 
subject of wages ; because ever since labor became free all the 
great disturbances in the industrial world have been chiefly 
caused by a difference between labor and capital on the rate of 
wages. It is here that the interests of employer and employed 
begin to diverge, and it is. on the question of wages that strikes 
and lock-outs mostly originate. In an inquiry into the origin of 
strikes and lock-outs made at the last census, out of a total of 
813 labor contests investigated 582, or over 71 per cent., were 
caused by differences as to rate of wages. Of these 582 con- 
tests 86 per cent, were for advances in wages, and 14 per cent, 
against reductions. 

While these exact proportions will not hold in all years, nor 
in all sections and industries, it is safe to say that by far the 
most prolific sources of labor disputes are differences as to 
wages. It will also be found that many disputes that are not 



854 THE ENCYCLICAL AND AMERICAN [Sept., 

primarily disputes about wages have a direct bearing on rates of 
wages, and are important only because of such bearing. Apart 
from rates of wages the causes of these differences are legion. 
Trouble may arise concerning the basis of computing wages ; the 
method, time, or frequency of payment ; the store-system ; hours 
of labor ; the holidays and weekly half-holiday ; Apprenticeship ; 
administration and methods of work, such as shop-rules, labor- 
saving machinery, piece-work, objectionable workmen ; trades- 
unions and their rules, and a thousand and one causes that we 
daily hear of. Notwithstanding their number, however, it will be 
found that all causes of difference readily group themselves into 
three general classes : 

1st. Differences as to future contracts. 

2d. Disagreements as to existing contracts. 

3d. -Disputes on some matter of sentiment. 

In the first division would be classified differences as to fu- 
ture rates of wages, and those arising from attempts to change 
or abrogate existing agreements, customs, or methods, or to 
introduce new ones. Disagreements under the second class arise 
either upon matters of fact or construction, having in view ex- 
isting agreements, customs, or methods, and not necessarily in- 
volving the validity of the contracts themselves, nor any change 
in their terms. Under the third head are included those quar- 
rels that grow out of the offended amour propre either of the 
individual or the organization. 

It is in the first of these classes, " Differences as to future 
contracts," which, as stated, includes questions as to future 
rates of wages, that disputes most frequently occur and in which 
the gravest difficulties arise in harmonizing conflicting interests 
and hostile views. What is " a fair day's wage for a fair day's 
work," is a difficult and complex problem to solve. Concerning 
its solution there are honest differences of opinion even upon 
the basis or principle on which it shall be decided. With the 
ebb and flow of the tides of business, of prices and demand, so 
frequent in these days of the increased effectiveness of labor 
and rapid transportation ; with the constant changes in methods 
of production or conditions of work, and the introduction of 
improved machinery, so common in this age of invention, comes 
an ever-recurring necessity for a revision of the contracts or 
agreements governing the relation of employer and employed, 
and with it the possibility of differences as to what changes the 
new conditions demand. 

Let us take, for instance, the iron and steel business, the 



1891.] IRON-WORKERS AND COAL-MINERS. 855 

glass trade, or the coke industry of Western Pennsylvania, and 
we shall see at once how easy it is for difficulties to arise, un- 
less there be found some means of forestalling them. The com- 
petition of trade, high or low tariff, the facilities and cheapness 
of transportation, the methods of production, and other con- 
ditions imply Jhe necessity for frequent revision of agreements 
as to the rates of wages. Here in Pittsburgh, which is the heart 
and centre of the iron and steel interests of the country, the 
Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers holds an 
annual convention to determine the scale or rate of wages for 
the ensuing year. When the scale is agreed upon by the 
workers it is then submitted to the employers, and where dif- 
ferences are found they are eventually adjusted by conferences 
of both parties. This arrangement has worked successfully for 
years, there being only one notable instance, nine years ago, 
when it failed, and the result was a bitter and prolonged fight. 
The miners, coke and glass workers, have much more trouble in 
settling the question of wages. With them strikes and lock-outs 
are much more frequent, and are attended, as in the case of the 
terrible strike recently in the Pennsylvania coke region, where 
many lives were sacrificed and valuable property destroyed, with 
painful and disastrous results. The writer has witnessed the 
most intense suffering and want among workmen and their 
families as the consequence of these disturbances. And his 
limited experience is repeated by almost every clergyman in the 
mining and coking district of this State. Whilst preparing this 
paper I have been called upon by three or four poor men from 
the Connellsville coke region, who told a pitiful tale. " Father," 
said one man and the tears came hot and fast as he spoke " I 
have left behind me a wife and six children who are without 
a morsel of bread. Were it not for the aid of our good priest 
and some kind neighbors they would be starving. I am willing 
to work," he continued, " but I have been blacklisted by the 
operators and can find nothing to do." " Why not try some- 
thing else for a living? Did you not belong to the labor union? 
Why does it not help you ? " In answer to the first question 
he replied : " Father, you can see I am an old man now and it 
is useless for me to look for any other kind of work ; employers 
do not want a man like me." " And how about the union ? 

Did you not receive assistance from the s ? " To this he 

answered : " I had always a fear of joining them because I 
thought the church was opposed to the organization ; and, fur- 
thermore, from what I could make out from hearsay, I honestly 



856 THE ENCYCLICAL AND AMERICAN [Sept., 

did not like some of their ways of doing business." The -case 
of the others was similar, except that they belonged to the 
labor union, and, as they alleged, for that reason would not be 
taken back to work now that the strike was ended. 

It is right here, on this important matter of wages, and on 
that of the usefulness and benefits of labor associations, that 
Americans especially will find in the Encyclical of Leo XIII. 
sound and practical principles of guidance. Let us analyze what 
he has laid down. 

In the first place, it is to be observed that there is a wide di- 
vergence between the Pope's teaching and the views of most of 
modern political economists, for these proclaim that supply and 
demand is the great law that always and everywhere determines 
the rate of wages. And they insist that this law is inflexible. 
Hence it is held by the advocates of this cruel law that the 
working-man should be satisfied with the market price of his 
labor, w r hether that be high or low. Profits or the selling price 
of the manufactured article have no direct bearing on the rate 
of compensation that the working-man receives. His wages are 
fixed by the inexorable law of supply and demand in the labor 
market. In combating this heartless doctrine of the modern 
school of political economists, Leo XIII. lays down certain prin- 
ciples that ought to be accepted by all just and right-thinking 
persons. He insists that sound ideas are necessary on this most 
important matter. Here is what he says: "Wages, we are told, 
are fixed by free consent ; and therefore the employer, when 
he pays what was agreed upon, has done his part and is not 
called upon to do anything further." In proving how false and 
unjust is this view of the relationship existing between the em- 
ployer and the employed the Pope calls attention to the fact 
that man's labor has two notes or characteristics. It is, in the 
first instance, personal, inasmuch as the muscular power or ex- 
ertion put forth by the laborer is individual or personal to him, 
and he employs it for his personal benefit. The second charac- 
teristic of labor is that it is necessary, as without the results of 
labor man cannot sustain life. " Self-preservation is a law of 
nature which it is wrong to disobey." After directing attention 
to thes.e two characteristics of labor, the Encyclical reads: 

u Now, if we were to consider labor merely so far as it is 
personal, doubtless it would be within the workman's right to 
accept any rate of wages whatever ; for in the same way as he is 
free to work or not, so he is free to accept a small remunera- 
tion or none at all. But this is a mere abstract proposition. 



1891.] IRON-WORKERS AND COAL-MlNERS. 857 

The labor of the working-man is not only his personal attribute, 
but it is necessary ; and this makes all the difference. The 
preservation of life is the bounden duty of each and all, and to 
fail therein is a crime. It follows, then, that each one has a 
right to procure what is required to live, and the poor can pro- 
cure it in no other way than by work and wages/' 

The Holy Father proceeds to show that wages should not be 
measured by what is merely required to keep the working-man 
and his family alive. The Pope has no faith in the bread-and- 
water theory; or in the scaling-down process to the lowest 
minimum of wages that is often practised by wealthy corpora- 
tions and grasping employers. No, he does not believe in 
this; and he says so in unmistakable language. After stating 
that it is usual for workmen and employers to agree to make a 
contract as to wages and under all ordinary circumstances this 
contract is binding, though the case may arise when the work- 
man is not morally bound to stick to the agreement the Pope 
adds: "There is a dictate of nature more imperious and more 
ancient than any bargain between man and man : that the re- 
muneration must be enough to support the wage-earner in rea- 
sonable and frugal comfort." And equally important is the state- 
ment that immediately follows this. " If," he writes, " through 
necessity or fear of a worse evil, the workman accepts harder 
conditions because an employer or contractor will give him no 
better, he is the victim of force and injustice." This extract 
from the Encyclical sets before us the true basis and the 
lowest at that upon which the rate of wages is to be com- 
puted. And it also furnishes an answer to those who cry out 
against the working-men who sometimes break agreements into 
which they had been forced by fear or necessity to enter. The 
laborer is not a piece of machinery to be purchased at the least 
possible cost, or thrown aside as worthless when it is of no fur- 
ther use. Nor is he a mere animal needing provision for bodily 
wants only. No, he is infinitely higher than that monstrous 
conception which the materialistic philosophy of these times fur- 
nishes. He is a man, with God-given faculties, of high and 
noble dignity, having the most sacred relations and owing the 
most solemn duties to his Maker, and having spiritual and men- 
tal aspirations that require to be satisfied just as much as the 
wants of the body nay, more than they do. He should, there- 
fore, have the means of reasonably meeting these wants. And 
it is only when capitalists and economists get this true idea of 
the working-man that the wage question, the eight-hour ques- 
VOL. LIII. 55 



858 THE ENCYCLICAL AND AMERICAN [Sept., 

tion, Sunday work, and other questions can be satisfactorily 
settled. 

Now let us take a practical example that will fully illustrate 
these principles. In Pennsylvania there are thousands of men 
employed in the coal-mining and coke region. The labor of 
these workers is hard, unhealthy, and, in the case of the miners, 
attended with more or less danger to life. The labor, especially 
of the miner, might be classed as skilled. Taking account, 
therefore, of these circumstances the wages of this' class ought 
to be such as to enable the miner and his family to live in 
" reasonable and frugal comfort." What are average wages paid 
in the bituminous coal districts of this State ? Perhaps the 
figures will furnish an explanation of the recent strike in the 
Connellsville coke-field, which, in its terrible results, arrested the 
attention of the whole country. 

A bulletin just issued by Census Superintendent Porter shows 
that in 1889 the average number of persons in the mines of 
Fayette County was 6,567. The total amount of. wages paid w r as 
$2,644,425. This is an average of about $420 a year to each 
person, or head of family, or about $1.35 a day. And from this 
is to be deducted the tolls levied in the " Pluck-me " stores which 
still flourish in the coal regions. In Westmoreland County the 
miners averaged 9,109 in number, and were paid in wages 
$4,064,950, or an average to each person of about $445. In Al- 
leghany County the sum of $3,497,893 was paid to 9,386 miners, 
or an annual average wage to each miner of about $373. 

Any one examining these figures must see at a glance the 
difficulties the head of a family has to meet in housing, feeding, 
and clothing himself, wife, and four or five children on a dollar 
and thirty-five cents a day! The payment of $373 a year, which 
is the rate received by the average miner in Alleghany County, 
divided in a family where there are five persons to be supported, 
means about $75 to each person, or a dollar arid a half a week. 
Of course " reasonable and frugal comfort," of which Pope Leo 
XIII. speaks as due to the laborer, is out of the question on 
such compensation as' this. 

It may be said that the census calculation was based on the 
average wages paid the miner within the year, and not on the 
average wages received while the miner was actually at work. 
If the calculation were made on the latter basis the rate would 
be much higher. The answer is, that the miner has to support 
himself and his family the year round on what he earns in a 
year ; and this is, therefore, the proper basis on which to figure. 






1891.] IRON-WORKERS AND COAL-MINERS. 859 

If he works six days and earns $15, and then is idle six days, 
his average daily pay for the twelve days is $1.25. 

Again, it is said that the miners are themselves largely to blame 
for their condition. They inaugurate a strike on little or no 
cause ; if work is suspended in the mines because of excess of pro- 
duction or dulness in the coal trade, the miners, as a class, will 
remain in idleness for months rather than work at anything else ; 
and, -lastly, they are improvident and generally intemperate in 
their habits. Consequently, it is held, they themselves are in a 
large measure responsible for their hard lot. 

While it must be admitted that there is some ground for 
these charges, the experience of the writer for four or five years 
as resident pastor in a mining district proves them to be in the 
main unfounded. I witnessed a number of strikes, and I often 
thought that the miners lent too ready an ear to the agitator or 
the advocate of violent measures ; I also felt that thrift, fore- 
sight, and a little more domestic economy would do much to 
improve their surroundings and make their home-life more en- 
joyable. I saw that intemperance worked its dreadful havoc 
here as elsewhere. But making the most ample allowance for 
these things, what the Holy Father aptly calls "the cruelty of 
grasping speculators" in human labor supplies the true explana- 
tion of the miners' situation to-day. And it is useless to look 
for any improvement as long as the ordinary operator or capi- 
talist sees no higher estimate on human beings than mere instru- 
ments for making money. 

Under the store-system, to which reference has already been 
made, any coal operator cannot fail to get rich in a few years 
if he employs a considerable number of men ; and this largely 
at the expense of the miner. I knew a " gentleman" who, hav- 
ing failed in business in one of our large towns, was made 
superintendent of a coal-mine by the owners, to whom he was re- 
lated by marriage. He opened a company's store on his own ac- 
count, and with the profits from this store and an ordinary salary 
he was able to retire from the mining village within a few years 
a rich man. And this is. not by any means an isolated instance. 
The history of the coal region will furnish many similar cases. 

To protect themselves against injustice of this sort ; to main- 
tain and secure the highest standard of wages that the worker in 
the various departments of labor is entitled to ; to guard their 
sacred rights and interests, the Encyclical recognizes and encour- 
ages the formation of working-men's associations or societies. 
These societies the Pope would wish to see fashioned after the 



86o THE ENCYCLICAL AND AMERICAN [Sept., 

Catholic guilds of a former day, but subject to such changes as 
the requirements of this age, custom, or other circumstances may 
demand. What those who have the real interests of labor at 
heart must do is to place at the head of these organizations the 
right persons. Leaders are needed of the highest and strongest 
character, of great firmness, tac;t, and superior executive ability ; 
in a word, those whose aim will be to safeguard the interests 
and promote the welfare of the society without infringing on the 
rights of employers or others. Societies, no matter what the 
avowed objects may be, that are managed by " invisible leaders 
and on principles far from compatible with Christianity and the 
public well-being," must be avoided. And the rank and file of 
labor organizations should see to it that persons of this stamp 
never control the society. We all know how much suffering 
and misery have been brought to numberless working-men's 
homes through the false and, I do not hesitate to say, wicked 
counsel of selfish and designing leaders. It is the influence of 
such men that forces labor organizations to adopt, and try to 
enforce, measures that are unjust and tyrannical. By the enact- 
ment of these unjust and objectionable methods strife and ill- 
feeling are engendered, and the good-will and sympathy of the 
community in general are lost at times when the cause of labor 
needs the strong support of public sentiment. 

To sum up the teaching of the Pope on this subject of labor 
associations, he believes in the fullest freedom of industrial 
workers to organize for mutual self-help and protection ; he 
would have all labor unions based on Christian principles and 
kept under the restraint of religious motives ; and he would have 
the most devoted, disinterested, and earnest religious men placed 
at the head of these unions. 

As a result of the Encyclical, I read the other day in one 
of our daily papers the statement that an effort will be made 
here in Pittsburgh, and it is hoped elsewhere, to establish indus- 
trial organizations of which both the wage-earners and employers 
shall be members, and in which they shall co-operate for the 
promotion of friendly relations with each other. Leo XIII. has 
given expression to a strong desire for the formation of such 
bodies ; because he sees, what has been confirmed by experience, 
that where conferences are held in the proper spirit between 
employers and employed the best results follow. Strikes are 
oftentimes prevented, differences and disputes are amicably set- 
tled, confidence is restored, and a better and more kindly feel- 
ing established all around. 



1891.] IRON-WORKERS AND COAL-MINERS. 86 1 

This method of conference has been successfully followed for 
years by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel 
Workers of Pennsylvania in arranging the rate of wages, the 
hours of work, and all matters of importance to the men or the 
mill-owners. By this means strikes are averted, and it would be 
well if this plan for adjusting labor differences were more 
generally adopted in all kinds of industry all over the United 
States. As long as the present wage-system ' exists it is the 
simplest and most effective mode of settling labor disputes ; 
and should conciliation and conference fail, recourse ought to 
be had to arbitration. Better, too, to arbitrate in the beginning 
than at a late stage of a prolonged strike or lockout. Strikes 
are no sufficient remedy for a labor grievance. They are rather 
a means, and oftentimes, if not in all instances, a drastic means 
of directing attention to a grievance. In the great majority of 
strikes the strikers lose. They are either starved into submis- 
sion, or provoked by the capitalist into deeds of violence and 
unlawful conduct ; then the state steps in and helps to end the 
strike. They are a relic of barbarism. 

The Encyclical casts a strong white light on all these points 
that are now raised in the industrial world. It is a message of 
peace and good-will to all men. It lays down the eternal prin- 
ciples of right and justice for the guidance of rich and poor, 
worker and capitalist. It does 'not array class against class. It 
rather points out the line of duty for each to follow, while it 
aims to establish and strengthen right relations between labor 
and capital. It is a reassurance, if there be need of it, that the 
church is the friend of the working-man the world over ; and a 
declaration that it is part of her divine mission to teach justice 
and charity to all men. 

Such is Leo XIII. 's solution of the labor problem. It is a 
standing solution. May the closing century witness its fruits and 
blessings ! 

MORGAN M. SHEEDY. 

Pittsburgh, Pa. 



862 THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION. [Sept., 



CONVENTION OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION 

ASSOCIATION IN TORONTO. 
* 

THE National Education Association of the United States 
held its annual meeting in Toronto from the I4th to the i/th of 
July. Two years ago the Minister of Education for Ontario 
invited the association to hold its next meeting there, but they 
were unable to do so. Last year another invitation was given 
to them by Mr. James L. Hughes, Inspector of Public Schools 
for Toronto. This met with better success. 

About the earnestness with which, not alone the leaders but 
the rank and file of the profession, entered on the work of the 
convention there can be no doubt ; about the practical value of 
the meetirrg there may be room for doubt. Seeing that the 
meeting in Toronto was intended to be, and was as far as its 
promoters could make it, a glorification of the unreligious or 
state system of education as the be-all and end-all in the train- 
ing of youth, it may be well to set forth a few of the more 
important points connected with the convention, points bearing 
especially on this view of the end and aim of the meeting. 

As has been already stated In the pages of THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD, the British North America Act guarantees to the re- 
ligious minority in each of the two older provinces of Canada, 
Quebec and Ontario, the safety and perpetuation of their de- 
nominational schools. Protestant schools for the Protestant 
minority in Quebec, Catholic schools for the Catholic minority 
in Ontario. These schools are under the care of, and are sup- 
ported by, the state as far as it supports the so-called public 
schools. 

But mark the difference between Catholic Quebec and Pro- 
testant Ontario in the development of the system of denomina- 
tional schools. In Catholic Quebec there is a complete system 
for the minority Protestant elementary schools, Protestant high- 
schools, a Protestant normal school, a Protestant Council of 
Public Instruction, all supported by the Catholic government of 
Quebec. In Protestant Ontario the development of the system 
of Catholic schools for Catholic children stops with the elemen- 
tary schools. No Catholic high-schools supported by the state, 
no Catholic normal school, no Catholic Council of Public In- 
struction. There is a lesson in liberality here : he that runs may 



1 89 1 .] THE NA TIONAL ED UCA TION A SSOCIA TION. 863 

read. And while the Catholic minority in Ontario fully appre- 
ciate the state's recognition of their elementary schools in which 
religious is combined with secular education, where the faith of 
their children is safe, they cannot shut their eyes to the ex- 
tended privileges of the more fortunate minority in Quebec. 

It may not be out of place here to notice how the very just 
complaint of Ontario Catholics, based on this state of affairs, is 
met. It is said : " The public schools of Quebec are Catholic, 
consequently Protestant children cannot conscientiously attend 
them ; the public schools in Ontario are non-sectarian, conse- 
quently Catholics are quite safe in attending them." Are the 
" public " schools of Ontario non-sectarian ? I have a long ex- 
perience of the so-called non-sectarian or public schools, and can 
say, no public school conducted by a Protestant teacher in 
Ontario is a safe one for a Catholic child. It may be granted 
that in many such schools glaring or serious dangers to faith 
and morals do not appear ; but there is always some danger. 
The whole atmosphere of such schools is Protestant ; and a Pro- 
testant teacher can no more put away his Protestantism from 
his teaching than he can put away his thinking faculty. As one 
having over fifty years' experience of public schools, I desire to 
place this opinion on record. The history of some of the public 
schools in the States, presented to us of late in the newspapers, 
is part proof of this. Let me say once and for all to Catholic 
parents, the whole public-school system is tainted with either 
Protestantism or irreligion. And if the facts I shall set forth 
respecting the convention in Toronto do not bear this out, then 
I will cheerfully acknowledge my error. 

Holding these opinions, it was with a good deal of interest I 
and other friends of Catholic education watched the arrange- 
ments made for the convention in Toronto, the programme of 
work, the special line to be taken in the various papers and 
addresses. 

Let me first introduce the prime mover in bringing the asso- 
ciation to Toronto, Mr. James L. Hughes. I do not know 
whether his fame as the bitterest and most unscrupulous foe to 
Catholic schools has reached the reading and thinking public of 
the States ; but it can hardly have failed to do so. Some years 
ago he was comparatively unknown. How he reached his 
present " bad eminence " it would take too long to tell. Some 
say that the hope of one day being Minister of Education in a 
sound Orange Provincial government had much to do with it. 
Up to the present these hopes, if they ever existed, have not 



864 THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION. [Sept., 

been realized. Let us pray, for the sake of peace and the fair 
fame of this province, they may ever remain so. 

It was, therefore, with little or no wonder we saw the elabo- 
rate programme of a meeting to be held in a city, the capital 
of a province where denominational schools are recognized and 
supported by the state, silent pn the subject of these schools, as 
if the local committee dreaded lest the visitors should learn 
something about them. It was to be expected that in such a 
city as Toronto, possessing as it does the highest (if there are 
any highest) and the lowest types of Orangemen and bigotry, 
and with such an active enemy as Mr. Hughes, Catholic schools 
would be quietly ignored, or damned with faint praise, and the 
so-called non-sectarian schools lauded to the skies. 

For this, however, I believe the local committee is wholly to 
blame, and not the executive of the National Education Associa- 
tion. A late meeting of the association shows that they are 
not afraid to hear the principles of Catholic education discussed. 
These principles will not down, they are eternal ; and so we find 
at the convention some who were called on to " curse " denomi- 
national schools very unexpectedly, and to the no small con- 
sternation of the local managers of the meetings, turned to 
"bless" instead. 

