er
once contradicted herself."

"You don't say the Catholics are allowed the use of the Bible, do you?
or that there was any Bible in the world but the one Luther found in the
monastery hid, in the year 1517?" said the elder, who did not well hear,
as he was somewhat deaf.

"Do you seriously believe that we Catholics have not leave to use the
Bible? I tell you we have, and always had, the unquestioned right to its
proper use. Even before the art of printing was discovered by a
Catholic, and when books were scarce, a Bible, in large, plain writing,
was chained to a stand or desk in each parish church in most countries,
so that all who wished could read. I saw one of these stands, which
turned on a pivot, in an old Catholic church in Yorkshire, England,
where it remains to this day. And as regards the absurdity that Luther
found the only copy of the Bible extant in a monastery or university,
that story is refuted by the fact that there were millions of Bibles,
and countless editions of it, printed before Luther was born. Indeed, I
have just read in this Protestant paper, here, that there is a Bible in
Cincinnati, printed in 1470; that is, nearly fifty years before Luther
began to revolt."

"Why, Betsey Darcy, that jined our kirk at the late revivals, told us,
public, in the meeting house, that the priests in Ireland would not
allow any Catholic to read the Bible; and she said that was the first
one she ever saw which I handed to her," said the pious elder.

"Don't you believe her, elder," said Murty, "for I saw that same girl
handle a true Protestant Bible in Ireland, when she attempted to father
her illegitimate child on an honest man, but when she was, instead,
convicted of perjury the most gross. She has had two other fatherless
children since she came to 'free America;' and now, after having been
rejected from the humblest society of Catholics on account of her
immoralities, she, of course, takes refuge among the impeccable saints
of Presbyterianism, where she ranks high in the scale of sanctity."

"Sartin," said the sheriff; "she is a hard one, I do believe. I saw her
drunk at the donation visit of dominie Grinoble, last winter."

"Yes," said Murty, "when you get such a convert as this unfortunate
reprobate, you boast and write tracts to herald the conquest; but such
conversions as those of Spencer, Brownson, Wilberforce, Newman, Lords
Camden, or Freeling, are as nothing in your eyes. You stuff your ears
when