Patrick Augustine Sheehan

“ Then I thought Father Letheby was making fun of me, and I was getting cross, when I heard, "Hush!" and Miss Campion rose up and passed on to the stage, and took her place at the piano, and with one little wave of the hand, she marshalled them into a crescent, and then there was a pause, and then—a crash of music that sent every particle of blood in my old body dancing waltzes, and I began to feel that I was no longer Daddy Dan, the old pastor of Kilronan, but a young curate that thinks life all roses, for his blood leaps up in ecstasy, and his eyes are straining afar. ”

“ What cool contempt for God's dispensations in the other! And how the one realizes the bursting of bonds and the setting free of the immortal spirit unto the vast environments and accidents of life, whilst the other sees but dead clay with some dim ideas of a shadowy and problematical eternity! "His soul! his soul!" Here was the burden of Bittra's grief. Ormsby could not understand it; he was frightened and bewildered. I tried every word of solace, every principle of hope, that are our inheritance, only to realize that—
"Not all the preaching since Adam
Can make Death other than Death!" ”

“ And so I came to Kilronan, and here have I been since. The years have rolled by swiftly. Life is a coach, whose wheels move slowly and painfully at the start; but, once set moving, particularly when going down the deep decline of life, the years move so swiftly you cannot see the spokes in the wheels, which are the days we number so sadly. What glorious resolutions I made the first months of my residence here! How I would read and write and burn the midnight oil, and astonish the world, and grow from dignity to dignity into an honored old age! ”

“ I said, "the question of honor. Human nature is a very crooked thing, and you can't run a level road over a hill."
"I never like even the shadow of deception," he said; "I hate concealment; and yet I should not like Campion to know that I practised even so innocent a stratagem."
"Oh, shade of Pascal!" I cried, "even you could detect no casuistry here. And have you no scruple, young man, in keeping an old gentleman on the tenter-hooks of expectation whilst you are splitting hairs? Go on, like a good fellow, I was never so interested in my life. The idea of landing Campion!" ”

“ I do not think it was personal humiliation, or the sense of personal shame, or dread of further exposure, that really agitated Father Letheby during these dreary days, so much as the ever-recurring thought that his own ignominy would reflect discredit on the great body to which he belonged. He knew how rampant and how unscrupulous was the spirit of criticism in our days; and with what fatal facility the weaknesses and misfortunes of one priest would be supposed, in the distorted mirrors of popular beliefs, to be reflected upon and besmirch the entire sacred profession. ”

“ What folly is this, Father Dan? Do you think you know more than God and His Blessed Mother? Do you? Your head is so turned with heathen vanity that you think you ought to get the reins of the universe into your hands. Here's your classics, and your Spinoza, and your Cappadocians, and your book-writing, and all your castles in the air, and your little children lying on their sick-beds and you knowing nothing about it. Look sharp, old man, your time is at hand, and think what the Judge may do with you when His hand presses so tightly on His little children. ”

“ This evening, after leaving Father Letheby, I determined to call, unprepared to witness the little tragedy that was before me—one of those little side-scenes in the great drama of existence, which God turns suddenly to the front lest we should ever mistake the fact that our little world is a stage, and that we have all the denizens of the veiled eternities for our audience. Mrs. Moylan was one of those beautiful Irish mothers, who, having passed through the stress and storm of life, was moving calmly into the great sea of Death and Eternity. ”

“ Deady, setting herself in a rather defiant attitude, "he had as good a dinner as any poor man in your parish. He had a roast goose, stuffed by thim two hands with praties and inguns, until the tears ran down my face; and he had a pig's cheek, and lashins of cabbage."
"And why don't you tell his reverence about the rice puddin'?" said Jem, in a tone of honest indignation. "'T is a shame for you, Bess! She made a rice puddin', your reverence, that was fit for the Grate House; and begor, your reverence might sit down to worse yourself. Sich raisons and currans!" ”

“ I looked up to him ever since, and see under all his pomposity and dignity a good deal of the grit that makes a man a hero or a saint."
"I retract my remark unreservedly," said my curate; "it was unjust and unfair. It is curious that I have never yet made an unkind remark but I met with prompt punishment."
"You may not be a great theologian nor a deep thinker," said I, "but no man ever uttered a more profound saying. God may ignore our petty rebellions against Himself; but when we, little mites, sit in contemptuous judgment on one another, He cannot keep His hands from us! ”

“ Christmas Day was a day of undiluted triumph for Father Letheby. There were great surprises in store for me. That is one of my curate's few faults—is it a fault?—that he is inclined to be dramatic. As he says, he hates to speak of a thing until it is beyond the reach of failure. Of all criticisms, the one he most dreads is, "I told you so." And so, on this Christmas morning, I had a series of mild, pleasant shocks, that made the bright, crisp, frosty, sunny morning all the more pleasant. It was a slight, because expected, surprise to see Captain Campion at the altar rails. ”

“ The old women and the little children come to me. They don't mind an occasional growl, which will escape me sometimes. Indeed, they say they'd rather hear one roar from the "ould man" than if Father Letheby, "wid his gran' accent," was preaching forever. But young men are sensitive; and I am not sorry.
Yet, if my Guardian Angel were to ask me, What in the world have you to grumble about? I couldn't tell him. For I never come away from that awful and sacred duty of the confessional without a sense of the deepest humiliation. I never sit in "the box," as the people call the confessional. ”