The beginning of the convention was bad. The dark shadow 
of intolerance came over it then, and, I am sorry to say, re- 
mained over it to the close. The first day's proceedings in- 
cluded the addresses of welcome and the answers thereto. Of 
these I shall refer to three only. That of the Minister of Edu- 
cation for Ontario, who, if rumor speaks true, had almost been 
left off the programme by the local committee, was pointed and 
in good taste. That of the Rev. Mr. Rexford, an Anglican 
clergyman from Quebec, secretary of the Protestant Council of 
Public Instruction, and who represented the Chief Superinten- 
dent of Education of that province, must have somewhat sur- 
prised the " locals." Speaking with authority and the statement 
coming from a Protestant came with all the more effect he 
tore to shreds the flimsy stories which do duty so frequently 
about the ignorance of the habitants of Quebec. A writer in 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD some time ago pointed out the utter 
falsehood of such stories. Mr. Rexford showed that Quebec 
stands high in educational matters ; that she has built up a litera- 
ture which ranks first in the Dominion to-day; that her universi- 
ties, high-schools, and elementary schools are doing a work 
equal, to any other institutions on this continent. And using the 



1891.] THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION. 865 

language of la belle France, he presented to the convention the 
greetings of the province in the tongue of six-sevenths of its 
people. 

Short, direct, and appropriate addresses were given by the 
leading American visitors. To one of these I wish to refer. It 
seemed to strike the key-note of the work of the convention. If 
this statement does injustice to a large body of apparently intel- 
ligent and liberal-minded men and women, I am sorry for it ; 
but up to the present no repudiation of the sentiments uttered 
has come from the executive or any member of the association, 
either publicly or privately. Many watched in Toronto for this 
repudiation ; it did not come ; it has not come. The following 
is a newspaper summary of the address referred to : 

" Professor P. Marcellus Marshall, of Chamita, New Mexico, 
responded for the south-west. He said : People of Canada, offi- 
cers, and citizens of Toronto: 800,000 square miles of mountains 
and of valleys in the ' Southland ' of the west heard your invita- 
tions so loud and so strong, and now respond to your welcomes 
so free and so warm. The land of the cactus and the pine ; the 
land of the orange and the palm ; the land of earth's most bar- 
ren wastes and of her richest ever-producing fields ; the land in 
parts of which it burns by day and freezes by night, and in 
other parts of which it neither burns nor freezes during all the 
rolling year ; the land of Montezuma's children of the sun, which 
by the Romish Spaniard was later overrun, but in which Ameri- 
can civilization is merely just begun, . . . has lifted up her 
golden ears, and heard and come, at your invitation, to this fair 
Canada land, to this beautiful, moral, Protestant city of Toronto, 
chaste Queen of the North, and now, from her life-giving air and 
cloudless skies and unfathomed possibilities, responds with all her 
warm, southern, Spanish heart to your grand and gracious wel- 
come. Boasting houses and towns, with dwellers now as they 
were when Columbus came, she also boasts a middle civilization 
as well as the newest of the name. The red man still bends his 
bow upon the game ; the Pueblo dances to Montezuma and 
Malinche, and elects his governors and his captains once a year ; 
the Mexican, son of Spanish * Conquistador,' in his utter illiter- 
acy yet bows down to sticks and stones, carries his fetiches 
about his fields in solemn procession to pray for rain, and sheds 
his own blood to absolve his own sins an ignoble, superstitious 
slave of Rome and Romanism ; the American has come with rail 
and wire, with printing-press and Protestant missionary, with 
light and law and learning, and * the desert begins to bloom as 
a rose.' * San Miguel College,' founded before Harvard Univer- 
sity, and the public school-master who cannot write his own 
name, must now do or die for ever. The seven empires of the 
south-west respond, ' Viva Canada, Viva Toronto, Viva la Reina 
Victoria ! ' " 



866 THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION. [Sept. 

The Minister of Education, in his explanation of the school 
system of Ontario, gave simply the fact of the existence of the 
Catholic schools ; and gave statistics to show their standing in 
the province. This is really all he was called on to do by the 
circumstances ; he did no more. 

The address of Dr. Gates, President of Amherst College, was 
eloquent if his ideas were a little peculiar. He said that the 
great object of common-school education is to find a man, or to 
make a man. His list of men partook somewhat of the blasphe- 
mous Christ, Martin Luther, Cromwell, etc. This association of 
names is peculiar and painful. 

On the evening of the last day of the convention two re- 
markable addresses were delivered, one by Rev. Professor Clarke, 
Trinity University, Toronto ; the other by Goldwin Smith. Pro- 
fessor Clarke, who on short notice took the place of Professor 
Meiklejohn, of Aberdeen University, spoke of the progress of ele- 
mentary education in England. He made some very important 
admissions that it was not until 1832 or '34 the state did any- 
thing for the education of the masses. Who, then, attended to 
this ? The teachers of parochial schools, whose salaries were 
often paid out of the poor pittance of the clergymen. These 
parochial schools simply followed out a recognized principle the 
child belonged to the parent and to God, and not to the state. 
There could be no mistaking his admiration of and faith in such 
a system of education. 

Goldwin Smith spoke for a few minutes. He said that, be- 
ginning with his own remembrance of things, the two great prin- 
ciples of education, parental control and state control, were the 
subject of discussion. His own leanings were evidently in the 
direction of the former. 

It is likely that the proceedings of the convention will be 
officially published. If so, they will repay a careful reading and 
will afford much food for thought. The friends of Catholic edu- 
cation have, in one sense, no reason to regret the peculiar color- 
ing placed on the proceedings of the convention. Even Protes- 
tant public opinion is unmistakably moving round to the Catho- 
lic position in this matter. It is one of the signs of the times. 

M. A. 






1891.] MADAME GRADOT. 867 



MADAME GRADOT. 

IN the yards and upon the rear walls of our row of tenement 
houses the sun had been shining for an hour or more ; but now, 
grown tired, it may be, of loitering there and with the few flow- 
ering plants and the climbing vines which the Little Madame 
had cultivated with such loving care and so successfully, it had 
reached the furthest corner of my room. It seemed to me that 
only the day before I had had to dress quickly to be in time 
for our breakfast, if I waited before rising for the sunlight to 
come near that corner ; but the days were rapidly growing 
longer, and now I could easily wait for it to chase the shadows 
a long way up the wall. 

Through the open windows I could hear the discordant cry 
of a parrot kept by some fellow-tenant, possibly for his own 
amusement but certainly to the annoyance of his neighbors. 
The clothes-line man had already begun his rounds, and some- 
times, as he would discern some broken, frayed line hanging 
from the high centre pole at the back of every house, he would 
intermit his curious, unintelligible call to ask, " Fix your line, 
lady?" in a high, far-reaching voice. Now, too, through the 
doors, I could hear Mme. Gradot's quick and earnest voice as 
she tried to waken her husband. 

" Jean, Jean!" she called, "you must get up; it is time. Ah! 
see the bright sun ; it is kissing now, it is kissing just the end 
of your nose. It will make it so red." 

But Jean rebelled and muttered sleepily, and I could hear the 
bed creak as he turned and settled himself for still another nap. 
But the little woman was inexorable. 

" You must, you must," she repeated. " How lazy, how lazy 
you are! Are you not lazy?" 

And Jean, finally yielding, was soon up, and presently I 
heard him, as he was about to leave his room, ask if I was not 
to be called for breakfast. 

" No, no ; go, and do not disturb him. He is not busy as 
you are, and his employer is so kind," Mme. Gradot replied. 

Jean laughed in his cheery way, and soon I heard his steps 
through the hall and down the stairs. He was now, as he had 
been for many years, a foreign-corresponding clerk in a large 
house down-town, where the pay was small and the hours long ; 



868 MADAME GRADOT. [Sept., 

but he was always good-natured, and as fond and proud of the 
little woman who took such good care of him as he had been 
when thirty years ago he had come to America with her, newly 
wedded, in search of fame and fortune. 

Now as he went away I heard her murmur to herself, as she 
came nearer to the door, " Ah, the poor Jean ! why do they 
have to work so early?" And I wondered how long she had 
been about her daily duties. 

" I must be at work, too," I thought ; but as I tried to rise 
a sharp pain in my shoulder reminded me that I had fallen 
badly the day before and had had to come earlier than usual 
to the Little Madame, for so Jean and I always thought of our 
home-coming. When I would meet him down-town, as T did in- 
frequently, he would shake me warmly by the hand and ask, 
" You come early to the Little Madame to-night ? " 

Mme. Gradot was always good to me, and she had always 
been willing to let me take my own time before breakfast. A 
long time ago, soon after she had given her consent to let me 
have the little room there was no other use for, Jean had urged 
her to call me ; but *as I entered the little room which served 
her as kitchen, dining-room, and living-room as well on cojd 
days, I had heard her say : 

" Let the poor child sleep." 

" Such a woman should have a pedestal," I cried as I lifted 
her bodily upon the dresser. This distressed her greatly, her 
dignity was so ruffled, and for the only time since I had known 
her she was angry with Jean; but then, he had laughed zealously. 
In a minute, however, she forgave us both, and, maybe, we were 
the better friends. 

Now this morning I was glad to be reminded that I was not 
busy and could easily enough take a holiday ; but what a holi- 
day it was to be to be spent in bed with a strained shoulder ! 
But still I worried a little, for I knew that the little woman 
would be anxious lest my breakfast might be spoiled. I tried 
to smile cheerfully as her bright face looked in at the door, but 
I must have failed, for she came to me quickly. 

"You are not sick?" she asked; "you have not fever?" 

" No," I answered, and then I told her that my fall had been 
worse than I thought. 

"Oh," she said, as she kissed me, "you are so patient, and 
so like my son." 

Her words hurt a little and made me wince, for I knew 
there was then no reason why I should not be patient, and Jean 



1891.] MADAME GRADOT. 869 

had told me too much of their son to make me wish to seem 
like him. 

" The dear little woman must never know," he had said to 
me, and I had agreed with him. " You see," he went on, "so 
many drinking-shops are needed to keep us happy in these 
slums you call them slums ? and the boy liked them too well. 
And but I hope he will come back never." 

But his mother always looked for her son, and often she 
asked Jean whether he thought the day of his return could 
be far off, much to the discomfiture of the good man. 
Sometimes I wondered whether, if he should return, we might 
find that I had stolen his place in his mother's heart ; but if he 
did not, none of us need care for that. 

"You will stay in bed to-day?" now she said to me, passing 
her warm, smooth hand over my forehead. 

"Yes," I answered, "I am glad to think that I must." 

" ' Glad ? ' Then we shall make it a fete day. What shall we 
have for the dinner, then?" 

" O madame ! " I replied, " I cannot do justice to one of 
your marvellous dinners to-day." 

" * Marvellous ? ' she repeated doubtfully ; "I do not know, 
but good ? Yes. It will be so good, you can eat, oh ! all of it. 
The soup as clear as that," she went on, holding her thumb and 
finger close together and before me, and then slowly separating 
them. "What else? The sweetbreads, perhaps? Oh! I know 
where to get them, and and everything. You shall see." 

And she hurried out of the room, but only to return in a 
minute penitent. 

" You will not tell, Jean ? " she said, shaking her finger at me. 

"Certainly not," I replied, laughing; "but what is it I am 
not to tell him ? " 

" The poor child's breakfast, I forgot." And her grief was 
so real that, hungry though I was, I almost wished she had not 
now remembered it ; but before I could reply to her at all she 
had hurried out to prepare it. 

" You will let me sit here while you eat it, the breakfast ? " 
she asked, when she brought the simple meal to me, and had 
managed to make me comfortable as I sat up in bed. 

" Why did you not call Jean ? " she continued presently. 
" He is so big he could have lifted you so high, so high." 

And she was full of tender solicitude until convinced that, 
although it was wiser for me to remain in bed, I was in no 
great pain. 



870 MADAME GR4DOT. [Sept., 

The house in which we lived was still a new one, and its 
tenants were pleasanter and better people than many of those 
who live in these tenements. The world, they say, grows better 
as it grows older and better worth the living in, and it may be 
so ; but it is not so with all the small worlds within the world. 
Dirt will accumulate, and there is much wear and tear in these 
hastily built houses tenanted by so many. Long ago I noticed 
that as the houses grew older the tenants changed in character 
for the worse. We had now been in this house, in a newly 
developed part of the city, for nearly a year, and I was not 
surprised to learn that Madame Gradot was looking forward 
eagerly to the completion of a new and particularly ugly block 
of houses being built not far from us. 

" But," she said, after I ,had finished my breakfast, and the 
room had been cleaned as well as it could be " but it is not 
nice. I do not like it, these apartments. When my boy gets 
back oh ! so soon we shall have in the country a little place. 
It will cost nothing only one thousand dollars, not a bit more. 
What is that for two grat men ? And you will come too," she 
added with a little cry. " We could not live without you. No, 
no ! " 

For a little time she was silent, and I could fancy that she 
was already building for herself her little cottage in the sunlight. 

" Think," she went on shortly, " what we shall have : in every 
room the blessed sun, and flowers, oh ! so many. And and 
and pigeons. We will not live in the country without pigeons, 
no." 

" Is that all ? " I asked ; but though I laughed, I took great 
pleasure in her joy and happiness in the delightful forecast. 

" We shall have a whole big yard to dry the clothes ; no big 
pole like that, and pulleys, no. They creak so, ugh ! " she 
went on with a little shrug of disgust. " Oh ! you do not see 
all the day from the window the clothes. They make the dogs 
bark, I tell you. But you will let me go or we shall not have 
the dinner." 

Then, smiling brightly at me, she left me to get along alone 
as best I could. Truly it was not difficult, for I had much to 
think of, but chiefly I thought of the Little Madame herself. I 
fancied her in the little home in the country she wished for so 
much, with the pigeons and the sunlight, and I wondered if she 
would be so much happier there. And then I wondered whether 
the little house would ever be hers at all, for Jean had told me 
how most of the money they had struggled so to save for their 






1891.] MADAME GRADOT. 871 

country home and their old age ' had been squandered by their 
son, or spent in one of the many efforts they had made to save 
him from the consequences of his folly. 

The day was drawing to a close ; Madame Gradot had long 
ago returned from her trip to market, and had told me with 
glee of her successful search. 

" We who go late," she said, " have not the choice ; but the 
price ! Ah ! you should see." 

She had finished her work and had even arranged the table, 
and in my room, too, so that I might not have to be moved 
far ; and now we were waiting patiently in the lengthening 
shadows for Jean's return. But Madame Gradot did not like 
the shadows ; nor, indeed, could she bear any dark spot what- 
ever, and now as again her talk was of the place we should 
have near by in the country, she spoke only of how bright it 
would be, and pretty and clean. 

" Ah ! yes, so clean always. Is it not good I am so small ? " 
then she asked, as she reached over on the floor to pick up 
some speck her bright eyes had found. 

At last Jean returned to us, and then we soon found that 
the dinner was quite as marvellous as I expected, and as good 
as the Little Madame had promised that it should be. Then 
Jean brought to us from a small stock he had had, I do not 
know how long, a bottle of excellent claret, and* as he carefully 
withdrew the cork and then held it still on the corkscrew 
toward us, that we might enjoy its fragrance, he said : 

" This shall be a fete day, veritably." 

" If I but had your appetite," I said. " How lucky you a're 
to be so hungry! " 

" Yes," he assented ; " and you ? " 

" I shall do better to-morrow," I answered. " Can we have 
so good a dinner to-morrow, madame ? " 

" Every night, always. Never fear." 

Then when we had finished, and the table and the plates 
had been taken to the kitchen and duly put away, Jean told us 
of his day and of the letters he had written to his firm's agents 
in France, and of how his heart would sometimes follow them 
there. 

" Now, Jean, see," said Madame Gradot. "We need more 
light. You must not think it is dark here. But we have been 
talking to-day of the home in the country, Jean. It must come 
soon. We are growing old, so old " ; and she gently stroked 
Jean's hand. 



872 MADAME GRADOT. [Sept., 

Madame Gradot liked to have me read to them ; but on this 
evening we talked until Jean grew sleepy and the good woman 
took him off to bed. I felt that her " Good-night " was indeed 
a benediction. 

Slowly the summer ran its course. For many days the air as 
it reached us seemed parched by its passage over the heated pav- 
ing stones. The Little Madame was always cheerful ; but she 
did not bear the heat well. She grew thinner, and I noticed 
that she was more willing to rest than she had been always. 
Her eyes grew sometimes dull, and when she did not know that 
any one was looking at her there was a listlessness in her man- 
ner and appearance strangely unlike her. The lines in her face 
deepened, too. Jean watched her closely, and I saw that he was 
greatly troubled ; but he hid his trouble ; even to himself, he 
would not admit that she could be seriously ill. 

" How well you look this morning ! " he would say to her ; 
but his smile, meant to be reassuring, was of the sorry kind one 
can stop so easily and so quickly. 

" Yes," she said simply, and she smiled too in response ; for 
she was brave and determined not to show her suffering. 

I tried to take her with me to some good doctor ; but she re- 
belled and would not admit that she could need a doctor's care. 
But Jean and I took counsel together, and we decided that soon 
we would send her away into the country to stay until cooler 
weather should come again. There, we thought, she would be 
sure to regain her health and strength. We talked the matter 
over many times together, and we found great pleasure in our 
discussion of the places to which we might send her, and many 
were the plans we formed for her enjoyment. At length we se- 
lected the place we believed might do. It was said to be cool, 
it was not far, and it was not too expensive for Jean's meagre 
purse. 

With Jean's approval, almost indeed at his request, I made a 
journey there to be sure that there might be no mischance. 
The small house was prettily situated on a little level spot 
among some near-by mountains. The trees were bending in the 
breeze, and the shadows of the leaves were dancing and playing 
in the sunlight. In the room they showed me there was no hint 
of spot or stain. It would surely do, I thought. On my return 
Jean was enthusiastic, and we went together to tell the Little 
Madame of the change in store for her. 

" The sun ? " Jean asked. 

" Is everywhere," I answered. 



MADAME GRADOT. 873 

"It is clean, and and there are pigeons?" 

" Clean ? Yes. I do not know about the pigeons, but there 
are birds in plenty." 

"Singing?" he asked. 

"Yes," I replied, enjoying his earnestness, "singing all day." 

" Then she will be happy, of a truth ? " 

" We need not fear, I think, Jean," I responded. 

The day was a warm one, one of the warmest we had had, 
and oppressive. Along the streets there were not many stirring, 
for we were then too early to meet the home-returning working- 
men ; but many women were gathered in front of the houses, 
lazily fanning sleepy, white-faced children in their arms. 

" She will soon be away from this," Jean said ; " it is good. 
No," he went on, "it is not fair. You must wait for me." And 
he laughingly held me back that I might not reach the Little 
Madame first, for I was much younger and quicker. We were 
surprised that she was not upon the landing to meet us ; but as 
we entered the room almost together we saw her form upon the 
floor. A glance upward told the story. In the dreadful heat 
her thoughts miist have turned to the country home she so 
wished for, and she had climbed upon the ladder to look upon 
their little store of savings, safe hidden away at the top of the 
dresser, perhaps to add to it, and there had fallen as we found 
her. We placed her gently on the bed, and soon the doctor 
came, followed quickly by the priest. 

When consciousness returned and, true to the faith she had 
lived up to her life long, her peace had been made with the 
good God, I told her the story of our plans, and described to 
her the house in the mountains and the sunlight to which we 
hoped soon to take her. She smiled, but she shortly beckoned 
us to her, and she kissed me and then Jean. Jean's kiss was the 
last thing she knew. She did not linger long. 

We knew what she would have wished, and in the quiet 
country church-yard wherein she sleeps there is no hint of 
suffering or sorrow. Upon her grave no stone stands to remind 
us of her virtues, but all summer the grass grows and the flow- 
ers bloom, and it may be that the birds stopping there to rest 
sing sweeter than their fellows. 

W. M. BANGS. 



VOL. LIII. 56 



874 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER* 

CHAPTER XXX. 
THE APOSTOLATE OF THE PRESS. 

ONE Sunday forenoon, happening to cross Broadway near a 
fashionable Protestant church, we saw the curb on both sides 
of the street lined with carriages, and the coachmen and foot- 
men all reading the morning papers. The rich master and his 
family were in the softly-cushioned pews indoors, while their ser- 
vants studied the news of the world and worshipped at the 
shrine of the Press outside : a spectacle suggestive of many 
things to the social reformer. But to a religious mind it was an 
invitation to the Apostolate of the Press. The Philips of our day 
can evangelize the rough charioteer by means of the written 
word as easily as they can his cultured master. 

To Father Hecker the Press was the highest opportunity for 
religion. The only term of comparison for it is some element of 
nature like sunlight or the atmosphere. In the Press civilized 
man lives and breathes. Father Hecker was as alive to the in- 
jury done to humanity by bad reading as a skilful physician is 
to the malaria which he can smell and fairly taste in an infected 
atmosphere ; and he ever strove to make the Press a means of 
enlightenment and virtue. He began to write for publication 
almost immediately after his arrival in America as a Redemp- 
torist missionary; the Questions of the Soul and the Aspirations 
of Nature were composed amidst most absorbing occupations be- 
tween 1853 and 1858. Throughout life he was ever asking him- 
self and others how the Press could be cleansed, and how its 
Apostolate could be inaugurated. To this end he was ready to 
devote all his efforts, and expend all his resources and those of 
the community of which he was the founder. It is true that no 
man of his time was better aware of the power of the spoken 
word, and few were more competent to use it, the natural and 
Pentecostal vehicle of the Holy Spirit to men's souls. But he 
also felt that the providence of God, in making the Press of our 
day an artificial medium of human intercourse more universal 
than the living voice itself, had pointed it out as a necessary ad- 
junct to the oral preaching of the truth. He was convinced that 

* Copyright, 1890, Rev. A. F. Hewit. All rights reserved. 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 875 

religion should make the Press its own. He would not look 
upon it as an extraordinary aid, but maintained that the ordin- 
ary provision of Christian instruction for the people should ever 
be two-fold, by speech and by print : neither the Preacher with- 
out the Press nor the Press without the Preacher. He was 
heard to say that in reading Montalembert's Monks of the West 
he had been struck with the author's eloquent apostrophe to the 
spade, the instrument of civilization and Christianity for the 
wild hordes of the early middle ages. Much rather, he said, 
should we worship the Press as the medium of the light of God 
to all mankind. He felt that the Apostolate of the Press might 
well absorb the external vocation of the most active friends of 
religion. 

In the Press he found a distinct suggestion from above of a 
change of methods for elevating men to truth and virtue. In 
the spring of 1870, while on his way home from the Vatican 
Council, he wrote to Father Deshon from Assisi : 

" I felt as if I would like to have peopled that grand and 
empty convent with inspired men and printing-presses. For 
evidently the special battle-field of attack and defence of truth 
for half a century to come is the printing-press." 

He believed in types as he believed in pulpits. He believed 
that the printing-office was necessary to the convent. To him 
the Apostolate of the Press meant the largest amount of truth 
to the greatest number of people. By its means a small band 
of powerful men could reach an entire nation and elevate its 
religious life. 

This being understood, one is not surprised at the extent of 
his plans for this Apostolate. He was never able to carry them 
out fully. Not till some years after the founding of the commu- 
nity could he make a fair beginning, although the first volume of 
the Paulist Sermons appeared in 1861. Delays were inevitable 
from the difficulties incident to the opening of the house and 
church in Fifty-ninth Street, and these were aggravated by the 
war, which for over four years bred such intense excitement as to 
interfere with any strong general interest in matters other than 
political. But the very month it ended, in April, 1865, Father 
Hecker started THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Its purpose was to 
speak for religion in high-grade periodical literature. The year 
following he founded The Catholic Publication Society, with the 
purpose of directing the entire resources of the Press into a 



876 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [Sept., 

missionary apostolate. In 1870 he began The Young Catholic. 
In literary merit and in illustrations it equalled any of the juven- 
ile publications of that period, and was the pioneer of all the 
Catholic journals in the United States intended for children. 
And finally, in 1871, he projected the establishment of a first- 
class Catholic daily, securing, within a year subscriptions for 
more than half the money necessary for the purpose, when the 
work was arrested by the final breaking down of his health. 

