thinking now of an old
decrepit house with sagging roof and lichen-covered walls, and all the
doors and windows nailed up. Every generation nailed up a door or a
window till all were nailed up. In the dusty twilight creatures wilt and
pray. About the house the sound of shutters creaking on rusty hinges
never ceases. Your hand touched one, and the shutters fell, and I found
myself looking upon the splendid sun shining on hills and fields, wooded
prospects with rivers winding through the great green expanses. At first
I dared not look, and withdrew into the shadow tremblingly; but the
light drew me forth again, and now I look upon the world without fear. I
am going to leave that decrepit dusty house and mix with my fellows, and
maybe blow a horn on the hillside to call comrades together. My hands
and eyes are eager to know what I have become possessed of. I owe to
you my liberation from prejudices and conventions. Ideas are passed on.
We learn more from each other than from books. I was unconsciously
affected by your example. You dared to stretch out both hands to life
and grasp it; you accepted the spontaneous natural living wisdom of your
instincts when I was rolled up like a dormouse in the dead wisdom of
codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions. I never told you how I became a
priest. I did not know until quite lately. I think I began to suspect my
vocation when you left the parish.

'I remember walking by the lake just this time last year, with the story
of my life singing in my head, and you in the background beating the
time. You know, we had a shop in Tinnick, and I had seen my father
standing before a high desk by a dusty window year after year, selling
half-pounds of tea, hanks of onions, and farm implements, and felt that
if I married my cousin, Annie McGrath, our lives would reproduce those
of my father and mother in every detail. I couldn't undertake the job,
and for that began to believe I had a vocation for the priesthood; but I
can see now that it was not piety that sent me to Maynooth, but a
certain spirit of adventure, a dislike of the commonplace, of the
prosaic--that is to say, of the repetition of the same things. I was
interested in myself, in my own soul, and I did not want to accept
something that was outside of myself, such as the life of a shopman
behind a counter, or that of a clerk of the petty sessions, or the habit
of a policeman. These were the careers that were open to me, and when I
was hes