My New Curate

The winter had nearly rolled by, and the sky was opening out its eyelids wider and wider, and letting in light to man and all his wondrous train of servitors. It was a cold, ste...

The soul of Jem Deady was grievously perturbed. That calm and placid philosopher had lost his equanimity. It showed itself in many ways,--in violent abstraction at meal-times, a...

Christmas Day was a day of undiluted triumph for Father Letheby. There were great surprises in store for me. That is one of my curate's few faults--is it a fault?--that he is in...

I do not think it was personal humiliation, or the sense of personal shame, or dread of further exposure, that really agitated Father Letheby during these dreary days, so much a...

Glorious summer weather, gold on sea and land, but gloom of death and dole on our hearts, and dark forebodings of what the future has in store. I could hardly believe it possibl...

Notwithstanding my gloomy forebodings, I find that Father Letheby has eagerly grasped the idea of writing on the historical and philosophical subjects I had suggested. Where he...

The progress of my curate and myself in our study of the Greek authors is not so steady or so successful as we had anticipated. Somehow or other we drift away from the subject-m...

I notice, as I proceed with these mnemonic scraps from my diary, and try to cast them into shape, a curious change come over me. I feel as one waking from a trance, and all the...

In pursuing my course of lectures to my young curate--lectures which he returned with compound interest by his splendid example of zeal and energy--I put into his hands the foll...

It was quite impossible that these changes or innovations could take place without a certain amount of reclamation, to use the theological expression, amongst the brethren. We a...

For one reason or another, the great events to which our little history is tending were deferred again and again, until at last the Monday within the Octave of Corpus Christi wa...

Father Letheby did come up, and we had one of those pleasant meetings on which my memory dwells with gratitude. I hope he thinks of them tenderly, too; for I believe he gave mor...

There was a vast crowd assembled down where the extemporized pier jutted into the creek, and where the new fishing-boat, perfect in all her equipments, lolled and rolled on the...

I am quite sure that sermon cost me more anxiety and trouble than Father Letheby suffered. I was deeply interested in its success, of course. But that was not the point. I am pr...

There is no law, supernatural or natural, forbidding us (who, if we have not many of the crosses, neither have we many of the pleasures of this life) from meeting sometimes, and...

Events are thickening around me these winter days; and much oftener than in past years am I compelled to lay aside my pet authors, when my lamp is lighted, and my fire is sparkl...

I broke Captain Ormsby's advice to Father Letheby as gently as I could; and I flatter myself I have the talent of putting things in as roundabout a way as any professional diplo...

My mail is not generally a heavy one, thank God! and when I do see a sheaf of letters on my table, I feel pretty certain that there is something unpleasant amongst them. I make...

The usual deadly silence of a country village in Ireland, which is never broken but by the squeal of a pig, or the clucking of chickens, or a high voice, heard occasionally in a...

Captain Campion was one of that singular race of Catholics, with which Ireland was familiar fifty years ago, but which is now dying rapidly away under the new conditions and env...

I often wonder if the May devotions in other countries are as sweet and memory-haunting and redolent of peace as here in holy Ireland. Indeed, I suppose they are; for there are...

I am afraid Father Letheby is getting irritable. Perhaps he is studying too hard, and I don't spare him there, for he has the makings of a bishop in him; or perhaps it is that w...

The winter stole in quietly, heralded by the white frosts of late October; and nothing occurred to disturb the quiet of the village, except that Father Letheby's horse, a beauti...

It is all my own fault. I was too free with my tongue. I said in a moment of bitterness: "What can a Bishop do with a parish priest? He's independent of him." It was not grammat...

I think it was about nine or ten days after his formal instalment in his new house, just as I was reading after breakfast the _Freeman's Journal_ of two days past, the door of m...

Vaticanus rang through my bewildered brain. Then I have a vague recollection that he actually laughed at the idea of six literal days of creation, which made an old priest, out...

Father Letheby was coming home a few nights ago, a little after twelve o'clock, from a hurried sick-call, and he came down by the cliffs; for, as he said, he likes to see the wa...

It must have been about two o'clock on Sunday morning, when the house bell was pulled violently and a rapid series of fierce, sharp knocks woke up the house. What priest does no...

Long ago, when I used to read an occasional novel, if the author dared to say: "But I am anticipating; we must go back here twenty years to understand the thread of this history...

Captain Campion gave a large dinner party on All-Hallows-Eve. It is a ghostly time; and, in Ireland, every one, even the most advanced and materialistic, feels that the air is f...

Thomas À Kempis was right in saying that next morning would be a sad one--not on account of previous merriment; but, as I drove home alone, the separation from Father Letheby af...

"Now, Father Irwin," said the chairman, addressing a smart, keen-looking young priest who sat at the end of the table, "you have just come back to us from Australia; of course,...