THE CATHOLIC WORLD was considered a hazardous venture. 
At the time it was proposed, such modest attempts at Catholic 
monthlies as had struggled into life had long ceased to exist. 
The public for such a magazine seemed to be small. The priest- 
hood had little leisure for reading, being hardly sufficient in num- 
ber for their most essential duties ; the educated laymen were 
not numerous, nor remarkable for activity of mind in matters of 
religion ; nearly the entire Church of America was foreign by 
birth or parentage, and belonged to the toiling masses of the 
people : " not many rich, not many noble." And, Father Hecker 
was asked, whom are you going to get to write for the maga- 
zine ? How many Catholic literary men and women do you know 
of? Prudence, therefore, stood sponsor to courage. The cau- 
tious policy of an eclectic was adopted, and for more than a 
year the magazine, with the exception of its book reviews, was 
made up of selections and translations from foreign periodicals. 
The late John R. G. Hassard, who had already succeeded as a 
journalist, was chosen by Father Hecker as his assistant in the 
editorial work. Efforts were .at once made to secure original ar- 
ticles ; but before the magazine was filled by them three or four 
years were spent in urgent soliciting, in very elaborate sub-edit- 
ing of MSS., and in reliance on the steady assistance of the 
pens of the Paulist Fathers. As a compensation, THE CATHO- 
LIC WORLD has introduced to the public many of our best 
writers, and first and last has brought our ablest minds on both 
sides of the water into contact with the most intelligent Catho- 
lics in the United States. All through its career it has repre- 
sented Catholic truth before the American public in such wise as 
to command respect, and has brought about the conversion of 
many of its non-Catholic readers. Since its beginning it has 
been forced to hold its own against the claims of not unwelcome 
rivals, and against the almost overwhelming attractions of the 
great illustrated secular monthlies, to say nothing of the vicissi- 
tudes of the business world ; and it has succeeded in doing so. 
Father Hecker's purpose in establishing it has been realized, for 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 877 

it has ever been a first-rate Catholic monthly of general litera- 
ture, holding an equal place with similar publications in the 
world of letters. He was its editor-in-chief till the time of his 
death, except during three years of illness and absence in 
Europe. He conducted it so as to occupy much of the field 
open to the Apostolate of the Press, giving solid doctrine in 
form of controversy, and discussing such religious truths as were 
of current interest. He kept its readers informed of the change- 
ful moods of non-Catholic thought, and furnished them with 
short studies of instructive eras and personages in history. 
These graver topics have been floated along by contributions of 
a lighter kind, by good fiction and conscientious literary criti- 
cism. Meantime, the social problems which had perplexed 
Father Hecker himself in his early life, have caught the atten- 
tion of the slower minds of average men, or rather have been 
thrust upon them ; and their consideration, ever in his own sym- 
pathetic spirit, now forms a prominent feature of THE CATHOLIC 
WORLD. 

The Young Catholic was an enterprise dear to his heart. His 
interest in it was constant and minute, and some of the articles 
most popular with its young constituency were from his own 
pen. It has always been edited by Mrs. George V. Hecker, as- 
sisted by a small circle of zealous and enlightened writers. It 
has held its way, but has had to encounter the not unusual fate 
of bold pioneers. It created its own rivals by demonstrating the 
possibilities of juvenile Catholic journalism, calling into existence 
more than a score of claimants for the support which it alone 
at first solicited. The lowest estimate of juvenile publications of a 
purely secular tone yearly sold in America carries the figure far 
into the millions. Some of these, and it is well to know that they 
are the most widely sold, are first-rate in a literary point of 
view and employ the best artists for the pictures. To say that 
they are secular but feebly expresses the totally unmoral influ- 
ence they for the most part exert. They are the extension of 
the unreligious school into the homes of the people. When 
Father Hecker and Mrs. George V. Hecker and their associates 
began The Young Catholic, this vast mirage of the desert of life 
had but glimmered upon the distant horizon ; they saw it com- 
ing and they did their best to point Catholic youth away from 
it and lead it to the real oasis of God, with its grateful shade, 
its delicious fruits, and its ever-flowing springs of the waters of 
life. 

As already said, The Catholic Publication Society was begun a 



878 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

year after THE CATHOLIC WORLD was started, its aim being to 
turn to the good of religion, and especially to the conversion. of 
non-Catholics, all the uses the press is capable of. It was a mis- 
sionary work in the broadest sense, seeking to enlist not only 
the clergy but especially the laity in an organized Apostolate of 
the Press, to enlighten the fajth of Catholics and to spread it 
among their Protestant fellow-citizens. Its first work was to be 
the issuing of tracts and pamphlets telling the plain truth about 
the Catholic religion. Local societies, to be established through- 
out the country, were to buy these publications at a price less 
than cost, and distribute them gratis to all classes likely to be 
benefited. To catch the eye of the American people, to affect 
their hearts, to supply their religious wants with Catholic truth, 
were objects kept in view in preparing the tracts. Although 
some of them were addressed to Catholics, enforcing important 
religious duties, nearly all of them were controversial. More 
than seventy different tracts were printed first and last, and many 
hundreds of thousands, indeed several millions, of them distrib- 
uted in all parts of the country, public, charitable, and penal in- 
stitutions being, of course, fair field for this work. They were 
all very brief, few of them covering more than four small-sized 
pages. "Three pages of truth have before now overturned a 
life-time of error," said Father Hecker. The tract Is it Honest? 
though only four pages of large type, or about twelve hundred 
words, created a sensation everywhere, and was answered by 
a Protestant minister with over fifty pages of printed matter, 
or about fifteen times more than the tract itself. One hundred 
thousand copies of this tract were distributed in New York City 
alone. It is printed herewith as a specimen, both as to style and 
matter, of what one may call the aggressive-defensive tactics in 

Catholic controversy: 

Is IT HONEST 

To say^ that the Catholic Church prohibits the use of the Bible 
When anybody who chooses can buy as many as he likes at any Catholic 
bookstore, and can see on the first page of any one of them the approbation of the 
Bishops of the Catholic Church, with the Pope at their head, encouraging Catho- 
lics to read the Bible, in these words : " The faithful should be excited to the read- 
ing of the Holy Scriptures," and that not only for the Catholics of the United 
States, but also for those of the whole world besides ? 

Is IT HONEST 

To say that Catholics believe that man by his own power can forgive sin 
When the priest is regarded by the Catholic Church only as the agent of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, acting by the power delegated to him, according to these 
words, " Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; and whose sins you 
shall retain, they are retained ? " (St. John xx. 23.) 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER BECKER. 879 

Is IT HONEST 
To repeat over and over again that Catholics pay the priest to pardon their 

sins 

When such a thing is unheard of anywhere in the Catholic Church 
When any transaction of the kind is stigmatized as a grievous sin, and ranked 
along with murder, adultery, blasphemy, etc., in every catechism and work on 

Catholic theology ? 

Is IT HONEST 

To persist in saying that Catholics believe their sins are forgiven merely by 
the confession of them to the priest, 'without a true sorrow for them, or a 
true purpose to quit them 

When every child finds the contrary distinctly and clearly stated in the cate- 
chism, which he is obliged to learn before he can be admitted to the sacraments ? 
Any honest man can verify this statement by examining any Catholic catechism. 

Is IT HONEST 

To assert that the Catholic Chitrch grants any indulgence or permission to com- 
mit sin 

When an " indulgence," according to her universally received doctrine, was 
never dreamed of by Catholics to imply, in any case whatever, any permission to 
commit the least sin ; and when an indulgence has no application whatever to sin 
until after sin has been repented of and pardoned ? 

Is IT HONEST 
To accuse Catholics of putting the Blessed Virgin or the Saints in the place of 

God or the Lord Jesus Christ 

When the Council of Trent declares that it is simply useful to ask their inter- 
cession in order to obtain favor from God, through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, 
who alone is our Saviour and Redeemer 

When " asking their prayers and influence with God " is exactly of the same 
nature as when Christians ask the pious prayers of one another ? 

Is IT HONEST 
To accuse Catholics of paying divine worship to images or pictures, as the 

heathen do 

When every Catholic indignantly repudiates any idea of the kind, and when 
the Council of Trent distinctly declares the doctrine of the Catholic Church in re- 
gard to them to be, " that there is no divinity or virtue in them which should ap- 
pear to claim the tribute of one's veneration " ; but that " all the honor which is 
paid to them shall be referred to the originals whom they are designed to repre- 
sent ? " (Sess. 25.) 

Is IT HONEST 

To make these and many other similar charges against Catholics 

When they detest and abhor such false doctrines more than those do who 
make them, and make them, too, without ever having read a Catholic book, or 
taken any honest means of ascertaining the doctrines which the Catholic Church 
really teaches ? 

Remember the commandment of God, which says : " Thou shalt not bear 
false witness against thy neighbor." 

Reader, would you be honest, and do no injustice ? Then examine the doc- 
trines of the Catholic Church ; read the works of Catholics. See both sides. 
Examine, and be fair, for AMERICANS LOVE FAIR PLAY. 



88o THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

In preparing these little messengers of truth every style of 
writing was used, narrative, allegory, dialogue, and positive argu- 
ment. They are as good reading to-day as when first issued, 
and the volume which they form may be placed in an inquirer's 
hands with excellent effect. To keep them agoing Father 
Hecker laid all his friends of any literary ability under contribu- 
tion, the series being opened by Archbishop Spalding with a 
tract on Religious Indifferentism. Did space permit, an entire list 
of the subjects dealt with might be given, and the reader could 
the better see how they embrace the entire controversy between 
Catholics and Protestants and infidels, many of the tracts being 
masterpieces of popular argumentation. 

As to the business side of these enterprises, Father Hecker 
confided it to Mr. Lawrence Kehoe, who was publisher of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD and of The Young Catholic from their begin- 
ning until the Paulists became their own publishers, shortly 
before Mr. Kehoe's death. He was placed in charge of the 
Publication Society as manager when it was started, and so con- 
tinued until the formation of the present firm, remaining then 
the active partner in its management. No more ardent advo- 
cate of a good cause could be desired than Lawrence Kehoe. 
Father Hecker cherished him as a friend, and he was his 
zealous and efficient agent in his entire Apostolate of the 
Press. 

The purpose of the Publication Society was missionary, and 
the intention was that its books, tracts, and pamphlets should be 
either given away or sold at cost price, or below it. Therefore 
it was necessary to secure funds for the running expenses. The 
reader has seen that this was to have been done by the contri- 
butions of subsidiary societies. To aid in the formation of these 
and to solicit contributions in money, circulars were sent to all 
the clergy of the United States. Only a few made any practical 
response. But the meeting of the Second Plenary Council of 
Baltimore in 1866, the same year the Society was founded, was 
opportune. The bishops were induced to take the matter up, 
and a decree, of which the following is a translation, was 
enacted. After speaking of the need of supplying Catholic 
literature at a low price the Council proceeds : 

" Since a society with this object in view, known as The 
Catholic Publication Society, has been founded in New York, 
and has been so far conducted with commendable diligence and 
with notable success, we therefore consider it to be entirely 
worthy of the favor and assistance of prelates and priests, as 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 88 1 

well as of the Catholic people in general. That the whole coun- 
try may the better and more certainly share in its advantages, 
we advise and exhort the bishops to establish branches of this 
society in their dioceses, by means of whose officers the publica- 
tions of the society may be distributed. But as without great 
expenditure of money these societies cannot be kept up and 
must fail of success, the bishops shall therefore appoint a yearly 
collection for their support, to be taken up in all the principal 
churches, or shall make other provision for the same purpose 
according to their best judgment." (Con. Plen. Bait., 500.) 

From the Pastoral Letter of the same Council we extract the 
following : 

-"In connection with this matter [the Catholic Press] we earn- 
estly recommend to the faithful of our charge The Catholic 
Publication Society, lately established in the city of New York 
by a zealous and devoted clergyman. Besides the issuing of 
short tracts with which this society has begun, and which may 
be usefully employed to arrest the attention of many whom 
neither inclination nor leisure will allow to read larger works, 
this Society contemplates the publication of Catholic books, 
according as circumstances may permit and the interests of re- 
ligion appear to require. From the judgment and good taste 
evinced in the composition and selection of such tracts and 
books as have already been issued by this Society, we are en- 
couraged to hope that it will be eminently effective in making 
known the truths of our holy religion, and dispelling the preju- 
dices which are mainly owing to want of information on the 
part of so many of our fellow-citizens. For this it is neces- 
sary that a generous co-operation be given both by clergy and 
laity to the undertaking, which is second to none in impor- 
tance among the subsidiary aids which the inventions of modern 
times supply to our ministry for the diffusion of Catholic 
truth." 

How .elated Father Hecker was by this action of the Council, 
and how over-sanguine, as the event proved, of the future of the 
Society, is shown by the following extracts from letters to a 
friend : 

" My efforts in the recent Council were completely successful, 
owing to the many prayers offered to God yours not the least. 
Could you have seen the letters from different quarters, from 
good pious nuns, and persons loving and serving and fearing 
God in the world, written to me, and their writers all praying 
and doing works of mercy and mortification for the purposes I 
had in view, you could not wonder at my success. God did it. 
What is more, I was fully conscious of the fact, and it is this 
that made my great joy. 



882 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

" The Catholic Publication Society has the unanimous con- 
sent, and sympathy, and co-operation of the entire episcopate 
and clergy. Every year there is a collection to be taken up in 
the principal churches for its support. I have drawn an ele- 
phant, but I do not feel like the man who did not know what 
to do with him after he had got him." 

" It is good in God to place me in a position in which I can 
act efficiently. The disposition towards me is, I know, most 
pleasant and favorable. I have been placed where I shall be at 
liberty to act and direct action. Quietly pray for me as the 
Holy Spirit may suggest. On my part I will also seek the same 
guidance. How good God is to give it ! " 

The Council had hardly adjourned when it began to be plain 
that in legislating for The Catholic Publication Society the pre- 
lates had been over-stimulated by the zeal of Archbishop Spald- 
ing and the personal influence of Father Hecker himself, who 
was present in his capacity of Superior of the Paulists. He 
went among the bishops and pleaded for the Apostolate of the 
Press with characteristic vigor, and with his usual success. 
Aided by the archbishop, he lifted the Fathers of the Council 
for a moment above what in their sober senses they deemed 
the exclusive duty of the hour. This was to provide churches 
and priests, and schools and school-teachers, for the people. Al- 
ready far too numerous for their clergy, the Catholic people 
were increasing by immigration alone at the rate of more than 
a quarter of a million a year. Every effort must be con- 
centrated, it was thought, and every penny spent, in the vast 
work of housing and feeding the wandering flocks of the 
Lord. And certainly the magnitude of the task and the suc- 
cess attained in performing it can excuse the indifference shown 
to the Apostolate of the Press, if anything can excuse it. But it 
seemed otherwise to Father Hecker, as it does now to us. For 
the Catholic people could have been better and earlier cared for 
in their -spiritual concerns if furnished with the abundant supply 
of good reading which the carrying out of Father Hecker's plan 
would have given them, and that at no great expense. What 
substitute for a priest is equal to a good book? What vocation 
to the priesthoo'd has not found its origin in the pages of a 
good book, or at any rate been fostered by its devout lessons? 
And all history as well as experience proves that the best guar- 
antee of the faith of a Catholic, moving amidst kindly-disposed 
non-Catholic neighbors, is the aggressive force of missionary zeal. 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 883 

The Publication Society, if brought into active play, would have 
done much to create this zeal, and would have supplied its best 
arms of attack and defence by an abundance of free Catholic 
reading. It would have helped on every good work by auxil- 
iary forces drawn from intelligent faith and instructed zeal. 

A closer view of the case shows that antecedents of a racial 
and social character among the people had something to do with 
the apathy we have been considering. To a great degree it still 
rests upon us, though such organized efforts as the Catholic 
Truth Society of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Holy Ghost 
Society of New Orleans indicate a change for the better. 

Had Father Hecker continued in good health there is a 
chance, though a desperate one, that he might have overcome 
all obstacles. Many zealous souls would have followed his lead. 
As a specimen we may name the Vicar-General of San Francisco, 
Father Prendergast, who, with the help of a few earnest friends, 
raised several thousand dollars in gold in that diocese alone. 
But in 1871 Father Hecker's strength began to fail, and in the 
following year his active life was done. As already shown, it 
had been the intention to establish branch societies everywhere, 
whose delegates would regularly meet and control the entire 
work, giving the Church in America an approved, powerful aux- 
iliary dominantly made up of laymen. In that sense the Society 
never was so much as organized, the number of branch 
societies not at any time warranting such a step as a general 
meeting of their representatives. The money actually collected 
was all spent in printing and circulating the tracts and other 
publications given away or sold below cost, Father Hecker 
and the Paulists managing the entire work. When the 
collections gave out, Mr. George V. Hecker contributed a 
large sum for continuing the undertaking. The result was 
his finding himself in the publishing business, which he was 
compelled to place as far as possible on a basis to meet the cur- 
rent outlay. The Society, as far as its name went, thus became 
a Catholic publishing firm, with Mr. Hecker mainly* involved 
financially and Mr. Kehoe in charge of the business. Mr. 
Hecker sunk a small fortune in the Apostolate of the Press, 
much of it during the hard times between 1873 and 1876. The 
history of the whole affair is as curious as it is instructive, and 
hence we have given a pretty full account of it. It weighed 
heavy on Father Hecker's heart, though he astonished his friends 
by the equanimity with which he accepted its failure. His work, 
if it did not perish in a night like the prophet's gourd, withered 



884 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [Sept., 

quickly into very singular form and narrow proportions. The 
amazement of Protestant bigots at the appearance of the Catho- 
lic tracts, speechless and clamorous by turns ; the quaker guns 
of the Second Plenary Council, and the bright dreams of a vig- 
orous attack upon the enemy all along the line and by all classes 
of clergy and laity how Father Hecker did in after years dis- 
cuss these topics, and how he did inspire all about him with his 
own enthusiastic hopes of a future and more successful effort ! 
When he went to Europe in 1873, too feeble to hope for recov- 
ery, leaving the enterprise behind him in the same condition as 
his own broken health, how unmurmuring was his submission to 
the Divine and human wills which had brought all to naught ! 

Not more than a few words need be said of his undertaking 
to buy a New York daily paper. It happened that in 1871 a 
prominent journal, a member of the Associated Press, could be 
bought for three hundred thousand dollars. In an instant, as it 
seems, Father Hecker grasped the opportunity. By personal ap- 
peals to the rich men of the city more than half the sum re- 
quired was subscribed, Archbishop McCloskey heading the list 
with a large amount. But soon the doctors had to be called in, 
and the enterprise went no further. 

How Father Hecker appeared to men when advocating the 
Apostolate of the Press, and how he spread the forceful majesty 
of Catholicity over his personal surroundings, is shown by Mr. 
James Parton's words in the article in the Atlantic Monthly al- 
ready quoted from : " The special work of this [the Paulist] 
community is to bring the steam printing-press to bear upon the 
spread of the Catholic religion in the United States." The re- 
sistless missionary power latent in the Church is thus spoken of 
by the same writer: 

"What a powerful engine is this! Suppose the six ablest 
and highest Americans were living thus, freed from all worldly 
cares, in an agreeable, secluded abode, yet near the centre of 
things, with twelve zealous, gifted young men to help and cheer 
them, a thousand organizations in the country to aid in dis- 
tributing their writings, and in every town a spacious edifice and 
an eager audience to hang upon their lips. What could they not 
effect in a lifetime of well-directed work?" 

What follows, taken from a letter of Father Hecker's while 
sick in Europe in 1874, shows one of his aims in the Apostolate 
of the Press. It is suggestive of a result since attained, at least 
partially, in more than one religious community in America: 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 885 

" Monsignor Mermillod desired, 'early in the fall, that I should 
see Canon Schorderet, of this place [Fribourg in Switzerland], as 
he was engaged zealously with the press. This was one of my 
principal reasons for visiting this place. My surprise has been 
most gratifying in rinding that he has organized, or rather be- 
gun, an association of girls to set types, etc., who live in com- 
munity and labor for the love of God in the Apostolate of the 
Press. He publishes several newspapers and journals. The 
house in which the members live is also the store and the pub- 
lishing house. Each girl has her own room. They are under 
the patronage of St. Paul. The canon is filled with the idea of 
St. Paul as the great patron of the Press, the first Christian 
journalist. What has long been my dream of a movement of 
this nature has found here an incipient realization. Our views 
in regard to the mission of the press, and the necessity of run- 
ning it for the spread and defence of the faith as a form of 
Christian sacrifice in our day, are identical. You can easily 
fancy what interest and consolation our meeting and conversation 
must be to each other. His movement is the completion of The 
Catholic Publication Society of New York." 

As there may be some curiosity about Father Hecker's prin- 
ciples as a public writer, in point of view of ecclesiastical 
authority, we give the following from a letter written just before 
the Vatican Council : 

" I. Absolute and unswerving loyalty to the authority of 
the Church, wherever and however expressed, as God's authority 
upon earth and for all time. 

"2. To seek in the same dispositions the true spirit of the 
Church, and be unreservedly governed by it as the wisdom of 
the Most High. 

" 3. To keep my mind and heart free from all attachments 
to schools, parties, or persons in the Church,. Hecker included, so 
that nothing within me may hinder the light and direction of 
the Holy Spirit. 

"4. In case any conflict arises concerning what Hecker may 
have spoken or written, or any work or movement in which he ' 
may be engaged, to re-examine. If wrong, make him retract at 
once. If not, then ask: Is the question of that importance that 
it requires defence, and the upsetting of attacks? If not of this 
importance, then not to delay and perhaps jeopardize the pro- 
gress of other works, and condemn Hecker to simple silence. 



886 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [Sept., 

" 5. In the midst of the imperfections, abuses, scandals, etc., 
of the human side of the Church, never to allow myself to think 
or to express a word which might seem to place a truth of the 
Catholic faith in doubt, or to savor of the spirit of disobedience. 

" 6. With all this in view, to be the most earnest and ar- 
dent friend of all true progress, and to work with all my might 
for its promotion through existing organizations and authorities." 



CHAPTER XXXI. 
THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 

In 1867 Father Hecker visited Europe in company with 
Father Hewit for the purpose of opening business relations be- 
tween The Catholic Publication Society and English, Irish, and 
Continental publishers, as well as to attend the Catholic Congress 
of Malines held in the summer of that year. The latter purpose 
was the chief inducement for the journey. The Archbishop of 
New York favored the project of holding a Catholic Congress 
in America, and encouraged Father Hecker to study the pro- 
ceedings at Malines with this end in view. Their stay at Ma- 
lines was full of instruction, as they heard there the renowned 
orators, Dupanloup and Montalembert, as well as others of note. 
The Catholic Congress of American laymen held in Baltimore a 
few years ago, and whose good effects are still felt, would have 
been assembled twenty years earlier if Father Hecker could have 
brought it about. These meetings were part of his scheme for 
that moral organization of Catholic forces which he knew to be 
so necessary for the fruitful working of the official unity of the 
Church. 

In the early part of the year 1869 Pius IX. wrote Father 
Hecker an autograph letter commending the various religious 
works which he and his community were engaged in, especially 
the Apostolate of the Press, and giving them all his blessing. 

"I have good news to tell you," he wrote to a friend. "The 
Holy Father has written me the ' tallest ' kind of a letter, en- 
dorsing every good work in which I am engaged. Hurrah for 
Catholicity at Fifty-ninth Street ! My private opinion is that the 
Holy Father has gone too far in his endorsement of Hecker. 
He has made me feel ashamed of myself and humiliated." 

