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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.)