wn gray in the
service of God, I should congratulate you on this day, the day of thy
espousals to Jesus Christ. I should say to thee: well done thou faithful
servant, thou hast labored long and well in the service of thy maker.
Thou hast gone to thy well-merited reward." Father Licking continued at
some length in this strong strain of apostrophe to the name and memory
of his beloved brother, and then entered into reminiscences, in which he
said, "I remember well when first I met the departed. It was in the year
1870. We were then students at the preparatory college of the
Redemptorist order. He was even then the picture of health, and a model
for every student. Never was he known to infringe upon the slightest
rule of the institute; never (and this is saying a great thing), never
did he lose a single moment of time. Always at his books by day and by
night, even stealing from his well-merited rest some hours in order to
acquire knowledge which he might employ in after years in the service of
God and for the good of souls. So well pleased were his superiors with
his conduct, that they appointed him, together with the late lamented
Rev. Father McGivern, overseer of the college boys in the absence of
their superiors."

He received the habit of the order in 1875, with Rev. Fathers Beal and
Licking. The panegyrist made most feeling allusion to the occasion, when
the lamented dead took "the profession of those holy vows, those
tremendous vows, those eternal vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience.... Thank God, he kept those vows to the end."

Father O'Brien was next sent to the Redemptorist Theological Seminary of
Ilchester, Md., to further pursue the great studies that fitted him for
his calling.

"It often required an express command of his superiors to take him from
his books that his body might not succumb, and the mind gain the
necessary rest. So exact was he in all his ways, that we, his fellow
students, could, at any hour of the day, point out the very spot where
he might be found, either going through the Way of the Cross, or praying
before the Blessed Sacrament, or reciting his rosary, or studying at his
books. Is it a wonder, then, that God should allow him to die on a spot
which had so often been the witness of so much piety and so many of his
good works."

He was ordained priest in 1880, and the following February found him at
the Boston Highlands in the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Here
he administ