heological studies and discussions in our own colleges and
academies. Novels, poetry, essays, lectures, treatises on the natural
sciences,--all deal with the great central questions of man's being, his
origin, and his conduct. And surely it is folly to ignore these
discussions in the market places of the world, because they are
literature, and not couched in scholastic syllogisms. Dear me! I am
philosophizing,--I, old Daddy Dan, with the children plucking at my
coat-tails and the brown snuff staining my waistcoat, and, ah, yes! the
place already marked in my little chapel, where I shall sleep at last. I
must have been angry, or gloomy, that day, thirty years ago, when I
stepped on the platform at M----, after my interview with the Bishop,
and met my friends, who had already become aware that I was elevated out
of the junior ranks, and had become an independent officer of the Church
Militant.

"You don't mean to say that you have accepted that awful place?" said
one.

"You'll have nothing but fish to eat," said another. "The butcher's van
goes there but once a week."

"And no society but fishermen," said a third. "And they speak nothing
but Irish, and you know you cannot bless yourself in Irish."

"Well," I replied, "my Job's comforters, I have accepted Kilronan, and
am going there. If all things go well, and you are good boys, I may ask
for some of you as curate--"

"You'll be glad to get a curacy yourself in six months," they shouted in
chorus.

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! Alas!
circumstances are too much for us all, and here I am, in my seventieth
year, poor old Daddy Dan, with no great earthly trouble, indeed, and
some few consolations,--my breviary and the grand psalms of hope,--my
daily Mass and its hidden and unutterable sweetness,--the love of little
children and their daily smiles,--the prayers of my old women, and, I
think, the reverence of the men. But there comes a little sting
sometimes,