“ I used be thinking, Daddy Dan, a good deal of what you said to me—how these poor bodies of ours were but a little lime, and phosphorus, and water; and that we must all go through the terrible changes of death; and what you told me of that great saint in Spain and the dead queen; but it was only when Father Letheby read to me about our Lord, 'a worm and no man,' 'a leper and accursed by God and afflicted'; 'and one huge sore from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet'—that I began to think He had made me like Himself, welcome be His Will, and Holy be His Name! ”

“ Nothing on earth can cure the inertia of Ireland. It weighs down like the weeping clouds on the damp heavy earth, and there's no lifting it, nor disburthening of the souls of men of this intolerable weight. I was met on every side with a stare of curiosity, as if I were propounding something immoral or heretical. People looked at me, put their hands in their pockets, whistled dubiously, and went slowly away. Oh, it was weary, weary work! The blood was stagnant in the veins of the people and their feet were shod with lead. ”

“ I could barely distinguish the pale faces of the confused mass that stretched in the deep gloom towards the door; but overhead, about a dozen dark figures were outlined against the light of the two wax candles on the harmonium, over which, on this eventful morning, Father Letheby presided. And this was the object of the concert at last. I should have known that there was some supernatural object behind it. This young man does not care much to develop or elicit the dormant energies of the people, unless he can turn therewith the mills of God. ”

“ It is a little luxury I am rather fond of, like the kindred stimulant of a pinch of snuff; and as I have had but few luxuries in my life, no one ought grudge me this.
"My dear Father Letheby," I said, as we sat comfortably together, "the great principle of Irish life is quieta non movere. Because, when you lay a finger on the most harmless and impotent things, they spring at once into hissing and spitting things, like the Lernæan hydra; and then, like that famous monster, you must cauterize the wound to heal, or prevent new hideous developments. ”

“ There was a genuine ringing cheer when he walked down her deck; for every one knew what a splendid seaman he was, and it is exhilarating to see a strong man, self-reliant and confident, assume an authority and premiership by natural right, where weaklings are timid and irresolute. The clouds moved off from Father Letheby's face only to gather more deeply upon poor Bittra's. Campion saw it and came over to where she stood, leaning on Ormsby's arm. ”

“ Dear me! if only the young had fair play and the tonic of a kindly word—- but no, kind words appear to be weighed out like gold; and then comes deadly depression and heart-searching, and all brave courage is extinguished, and all noble aspirations checked, until in middle age we find only the dried-up, cauterized, wizened soul, taught by dread experience to be reticent and cautious, and to allow splendid opportunities to pass unutilized rather than risk the chances of one defeat. ”

“ True enough, even under the cold light, the broad sea stretched sparkling before us, with all its magic and glamour, but unruffled and unploughed by even one Nautilus-sail of busy man.
"There," he cried, "there lie the gold mines of Ireland, unworked and neglected. In these depths is wealth enough to make Kilronan a busy emporium of merchandise for half the world!"
"I see. And the other two hundred? Where do they come from?"
"Subscribed by twenty merchants, who have taken shares in the boat."
"And you never asked your old pastor to invest in this patriotic bank. Shame! Shame! ”

“ Father Letheby was very much pleased. He was again in the society that best suited his natural disposition. It was tolerably intelligent and refined. The lights, the flowers, the music, told on his senses, long numbed by the quietness and monotony of his daily life. He entered into the quiet pleasures of the evening with zest, made all around him happy, and even fascinated by the brilliancy with which he spoke, so much so that Bittra Campion said to him, as he was leaving about eleven o'clock:—
"Father, we are infinitely obliged to you." ”

“ He makes a memento, he said, for the most abandoned priest, and for the soul that is next to be released. And whenever he has not a special intention, he always gives his Mass to our Blessed Lady for that soul. Now, I think, that's very nice. Just imagine that poor soul waiting inside the big barred gates, and the angel probably her warder for many years, outside. They don't exchange a word. They are only waiting, waiting. Far within are the myriads of Holy Souls, praying, suffering, loving, hoping. There is a noise as of a million birds, fluttering their wings above the sea. ”

“ But it has been a singular intellectual revival for me to feel all my old principles and thoughts shadowing themselves clearer and clearer on the negatives of memory where the sunflames of youth imprinted them, and from which, perhaps, they will be transferred to the tablets that last for eternity. But here God has been very good unto me in sending me this young priest to revive the past. We like to keep our consciousness till we die. ”

“ Bittra herself settled the dispute, as, standing in the prow of the boat, she flung a bottle of champagne on the deck, and said tremulously: "I name her the 'Star of the Sea.'"
But she grew pale, and almost fainted, as the heavy bottle, without a break, pirouetted down between sails and cordage, and seeking an opening in the gunwale of the boat flopped into six fathoms of sea-water.
It was a dread omen, and all felt it. Nothing could have been more inauspicious or unlucky. But the Celtic wit and kindness came to her aid. ”

“ Let no one say that our poor Irish do not grasp the meaning of this central mystery of our faith! It is true that their senses are touched by more visible things; but whoever understands our people will agree with me that no great theologian in his study, no philosopher in his rostrum, no sacred nun in her choir, realizes more distinctly the awful meaning of that continued miracle of love and mercy that is enshrined on our altars, and named Emmanuel. ”

“ Each from his own little pedestal—it may be the shuffling stilts of three feet high, or it may be the lofty security of the Vendôme column—shrieks out his little opinion, and demands the silence or assent of the universe. Would that our modern Stylites, like to those of old, might, from their eminences, preach their own nothingness! Would that, like the Muezzins of Islam, they might climb the minarets of publicity and fame, only to call the world to praise and prayer! ”