hat the effect of being banished from Malta was to
stimulate him into a practical attempt to express his dreams of
religious devotion. He hired a small room over a stable in a back street
and started a club for the sons of soldiers. The band-master would not
have minded this so much, especially when he was congratulated on his
son's enterprise by the wife of the Colonel. Unfortunately this was not
enough for Edward, who having got the right side of an unscrupulously
romantic curate persuaded him to receive his vows of a Benedictine
oblate. The band-master, proud and fond though he might be of his own
uniform, objected to his son's arriving home from business and walking
about the house in a cassock. He objected equally to finding that his
own musical gifts had with his son degenerated into a passion for
playing Gregorian chants on a vile harmonium. It was only consideration
for his delicate wife that kept the band-master from pitching both
cassock and harmonium into the street. The amateur oblate regretted his
father's hostility; but he persevered with the manner of life he had
marked out for himself, finding much comfort and encouragement in
reading the lives of the saintly founders of religious orders.

At last, after a long struggle against the difficulties that friends and
father put in his way, Edward Burrowes managed at the age of
twenty-seven to get ordained in Canada, whither, in despair of escaping
otherwise from the solicitor's office, he had gone to seek his own
fortune. He took with him the oblate's cassock; but he left behind the
harmonium, which his father kicked to pieces in rage at not being able
to kick his son. Burrowes worked as a curate in a dismal lakeside town
in Ontario, consoling himself with dreams of monasticism and chivalry,
and gaining a reputation as a preacher. His chief friend was a young
farmer, called George Harvey, whom he succeeded in firing with his own
enthusiasm and whom he managed to persuade--which shows that Burrowes
must have had great powers of persuasion--to wear the habit of a
Benedictine novice, when he came to spend Saturday night to Monday
morning with his friend. By this time Burrowes had passed beyond the
oblate stage, for having found a Canadian bishop willing to dispense him
from that portion of the Benedictine rule which was incompatible with
his work as a curate in Jonesville, Ontario, he got himself clothed as a
novice. About this period a third man joined Burrowes a