When Pius IX. called together the Council of the Vatican 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 887 

Father Hecker was urged by friends, among them several bish- 
ops, to go to Rome for the occasion. The late Bishop Rose- 
crans, of Columbus, Ohio, not being able to attend himself, ap- 
pointed Father Hecker his Procurator, or proxy. Before his 
departure he preached a sermon on the Council in the Paulist 
Church, which was printed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD for Decem- 
ber, 1869. He devoted the greater part of it to quieting the wild 
forebodings of timid Catholics and combating the prognostics of 
outright anti-Catholics. He concluded by asking the people to 
pray that the hopes of a new and brighter era for religion, to 
date from this great event, might be fulfilled ; for it was com- 
monly believed and expressly intended that the entire state of 
the Church should be considered and legislated upon at the 
Council. The breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war, as is 
well known, together with the seizure of Rome by the Piedmon- 
tese, frustrated these hopes as to all but the very first part of 
the work laid out for the Council. 

Father Hecker arrived in Rome on the 26th of November, 
1869. When the preliminary business of organization had been 
finished it was announced that the procurators of absent bishops 
would not be admitted to the Council, as the number of prelates 
present in person was 'exceedingly large. But, he writes home: 

" The Archbishop of Baltimore has made me his theologian 
of his own accord. This gives me the privilege of reading all 
the documents of the Council, of knowing all that takes place in 
it, its discussions, etc. As his theologian I take part in the meet- 
ings and deliberations of the American hierarchy, which is, as it 
were, a permanent council concerning the interests of the Church 
in the United States, in which I feel a strong and special in- 
terest." 

Father Hecker had ever been a firm believer in the doctrine 
of papal infallibility, as was the case with all American Catholics, 
prelates, priests, and people. Shortly before leaving for the 
Council we heard him say : " I have always heard the voice of 
Rome as that of truth itself." This he also showed very plainly 
in his farewell sermon. Speaking of the dread of undue papal 
influence over the bishops in the Council, he exclaimed : " All I 
have to say is, that if the Roman Court prevail [in the delibera- 
tions of the Council], it is the Holy Ghost who prevails through 
the Roman Court." But the tone of the controversy on the sub- 
ject of papal infallibility, which soon deafened the world, was too 



888 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

sharp for his nerves, and he abstained from mingling in it. As a 
matter of fact he determined to get away from Rome early in 
the spring of 1870. If the reader would know what we deem to 
have been Father Hecker's frame of mind about the proceedings 
of the Council we refer him to Bishop J. L. Spalding's excellent 
life of his uncle, the then Archbishop of Baltimore, whose views 
of both doctrine and policy were, as far as we can judge, shared 
by Father Hecker, who was his intimate and beloved friend. 

But his stay in the Eternal City, at this time more than ever 
before the focus of all religious truth, as well as the object of 
all human expectancy, had not been uneventful. Very much 
against his will he preached one of the sermons of the course given 
during the octave of the Epiphany, in the Church of San Andrea 
della Valle, and later on another, on an important occasion, in 
place of Archbishop Spalding, who had fallen ill. Much of his 
time he spent with the American bishops and the distinguished 
priests who were with them ; he renewed the old-time friendships 
of his stay in Rome twelve years before, seeing a good deal of 
Archbishop Connolly, of Halifax, N. S. ; he made new friends, 
too, among whom he names especially Mrs. Craven, the author 
of the Rtcit d'une Sceur ; and he formed acquaintance with lead- 
ing men and women of all nationalities. 

" There is not a day passes," he wrote home, " that I do not 
make the acquaintance of persons of great importance, or ac- 
quire the knowledge of matters equally important for me to 
know ; and I gain more in a day than one could in years at 
other times. For we may say that the intelligence, the science 
and sanctity of the Church are now gathered into this one city. 
Yet my heart is in my work at home." 

He had two private audiences with Pius IX., which, though 
of course brief, were very interesting ; the Pope remembered him, 
and expressed his interest in him and his work in America. The 
following extracts from letters to his brother George, written 
very soon after reaching Rome, recall an old friend : 

" I do not know whether I told you of my interview with 
Cardinal Barnabo. He received me literally with open arms. 
After an hour's conversation on several matters he ended by say- 
ing: ' The affection and esteem which I had for you when you 
were here before has been increased by your labors since then, 
and my door is always open for you, and I shall always be glad 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 889 

to see you.' He entertains a high idea of the importance of 
TH CATHOLIC WORLD." 

" I had a most pleasant interview a few evenings since with 
Cardinal Barnabo," he writes in April, 1870, shortly before leav- 
ing. " Among other things he said: ' You ought to be grateful 
to God for three reasons : first, He drew you out of heresy ; 
second, He saved you from shipwreck in Rome ; third, He has 
given you talents, etc., to do great things for His Church in 
your country.' He takes great interest in the Paulists." 

Not alone in Rome did he meet with friends, but what fol- 
lows, written home in December, 1869, tells that his name and 
his vocation had been made familiar to many observant persons 
in Europe: 

" It surprises me to find my name familiar everywhere I have 
been on my travels. But magazines, newspapers, telegrams, and 
what-not have turned the world into a whispering gallery. But 
the less a man is known to men the more he knows of God ; so 
it seems to me, as a rule. Yet great activity may flow as a 
consequence of intimate union with Him whom theologians call 
Actus Purisfimus. From the fact of his being known, I enter- 
tain no better idea of Father Hecker than I ever did ; and could 
I get him again in the United* States, he will be more devoted 
than ever to his work." 

Father Hecker gave his view of the bearing of the Vatican 
Council on the future of religion in a letter which will be found 
below. It concerns what we have already spoken of at some 
length and what we shall again refer to, namely, the relation 
between the inner and outer action of the Holy Ghost as fac- 
tors in the soul's sanctification. We heard Father Hecker several 
times affirm that he received special illumination from God on 
this subject while in Rome during the Council, and that some- 
thing like the very words in which properly to express himself 
were then given to him. It was written in the summer of 1872, 
but we quote it here before bidding adieu to Rome and accom- 
panying him in his short pilgrimage among the great shrines of 
Italy : 

" These two months past I have been driven away from 
home to one place and another by poor health. . . . The de- 
finition of the Vatican Council completes and fixes for ever the 
external authority of the Church against the heresies and errors 
of the last three centuries. . . . None but the declared 
VOL. LIII. 57 



890 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

enemies of the Church and misdirected Catholics can fail to see 
in this the directing influence of the Holy Ghost. 

" The Vatican Council has placed the Church in battle array, 
unmasked the concealed batteries of her enemies ; the conflict 
will be on a fair and open field, and it will be decisive. The 
recent hostility of the governments of Europe, and especially of 
Italy, against the Church, has shown the wisdom of the Vatican 
Council in preparing the Church to meet the crisis. The defini- 
tion leaves no longer any doubt in regard to the authority of 
the Chief of the Church. 

" For my part I sincerely thank the Jesuits for their influence 
in bringing it about, even though that were as great as some 
people would have us believe. . . . This had to be done 
before the Church could resume her normal course of action. 
What is that ? Why, the divine external authority of the 
Church completed, fixed beyond all controversy, her attention 
and that of all her children can now be turned more directly to 
the divine and interior authority of the Holy Ghost in the soul. 
The whole Church giving her attention to the interior inspira- 
tions of the Holy Spirit, will give birth to her renewal, and 
enable her to reconquer her place and true position, in Europe 
and the whole world. For we must never forget that the im- 
mediate means of Christian perfection is the interior direction 
of the Holy Spirit, while the test of our being directed by the 
Holy Spirit and not by our fancies and prejudices, is our filial 
obedience to the divine external authority of the Church. 

"If for three centuries the most influential schools in the 
Church gave a preponderance in their teaching and- spiritual 
direction to those virtues which are in direct relation to the ex- 
ternal authority of the Church, it must be remembered that the 
heresies of that period all aimed at the destruction of this au- 
thority. The character of this teaching, therefore, was a neces- 
sity. There was no other way of preserving the children of the 
Church from the danger of this infection. If the effect of this 
teaching made Catholics childlike, less manly and active than 
others, this was under the circumstances inevitable. 

" The definition of the Vatican Council, thanks to the Jesuits, 
now gives us freedom to turn our attention in another direction, 
and to cultivating other virtues. If one infidel was equal to two 
Catholics in courage and action in the past, in the future one 
Catholic, moved by the Holy Spirit, will be equal to half-a- 
dozen or a thousand infidels and heretics. 

" The stupid Dollingerites do not see or understand that what 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 891 

they pretend to desire the renewal of the Church can only be 
accomplished by the reign of the Holy Spirit throughout the 
Church, and that this can only be brought about by a filial 
submission to her divine external authority. Instead of their 
insane opposition to the definition of the Vatican Council and 
to the Jesuits, whose influence they have exaggerated beyond all 
measure, they ought to embrace both with enthusiasm, as open- 
ing the door to the renewal of the Church and a brighter and 
more glorious future. . . . To my view there is no other 
way or hope for such a future." 

He left Rome and his many warm friends there early in the 
spring of 1870, and, as he thought, for the last time. He was 
full of courage, he was conscious of not only perfect agreement 
with every credential of orthodoxy, but of interior impulses of 
a marvellously inspiring kind. In a very familiar letter to his 
brother's family he says that just before his departure, while 
standing in one of the great piazzas, looking at the concourse 
of representatives of all nations passing back and forth, gathered 
to take counsel with the Vicar of Christ for the well-being of 
the human race, he was so exhilarated that he could hardly refrain 
from calling out, " Three cheers for Paradise, and one for the 
United States ! " 

" I return with new hope and fresher energy," he writes, 
" for that better future for the Church and humanity which is 
in store for both in the United States. This is the conviction 
of all intelligent and hopeful minds in Europe. They look to 
the other side of the Atlantic not only with' great interest, but 
to catch the light which will solve the problems of Europe. 
Our course is surely fraught with the interests, hopes, and hap- 
piness of the race. I never felt so much like acquitting myself 
as a Christian and a man. The convictions which have hitherto 
directed my course have been deepened, confirmed, and strength- 
ened by recent experience here, and I return to my country a 
better Catholic and more an American than ever." 

That he might say Mass daily and at convenient hours while 
in Rome, crowded as it was at the time with bishops and priests, 
he obtained leave to do so in his own rooms. He made little 
pilgrimages to the great shrines of the Holy City, especially 
those of the Apostles and the typical martyrs, not forgetting, of 
course, his favorite modern saints, Philip Neri and Ignatius 



892 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [Sept., 

Loyola. The following are extracts from letters home telling of 
his celebration of St.* Paul's Conversion and of the martyrdom 
of St. Agnes. The reader will remember that the " association 
of women " here mentioned was one of his earliest ideas, and 
one of the many whose realization Providence has given over, 
let us hope, to some souls - especially favored by Father Hecker's 
gifts : 

" I pray much for each member of the community, and for 
light to guide it in the way of God. Within a short period 
much light has been given to me, and the importance of our 
work and its greatness have impressed me greatly, more than 
ever before. Yesterday I went to the Basilica of St. Paul, being 
the feast of his conversion, especially to invoke his aid. I felt 
that my visit was not in vain. ... I forgot no one of our 
dear community. ... On the 2ist I said Mass in the cata- 
combs of St. Agnes ; it was the day of her feast. More than 
twenty persons were present, friends and acquaintances. I gave 
eleven communions, and made a little discourse at the close of 
the Holy Sacrifice. The scene was most solemn and affecting. 

" What did I pray for? [during my Mass in St. Agnes's Cata- 
comb]. For you all, especially for the future. Wliat future ? 
How shall I name it ? The association of women in our coun- 
try to aid the work of God through the Holy Church for its 
conversion. My convictions become fixed, and my determination 
to begin the enterprise consecrated. 

"At the close of the Mass I made a short discourse. Think 
of it, preaching once more in the Catacombs, surrounded with 
the tombs where the martyrs are laid and where the voice of 
the martyrs had spoken ! You can imagine that the impression 
was profound and solemn on us all. It was a piece of fool- 
hardiness on my part to open my lips and speak, when every- 
thing around us spoke so impressively and solemnly to our 
hearts. I will attempt to interpret this speech : In the days of 
Agnes, Christians were called upon to resist and conquer physi- 
cal persecution. In our day we are called upon to overcome 
intellectual and social opposition. They conquered ! We shall 
conquer ! Agnes tells us there is no excuse for cowardice. 
Agnes was young, Agnes was weak, Agnes was a girl, and she 
conquered ! One Agnes can conquer the opposition of the 
nineteenth century. Such in substance was my discourse. The 
whole scene caused every one to be bathed in tears." 

After leaving Rome he went straight to Assisi, for whose 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 893 

saint he had ever felt a very powerful attraction. He thus de- 
scribes his impressions : 

" The people that I have seen about here have a milder 
countenance and a more cheerful look, more refined and human 
than the Italians around Rome. They are to the other Italians 
what the Swabians are to the other Germans. It is easy for the 
Minnesinger of the human, to become the Minnesinger of 
Divine love. 

" I could have kissed the stones of the streets of the town 
when I remembered that St. Francis had trodden these same 
streets, and the love and heroism which beat in his heart. 
. . . I said Holy Mass at the tomb of St. Francis, and in 
presence of his body this morning a votive Mass of the Saint. 
It seems I could linger weeks and weeks around this holy spot. 
. . . What St. Francis did for his age one might do for 
one's own. He touched the chords of feeling and of aspiration 
in the hearts of the men and women of his time and organized 
them for action. St. Dominic did the same for the intellectual 
wants of the time. Why not do this for our age ? Who shall 
so touch the springs of men's hearts and reach their minds as 
to lead them to the desire of united action, and organize them 
so as to bring forth great results ? There is no doubt that the 
age wants this. Who is there that is inspired from a higher 
sphere of life, and sees into the future, so as to be able to speak 
to men and to invite them to do the work of God in our day ? 
Who takes all humanity into his heart, and with the past and 
present at once in his mind can inspire men to live and act for 
the divine future ? " 

He also visited the Holy House at Loretto, and, passing 
through Venice and Milan to see the great churches of these 
cities, " the despair of all modern church-builders," as he says, 
he came finally to Genoa. 

" I turned my steps," he writes, " to the general hospital ; 
and why ? Because the interest of my heart was there, and has 
been there for upward of twenty years. It is the spot where 
St. Catherine of Genoa labored for the miserable, loved God, 
and sanctified her soul. Her body is in a crystal case, uncor- 
rupted, withered in appearance but not unpleasant to the sight. 
When the curtain was withdrawn and I could see her face and 
her feet, which were uncovered, I could not help exclaiming 
with the Psalmist, ' God is wonderful in His saints ! ' I cannot 



894 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

express what an attraction I have always felt for St. Catherine 
of Genoa. She knew how to reconcile the greatest fidelity to 
the interior attrait and guidance of the Holy Spirit with perfect 
filial obedience to the external and divine authority of the 
Holy Church. She knew how to reconcile the highest degree 
of divine contemplation with, the greatest extent of works of 
external charity. She was a heroic lover of God, for she re- 
sisted His gifts, lest she might forget the Giver in them, and 
be hindered the entire possession of Him, and the complete 
union of her soul with Him. As a virgin she was pure, a 
model as a wife, and as a widow a saint! Her writings on the 
spiritual life are masterpieces, and though a woman, no man 
has surpassed, if any has equalled, the eloquence of her pen." 

He procured ail excellent copy of St. Catherine's portrait 
preserved at the hospital, and brought it home with him. He 
had done the same for Sts. Philip and Ignatius before leaving 
Rome. St. Catherine's picture represents a handsome face, ear- 
nest, simple, and joyful ; she is dressed plainly as a devout 
woman living in the world, lovely to look upon and inspiring 
love of God and man in the beholder. 

Father Hecker's stay in Europe during the winter of 1869-70 
and the following spring awakened in his soul aspirations 
towards a wide and enduring religious movement in the Old 
World, similar to that which he had started in the New. At the 
time he did not anticipate any personal share in it other than 
encouragement and direction from America. The reader will 
learn in the sequel that these aspirations were again felt, and 
that with renewed force, when he returned to Europe in ill 
health three years later. 

What follows is from a pocket diary, and from a letter 
home : 

" The work that Divine Providence has called us to do in 
our own country, were its spirit extended throughout Europe, 
would be the focus of new light and an element of regenera- 
tion. Our country has a providential position in our century in 
relation to Europe, and our efforts to Catholicize and sanctify 
it give it an importance, in a religious aspect, of a most interest- 
ing and significant character." 

" I do not wish to cross the Atlantic ever again, and there- 
fore would like to finish with Europe and Italy. As for the 
notable men of the day, I have seen many of them enough of 
them. My present experience in one way and another seems 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 895 

to have prepared me to lay a foundation for action which will 
be suitable not only for the present but for centuries to come. 
No one of my previous convictions have been disturbed, but 
much strengthened and enlarged and settled. I see nothing, 
practically, in which I am engaged, that, were it in my power, 
I would now wish to alter" or abandon. I shall return with the 
resolution to continue them with more confidence, more zeal, 
more energy." 

He arrived in New York in June, 1870. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 



THE LONG ILLNESS. 



We have now arrived at the last period of Father Hecker's 
life, the long illness which completed his meed of suffering and 
of merit, and gradually drew him down to the grave. It will not 
be expected that we shall treat extensively of this subject ; nor 
can one who writes in the beginning of the '903 about the clos- 
ing scenes of a life which ended late in the '8os go very much 
into detail without bringing in the living. As to Father Heck- 
er's latter days in this world, it may be said that his joy and 
courage and buoyancy of spirits, as well as his hopeful outlook 
upon men and things, were all tried in the furnace of extreme 
bodily suffering as well as of the most excruciating mental 
agony. 

Four distinct epochs divide Father Hecker's life : one when 
in early days he was driven from home and business and ulti- 
mately into the Church by aspirations towards a higher life ; 
another marks the extraordinary dealings of God with his soul 
during his novitiate and time of studies ; the third was the strug- 
gle in Rome which produced the Paulist community ; the fourth 
and last was the illness which we are now to consider. The 
closing scenes of his life are scattered over more than sixteen 
years, filled with almost every form of pain of body and dark- 
ness of soul. 

From severe colds, acute headaches, and weakness of the di- 
gestive organs Father Hecker was a frequent sufferer. But 
towards the end of the year 1871 his headaches became much 
more painful, his appetite left him, and sleeplessness and excita- 
bility of the nervous system were added to his other ailments. 
Remedies of every kind were tried, but without permanent re- 



THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

lief, and, although he lectured and preached and did his other 
work all winter and most of the following spring, his weakness 
increased, until by the summer of 1872 he was wholly incapaci- 
tated. The winter of 1872-3 was spent in the South without 
notable improvement, and early in the following summer, acting 
upon the advice of physicians, he went to Europe. " Look upon 
me as a dead man," he said with tears as he bade the commu- 
nity farewell ; " God is trying me severely in soul and body, and 
I must have the courage to suffer crucifixion." He also assured 
us that whatever action should be taken in adopting the Consti- 
tutions, then under consideration, had his hearty approval before- 
hand. He was accompanied to Europe* by Father Deshon, from 
whom he parted with deep emotion at Ragatz, a health resort 
in Switzerland. 

Father Hecker remained more than two years in Europe, try- 
ing every change of climate and scene, and every other remedy 
advised by physicians, and returned to New York in October, 
1875, with unimproved health. He had derived most benefit from 
a journey up the Nile in the winter of 1873-4, and a short visit 
to the Holy Land in the following spring. While in Europe his 
mind was busy, and he managed to meet many of his old friends 
there, and formed new and^important acquaintances. In Febru- 
ary, 1875, ne published his pamphlet, An Exposition of the 
Church in View of the Present Needs of the Age, which contains 
his estimate of the evils of our times, especially in Europe, and the 
adequate remedy for them. On his return to New York he was 
too weak to bear the routine of the house in Fifty-ninth Street 
and lived with his brother George till the fall of 1879, wnen ne 
removed to the convent, remaining with the community till his 
death nine years afterwards. . 

As to the physical sufferings of those last sixteen years, they 
were never such as to impair Father Hecker's mental soundness. 
He never had softening of the brain, as the state of his nerves 
before going to Europe seemed to indicate ; nor had he heart 
disease, as was for a time suspected. His mental powers were 
intact from first to last, though his organs of speech were some- 
times too slow for his thoughts. His digestion had been im- 
paired by excessive abstinence in early manhood, dating back to 
a time before he was a Catholic, and his nervous system, also, 
had been injured by that means, as well as by the pressure of 
excessive work in later life. Gradual impoverishment of the 
blood was the result, and the dropping down of nervous force, 
till at last the body struck work altogether. Four or five years 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER BECKER. 897 

before his death Father Hecker became subject to frequent at- 
tacks of angina pectoris, said to be the most painful of all dis- 
eases. During the sixteen years of illness every symptom of 
bodily illness was aggravated by the least attention to commu- 
nity affairs or business matters, and also by interior trials which 
will presently be described. 

He was not unwilling to trace his breaking down to exces- 
sive austerity in former years. Once when asked for advice 
about corporal mortification he answered : " Don't go too fast. 
Remember St. Bernard's regret for having gone too far with 
such things in his youth. For my part, for many years I prac- 
tised frightful penances, and now I fear that much of my physi- 
cal helplessness is due to that cause." His state was not one 
of utter debility, though that quickly resulted if watchfulness 
were relaxed, or from application to responsible duties. But his 
strength never was " much to speak of," " only so, so," to use his 
own expressions, which signified a very small amount of the 
power of exertion or endurance in the muscles and nerves. 

"What about my health?" he wrote from Europe. "There 
are days when I feel quite myself, and then others when I sink 
down to the bottom. My condition of mind and body often 
perplexes me, and there is nothing left me but to abandon all 
into the hands of Divine Providence. The end of it all is en- 
tirely in the dark, and were there not parallel epochs in my past 
life, and similar things in the lives of some others which I have 
read, my perplexity would be greater." 

And again, from Ragatz, in the summer of 1875 : 

"My state of health is much the same. I found last week 
that my pulse was bounding in a few hours from the sixties 
into the nineties without any apparent cause. Yesterday I de- 
termined to consult the leading physician here. He examined 
me, and, like all others, attributes everything to my nerves, result- 
ing from impoverished blood. I say to myself: 1st, How long 
will the machine keep working in this style? 2d, There will be 
a smash-up some day. 3d, Or perhaps I shall be able to get 
up more steam and run it a while longer. Who knows?" 

And in another letter from the same place : 

"Even here, freed from all [labors], it often, seems to me 
that a good breeze, if it struck me in the right place, would 
drive the soul out of my body, so lightly is it connected with 
it, so slightly do they hold together." 



THE LIFE OF FA THER BECKER. [Sept., 

As already said, his trip to Egypt had given him a temporary 
relief, and this was due, so he supposed, to utter change of 
scene and to solitude. When it . was over he wrote as follows : 

"This trip has been in every respect much more to my bene- 
fit than my most sanguine expectations led me to hope. It 
seems to me almost like an inspiration, such have been its bene- 
ficial effects to my mind and body. In Nubia there reigned pro- 
found silence and repose, and in lower Egypt, although there is 
more activity and evidence of modern life, still it is quiet and 
tranquil. I feel somewhat like one who has been in solitude for 
three or four months." 

" My daily regime," he writes to his brother and Mrs. 
Hecker, from Italy, "has not changed these two years which I 
have spent in Europe. If I rise before nine I feel it the whole 
day. In the morning I awake about seven for good, and take a 
cup of tea with some bread and butter. I then read; sometimes, 
not often, I write a note in bed, and rise about nine or ten. I 
take a lunch at twelve and dine at six. My appetite is not 
much at any time. My sleep, so so. [All through his illness he 
went to bed at nine or shortly after.] I feel for the most part 
like a man balancing whether he will keep on swimming or go 
under the water. Sometimes I take a nap two or three times a 
day if I can get it. There are weeks when I do not and cannot 
put my pen to paper. To write a note is a great effort. . . . 
Though my strength is so little my mind is not unoccupied, and 
I keep up some reading." 

