ts
career with a ceremony so touching. The September sun streamed through
the venerable windows of the cathedral, the music soared among the
arches, the altar glowed with lights and flowers; the venerable
archbishop and his priests and attendants filled the sanctuary, an
adoring crowd breathed with reverence in the nave; but the center of the
scene, its heart of beauty, was the pale, sanctified son of Mary
Everard.

For him were all these glories! Happy, happy, youth! Blessed mother!
There were no two like them in the whole world, he said in his emotion.
Her glorified face often shone on him in the pauses of the ceremony. Her
look repeated the words she had uttered the night before: "Under God my
happiness is owing to you, Arthur Dillon: like the happiness of so many
others; and that I am not to-day dead of sorrow and grief is also owing
to you; now may God grant you the dearest wish of your heart, as He has
granted mine this day through you; for there is nothing too good for a
man with a heart and a hand like yours."

How his heart had like to burst under that blessing! He thought of
Honora, not yet his own.

The entire Irishry was present, with their friends of every race. In
deference to his faithful adherent, the great Livingstone sat in the
very front pew, seriously attentive to the rite, and studious of its
significance. Around him were grouped the well-beloved of Arthur Dillon,
the souls knit to his with the strength of heaven; the Senator,
high-colored, richly-dressed, resplendent, sincere; the Boss, dark and
taciturn, keen, full of emotion, sighing from the depths of his rich
nature over the meaning of life, as it leaped into the light of this
scene; Birmingham, impressive and dignified, rejoicing at the splendor
so powerful with the world that reckons everything by the outward show;
and all the friends of the new life, to whom this ceremony was dear as
the breath of their bodies. For this people the sanctuary signified the
highest honor, the noblest service, the loftiest glory. Beside it the
honors of the secular life, no matter how esteemed, looked like dead
flowers.

At times his emotion seemed to slip from the rein, threatening to unman
him. This child, whose innocent hands were anointed with the Holy Oil,
who was bound and led away, who read the mass with the bishop and
received the Sacred Elements with him, upon whom the prelate breathed
solemn powers, who lay prostrate on the floor, whose head was b