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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATIN OF GEOBGIA
7
CLERICAL LIFE—SOME OF ITS SERIOUS AND HUMOROUS
SIDES
By P. H. D.
A country Pastor has a great many things to do
which never fall to the lot of his brethren in the
city. I was Pastor and Sexton and in fact some
what of a Jack of all trades. Yet most assuredly
I never had to complain of a dull, dreary and un
interesting time. Thank God I always had a sense
of humor, and the humor helped me bear some of
the unpleasant things, while the good God gave
me occasion to thank Him for the good he was
doing in my little parish, and in which He per
mitted me to have a little share.
You often hear the question asked: “But how
many converts have you made?” I sometimes have
had the same question proposed to me and I re
sent it for the reason that no priest ever made
a convert. That is the work of God, since Faith
is a Divine gift. We do a little, but He does the
most. I remember well the story of what I may
be permitted to call: My First Convert.
Did you ever keep a Diary? Of course you did,
and of course you are ashamed to acknowledge it.
I find that I have two of them. One of these was
started in April, 1861, and was intended, I sup
pose, as a veracious history of the war between the
States. If I could only make out what it says I
have no doubt in the world that it would be of
absorbing interest to somebody. I had no doubt
then that the South was to be the victor in that
fratricidal strife, but truth compels me to state
that my Diary has very little news of the war, and
is made up, for the most part, of visits paid to my
mother’s house in Petersburg, Va., by officers and
soldiers, with occasional reference to the climatic
conditions which prevailed.
Let me quote some samples: “Cloudy today. Dr.
Thomas came in last night and remained all
night. Dr. Geddings called this morning and I
am going back with him to his headquarters
near General Lee’s, etc.” Another reference is:
“Nelson was shot today.” (Nelson was a pet dog
who had developed a very unpleasant complaint
m his latter days and we had tried to poison him
but he seemed to thrive on the stuff we gave him,
and so one day I asked a passing “reb” to shoot
him.) I had written in my Diary: “I asked one of
Lee’s Miserables’ to take him out to camp and
finish him.” Victor Hugo’s famous work had
reached us down South. But the other Diary in
my Old Drawer is one which I began, and, strange
to say, continued, and the last item in it is about
the siege and capture of Home by the Piedmon
tese Raiders in September 1870.
It begins on the day I left Baltimore—October
28, 1869—en route for Rome. It was a great day in
the Monumental City.and nearly all the Catholic
Societies marched down to the docks with ban
ners and music to bid farewell, to the Most Rev,
Archbishop Spalding, who, with a number of oth
er Prelates, was sailing for Europe to attend the
Vatican Council.
But the Diary has nothing to do with the story
of my first convert, except that it had esconced
among its pages some stray sheets on which I had
written the account of this conversion.
Two years ago I was one day summoned to the
parlor to find a lady who was a perfect stranger
to me, and who expressed her very great surprise
that I failed to recognize her.
“Is it possible,” she said, “that you do not know
who I am?”
I had to admit the charge and then in self de
fense I asked her where and when I had seen her
the last time, and was immensely relieved when
she told me that I had not seen her for eighteen
years. I told her that I had met in New York a
few months before a lady who had been very
much surprised at my failure to recognize her,
and when I put the same question to her she told
me that the last time I saw her was when I had
baptized her when she was an infant! My visitor
recalled herself to my memory by telling me that
I had received her father into the Church in
1875, and she believed that he was my first con
vert. I recalled some of the circumstances of her
father’s conversion and looking over my Diary I
find the stray leaves which tell in extenso the
story of the first Convert who came into the
Church in my missions. I really do not think I
had very much to do with his conversion for he
had, without knowing it, a truly Catholic mind.
His was a case resembling many that have come
under my observation since. When I asked him
how it was that he had never made any investi
gation of the Church and her claims, he said:
“No one ever said a word to me about the Cath
olic Church.” I need hardly say that all my story
is actual fact.
I was a very young priest then, and what I did
not know about the practical part of a Priest’s
life would fill volumes. How well I recall the
fright which I experienced at my first sermon. O
that some of the critics so comfortably sitting in
the pews would climb the pulpit steps and see
how they would feel and how eloquently they
would preserve silence there! One Sunday while
I was reading the usual Sunday announcements
I noticed a stranger in the first pew. He was of
middle age and kept his gaze fastened on my face
the whole time. It is quite a tribute that people
think they pay to a speaker when they give him
their undivided attention and in so doing never
let their eyes leave his face; but it is very much
of a trial sometimes to the speaker.
The late Father Tom McLoughlin (to whose dear
soul may God give eternal rest) told me he was
preaching once in the Church of the Transfigura
tion in New York, of which he was Pastor, on the
occasion of some Saint’s day which our Italian
Catholics were celebrating in their peculiarly ex
uberant way, when he observed in the front pew
on the Epistle side a man and a boy whose con
duct was rather singular. The boy was trying
very hard to get his hand in his father’s pocket
and the father was just as strenuous in prevent
ing him. Father Tom determined to look no
longer in that direction as it was becoming quite
a distraction to him, but his curiosity got the
better of his good resolutions and he took an
other glance, only to see the father with a look
of supreme resignation taking a bottle of ginger
ale from his pocket, which his son proceeded to
drink. It was more than Father Tom could stand
and so the sermon came to rather an abrupt close.
I profited by Father Tom’s experience, and
though there was nothing in the conduct of the
stranger or any one in the pew to make me fear
anything, yet I thought it wiser not to look any
more in that direction. During the Sunday
School that afternoon the superintendent told
me that a brother-in-law of his was visiting at
their house, and he asked me to call; however be
fore I had an opportunity of doing so he paid me
a visit.
On Monday morning the servant told me that
there was a gentleman in the parlor to see me,
(Continued on page 12.)