Just in what way his spiritual difficulties accelerated his 
bodily decline it is hard to say, for he was generally extremely 
reticent as to his interior life. A few words dropped unawares 
and at long intervals, and carefully taken down at the time, give 
fleeting glimpses into a soul which was a dark chamber of sor- 
row, though it was sometimes peaceful sorrow. To this we can 
fortunately add some sentences written in an unusually confiden- 
tial mood in letters from Europe. Before his illness he was 
over-joyful, or so it seemed to some to whom this trait of his 
was a temptation. "Why," it was said, "religion seems to have 
no penitential side to Father Hecker at all." From the day of 
his ordination until his illness began he might have made the 
Psalmist's words his own : " There be many that say, Who shall 
show us any good ? Lord, Thou hast set upon us the light of 
Thy countenance, Thou hast put gladness in my heart." But 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 

now the light of that radiant joy. had faded away, and the face 
of God, though as present as ever before, loomed over him dark, 
threatening, and majestic. He had studied spiritual doctrine too 
well not to be ready for this trial, nor had it been sent to him 
without warning. Nevertheless the sensible presence of God's 
love had been so vivid and constant that he could alternate the 
joy of labor with that of prayer with the greatest ease. And 
now it was an alternation, not of choice but of dire compulsion, 
between bitter, helpless inaction, and a state of prayer which was 
a mere dread of an all-too-near Judge. It seemed to him as if 
he had boasted, " I said in my abundance I shall not be 
moved for ever," and now he must end the inspired sentence, 
"Thou hast turned away Thy face from me and I became 
troubled." When this obscuration of the Divine Love first 
grew upon him the misery of it was intolerable and was borne 
with extreme difficulty. The pain was lessened at intervals as 
time passed on, and before a year had elapsed, his letters 
from Europe, though they did not before complain of desola- 
tion, now show its previous existence by hailing the advent of 
seasons of interior peace. But from beginning to end of this 
entire period of his life we have not found a word of his 
speaking of joy. And again, even the peace would go and the 
desolation return ; the face of God, not any time smiling, had 
lost its calm regard and was once more bent frowning upon 
him. The following extracts from letters written from Switzer- 
land in the autumn of 1874, and within a month of each other, 
tell of these alternations of storm and calm : 

"As to my health these last ten days I cannot say much. 
My interior trials have been such that it would be impossible 
that my health should improve under them. As long as they 
last I must expect to suffer. I see nothing before me but dark- 
ness, and there is nothing within my soul but desolation and 
bitterness. Cut off from all that formerly interested me, ban- 
ished as it were from home and country, isolated from every- 
thing, the doors of heaven shut, I feel overwhelmed with misery 
and crushed to atoms. My being away from my former duties 
is a negative relief; it frees me from the .additional burden and 
trouble which would necessarily fall upon me if I were within 
reach." 

"There remains nothing for me but to confide in, to follow, 
and abandon myself to that Guide who has directed me from 
the beginning. I read Job, Jeremias, and Thomas a Kempis, 



900 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

and meditate on the sufferings of Our Lord and the character 
of His death. I recall to mind what I have read on these mat- 
ters in spiritual writers and the Lives of the Saints. I reflect 
how from the very nature of the purification of the soul this 
darkness, bitterness, and desolation must be ; but not a drop of 
consolation is distilled into my soul. The only words which 
come to my lips are " My soifl is sad unto death," and these I 
repeat and repeat again. At all times, in rising and in going to 
bed, in company and at my meals, I whisper them to myself, 
while to others I appear cheerful and join in the talk. At the 
most I can but die ; this is the lot of all, and no one can tell 
the moment when. 

"Withal, I try to have patience, resignation, endurance, and 
trust in God, waiting on. His guidance and leaving all in His 
hands." 

" Since my last I have had some relief from my interior 
trials, and no sooner does this take place than my body recov- 
ers some of its strength. It would not have been possible for 
me to have borne much longer the desolation which filled my 
soul. Each new trial, when passed, leaves me more quiet and 
tranquil. Past periods of my life give me hope that this trial 
will also come to an end. What will that be ? How will it hap- 
pen ? and when ? God alone knows. He that has led me so 
many years still guides me, and resistance to His will is worse 
than vain. Judging from that same past, my expectations to re- 
turn to my former labors are not sanguine. It seems to me 
sometimes that I am cut off from these to be prepared for a 
deeper and broader basis for future action. But whether this 
will be so or not, is in the hands of God. Whatever He wills 
me to do, I must do it. My own will has become null, and all 
that is left for me to do is to wait on His good pleasure and 
His own time. To act or not to act, to suffer or not to suffer, 
to speak or to keep silence, to return to my former labors or 
never to return, to live on or die, all have become indifferent to 
me. I am in God's hands, with no will of my own ; for He has 
taken it, and it is for Him to do with me whatever He pleases. 
If this be a source of pain to others, none but God knows what 
it has cost me. There is nothing, therefore, left but to wait in 
trust on God's will and His mercy and good pleasure." 

And again the darkened heavens are above him : 

" Death invited, alas ! will not come. What a relief it would 
be from a continuous and prolonged death ! " 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 901 

The obscurity of the drawing of the Holy Ghost, as well as 
of God's designs, and his incessant fretting against this, partly 
involuntary and, as he confesses, partly voluntary also, " disturbs 
my health and reduces my strength." 

Next to the evil self-company of an unforgiven sinner there is 
no loneliness so sad as that of the invalid. He needs company 
most who is worst company for himself. Yet Father Hecker 
has not left a single word which would suggest that during 
more than two years of absence from all his life associates in re- 
ligion, as well as from his blood kindred, whom he loved with a 
powerful love, he felt the lack of human companionship. One 
reason for this was his contemplative nature, and this was the 
main reason. He was born to be a hermit, and was an active 
liver only by being born again for 'a special vocation. Another 
reason was that his mind was so constituted that, when subjected 
to trial, it rested better when quite out of sight of everybody 
and everything associated with past responsibilities. He bade 
adieu to Father Deshon when the latter left him at Ragatz with 
sorrow, but without reluctance ; and when a year afterwards it 
was suggested that one of the community should come to Eu- 
rope and keep him company, he refused without hesitation, say- 
ing that his companion would be burdened with a sick man's 
infirmities, or the sick man distressed by his companion's inactiv- 
ity on his account. But towards the very end of his life there 
were times when he felt the need of congenial company and 
was extremely grateful for it. But this did not happen often, 
and when it did it was because the waves of despondency which 
submerged him were heavier and darker than usual. 

The following extract from a letter shows this state of mind : 

" As I get somewhat more accustomed to my separation from 
all that was so dear to me, the strangeness of my position seems 
to me more and more inexplicable. All the things which are 
going on in Fifty-ninth Street were once all to me, and nothing 
appeared beyond. To be separated from all ; to look upon one's 
past as a dream ; to become a stranger to one's self, wandering 
from city to city, from country to country, ever in a strange 
land and among strangers ; to be attached to nothing ; to see no 
definite future; to be an enigma to one's self; to find no light in 
any one to guide me, isolated from all except God who will 
explain what all this means ? where it will end ? and how soon ? 
As I become resigned to this state of things my health suffers 
less. Occasionally my interior trials and struggles are almost 



902 THE LIFE OF FA THER HECKER. [Sept., 

insupportable, but less so than if I were surrounded by those 
who have an affection for me. To worry others without their 
being able to give' me any relief would only increase my suffer- 
ing, and finally become unbearable. All is for the best ! God's 
will be done ! " 

What he wrote to a friend buffering from illness he applied 
to himself ; he made spiritual profit, as best he might, from 
separation from the men and the vocation he loved so w r ell : 

" I can sympathize with you more completely in your sick- 
ness being myself not well. To be shut off from the world, 
and cut off from human activity and this is what it means to 
be sick gives the soul the best conditions to love God alone, 
and this is Paradise upon earth. Blessed sickness! which de- 
taches the soul from all creatures and unites it to its sovereign 
Good. But one's duties and responsibilities, what of these in the 
meantime ? We must give them all up one day, and why not 
now ? We think ourselves necessary, and others try to make 
us believe the same ; there is but little truth and much self-love 
in this. ' What else do I require of thee,' says our Lord in 
Thomas a Kempis, ' than that thou shouldst resign thyself in- 
tegrally to Me.' This is what our Lord is fighting for in our 
souls." 

Yet in having his life-work torn away from him he was like 
a man whose leg has been crushed and then amputated, the 
phantom of the lost limb aching in every muscle, bone, and 
nerve. This was partly the secret of his pain while in Europe, 
at the mere thought of his former active life ; it haunted him 
with memories of its lost opportunities, its shortcomings in 
motive or achievement, or what he fancied to be such, in view 
of the Divine justice, now always reckoning with him. 

He was ever cheerful in word, even when the pallor of his 
face and the blazing of his eyes betrayed his bodily and spirit- 
ual pain. " The end of religion is joy, joy here no less than 
joy hereafter," he once insisted, and he argued long and ener- 
getically for the proposition ; but meantime he was racked with 
inner agony and was too feeble to walk alone. In his letters 
and diaries he speaks of his illness and of its symptoms as of 
those of another person of whom he was giving news. 

His wanderings in Europe were like gropings after the 
Divine will in the midst of the spirit's night, often in anguish, 
often in tranquillity, never in his former bounding joy, always 



1891.] THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. 903 

with submission, beforehand, at the moment, and afterwards. 
Although the Divine will gave a cold welcome, he sought no 
other refuge. 

" There are a thousand things," he writes, " that would worry 
me if I would only let them, but with God's help I keep them 
off at arm's length. His grace suffices, or in His presence all 
the things of this world disappear. God alone has been always 
the whole desire of my heart, and what else can I wish than 
that His will may be wholly fulfilled in me. Having rooted 
everything else out of my heart, and cut me off from all 
things, what other desire can I have than that He who has 
begun the work should finish it according to His design. It 
is not important that I should know what that design is ; it is 
enough that I am in His hands, to do with me whatever He 
pleases. To be and to live in His presence is all." 

And again : 

" The mind quiet both as to the past and the future, con- 
tented with the present moment : as to the past, leaving it 
out of sight ; as to the future, unsolicitous. As to the present, 
satisfied to be outwardly homeless, cut off from all past friend- 
ships and relations. The present gives me all the conditions 
required for preparation for the future. Any time these two 
years past I would have made an entire renunciation of all re- 
lations to my past labors and position, but waited as a dictate 
of prudence. Now I feel ready to make it with calmness and 
in view of all its consequences." 

" No sooner do I set my mind to pray than God fills it with 
Himself," Father Hecker was once heard to say. And this 
power of prayer by no means left him after 1872; only that the 
God who filled him was no longer revealed as the Supreme 
Love, but as the Supreme Majesty. "There was once a priest," 
he said, speaking of himself, "who had been very active for 
God, until at last God gave him a knowledge of the Divine 
Majesty. After seeing the Majesty of God that priest felt very 
strange and was much humbled, and knew how little a thing he 
was in comparison with God." Comparison with God ! It was 
this that gave him, as it did Job, a terror of the Divine justice 
beyond words to express, and impressed that air of spiritual de- 
jection upon him which struck his old friends as so strongly in 
contrast with his former happy and vivacious manners. "You 



904 THE LIFE OF FATHER HECKER. [Sept., 

will never know," he once said, while being helped into bed 
after a very sad day, u how much I have suffered till you are 
in heaven." Meantime this awful Deity, so prompt to enter 
Father Hecker's mind, coming at times like a withering blast 
from the desert, was still the only, attraction of his soul, the 
only object of his love. He oould no more keep his mind off 
God now than he could before, and now God killed him, and 
then He made him alive. The ideas of the Divine goodness, 
patience, mercy, and love which formerly welled up in abun- 
dant floods at the thought of God, at the same thought now 
were dried up and disappeared. " Oh ! " he once exclaimed, "if 
I could only be sure that I shall not be damned ! " This was 
said unawares while listening to the life of a saint. The 
reader will, therefore, understand that Father Hecker's inner 
trouble was not a state of mere aridity, a difficulty of con- 
centration of mind on spiritual things, or a vagrancy of 
thought ; it was a perpetual facing of his Divine Accuser and 
Judge, a trembling woe at the sight of Infinite Majesty on the 
part of one for whom the Divine love was the one necessary 
of life for soul and body. Yet he knew that this was really 
a higher form of prayer than any he had yet enjoyed, that 
it steadily purified his understanding by compelling ceaselessly 
repeated acts of faith in God's love, purified his will by con- 
stant resignation of every joy except God alone God received 
by any mode in which it might please the Divine Majesty to 
reveal Himself. He was, therefore, willing, nay, in a true sense, 
glad thus to walk by mere faith and live by painful love. "I 
should deem it a misfortune if God should cure me of my 
infirmities and restore me to active usefulness, so much have 
I learned to appreciate the value of my passive condition of 
soul." This he said less than three years before his death. 
And about the same time, to a very intimate friend: "God 
revealed to me in my novitiate that at some future time I 
should suffer the crucifixion. I have always longed for it ; 
but oh, now that it has come it is hard, oh, it is terrible ! " 
And this he said weeping. 

One aspect of the Divine Majesty which threatened for years 
to overpower him was the Last Judgment. " God has given me 
to see the terrors of the day of judgment," he once said, " and 
it has tried me with dreadful severity ; but it is a wonderfully 
great privilege." Humility grew upon him day by day. No 
one who knew him well in his day of greatest power could 
think him a proud man, but his confidence in his vocation, 



1891.] TRIFLES. 905 

and in himself as God's representative, had been immense. 
The following, from a memorandum, shows how he ended : 

" I told him how courageous I felt. Answer : That is the 
way I used to feel. I used to say, O Lord ! I feel as if 
I had the whole world on my shoulders ; and all I've got to 
say is, O Lord ! I am sorry you've given me such small 
potatoes to carry on my back. But now well, when a mos- 
quito comes in I say, Mosquito, have you any good to do 
me ? Yes ? Then I thank you, for I am glad to get good 
from a mosquito." 



TRIFLES. 

WHAT hand of artist ever wrought, 

What craftsman carved from gold or gem, 

Such chalice, passing skill or thought, 
As flashes from the lily's stem ? 

What Crcesus quaffed with royal lip, 

What lord hath ever lifted up, 
Such vintage as the bee doth sip 

From out the violet's cunning cup ? 

On crown of king, or brow of earl, 

Or throat of girl, have ever been 
Such precious jewels, as empearl 

O' morns the meadow grasses green ? 

Such song to sing to harp or lyre 
In hall, hath any bard been born, 

As that wild-warbling, woodland choir 
That thrills before the feet of Morn? 

Nay! these are God's alone, and He, 

Inscrutable, confounds us still, 
While Art doth worship reverently, 

And own the wisdom of His will. 

PATRICK J. COLEMAN. 

VOL. LIII. 58 



906 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Sept., 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 

THE failure of the New Unionism of England in its recent 
conflicts with capital has *net with what may be deemed ample 
compensation. In the first place, the judges of the Court of 
Queen's Bench have unanimously reversed decisions of lower 
courts which would have dealt a death-blow to its practical 
methods. Intimidation is, of course, unlawful ; but what is in- 
timidation ? Is it intimidation for the officials of trade-unions 
to tell an employer that unless he dismisses non-union men they 
will call out all the union men employed by him ? Is it in- 
timidation to tell a man that unless he joins a particular union 
all the members of that union will strike for the sake of exact- 
ing his dismissal ? The lower courts held that there was legal 
intimidation in both these cases ; the high court has decided 
that there is no such intimidation, and has thereby rendered 
such proceedings, whatever may be thought of them from the 
moral, unimpeachable from the legal point of view. 



The second event, which will undoubtedly afford consolation 
to the new unionists, is one which has taken place not in the 
Old World but in one of its dependencies. It bears, however, 
upon their most recently declared policy, that of seeking relief 
by legislation rather than by striking, and will doubtless be a 
strong incentive to the adoption of this course. In New South 
Wales the party in power was lately defeated, and went to 
the country. The working-men found then the opportunity of 
carrying out what they had resolved upon as a result of last 
year's strike. They brought forward their own candidates, cut- 
ting themselves loose from both the old-established rival parties ; 
and they have succeeded in carrying a sufficient number to 
enable the Labor Party to hold the balance of power in the 
legislature. The ministerialists number forty-eight, the opposi- 
tion fifty-six, the labor party thirty-one. They are, therefore, in 
a position to secure for the working classes all that they can in 
fairness demand, for on them the existence of governments de- 
pends. They have resolved for the present to support Sir 
Henry Parkes, the actual premier, and he will in recompense 
introduce as government measures bills for constituting courts of 
arbitration and conciliation in connection with labor disputes, 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 907 

for regulating coal-mining, for amending the mining law, and 

for regulating factories and workshops with special reference 
to the employment of women and children. 



Let us hope that, as sometimes happens, the possession of 
power will bring with it the sense to use power wisely. For if 
we may put reliance in the evidence of a member of the legis- 
lature of one of the other Australian colonies, the most dis- 
astrous consequences have resulted there from the ill-advised and 
arbitrary conduct of working-men under the impulsion of a knot 
of disturbers, fluent of speech but utterly bereft of conscience, 
who make a profession of agitation. " Northern Australia," he 
says, " produces the finest cotton I have seen, but the pods are 
dropped for want of picking. The whites will not tolerate 
colored labor, although they themselves cannot work in the 
tropics. Vast sugar-estates have been abandoned. Rich mines 
of silver, gold, and tin cannot be worked because of the un- 
reasonable attitude of labor ; in fact, a territory teeming with 
wealth has been turned into what is little better than a desert." 
But we have no doubt that a keen sense of their own personal 
interests will avert such consequences in New South Wales. 



Another legal decision will tend materially to ameliorate 
the lot of working-men, especially of those engaged in dan- 
gerous occupations. The maxim, Scienti et volenti non fit in- 
juria, has been so interpreted by employers, and by the courts 
of law, that a workman injured by defective machinery or other 
negligence on his employer's part, could not recover damages if 
he continued to work after he had discovered such imperfection 
or negligence and called attention to it. It was assumed that if 
a man knew the danger even of this voluntary kind, he was 
willing and agreed to take the risk upon himself by the fact of 
his remaining. The House of Lords, however, in the case of 
" Smith, (pauper) against Charles Baker and Sons," has- reversed 
the decision gf the Court of Appeal, and as the House of Lords 
is the highest legal tribunal, the law is now authoritatively inter- 
preted and finally settled. A workman, consequently, is not de- 
barred from his remedy because he is aware of the danger, 
where the risk arises from the negligence of the employer. If 
the risk, however, is incident to his work and inseparable from 
it, he of course has no claim for compensation ; the consent to 
the risk being necessarily involved in the acceptance of the 
work. Perhaps the workmen will have a more friendly feeling 



908 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Sept., 

for the House of Lords when they see it maintaining their 
claims against the adverse decisions of lower courts. 



The Royal Commission on Labor has been the means of 
showing how little the proposers of startling remedies for in- 
dustrial evils have thought out their own suggestions. Among 
these remedies the extension of the direct employment of labor 
by the state takes, as is well known, a leading position. Nor is 
it by any means an untried expedient. Among other examples, 
the dockyards in England employ many thousands of skilled 
laborers, and, sad to relate, their outcries of discontent have 
been heard throughout the length and breadth of the land. In 
the examination of Mr. Ben Tillett, who is perhaps the most 
respected of the new unionist leaders, these facts were put 
before him as an objection to his proposal for the municipaliza- 
tion of the London docks, and he was asked to suggest some 
practical method for removing the difficulties. It then appeared 
that he had nothing better to propose than that the state 
should make those private employers whom it is the object of 
the agitation to displace the exemplars and models for the state 
in its dealings with its employees. Such is the superficiality of 
some of those who think that if only they had their own way 
everything would be right. 



That the relations between employers even large employers 
of labor and their employees are not always those of conflict and 
of efforts to get the advantage one of the other, is proved by 
the reports of the Provident Banks of the South-eastern and 
the Metropolitan Railway Companies. These banks were estab- 
lished by the directors for the purpose of giving encouragement 
to their workmen to save their earnings. One of them has been 
in existence for twenty years. By act of Parliament the deposits 
form a first charge on the property of the companies, so that 
the security is absolute. The rate of interest is four per cent. 
When it is borne in mind that consols pay only two and three- 
quarters per cent., and that the railway company could at any 
time borrow money for three per cent., this is a very high rate. 
Another advantage is that the smallest and the largest sums are 
taken on deposit, sums as low as one penny and as high as the 
depositor wishes. The pence of the children of the employees 
are also received. The management of the banks is left in the 
hands of the employees, in order that the directors may not know 
who deposit nor the amount of deposits. These can be with, 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 909 

drawn at a week's notice and for- any purpose; in this respect 
these banks are distinguished from the Friendly Societies, from 
which deposits can be withdrawn only in case of sickness, old 
age, or death. The success has been so great that out of 10,000 
persons employed by the company 4,000 are depositors, and the 
experiment, which was begun by the Great Eastern Railway 
Company, has been followed by nine of the other great com- 
panies, who have obtained similar powers from Parliament. The 
number of depositors amounts to some 20,000, and the amount 
of deposits to over .1,500,000. Hopes are entertained that the 
method which has proved so successful for railway operatives 
may be extended to other branches of labor. Special difficul- 
ties stand in the way; there is not the same ample security; but 
public-spirited men of skill and experience have the matter in 
hand, and we may look for some fruit from their labors. 



So powerful is the interest excited by social questions that 
at the conference held a few weeks ago of the Catholic Tract 
Society a society established for the purpose of disseminating 
cheap Catholic literature almost the whole of the papers read 
dealt with these questions. The subjects discussed were sanitary 
dwellings for the poor, the protection of young servants, the 
prevention of cruelty to children, penny banks, the present evils 
of the drink-traffic, the reform of the poor law, the better or- 
ganization of laymen and lay-women for the social and religious 
improvement of Catholic working people, the formation of social 
clubs for Catholic young men, and the best way of hindering 
mixed marriages. With the exception of the last, all these 
questions were primarily social in their character. And this 
course was not adopted without the sanction of the very 
highest authority. A letter was read from Cardinal Rampolla, 
who wrote in the name of the Pope that His Holiness approved 
the subjects which had been chosen for discussion, and affirming 
that those who endeavor to make the social question clear, and 
to ward off the dangers and evils that might otherwise arise, are 
worthy of all praise, and especially Catholic societies which act 
for this object. 

It is too early yet to estimate the effect of the 
Pope's Encyclical on employers and employed, but a few facts 
give ground for hope that its influence will be great on both 
parties in the conflict. Mr. Stead, who is a warm sympathizer 
with working-men, has testified in the Review of Reviews to the 



910 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Sept., 

most complete recognition accorded in the Encyclical to their 
claims, and has given what may be truly called a masterly 
analysis of the document. On the other hand, the Earl of 
Wemyss and March, who is as warm a defender of the rights of 
property and capital as Mr. Stead is of those of labor, said at 
a meeting of the Liberty ancj Property Defence League that 
there were only two directions in which they could gain encour- 
agement. The first of these was the Vatican ; and the ground of 
his confidence in the Vatican was the soundness of the principles 
laid down by the Pope in the Encyclical. It is said, too, that 
many employers of labor in the north of England have dis- 
tributed great numbers of copies of the Encyclical among their 
workmen, while in Lyons it has been given away by thousands 
in the streets. Belgian Catholic papers are strongly advising 
a wide-spread distribution among the classes which have been 
affected by the anti-religious press of that country as a means 
of removing the prejudices which have been infused into their 

minds. 



