ou're an honor to your tachers and to
your cloth.'

"Father Corrigan now laughed heartily at the puzzling the friar gave
Father James. 'James,' says he, 'never heed him; he's only pesthering
you with bog-Latin; but, at any rate to do him justice, he's not a
bad Scholar, I can tell you that.... Your health, Prank, you droll
crathur--your health. I have only one fault to find with you, and
that is, that you fast and mortify yourself too much. Your fasting has
reduced you from being formerly a friar of very genteel dimensions to
a cut of corpulency that smacks strongly of penance--fifteen stone at
least.

"'Why,' says the friar, looking down quite plased, entirely, at the
cut of his own waist, Uch, among ourselves, was no trifle, and giving a
growl of a laugh--the most he ever gave, 'if what you pray here benefits
you in the _next life_ as much as what _I fast_ does for me _in this_,
it will be well for the world in general Michael.'

"'How can you say, Frank,' says Father 'with such a carkage as that,
you're a poor friar? Upon my credit, when you die, I think the angels
will have a job of it in wafting you upwards."

"'Jemmy, man, was it _you_ that said it?--why, my light's beginning to
shine upon you, or you never could have got out so much,' says Father
Rooney, putting his hands over his brows, and looking up toardst him;
'but if you ever read scripthur, which I suppose you're not overburdened
with, you would know that it says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," but
not blessed are the poor in flesh--now, mine is spiritual poverty.'

"'Very true, Frank,' says Father Corrigan, 'I believe there's a great
dearth and poverty of spirituality about you, sure enough. But of
all kinds of poverty, commend me to a friar's. Voluntary poverty's
something, but it's the divil entirely for a man to be poor against his
will. You friars boast of this voluntary poverty; but if there's a fat
bit in any part of the parish, we, that are the lawful clargy, can't
eat it, but you're sure to drop in, just in the nick of time, with your
voluntary poverty.'

"'I'm sure, if we do,' says the friar, 'it's nothing out of your pocket,
Michael. I declare I believe you begrudge us the air we breathe. But
don't you know very well that our ordhers are apostolic, and that, of
coorse, we have a more primitive appearance than you have.'

"'No such thing,' says the other; 'you, and the parsons, and the fat
bishops, are too far from the right place--the