The Free, or rather the Assisted, Education proposals of the 
government have gone through Parliament with but little modifi- 
cation, and now the question arises whether the present settlement 
may be looked upon as permanent. On the one hand, the 
Liberals have pledged themselves to the bringing the schools un- 
der popular local control. Even the Marquis of Ripon, although 
a Catholic, found the bonds of party so strong that he felt com- 
pelled to give his adhesion to this policy. Moreover, although 
the bill is intended by its promoters to safeguard the voluntary 
and religious schools, many friends of those schools are fearful 
that certain provisions will operate seriously to their detriment. 
Opinion, however, on this point is greatly divided. On the other 
hand, voluntary schools have for their defence one of the most 
potent of influences. To supplant them will cost the rate-payers 
an enormous sum of money, and although politicians of the kind 
to which the enemies of the religious schools belong are willing 
enough to take other people's money, they have a strong objec- 
tion to part with their own. Now, the school board rate, which 
Mr. Forster anticipated would amount at the most to three 
pence in the pound, is already one shilling in London, and will 
increase ; while in other places it is even more. If the cost of 
the voluntary schools were added, the rates would be intolerable. 
This constitutes a practical safeguard of religious education. A 
second will be found in the zeal and earnestness of their sup- 



1 89 1.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 911 

porters, which we believe will not be found wanting in the future 
as they have not been in the past. In 1870 it was anticipated 
that the school boards would carry everything before them ; 
but, on the* contrary, the voluntary schools have more than held 
their own, and would we believe, if the law allowed, drive out 

the board schools. 

* 

For experience brings wisdom, and it is probable that the 
English statesmen and people will learn and take warning from 
the experiments made by others who are less opposed to 
change. In the debate in the House of Lords on the second 
reading of the Free Education Bill, the Duke of Argyll cited 
the colony of Victoria as an example of the actual developments : 
" Twenty years ago public education was established in that col- 
ony. It began with what has been called the system of concur- 
rent endowment, under which public money was given to the va- 
rious denominational schools. But what happened ? Very soon 
the doctrine was laid down that the state had no religion, then 
the logical inference was drawn that the state should teach no 
religion, and then came the illogical inference that the state 
should not tolerate religion. The result is that now not only is 
the Bible excluded from all schools, but even extracts are ex- 
cluded which contain the name of God or any reference to re- 
ligion." The duke then proceeds to pay a tribute of praise to 
the Catholics of this colony : " I am sorry to say that both the 
Presbyterians and the Episcopalians submitted to this scheme, 
although all regret it now. The Roman Catholics had the high 
honor of standing alone and refusing to pull down in their 
schools the everlasting standard of conscience. This resistance 
on the part of the Roman Catholics I believe may be the germ 
of a strong reaction against secularism against what I venture to 
call the pure paganism of the education of the colony." We 
commend the entire speech of a Scotch Presbyterian in its de- 
fence of the dogmatic religious instruction of the young, in its 
exposure of the intolerance of those who ar"e called Liberals, to 
the attention of his co-religionists in this State and country, for 
they are the stoutest defenders here of secular education. 



Notwithstanding the refusal of France and Portugal to ratify 
the Brussels Convention, some hope may yet be entertained that 
the efforts made to extirpate the slave-trade in Africa may not 
be altogether fruitless. Cardinal Lavigerie made an earnest ap- 
peal to the French government, and an extension of the time 



912 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Sept., 

for ratification has been signed. The fact that the present 
French Assembly has rejected the convention by a large majori- 
ty in the past does not render it at all impossible for the same 
body to accept it in the future. Meanwhile in England the gov- 
ernment proposes to depart from long-recognized principles and 
to make a grant of money to ,a private company, in order to en- 
able the British East Africa Company to construct a railway 
from the sea-coast to Lake Victoria Nyanza. The object of the 
railway and of the grant is to facilitate the execution of the pro- 
visions of the Brussels Convention for the suppression of the 
slave-trade. Germany also proposes to work actively against 
this gigantic evil, and to raise the money the German emperor 
has projected a state lottery. We fear that many who heartily 
sympathize with the end proposed will find it hard to approve 
the means. 

A new association, called " The Catholic Association," has 
been formed in England for the organization of Catholics gener- 
ally and locally into a compact body for the advancement of 
Catholic interests. These interests include the election of Catho- 
lics as Poor Law guardians, members of school boards and other 
bodies of a non-political character, for all interference in poli- 
tics is wisely and almost necessarily placed outside the sphere of 
its action. It is proposed, also, to create a fund for aiding strug- 
gling missions and helping in the establishment of new ones ; for 
assisting in paying off the debts on churches and school build- 
ings ; for the support of children in danger of losing the faith, 
and for assisting the interests of teachers in Catholic schools. 
It wishes actively to co-operate with existing societies, guilds, 
leagues, etc., and to promote their objects as far as possible. 
The chief promoter is a layman Mr. Edward Lucas and it has 
the warm support of many distinguished priests, such as Father 
Nugent and Father Lockhart. The new association has received 
the approbation of Cardinal Manning, who is deeply interested in 
its success. We hope that it will solve one of the problems 
which most urgently cries for solution how to interest Catholic 
laymen in the defence of Catholic objects and the supply of 
Catholic wants, and that it will afford a much-needed field for a 
useful exercise of their energies. 



The Royal Irish Academy has had the honor of revealing to 
the world the results of some recent Egyptian researches which, 
whether we consider the objects discovered, the manner of the 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 913 

discovery, and the possible results, -form a subject of great inter- 
est and importance. The discoveries consist of important frag- 
ments of a lost play of Euripides, the " Antiope " ; passages 
from the " Phaedo " of Plato, and a large number of wills and 
private letters, chiefly of Greek soldiers settled in Egypt. Of 
these literary treasures the discoverer is Mr. Flinders Petrie, who 
has already done so much by his researches in Egypt to confirm 
the Scriptural narratives. One of the most remarkable features 
of the new " find " is that it places the world in possession of 
manuscripts of the classics which are of far higher antiquity than 
any known hitherto found. Almost all actual texts are based 
upon manuscripts of late mediaeval date ; all are post-Alexandrian. 
The wills found by Mr. Petrie enabled the editors to fix the 
dates with certainty, and to their wonder, surprise, and delight 
they found that they belonged to the period of the early Ptole- 
mies ; that is to say, to the third century before Christ. But the 
character of the handwriting showed that the fragments of the 
literary texts were even of an earlier date than the official docu- 
ments, and there is reason to believe that if not actually written 
in the time of the authors, they are not of a much later period. 

* 

Judged by the amount of matter these remains contain 
there is doubtless reason for disappointment ; for, in addition to 
the wills and private letters, of the " Antiope " there are only 
three pages, and a little over one hundred intelligible lines ; of 
the " Phaedo," between three and four pages, and a few scanty 
fragments from the poets and other writers. But their value 
cannot be measured by mere quantity. The antiquity of this 
manuscript fragment of the " Phaedo " enables students to see a 
version of this work before it passed under the editorial care of 
the Alexandrian scholars ; and the comparison of the two leads 
to the somewhat painful conclusion which had already been 
suggested by the head-master of Westminster school that these 
Alexandrian editors were in the habit of " improving " the 
original texts by adding rhetorical a,nd other embellishments. 
As a consequence there is room for doubting whether we at 
present possess the real text of any of the Greek classical 
writers. One of the smaller fragments leads to a similar con- 
clusion. It consists of the beginnings and endings of thirty-five 
hexameter lines. This Mr. Bury, of Dublin, has conclusively 
identified as a portion of the eleventh book of the "Iliad." 
Now, of these thirty-five lines, five, or one-seventh of the whole, 
are not found in the text of Homer as the grammarians have 



THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Sept., 

bequeathed it to us. Is the inference legitimate that they have 
treated the rest of the text with the same freedom ? 



But perhaps the immediate source of the discovery is of 
equal interest to the object discovered. Mummy cases, as a 
rule, are made of wood, but Mr. Flinders Petrie found at Gurob, 
in the Fayoum, a number made of a sort of carton or papier- 
mache, consisting of layers of papyrus torn into small pieces and 
stuck together. It had been suggested some sixty years ago, by 
the Egyptologist Letronne, that discoveries might be made from 
this source. The same idea occurred independently to Mr. 
Petrie, and did not remain with him merely a barren idea. 
Examining the mummy case, he thought he detected writing on 
some of the scraps, and forthwith set to work to separate 
and clean the various fragments. He was subsequently assisted 
by Dr. Mahaffy, Professor Sayce, and others, and what has 
now been given to the world has been rescued by their efforts 
from a mass of lime, glue, and other substances which have 
destroyed the greater part. However, there are many mummy 
cases made of similar carton, and if scholars equally painstak- 
ing can be found, may we not hope that far greater treasures 
will be brought to light ? May we not even hope that, as has 
been suggested, a first century gospel will enable students of 
the Scriptures to get nearer to the original text ? 



The chief political events during the past month have been 
an unwonted series of visits of various representatives of the 
opposed forces in Europe those who are included in the Triple 
Alliance and who sympathize with it, on the one hand, and those 
who are left out, on the other. First, there was the visit of the 
British fleet to Fiume, where the Emperor-King was received 
on board the admiral's flag-ship. At Venice similar occurrences 
took place, except that here the King of Italy made a speech 
which rendered it perfectly clear to all hostile critics that Eng- 
land was fully committed, to the Alliance. The visit in state of 
the German Emperor to England, together with the subsequent 
less conspicuous visit of the Prince of Naples, tended only to 
make assurance doubly sure. As a set-off for the other side, the 
young King of Servia went to St. Petersburg, and the French 
fleet paid a visit to Cronstadt, and was received with all the 
honor possible. That the most absolute and unbending despot- 
ism, which has any claim to be looked upon as civilized, should 
manifest such demonstrative affection for the country which sup- 



1891.] THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. 915 

poses itself to be the type and chief representative of the prin- 
ciples of liberty and freedom, is but another example of how 
little is the power of abstract principles when they come into 
conflict with the concrete necessities of life. Of the normal 
antagonism between the two countries one incident furnishes an 
illustration. The French national anthem (if we may call it so) 
is the " Marseillaise " ; in Russia this hymn is positively unlawful. 
On all such occasions as this public visit of the French fleet, it 
is looked upon as indispensable that the respective national 
anthems should be performed. What was to be done ? A com- 
promise was made. While the music was allowed, other words 
were fitted to it, and in this way the wonted courtesy was 
shown to the visitors and the Russian public saved from con- 
tamination. 

Friends of the French Republic were beginning to congratu- 
late themselves that it was at last giving proofs of stability, and 
we do not say that they are not entitled to do so. However, 
when on one day its Chamber of Deputies passes a vote equiva- 
lent to a vote of censure on the Foreign Minister, and a vote 
which would render the unfriendly relations with Germany still 
more unfriendly, and on the next day, without there being any 
change of circumstances, reverses the preceding day's decision, 
there seems reason for warning these friends not to be too con- 
fident. The wider and wider acceptance by the clergy of the 
republic as the established form of government, forms a solid 
ground for belief in its permanent establishment. The move- 
ment has taken the form of an active political association, which 
eliminates from its programme all dynastic questions and seeks 
to band Catholics together in defence of Catholic interests. It 
will support any candidate, whether Bonapartist, Orleanist, or 
Republican, who will pledge himself to defend those interests. 
The Bishop of Grenoble has taken the initiative, and it is said 
that a number of other bishops are about to follow his example. 
He has created a Diocesan Electoral Committee, representing 
some six hundred parochial committees. When the organization 
is perfected it is intended that, as the parochial committees are 
subordinate to the Diocesan Committee, so the diocesan com- 
mittee itself will be subordinate to a Central Committee sitting 
in Paris. From this it seems clear that the Catholics of France 
have determined at last to exert themselves in defence of their 

faith. 



It is not often that mention has to be made of Switzerland, 



916 THE OLD WORLD SEEN FROM THE NEW. [Sept., 

but two constitutional changes which have been made in that 
little country deserve notice^ The right of minorities to be rep- 
resented in proportion to their strength finds advocates in Eng- 
land, and also, we believe, in this country. The canton of Ticino 
has, by a system of proportional representation, secured for them 
their fair share of power. But for Switzerland as a whole a 
more far-reaching change has been made, which places it far in 
advance of all other countries in giving to each citizen a direct 
voice in legislation. For many years the Swiss constitution has 
enabled the citizens to vote directly upon any measure which 
had passed the legislature, provided a sufficient number (fifty 
thousand, we believe) made a requisition for this reference. This, 
however, had reference only to laws which had gone through the 
legislative chamber, and gave the people the power merely to 
negative measures passed by their representatives. The new 
power enables fifty thousand citizens to submit to the chambers 
any constitutional change they think proper, and this proposal 
must be discussed by the chambers. This is the nearest ap- 
proach yet made to making the people themselves, and not their 
representatives, the direct law-makers. 



The other countries of Europe scarcely call for mention. 
Portugal is still in the throes of a financial crisis. Spain is in 
hopes that by the new bank charter she has secured herself 
against like dangers. The Balkan states the European centre 
of disturbance preserve their unstable equilibrium, marriages 
past and future forming the only pressing anxiety. In Russia, 
the crops having failed in the larger part of the empire, there 
are grave fears of a famine. Hopes have arisen for the persecuted 
Jews. Mr. Arnold White, who was sent by Baron Hirsch to 
make inquiries, has prevailed upon the Russian authorities to al- 
low them to depart from the empire without having to pay for 
the privilege, and permission has been granted for the establish- 
ment of emigration committees for the purpose of providing 
means and information to the emigrants. The money Baron 
Hirsch and other wealthy Jews are ready to provide, but the 
precise destination is not yet fixed. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. . 917 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 

A CLEVER and delicately-touched story,* from the modern 
woman's point of view, is Mme. Jeanne Mairet's An Artist, 
not altogether well translated by Anna Dyer Page. With little 
plot, few characters, and no striking incident save, perhaps, the 
midnight scene in Diane's studio the author has given a clear, 
definite impression of her motive, and produced her effect in an 
easy, apparently effortless way which almost conceals her art. 
Her heroine is an interesting type of one of the many new 
developments of what is often, and not inaptly, called the 
"woman's age." Religion plays no visible part in this develop- 
ment, it is true ; but in the career of a French jeune fille bien 
tlevtfe a preliminary Christian training of some sort may almost 
be taken for granted. Diane Verryot is, at all events, a pure- 
minded, high-principled, and courageous young creature, to whom 
necessity and a true artistic vocation have early imparted the 
safeguards of industry and self-reliance. Her father, once a 
painter of reputation, though in a period when painting was by 
no means the thing it is to-day in Paris, and now a vain and 
disappointed old man, long incapacitated from work by a para- 
lytic shock, has become a recluse. He lives with Diane, a 
young woman of twenty-four when her story opens, in a house 
of his own in Paris, too dilapidated for other tenancy, in the 
garden of which he had once built a huge studio. This he no 
longer visits, but lives surrounded by all that remains of its 
former luxurious fittings in his own room. A man of expensive 
though refined tastes, immensely vain of his early reputation, 
yet half-conscious that he could not have maintained it against 
the newer school, he has gradually wasted all his own fortune, 
as well as that which Diane had inherited from her mother, in 
the purchase of rare but not otherwise valuable engravings, and 
when the story begins is in reality his daughter's pensioner, and 
though not entirely ignorant of the fact, and chafing under it, 
yet accepting it as the natural due, not merely of his paternity, 
but of his superiority as man and artist. 

The awakening comes when Diane's talent is on the point of 
achieving a success certain to cast his own by contrast still 

* An Artist. Translated from the French of Mme. Jeanne Mairet by A. D. Page. New 
York : Cassell Publishing Co. 



9i 8 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Sept., 

more into the shade. Up till then he has systematically ignored 
it, not even looking at her work, and treating it as a mere 
pastime in which she must be indulged but not encouraged. 
The suspicion that she may have passed him on his own road 
is a hideous wound to his vanity and pride. Unwilling to go 
openly to the studio and watch^. Diane at her easel, he takes to 
going there at night, as Diane soon discovers and is very near 
betraying, seeing in it, as she at first hopes, a late development 
of fatherly interest. The old man is too much of an artist not 
to recognize the value of her work and the fact that it proceeds 
from an original talent which plainly owes nothing to his train- 
ing or traditions. Worse still, he judges correctly, for the first 
time in his life, such of his own canvases as still hang on the 
walls, and finds them "as atrocious as they were painful to him." 
Madame Mairet's analysis of the mental states of the old painter 
at this period seems painfully real. Never having loved any one 
but himself in his life, this love tortures him cruelly in his help- 
less age. He hates this art which makes his own seem an- 
tiquated, and he hates the author of it. And on the night 
when Diane's portrait is finished, in an access of envious spite, 
he passes his sleeve over her frail pastel, reducing it to a dirty, 
whitish mass. And, as he tries to give his malice the effect of 
accident, paralysis once more lays its hand on him, and there 
he dies. 

Enough of a story might have been made of this alone. 
But the author had not yet fully elaborated her theme. Diane 
was to suffer still more deeply from that new form of masculine 
jealousy which is treading hard upon its older, better-known, 
and once almost sole development. She marries, and from 
mutual love, another artist, and finds in him another jealous 
rival when her successes threaten to surpass his. Though her 
love is great enough to make her try to abnegate her indi- 
viduality and become " only a wife," as she should have been 
" only a daughter " in an acceptation of those relations which is 
passing, the struggle to do so, when complicated by an infidelity, 
not of the heart but of the senses, on the part of her husband, 
becomes too much for her and she again resumes her beloved 
work in secret. Virtual separation follows, which Diane will not 
terminate when Bernard becomes " repentant," even though his 
repentance is accompanied by a magnanimous willingness that 
she shall use her talent as she will. " I do not love you," she 
replies to his protestations. " I will not become your wife again 
from a sense of duty. I placed my ideal too high ; you lowered 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 919 

it ; there is nothing left." In the- end, however, Diane's love 
rekindles; the tie made by their child is strong; moreover, being 
a Frenchwoman, she feels too readily the force of M. Limes's re- 
mark when, in reply to her charge that Bernard had " betrayed 
her shamefully," he says : " What can you do about it now ? 
You are not going to judge us men as you would judge yourself, I 
hope." Some day, let us hope, when women generally become 
seriously inspired to conquer the right to their own individuality, 
this sentiment too will be recognized by them as the chief bar 
to their success, but also as one which it rests indispensably on 
them, and them alone, to put away. 

Marie BashkirtsefF s Letters* vivacious and clever as they are, 
add little to the knowledge of her personality gained from her 
Journal. They are less frankly egotistical, as might have been 
expected ; but it is the outside of the same inside that she and 
her friends were anxious to reveal before. It must be said in 
their excuse, or justification, that neither is commonplace. How 
real was her intention to make the public her confidant in the 
interests of art, is shown by a curious anonymous letter she sent 
to Edmond de Goncourt the same year she died, and which 
apparently elicited no response. In it she offers him this Jour- 
nal as material, stipulating only for profound secrecy on his part, 
as she " resides in Paris, goes into society, and the people whom 
she mentions are all living." M. de Goncourt, one may con- 
jecture, probably experienced some pangs later on for having 
shown the cold shoulder to so much generosity, pleading merely 
to expend itself. In the same year she carried on a witty but 
not at all compromising correspondence with another author 
whose works she admired, and wrote to Zola, saying that she 
had read every word he had published, and " cherished the im- 
possible dream of an epistolary friendship " with him. This also 
appears to have gained no response. All these letters were 
anonymous, as were two she sent a year earlier to " M. Alex- 

andre D ," presumably Dumas. In this, after asking him to 

" be for once the spiritual director of a woman who desires to 
consult you as she would a priest, regarding a serious matter," 
she tells him that in his books he seems " to be as great and 
good as possible," and that if he shows himself scornful now, he 
will destroy one of her " most cherished illusions," and proposes 
a meeting at the " ball of the Opera House, the only place 
where I can see you." With a difference, these letters remind 

* Letters of Marie Bashkirtseff. Translated by Mary J. Serrano. New York: Cassell 
Publishing Co. 



920 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Sept., 

one of those inflicted on the Duke of Wellington by Miss J. 
Dumas would seem to have met her with a serious rebuke, 
which she acknowledges in a second and curious epistle wherein 
she says : " The guidance of which I stand in need I shall ask 
from Him who suggested to me the thought of asking it from 
you. ... I shall see you, doubtless, on Saturday at the 
Chamber," she concludes. " The divorce law will be proposed. 
Apropos of divorces, I announce to you that of my admiration 
from your person." 

An excellent book, well written and most interesting, is Mr. 
James Jeffrey Roche's Story of the Filibusters* It forms one of 
Fisher Unwin's "Adventure Series," but is published in this 
country by Macmillan & Co. Besides giving a full account of 
the various attempts made by Walker, "the gray-eyed man of 
destiny," to establish his own rule in Nicaragua with a view to 
aid the slave-holders of our Southern States in maintaining the 
"peculiar institution," it also presents a brief but graphic sketch 
of earlier filibusters, from the Norsemen down. The latter and 
most amusing half of the book is occupied by an abridgment of 
the biography of Colonel David Crockett, the last survivor of 
the Alamo, and as to his real self almost a myth, so much has 
the actual man been obscured by the traditional " Davy Crock- 
ett." As a matter of fact, he is better worth knowing and quite 
as irresistibly droll. 

Felicia f seems a curious sort of book to be produced by a 
young lady of twenty-three, which is said to have been Miss 
Fanny Murfree's age when it was written. Clever it undeniably 
is, both in plan and execution, but in neither is it novel. The 
theme, indeed, reminds one of that charming Russian story, 
Asbein, where an ill-assorted marriage somewhat like that imag- 
ined by Miss Murfree was handled in a much more convincing 
manner. The chief difference is that Boris Lensky and Natalie 
were a real man and a real woman, while Hugh Kennett and 
Felicia fall into quite another category. Unlike those juvenile 
precocities of whom Olive Schreiner and Rudyard Kipling are 
the most modern and convincing specimens, but among whom 
Amelie Rives must also be counted, Miss Murfree produces the 
impression of having been born old in taste and judgment, and 
of not having been able to correct the mistake by genuine first- 
hand observation or spontaneity of feeling. Still, she writes so' 

* The Story of the Filibusters. By James Jeffrey Roche. New York : Macmillan & Co. 
t Felicia. A Novel. By Fanny N. D. Murfree. New York and Boston : Houghton, 
Mifflin & Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 921 

well that, when she shall have thrown off her allegiance to Mr. 
Henry James, and descended from what has at present very 
much the air of the teacher's desk, there is no saying that she 
may not in time find her way back to the true fountain of youth, 
direct contact with nature. 

It is impossible that Mr. Fuller's book * should ever be popu- 
lar, but it is certain that it will long be a favorite among people 
of cultivation who enjoy delicate satire and relish a good literary 
style. Though it can hardly be said that the satire of The 
Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani is at all times delicate, yet in the 
main it is so. Rancorous it never is, for when Mr. Fuller be- 
comes indignant or disgusted, he at once ceases to be satirical 
and says plainly what he means. For example, when speaking 
of the " once-lovely convent-isle of Sant' Elena," and the way 
in which Italy, " the Modern, the United," and the "brutal 
Progresso" have "trampled the olive down, together with a 
hundred other gracious and tender things," his indignation is 
too great and honest to permit him either to grin or to 
smile. 

The story of the book is a slight one, but inasmuch as it is 
but a line on which to hang many exquisite pictures of Italian 
scenery and modern Italian life among the upper classes, whose 
pursuits are mainly artistic, this does not matter. The most 
amusing chapter is that which gives an account of the discovery 
of the " Iron Pot " that was unearthed one day in the garden 
of "San Sabio," and became the subject of much dispute among 
German and Italian archaeologists, some of whom contended that 
it was of Etruscan make in pre-historic times. The Iron Pot 
threatened even to dissolve friendly relations between Italy and 
Germany, but was finally shown to be no older than Garibaldian 
times. This chapter suggests some of the best of Carlyle's sa- 
tirical work, and is exceedingly clever. The Chevalier of Pen- 
sieri-Vani is, in fact, a remarkably clever piece of writing 
throughout. 

It would be little for one who has never found Mr. George 
Moore otherwise than offensive as a novelist, to say that as a critic 
he is a much pleasanter companion. Everything in his volumef 
of Impressions and Opinions is entertaining, and for the most part 
well put. He has a faculty of imparting his impression and 
sharing his knowledge of a book, a picture, a man, between 
whom and his reader he is the sole connecting link, which is 

* The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani. By Henry B. Fuller. Boston: J. G. Cupples. 

t Impressions and Opinions. By George Moore. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 

VOL. LIII. 59 



922 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Sept., 

the product, one must suppose, of a keen, sympathetic knowledge 
of his subject united to a perfectly clear mental conception of 
it, and of his own means of rendering it. He is not, perhaps, 
eminently persuasive one may retain, if he has it already, his 
preference for the French art of the nineteenth century above 
the English art of the eighteenth, in face of Mr. Moore's verdict 
to the contrary, but at all events he will not fail to understand 
his convictions and his expressed grounds for them. In style he 
is not oppressively literary, and seldomer than most critics who 
are encouraged to collect their fugitive essays from the periodi- 
cal press does he make an isolated remark so individual or so 
epigrammatic that its form remains inseparable from its sub- 
stance. It is he, nevertheless, who says that " to succeed in 
England you must offer a new reading of the Book of Genesis ; 
to succeed in France you must offer medals." And again, in 
writing of "Art for the Villa," " Of the many enigmas which 
life offers for our distraction, I know none more insoluble than 
the prices artists put on their pictures." 

A second translation from Seftora Pardo Bazan's realistic 
novels* of contemporary life confirms an impression gained 
from its predecessor, A Christian Woman. A good Christian, 
if one may judge from her total attitude towards the doctrine, 
morality, practices, devotions, and professional teachers of Catho- 
licity, she seems to wish to aim a blow from that stand-point in 
favor of a greater equality in marriage than she has found preva- 
lent. That, at all events, is what we read between the lines of- 
Lucia's Wedding Trip, as we read it in the history of Car- 
men's pitiful venture into matrimony. Divorce is a sin and as 
impossible as adultery to a Christian woman, Sefiora Pardo 
Bazan seems to say, and therefore, fathers and spiritual directors, 
take greater heed how the Christian girl contracts marriage ! 
Do not give her purity and innocence into the hands of corrupt 
and vicious husbands, and then hope for all the graces of the 
sacrament. Only the highest Christian virtue can stand that 
test, and the most that can be hoped for, ordinarily, is that the 
living holocaust shall lie quietly on the altar and endure in 
silence the pangs of a burning against which she should have 
been guarded as if it were a sin instead of a sacrifice. The very 
docility with which she accepts your teaching as to her duty as 
a wife, should enlist you, who are men, to guard her innocence 
more sacredly. Lucia is charmingly painted. So are the delight- 
ful glimpses given by the author of life in northern Spain, and 

* A Wedding Trip. By Emilia Pardo Bazan. New York : Cassell Publishing Co. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 923 

such health resorts as Vichy and 'Biarritz. Her talent has great 
distinction and her hand is very sure. 

One of the brightest and most entertaining novels* we have 
seen in many months is Maarten Maartens' An Old Maid's Love. 
One does not read a dozen lines of its first chapter without ar- 
riving at the persuasion that he has come upon a new flavor 
and a pleasant one. There are a thousand fine things in it, both 
as to matter and manner, but the best of all is the portrait of 
that wrong-headed, right-hearted, delightful, Calvinistic old maid, 
Suzanna Varelkamp. The story is too long and too complicated 
to be retold in the most elementary fashion ; moreover, the Me- 
phisto, the evil genius of Suzanna's life and that of the darling 
nephew who is her love, is what the old lady calls " an idola- 
trous child of Rome," and very far from being a credit to her 
religion. But the moral lesson of the book is good, notwith- 
standing, and for freshness and charm, and a certain knowing- 
ness concerning human nature in out-of-the-way aspects, it would 
be hard to match it among recent novels. There are some curi- 
ous situations in it as, for example, where Suzanna, after thank- 
ing God in all sincerity that it was impossible for her to kill her 
dangerous guest, is only saved from the consummation of that 
crime by sheer accident and a good deal of warm water. And 
again when, in her attempt to save Arnout's honor and his soul 
by making his actions conform to her private notions of how 
alone that salvation can be effected in the circumstances he has 
created, she goes to the Count de Mongelas and buys his con- 
sent to divorce his wife at the sacrifice of all her fortune. 
Good, too, is her return upon herself when at last God has 
been gracious to her, Arnout has come back repentant, and the 
woman she has hated has heaped coals of fire upon her head. 

" ' She is a better woman than I,' she said ; ' she, the wicked 
creature, is a better woman than I. She lived more truly, more 
straightly than I. I love him, and I have been working hard to 
mould his lot as I thought best. And whether the means be 
right or wrong, what has it mattered to me as long as I could 
have my own way, and do as I thought best ? Yes, that is what 
it has always been : as I thought best. Even murder, if I 
deemed that it would attain what I thought best. And if I 
thought my best was better, then the world was mad, and God. 
was wrong. And what has my wisdom led to from the begin- 
ning? I have built up with all my labor the very things I de- 
sired to destroy. It was I who sent the lad forth from his home 
in the very moment when I was yearning to retain him. And 

* An Old Maid's Love. By Maarten Maartens. New York : Harper & Brothers. 



924 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Sept., 

it was I who was welding the chain which must fetter him for 
ever at the moment when this woman was loosening it to let 
him free. Oh, the unwisdom of our wisdom when it begins to 
doubt of conscience, when it tells ^us and reasons out to us that 
evil is not evil because it leads to good ! Oh, the wretchedness 
of going wrong ! ' 

" She sat for a long time undisturbed in the silence, alone with 
her thoughts. Then she got up from the table and went to a 
little cupboard in the corner, and took up a Bible which lay 
there. She opened it at the fifty-first Psalm, and she read the 
Psalm through solemnly without flinching. During all these 
troubled weeks she had calmly continued her reading, but she 
had shrunk, with a nameless feeling of terror, from that agonized 
cry of the repentant King of Israel. It was the Psalm which 
Arnout had whistled on the summer evening when he wandered 
down the lane, and came upon the carriage upset in the middle 
of the road. She shrank from it ; from the tune, from the 
words, from the awful, overwhelming, * Deliver me from blood- 
guiltiness, O God.' And now, with its meaning sinking deep 
into her spirit, with all the reminiscences of that fateful evening 
returning upon her, she read it through sorrowfully, calmly, from 
end to end." 

Philippa* is a pretty little tale, laid for the most part in cer- 
tain well-known Normandy coast resorts, like Trouville and Vil- 
lers-sur-Mer, which are sketched in with a good deal of verisimili- 
tude. Belonging to the " Unknown " series, it is, of course, full 
of mystery of a not very impenetrable nature, and, her griefs 
terminating blissfully by the time she is twenty, Philippa makes 
quite as good a thing of life as if she had not been handicapped 
at the start by a but it would be unfair to reveal the mystery 
in that way. 

Miss Christine Faber has a great deal of cleverness and "go" 
about her work, which will be sure to make it popular among 
the young people for whom and concerning whom she writes. 
Her latest story,f A Chivalrous Deed, though badly named, such 
a marriage as it characterizes not ranging properly under such a 
category, is amusing and full of incident. Would that it were 
also possible to describe this interest and fun as elevating or re- 
fining in its quality. Unfortunately, the best that can be said 
about it is that it is not morally harmful. As a specimen of 
book-making it could not easily be worse than it is, being full of 
gross errors of spelling, punctuation, and, in fact, of bad proof- 
reading of all descriptions. A writer who succeeds so well in 
making children interesting to each other, and who skirts so 

* Philippa; or, Under a Cloud. By Ella. New York : Cassell Publishing Co. 
t A Chivalrous Deed. By Christine Faber. New York : P. J. Kenedy. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 925 

cleverly the dangerous snare of ""goodiness" while keeping well 
within the limits of goodness, would be a real and great accession 
to the ranks of Catholic literature could she prune her style and 
terrorize her publisher into giving her work a proper setting. 

Better in all those qualities wherein Miss Faber's work is 
lacking, but less sparkling and vivacious, and more conventional, 
is a volume * of Mrs. Anna Hanson Dorsey's containing Two 
Ways and Tomboy. Mrs. Dorsey is an old favorite with our 
young people, however, and these stories may be new only to 
the present writer. Each of them is entertaining and well- 
written. 

The series of articles in the Fortnightly Review concerning 
Russia, by E. B. Lanin, which turns out to be the collective sig- 
nature of several writers writers with an astonishing evenness 
and similarity of style and sentiment be it said have been col- 
lected into a volume f and brought out by Benjamin R. Tucker. 
It forms a terrible indictment of a great nation. If the half of 
such papers as those entitled respectively " Russian Prisons : the 
Simple Truth" and "Sexual Morality in Russia" are to be 
taken as a literal fact and that is what their writers claim and 
seem to establish by documentary evidence it must be avowed 
that the horrors of hell itself could not easily surpass those al- 
ready existing upon earth. The Swedenborgian hell would be a 
Paradise compared with the terrible etape prisons, in which con- 
victs of all sorts, as well as such guiltless members of their fami- 
lies as choose to accompany them into exile, are quartered on 
their way to Siberia. Certainly, the tale suggests the reflection 
by which of old King David governed his choice of punish- 
ments : that it is better to fall into the hands of God than into 
those of men. St. Catherine of Genoa hints the same thing 
when she says that man, when he abandons himself to evil, is 
worse than the devil, seeing that he has a body and can use it 
to such vile purpose. 

In other points, as for instance that of dishonesty, the indict- 
ment against a whole people on the score of such anecdotes as 
that which opens chapter iv. is like enough too sweeping. That 
instance, we are very sure, could be paralleled much nearer 
home without any one of us being willing to accept it as a 
proof of a general lack of common honesty among Americans. 
We remember the astonishment with which a woman of our ac- 
quaintance, who had established a flourishing business, received 

* Two Ways and Tomboy. By Anna H. Dorsey. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co. 
t Russian Traits and Terrors, By E. B. Lanin. Boston : Benj. R. Tucker. 



926 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Sept., 

the effusive thanks of a large Boston firm with whom she had 
had extensive transactions. When their account was presented 
and examined, it became evident that the bill against her was 
less by a hundred dollars than it should have been, and she 
called their attention to the fact. One of the Boston men wrote 
her in terms so complimentary of her integrity, and at the same 
time so indicative of surprise that she should have been at pains 
to rectify a mistake in her favor, that she counted the praise so 
near an insult as to justify her in putting the pertinent question : 
" What, then, would you have done in my place ? " Does one 
thence conclude that commercial morality is at a hopelessly low 
ebb in the United States? 

The paper on " The Jews in Russia " it would be well to 
read in connection with Professor Goldwin Smith's article in the 
August issue of the North American Review, u New Light on the 
Jewish Question," wherein he points out that it is as a financier 
and usurer that the Jew is hated, and not as a deicide. The 
press of all European nations, Professor Smith says, is for the 
most part owned or largely subsidized by Jewish capitalists ; 
hence, when it deals with moot questions between them and the 
Christians who feel that they are being eaten out of house and 
home by the Jew's characteristic hunger after the goods of this 
world, its statements of fact should be taken with a grain of 
salt. Perhaps a walk down the length of Broadway, and a care- 
ful study of the business signs there by one who retains any 
recollection of the shop-fronts of thirty or forty years ago, would 
serve to intensify his appreciation of the points of the North 

American article. 

+ 

I.- THE BOOK OF JOB.* 

Professor Genung, of Amherst College, in this new study of 
the Book of Job, has fulfilled his task in both a reverent and a 
critical spirit. The sublime Book of Job is shrouded in a cloud 
of mystery. The period and author of the book, and the ques- 
tion as to its strictly historical character, have been matters for a 
controversy which is not yet determined, and perhaps never 
will be. 

Professor Genung's opinion that it is an Epic Poem, by an 
unknown author contemporary with Isaiah, is ingeniously de- 
fended, and seems quite compatible with its inspiration if the 

* The Epic of the Inner Life, Being the Book of Job translated anew and accompanied 
with Notes and an Introductory Study. By John F. Genung. Boston and New York : 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1891. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 927 

poem is regarded as founded on a true history. Without con- 
sidering any particular passages of doubtful rendering, we may 
say that the translation is correct, and it is certainly very good 
in a literary point of view. The interpretation and notes show 
much thought, and, although it cannot be expected that they 
should be regarded as an adequate exposition by Catholic 
scholars, we think they will be found very serviceable in many 
ways to those who make this sublime book an object of special 
study. 



2. BLESSED THOMAS MORE.* 

" He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath ex- 
alted the humble." Surely we may well apply these words to 
the blessed martyr whose glorious name gives title to this excel- 
lent work of Father Bridgett. He was humble in his life and 
dealings with his fellow-men, and so merited to be exalted to 
the martyr's crown ; having first been divested of the greatest 
honors which a man of the world could bear in the days when 
Blessed Thomas More lived, he was born again to everlasting 
life. 

We welcome this life coming from the pen of Father 
Bridgett, whose valuable, accurate, and scholarly works we have 
had the pleasure of reading, some of them more than once or 
twice, and of noticing in these pages. When the life of Blessed 
John Fisher appeared we longed for that of Thomas More, 
and now we are hoping that God will spare our author to write 
the life of Blessed Margaret Pole. 

We have read many of the lives of the great chancellor, 
martyr, and patriot. A new one like this is a delightful month's 
spiritual reading. The letters quoted and the extracts from 
some manuscripts unpublished hitherto give us a deeper insight 
into his character than we have had before. 

More was a man of the most profound humility, and it 
seems as if he practised it in an heroic degree. Consequently 
he was a man who had the highest respect for the authority of 
the church as the divine teacher. Had he not combined these 
two virtues in so close a union, he had never given his life for 
the faith. He was an illustrious example of a great genius con- 
trolled by reason, by piety, and the love of God. The world 

* Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, and Martyr 
under Henry VIII. By the Rev. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R. London: Burns & Gates; New 
York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 



928 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Sept., 

had no charms for him. When at court his heart was in the 
domestic circle. His world there was his family, and yet he was 
willing at the voice of God to leave his earthly love, and serve 
his country, and finally his God, unto death. He never sought 
advancement, and when he was preferred to the highest office in 
the gift of his royal master, he discharged his duties with extra- 
ordinary wisdom and great simplicity. 

To the student who wishes to study the times of the Refor- 
mation in England Father Bridgett's books are invaluable. To 
the layman of our day the life should be a hand-book. It is the 
life of a man in the world and not of it. A man twice married, 
with a family of children, and yet living the life of a confessor, 
and meriting to crown a work well done with the martyr's palm. 
A man who served his country faithfully and well, but whose 
country was too ungrateful to give him the reward he deserved. 
We hope this book will circulate among Catholic lay people. 



3. A HISTORY OF THE WORSHIP OF GOD.* 

Divine .Revelation, as the author of this book conclusively 
shows, teaches the necessity of divine worship. And this wor- 
ship, which is of obligation, he proves to be of two kinds, viz. : 
internal, or the homage of the mind and heart toward God, and 
the external, which, as he deduces from Holy Scripture, has 
from the beginning been divinely instituted, and has always 
been sacrificial. Beginning with the sacrifice offered by Abel, he 
gives a continuous history of the true worship of God until the 
institution by our Divine Lord of the Most Holy Sacrifice of 
the altar the central glory of the Catholic Church. 

No one who reads this book can fail to see that the Holy 
Mass is the only form of Christian worship which links " the 
pure oblation " of the New Dispensation with the sacrifices of 
the Old. 

We most heartily second the wish of the' devout author that 
this book may be extensively circulated among all Catholics, 
and particularly among the laity. Although not professedly a 
controversial work, it will be a great help in bringing non-Cath- 
olic believers of the Bible to a knowledge of the truth. 

* A History of the Worship of God. By Right Rev. L. De Goesbriand, D.D., Bishop of 
Burlington, Vt. Burlington : The Free Press Association. 



1891.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 929 

4. FATHER CURTIS. * 

The author of Tyborne, Forgotten Heroines, and other charm- 
ing books, has, it seems to us, done no better work than this 
little biography of a very saintly man. The life of Father Cur- 
tis may be summed up in the following extract taken from one 
of his letters : " God delights in joy ; it is one of the most cer- 
tain means to secure his favors." And from the following 
descriptive of his penitents : " His confessional was thronged 
with his dear poor, who were his favorites an assembly of 
poor, miserable, deaf, blind, lame, half-alive people, in many 
shapes and forms, all most sorrowful, and some quite repulsive." 
A man of no mean learning, of a joyous, robust nature, he 
found his greatest happiness in ministering to the abject poor, 
so as well to merit the title of the " Apostle to the Poor." 
And this we take to be a greater miracle of grace than those 
other miracles he is believed to have wrought, or that of the 
miraculous manifestation at his grave. 

He was an Irishman, born in 1794, and died in 1885 at the 
good old age of ninety-one. Most of his life was spent in Dub- 
lin after he became a priest, either as rector in Gardner Street, 
or as provincial. Apropos of his love for his countrymen, it 
may not be out of place to quote a witticism contained in a 
letter of his to a friend on the loss of a parrot : " I offer my 
sincere condolence on the loss of the beautiful parrot. What a 
wondrous bird ! It did more than O'Connell or Grattan ever 
could realize it blended together in beauteous harmony the 
orange and the green." Indefatigable in all good works for the 
raising up of the poor, he had a helping hand for all, lay or 
religious, engaged in God's service. He held in particular and 
high esteem the Christian Brothers. 

He lived constantly in the presence of God. In one of his 
instructions to novices he says : " All authority comes from God, 
and superiors are only his representatives. You should be 
superior to every superior ; let God be your superior. He can- 
not mistake or forget. Try to please him. I wish to impress 
on your mind, and on the mind of every religious, that you 
must not be depending upon your superiors ; you must learn to 
depend upon God alone, and not on creatures." 

* The Life of Father John Curtis, of the Society of Jesus. By the author of Tyborne, 
etc. Revised by Father C. Purbrick, S.J. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son ; New York : The 
Catholic Publication Society Co. 



930 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Sept., 

5. A BOOK FOR YOUNG MEN.* 

The author has written a useful book for young men in a 
pleasant, confidential vein, and the title he has given it is a 
particularly taking one to the energetic youth of America. 
That " Young America " is energetic no one denies. That a 
vast amount of energy is wasted in the pursuit of false ideals, 
that aims are energetically pursued without any ideal at all, is 
sometimes the case even in America. Is it not the creed of 
certain modern philosophers that belief in the ideal is always to 
be reprehended? Father Feeny, however, without sharing this 
error, deals little in ideals. 

The book is both negative and affirmative. It tells why 
some young men do not " get on," and why others do. It 
shows that it is not impracticable to mingle God in all our 
actions, and might very easily have shown that all the most truly 
successful men the world has ever seen, all the true benefactors 
of the human race, have been men of God. 

All in all, it is a book calculated to do good, and may be 
read with profit not alone by the class for whom it has been 
written, but by all teachers of youth as well. The strain of 
hopefulness in which the book is written is particularly pleasing. 



6. AN EXPLANATION OF THE EPISCOPAL INSIGNIA, f 

This explanation of the episcopal insignia, by a Roman 
canon, need only be mentioned to recommend it sufficiently to 
all who are interested in Catholic rites, ceremonies, and vest- 
ments. 



7. HEALTH WITHOUT MEDICINE. $ 

A tiny booklet containing practical and sensible directions 
about hygienic habits and exercises. 

* How to Get On. By the Rev. Bernard Feeny. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago : Ben- 
ziger Bros. 

t De Insignibus Episcoporum Commentaria. Auctore Petro Josepho Rinaldi-Bussi. 
New York : Fr. Pustet. 1891. 

% Health Without Medicine. Theodore H. Mead. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 931 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

A FRIENDLY DISCUSSION' OF PLANS FOR THE DIFFUSION OF 

GOOD BOOKS. 

" Were a wholesome book as rare as an honest friend, 
To choose the book be mine : the friend let another take. 
Choose discreetly, and well digest the volume most suited to thy case, 
Touching not religion with levity, nor deep things when thou art wearied." Tupper. 

" I am not a reading man. There was a time when I was 
fond of a good book, but I seldom open one now." The 
speaker was a middle-aged, good-humored man. His name was 
Paul Carrollton. 

" Nor I, Paul," exclaimed his companion. " My business ab- 
sorbs the most of my time, and whenever I happen to have a 
leisure half-hour, I find quite enough in the daily papers to in- 
terest me." 

" The daily papers," observed the third speaker a tall, well- 
built, handsome young man " are well enough in their way, 
from a worldly stand-point, but as sensible men, my friends as 
I know you are you must acknowledge that we were endowed 
with a mind for. nobler " 

u Hold on ! " interrupted Paul ; " stop right there, Francis. No 
polemical discussion under my roof this evening, if you 
please." 

" You are mistaken, Paul, I assure you," said the young man. 
" I hadn't the remotest idea of introducing a theological subject. 
Yet I am convinced that a few -words on the question of 
healthy literature will not be out of place beneath your hospita- 
ble roof." 

The foregoing conversation took place in the cosey parlor of 
my friend and host, Paul Carrollton, in an important town in the 
State of New York. The immediate cause of the talk on read- 
ing was the somewhat abrupt appearance in our midst of a can- 
vasser for a New York publishing house, bearing a recently is- 
sued, bulky volume under his arm, for which he asked an exor- 
bitant price. 

Our young friend Francis was an enthusiast on the subject 
of good literature. 

" I never saw such a book-worm as you are, Francis," ob- 
served Paul. 



932 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Sept., 

" I confess I have an unquenchable thirst, almost, for good, 
solid, healthful reading," said Francis. " I prefer historical or 
scientific subjects, but I also find much profit and amusement in 
works of fiction, such as Newman's Catlista, Wiseman's Fabiola, 
and Walter Scott's historical novels." 

" For my part," exclaimed our host, " I am as willing as any 
man living to pay for a good took, if I could only be assured 
of its worth, but there is a great quantity of trashy literature 
sold nowadays in beautifully bound covers." 

" I agree with you there," said Francis. " For the sake of 
my children's morals, I wouldn't allow one of them to go within 
a mile of such books." 

" But," said Paul, " how are we to distinguish between the 
good and the bad ? Now you, Francis, belong to the same 
church as I do ; so do our friends here ; but with all due re- 
spect to you for your book knowledge, I must honestly say that 
I consider the prayer-book has quite enough good reading for 
me and for my family. Yes, sir ; a man can pull through well 
enough, without bothering his head so much in search of book- 
learning. That's my argument, Francis. Don't you think I'm 
near the mark ? " 

" Your argument, Paul, will hardly bear inspection. What 
you say might have been more to the point some years back, 
when our fathers first came here. In those days, I must admit, 
the man who could barely write his name stood as good a 
chance of pushing his way ahead in the battle of life as the col- 
lege graduate of to-day. However, things have changed amaz- 
ingly since then ; this is a more progressive age." 

"Francis, you are right. A man who has lived his life-time 
here in America must be pretty short-sighted if he fails to no- 
tice the wonderful change that has taken place in less than half 
a century. And now you have mentioned it, I begin to think 
that a young man needs a well-informed head on his shoulders 
in this age of competition." 

" You must also a'dmit, Paul, that it would be a most diffi- 
cult task to make a young man bright and clear-headed with- 
out the aid of books. The diffusion of clear, sound literature 
is as essential to sustain the mental faculties of youth as eating 
is to their material existence." 'l believe that good books are 
as necessary as wholesome food. 

" But," said Paul, " how are we going to discriminate be- 
tween good and bad; and where are our libraries? Just take 
this town of ours for example. I am an old citizen and a tax- 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 933 

payer, and should know what I am talking about. Now, this 
town, as near as I can calculate, contains about ten thousand in- 
habitants. Well, at a close guess I suppose we may count here at 
least three thousand Catholics. Again I ask, Where are our 
libraries ? It is true we have a public library, and I am one of 
the board of directors. It is a great benefit to our society peo- 
ple, but if you hunt the shelves for works relating to our Cath- 
olic literature, you'll have your journey for nothing." 

" Can you inform me how many of our Catholic authors 
are admitted to that library?" asked Francis. 

" Well, now, that's a puzzler," replied Paul ; " but to be frank 
with you, I must say I haven't the least idea." 

" Can it be possible, Paul an old citizen like you, a tax- 
payer, and a member of the board of directors. You astonish 
me." 

" It's a fact, nevertheless, Paul. Before you questioned me I 
had never given the matter a thought." 

" I venture to say," replied Francis, " that we have only one 
Catholic representative among the directors, and that one is 
yourself, and you have done nothing to make them acquainted 
with the treasures of Catholic literature." 

" Which shows how careless 1 have been," said Paul. 

"My advice is," answered Francis, "that you introduce this 
question at the next meeting of the board of directors, and any 
information they may require as to books by Catholic authors, 
to be placed on their shelves, can be obtained by addressing the 
Columbian Reading Union at 415 West 59th St., New York City. 
Just make a memorandum of that in your note-book, and 
do not forget to use it at the next meeting of the board. I am 
proud to say we enjoy a better state of affairs in our town. 
We have made quite an advance there." 

" This town," said Paul, " is about a century or so behind 
the age, I should judge. The wheels of progress seem to have 
come to a stand-still here ; the axle-tree wants a thorough 
greasing, in my opinion. But to come to the point. What 
change is this you speak of respecting our Catholic literature in 
your town ? " 

" Oh ! " said Francis, " I was about to allude to our Reading 
Circle." 

"' Reading Circle!'" echoed Paul. 

" Reading Circle ; that is the name of our club." 

"Turn on the gas, Francis, if you please, for I am as much 
in the dark as ever." 



934 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Sept., 

"The Reading Circle of which I speak is associated with 
our parochial library. It was established but a short time since, 
but it has proved to be a wonderful success." 

"Who was the founder of your Reading Circle?" inquired 
Paul. 

"We owe much of our success," replied Francis, "to the 
Columbian Reading Union." 

"'The Columbian Reading Union!'" exclaimed Paul. "Is 
that another society?" 

"Certainly," said Francis. "Don't you remember that I 
called your attention to it when speaking of the board of 
directors?" 

" How stupid I am ! " said Paul. " So you did. And I also 
made a note of it. Well, you say your Reading Circle has been 
aided by the Columbian Reading Union ? Explain how ? " 

" Yes," said Francis, " you must know that the central or- 
ganization was established in New York by the Paulist Fathers 
for the diffusion of wholesome literature. The Reading Circle to 
which I belong is one of its branches. The movement awakened 
interest in all directions, and now there is scarcely a town or 
city of any pretension without its Catholic Reading Circle." 

" God speed the good work ! " cried Paul excitedly ; " that is 
the fervent wish of my heart." 

" It is a good work," continued Francis, " and merits the 
success it has already achieved. Our young people need no 
longer speak of Catholic literature as if it were something worth- 
less. Every Reading Circle in the country is supplied by the 
Columbian Reading Union of New York with guide-lists, enu- 
merating the works of our best writers." 

" It is an excellent plan, Francis, and I don't wonder at its 
success. Now just think how many there are of us Catholics in 
the United States who up to this period have lain fallow, as it 
were, where our literature was concerned ; but as far as human 
foresight can go, I see in this new movement a means of extri- 
cating ourselves at last from the Dismal Swamp of neglect. 
But what is the reason that we are still without a Reading Cir- 
cle in this miserable, snail-paced old town of ours ? " 

"Remember," said Francis, "that Rome was not built in a 
day, and you know it is never too late to mend. Your Reading 
Circle has already been thought of." 

"Thought of!" exclaimed Paul; "what does that signify?" 

" To hasten matters," said Francis, " I saw Father M - this 
very afternoon; he intends to organize a Reading Circle next 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 935 

Sunday. What do you think of that, Paul? I see the news has 
had a talismanic effect on your features already. A moment or 
two ago your face was as long as a fiddle. There is a spark of 
life left in this plodding old town after all, you see ; for in about 
a fortnight from now your Reading Circle will be in full swing, 
shining forth like a bright star in a dark sky." 

" Francis, my dear fellow," cried Paul, starting from his seat, 
his face beaming with delight, "you have made me as great an 
enthusiast on the question of good reading as yourself. Think 
of what a benefit it will be to our growing-up boys and girls, 
as well as a source of pleasure to ourselves ! " 

"The Reading Circle," said Francis, "will also be hailed as a 
boon by the writer and publisher, as well as by the reading pub- 
lic in general. A noted Catholic writer has said : ' The author 
who writes a Catholic story in this country has no audience, 
and no publisher; secular publishing houses will not take his 
books, and religious ones cannot afford to take them. They do 
not pay the publisher, even when the author has paid half 
the price of publication." 

" Well, now, that's pretty hard," said Paul. " I don't see, for 
the life of me, why any writer who is obliged to exercise his 
brains for the welfare of humanity should be left out in the 
cold for the want of proper support, any more than the man 
that digs in the mine or guides the plough. For my own part 
although, as I have already observed, I am not much of a 
reading man I have always had a special admiration for the 
author whose writings afforded me either pleasure or instruc- 
tion." 

" Such an avowal," said Francis, " does credit to you. This 
question of reviving and encouraging the growth of our own 
literature to-day reminds me forcibly of a somewhat similar topic 
which was agitated more than half a century ago. One of the 
most gifted writers of that period, in advocating the require- 
ments of art in Ireland, asks the following question : ' Where 
is your Temple of Art ? ' He then instances the support given 
to art by the rulers of other nations ; but assuming that it 
may be contended that in the Emerald Isle the professions of 
painting and sculpture are not of sufficient importance to jus- 
tify the serious contemplation of collecting funds for the pur- 
pose of erecting an Irish National Gallery and School of Arts, 
he writes thus : * Egypt is a wilderness ; we only remember that 
she was. But of our recollections of her old name which is the 
most lively the most interesting? which most absorbs our sym- 



936 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Sept., 

pathy, commands our respect ? Is it our recollection of her 
wealth, her commerce ? No ! it is her mind, and not her wealth ; 
her philosophy, and not her arms ; her arts, and not her com- 
merce. Her foster-child, Greece, has left us a greater variety of 
models for admiration. Her laws, her arms, her poets, orators, 
heroes, either were more distinguished, or history has better de- 
fined or transmitted them to us!' " 

" I respect the talents of the painter and the sculptor as 
much as any man," said Paul, " but in my humble opinion the 
writer of a good book is as much entitled to admiration as 
either of them." 

"I agree with you," said Francis; "and if it was right for an- 
cient Greece and Rome to honor art, science, and literature in 
the early ages of the world, is it not right and proper that we 
of the old faith should be equally proud to encourage the 
Catholic writer of to-day? Or is civilization tending backward?" 

" It looks very much as if we were inclined that way, Fran- 
cis. The mighty dollar appears to be the magnet of attraction. 
Now, if we who are hunting after worldly wealth I include my- 
self, you see could only realize the fact that a genuine book is 
of more solid value than a nugget of gold 

"An American writer," said Francis, "in the early part of 
this century summed up the value of good books in these 
words : 

" ' In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most 
precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked 
for books ! They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and 
make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the 
true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the 
society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our 
race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the prosper- 
ous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the 
sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof ; 
if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and 
Shakspere to open to me the worlds of imagination and the 
workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with 
his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual 
companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though ex- 
cluded from what is called the best society in the place where 
I live.' ' 

"The Reading Circle you speak of is like a rainbow of 
hope," said Paul ; " but give me an idea of the plan you have 
adopted." 

"The plan of our Reading Circle is simply this," replied 
Francis : " each member is to pay one dollar for initiation, the 



1891.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 937 

money to be used in buying books. The fly-leaf of each book 
contains a printed list of members, arranged according to resi- 
dence. To every member will be sent one or two books, which 
may be retained two weeks, and must then be passed to the 
one whose name follows on the list ; all books to be passed 
the first and fifteenth of each month, and the dates when re- 
ceived and when passed to be noted by each member. In the 
forming of a club," continued Francis, " it is necessary to avoid 
too heavy reading, which would soon discourage all but those 
above the average literary taste. Books of fiction should be cir- 
culated with more solid work." 

"How are your meetings conducted?" inquired Paul. "I 
suppose they afford you sufficient enjoyment?" 

" They please me immensely," replied Francis. " I can truth- 
fully say, that the time is spent pleasantly and profitably at the 
regular meetings of our Reading Circle. The exercises begin 
with the reading of the minutes of the previous meeting. This 
is followed by quotations containing good, wholesome thoughts 
that impress the members in the course of their readings. The 
readings are selected from a literary stand-point ; hence standard 
periodicals are frequently consulted. For instance, every month 
at least one selection from THE CATHOLIC WORLD is rendered. 
The members subscribe to this magazine and circulate it weekly, 
so that each member in turn is supplied with a copy. An origi- 
nal story was given as a Christmas contribution at one of our 
meetings. Sometimes, however, we devote the whole evening to 
one special subject, or one celebrated character, such as Shak- 
spere, Longfellow, or St. Patrick. A modern author, whose 
works are familiar to most Catholic readers, in describing what 
our young people must have, says : 

" * How much better is it not for them to read good books, 
and wholesome books, and solid books, under proper guidance, 
than to devour indiscriminately all kinds of printed matter? In 
the one case, whatever they read will assist in forming the mind 
or building up the character; in the other, naught comes of it 
all but distraction, waste, and loss of time. Why devour trash 
when all the great writers and thinkers and singers of the world 
are at their disposal to inspire them with noble thoughts and 
glorious aspirations ? ' ' 

"My dear Francis," said Paul, "I am delighted to have had 

the pleasure of this evening's conversation. You have expanded 

my mind with new ideas, for I really believe that, like Rip Van 

Winkle, it has been under the influence of a twenty years' sleep 

VOL. LIII. 60 



938 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Sept., 

until you have disturbed its slumber. You have broken the spell 
at last, and opened my eyes to the blessed light of day." 

" I am glad," said Francis, " that I have been fortunate 
enough to make one convert at least. Your snail-paced, slow- 
coach old town, Paul, as you term it, is at length on the sure 
road to success, and will soon have many an ardent supporter of 
studious reading, now that you are about to set the example. 
It has been said that our Catholic literature, like the grand old 
Celtic language, was either dead or forgotten ; but, thank 
Heaven, we are now able to fling back the lie ! Already our 
traducers begin to realize the mettle we are made of. A glori- 
ous era is at length dawning before us. Our long-neglected 
writers, whose luminous pens have spread the light of truth in 
characters of gold, are becoming better known, and their works 
are receiving more attention from printers and publishers. It is 
no longer necessary for a Catholic author to 'become a color- 
less, lifeless litterateur, or else to follow false gods, become un- 
Catholic, and wallow in the muck of realistic popularity.' Every 
thinking Catholic will hail the movement as the first one to give 
the Catholic writer hope of having a little home where he may 
securely tend the vine and olive and uproot the noxious 
weed. 

" Long may the Columbian Reading Union continue to wield 
its potent influence, as the advance guard in the crusade for the 
spread of Catholic literature in the United States ! No depart- 
ment of its work is more important than that of trying to secure, 
through the united efforts of Reading Circles, a suitable recogni- 
tion of Catholic authors in every public library!" 

B. O. C. 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 939 



WITH THE PUBLISHER. 



DURING the past month the mail brought us many hearty 
and outspoken words of congratulation and encouragement, the 
result of the announcement in our last issue of the changes in 
the fortunes of THE CATHOLIC WORLD which point so clearly 
to greater efficiency and give so unmistakable an assurance of 
greater success. This issue of the magazine is the first that 
comes from its new, its own home, THE COLUMBUS PRESS. 
And though there have been delays inseparable from conditions 
that involve moving, new machinery, and new employees, the 
work produced is of a quality that will bear comparison with 
the best of our contemporaries, not only in matter, but also in 
typography. It must be plain to all our readers that the magazine 
is beautifully printed from its brand-new dress of type. It is 
true that this feature of fine typography is but a means to the 
end and aim of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, but in these days es- 
pecially the cause of Truth cannot ignore and must enlist every 
aid of this character. 

And so everything already augurs success in this new venture 
of the magazine. The Publisher, however, wishes to call the at- 
tention of his readers to a fact which he regards of special sig- 
nificance at the present time. It is certainly as happy a coinci- 
dence as it was unexpected to find that the first sheets that 
came off the new press of THE CATHOLIC WORLD contained 
that chapter in the Life of Father Hecker which embodied all 
his ideas on the subject of the Apostolate of the Press. 



The Publisher asks his readers to give that chapter a careful 
study. All that he has ever said of the value of Printer's ink as 
a vehicle for Divine truth has been derived from the words, 
spoken and written, of the great man who founded THE CATHO- 
LIC WORLD, and it may be of interest to note that in the plan 
and scope of the new COLUMBUS PRESS one of his ideals has 
been realized, one of his prophecies has been fulfilled. The con- 
vent and. the printing-office have been united. 



940 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [Sept., 

The results of that union, the good that will thence be effect- 
ed, rest under God's providence with us with the reader as well 
as with the editors and publisher. Don't say that this is the 
same old story, that the Publisher has repeated it again and 
again, and that it is high time to change. The Publisher thinks 
otherwise, and so will you if you examine your own conscience. 
He knows that he cannot say* it too often and too strongly, 
that the best fruits of the work of the magazine are to be real- 
ized by its readers ; that upon them rests its continuance, upon 
them rests the successful achievement of its purpose. He has 
not yet convinced all his readers of this truth ; he has not yet 
brought it clearly home to you, dear reader of these lines, 
that you have a share and an important share in the work of 
the Apostolate of the Press. And he won't change his key until 
he has convinced you of this, until he has made you feel the 
pressure of your duty in this respect. 



Don't allow yourself to think that somebody else can do this 
better than you, for this would be self-deception and you would 
not permit the thought in any other matter of pure business or 
even charity. As a reader of THE CATHOLIC WORLD you have 
a share in the good it can accomplish, you are a stock-holder 
in the company of all those who in one way or another work to 
secure the greatest good to the greatest number. And if your 
interest is genuine, you must and will do whatever falls in your 
way to boom that stock and secure the highest dividends at 
the Great Reckoning. Don't hide the magazine in a napkin ; 
put it out at interest. Let it become known for though it has 
now been in existence some twenty-seven years, it is surprising 
to find how many otherwise well-informed Catholics there are 
who are ignorant of its very existence, or who at least know 
nothing of the aims and purposes of its publication. 



All this, I repeat, has been said before, but the almost daily 
experience of the Publisher makes it clear that it cannot now 
be said too often, especially as the managers of the magazine 
have now undertaken the burden of debt and increased expense 
in order the better to secure the realization of the original plans 
of its founder. There are some of our readers who are already 
full of the spirit that should belong to those who see in 
THE CATHOLIC WORLD something more than the profit that can 
come to themselves individually ; there are those that find it an 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 941 

aid to the pulpit in the battle for the cause of Truth. Of such 
is the gentleman who this year repeats his generosity of the 
past, remitting the price of a year's subscription to the maga- 
zine to be sent " where it will do the most good." It would be 
out of place to state here the good that was the outcome of 
that expenditure last year ; it would involve disclosures of too 
personal and local a character ; but the magazine went to a 
South-western town where a priest is never seen, and it has 
already prepared the way for the Truth by the conquest it 
has made over Prejudice and by the demand it created in 
the place for books explanatory of Catholic doctrine. At the 
present moment the Publisher has on his desk an order for 
five different books on the Church's teaching, to be sent to 
a little town in Iowa into which only one copy of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD finds its way. But it goes to an earnest and 
fearless Catholic layman and this order is the first-fruits of 
his missionary spirit. It is something of this spirit that should 
possess you, dear reader, and the Publisher begs you to read 
and ponder that chapter in Father Hecker's life in which he 
speaks of the Press and its opportunities for the cause of 
Truth, in this land particularly. 



A recent writer in the Academy, in speaking of the evils 
wrought by biased and unscientific historians evils so great 
that they often mean the deception of several generations of 
a trusting public says that, while the operation of destroying 
these myths is not laborious, it is very thankless and is often 
unheeded. How often this has been the experience of the 
Catholic in argument with well-meaning Protestants needs no 
proving here ; but the writer's summary of the Luther " Bible 
Myths " is so well put that we venture to quote it at 
length : 

" Take, for example, the whole range of Luther myths, and 
especially the Luther Bible myth. It used to be asserted, hard- 
ly forty years ago, that Luther refound the Latin Bible as a 
rare book in the Erfurt Library. This card-house toppled down 
so soon as it was demonstrated that the Vulgate had been 
printed in hundreds of thousands of copies within the first thirty 
years of the printing-press. Then a new card-house arose 
Luther had first given the Bible in the vernacular to the Ger- 
man people. This toppled down also when it was shown that 
the German Bible had been printed eighteen times before Lu- 
ther's version appeared, and that his September Bible was but a 
slight modification of the old text. The next card-house was 



94 2 WITH THE PUBLISHER. [Sept., 

the theory that the pre-Lutheran German Bible was not only 
due to Waldensian heretics, but that the very printers and illus- 
trations were tainted with heresy. Here there was plenty of 
scope for show of learning and for knitting hypothesis to hy- 
pothesis. The trials of Waldensians in Strassburg and Augsburg 
were drawn from the archives and printed alongside accounts of 
the early printers of these towns. The heretics were found to 
have Bibles in their pockets ; what more natural than that they 
should have been on their way to take them to the printers ? 
But not only the printers, the engravers were also l Reformers 
before the Reformation ' for these sectarian historians !" 

Mr. Andrew Lang in Scribner's Magazine for this month has 
a somewhat summary way of disposing of the difficulty of advis- 
ing " a course of reading." " Distrust a course of reading," he 
says. " People who really care for books, read all of them. 
There is no other course." When one remembers that this 
piece of advice is addressed to the young, its wisdom can be 
questioned in spite of Mr. Lang's acknowledged place as a 
guide in matters literary. 

Of interest to teachers is the latest addition to Dr. Rolfe's 
" English Classics for School Reading," a series of Tales from 
Scottish History, selected from the works of standard authors. 
The tales are carefully graded and annotated, and the series is 
in the line of the plea made by Mr. George E. Hardy in the 
July issue of the Educational Review for the abolition of the 
ordinary " reader " from the school-room, and the substitution 
of reading matter that has rank as literature, properly graded 
and prepared for children. Mr. Hardy speaks from experience 
both of the evils of the old system and a careful and prolonged 
trial of the new plan in his own school, and we earnestly recom- 
mend the reading of his article to all those of our readers who 
have an interest in school work. 

The Will and the Way Stories is the title of a recent volume 
by Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont, the wife of the famous Path- 
finder. It is a collection of her adventures in the early days 
when her husband was a power in the Far West. D. Lothrop 
Co. publish the volume. 

Macmillan & Co. have just issued the first part of a new 
Dictionary of Political Economy edited by R. H. Inglis Palgrave, 
on the same lines as Sir George Grove's well-known Dictionary 
of Music. 

Major Wissmann, the writer who gave such striking testi- 
mony to the efficiency of the Catholic missionaries in Africa as 
compared with the labors of the Evangelical- bodies, is about to 



1891.] WITH THE PUBLISHER. 943 

issue, through Messrs. Chatto . & Windus of London, another 
book of African travel, which he calls My Second Journey 
through Equatorial Africa. 

It is announced that Mr. Walt. Whitman will write no 
more. He has completed his peculiar literary work with his last 
book, entitled Good-by, my Fancy. 

Macmillan & Co., the publishers of Mr. Joseph Pennell's 
work on Pen Drawing and Pen Draughtsmen, have issued another 
book by the same author, descriptive of the river Thames, un- 
der the title The Stream of Pleasure. The work is enriched by 
ninety illustrations by the author. 

Harper & Bros, have published : 

A King of Tyre. A Tale of the Times of Ezra and 
Nehemiah. By James M. Ludlow, author of The Cap- 
tain of the Janizaries. 

As We Were Saying. A volume of essays by Charles 
Dudley Warner. 

The Uncle of an Angel and other Stories, by Thomas A. 
Janvier. 

The Catholic Publication Society Co. has just issued : 

The Life of Father John Curtis, S.J. By the author of 

" Tyborne." 
The Memoirs of Richard Robert Madden, M.D. Edited by 

his son, Thomas More Madden, M.D. 

The same firm announces : 

The Autobiography of Archbishop U Hat home. With Selec- 
tions from his letters. By Augusta Theodosia Drane. 

Ireland and St. Patrick. A Study of the Saint's Charac- 
ter, and of the results of his Apostolate. By the Rev. 
W. B. Morris, of the Oratory. 

Life of the Cure of Ars. From the French of the Abbe 
Monnin. Edited by the Cardinal-Archbishop of West- 
minster. A new and cheap edition. 

Life of St. Francis di Geronimo, S.J. By A. M. Clarke. 
(New volume. Quarterly Series.) 

The Spirit of St. Ignatius, Founder of the Society of 
Jesus. Translated from the French of the Rev. Fa- 
ther Xavier de Franciosi, of the same Society. 

Succat ; or, Sixty Years of the Life of St. Patrick. By 
the Very Rev. Mgr. Robert Gradwell. 



944 BOOKS RECEIVED. [Sept., 1891. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

UN COUVENT DE RELIGIEUSES ANGLAISES A PARIS. Par 1'Abbe 
F. M. Th. Cedoz. Paris : Victor Lecoffre ; London : Burns 
& Oates. 

THE DIVINE ORDER OF HUMAN SOCIETY. By Professor Rob- 
ert Ellis Thompson, S.T.D. Philadelphia: John D. Wattles. 

LOURDES: HlSTOlRE MEDICALE. Par Docteur Boissarie. Paris: 
Librairie Victor Lecoffre. 

THE LITTLE GRAIN OF WHEAT. Suggestions of Devotion. 
Compiled by F. A. Spencer, O.P. Boston : T. B. Noonan 
& Co. 



PAMPHLETS RECEIVED. 

L'ANGELUS. Par Claude-Charles Charaux. Paris : Didot et Cie. 

LA CIVILISATION ET LA PENSEE. Par C.-C. Charaux. Greno- 
ble: F. Allier Pere et Fils. 

ADDRESS OF JAMES F. TRACY. Albany: Argus Company. 

THE CHURCH AND POVERTY. By John Brisben Walker. 

KANSAS STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. Topeka: Hamilton 
Printing Co. 

VIOLET NEVIN : THE STORY OF A MIXED MARRIAGE. By her 
Uncle. Liverpool : J. C. Conolly. 



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