tion to two things for which you must prepare your feelings. The first is the parting scene from home; the second, the first night at the Convent away from all that once was dear to you.

When the living Saviour was about to enter upon His public life (and remember that He is your model) what a scene of overwhelming anguish was exhibited when He took His farewell of His Blessed Mother and of His home at Nazareth? The Mother's heart, however, was consoled when she called to mind the expressions which her Divine Son used on a former occasion: " Ought I not to be about My Father's business?" Now, my dearest child, remember that you, too, must be about your Father's business, engaged in the concerns of your Eternal Father; and what are these ? Ist. His glory; 2ndly, the salvation of your own soul; 3rdly, the salvation of many, very many, who perhaps in the designs of God are actually waiting for another assistant Saviour to be brought back to the fold of the true Shepherd. These are your Father's concerns. They are your own, because God's concerns are yours. Will you, then, be guided by your ardent desire to secure these concerns at that moment when nature must give way? Will you remember all this when you are on the threshold of your father's house and when you will feel your heart grow faint and sinking within you? Oh! how I could wish to be beside you at this moment, and to whisper to you the words of the Redeemer : Have confidence-I have overcome the world." But your own Angel Guardian will sweetly whisper them to you; and he will report in heaven at the throne of the living God with what courage, with what fortitude you braved all the pangs of a delicate nature, and how you rescued yourself from the long and fond embrace of your father and of your family, and how you did all this in the name of Jesus, by the power of the name of Jesus, and for the sake of Jesus. Thus emancipated, let me suppose you in the abode of your rest and happiness, but on the first night.

I think I see you already following my poor advice, viz. : at nightfall, when all is calm and still, I see you at the foot of the Convent Altar, where the Redeemer dwells, shedding tears of joy mingled of course with some of passing sorrow, the overflowing of nature. There I hear you pronounce such words as these: "Jesus, remember me- -Jesus, have mercy on me- —Jesus, do not abandon me-Jesus, give me perseverance-Jesus, I vow myself away for ever to your service-Jesus, teach me how to suffer and to suffer for Your sake." These and the like effusions will you pour out to the Sacred Heart of Him who will not abandon you. Need I allude to the deep and lasting confidence which you will encourage in yourself towards the Queen of Heaven? Need I tell you how necessary it is to place yourself at once under her protection, and never, never to lay your head upon its pillow without some most special little act of piety towards your Mother?

On that first night, therefore, make these generous acts to the Redeemer, and believe me you will never repent them.

I must now take my farewell of you. Your name and the sacred

cause you are about to be engaged in shall ever be connected with the Holy Sacrifice, so long as I am able to offer it. Separated as we shall be, let us be united in the Redeemer; and when you think of me, do offer a small prayer for me.

May every blessing be yours. May the Living God open His divine hand and fill you with His choicest benedictions, and may you, when the cold hand of death is about to press heavily upon you, look upon the past as a long continued sacrificial act by which you were made the victim of your own ardent love of Him by whom alone we can be saved for ever. My dearest child, farewell, farewell.

Ever devotedly yours in Jesus Christ,

HENRY J. RORKE, S.J.

The youthful postulant profited by all this good advice. She quickly became an admirable religious, and gained the esteem and confidence of the Sisters so much that, a few years later, while still very young, she was chosen to succeed as Mother Abbess Mary O'Hagan, the gifted sister of the first Catholic Lord Chancellor of Ireland, when the latter was called away from the north to the south of Ireland to found a new convent of the Order at Kenmare. She in her turn, dying after many holy and useful years in that arduous and meritorious office, was succeeded by a niece of another Judge O'Hagan, son-in-law of Lord O'Hagan just referred to.

In the sketch which I am slightly expanding in those pages I applied to the three Kelly brothers the dedication prefixed to Miss May Probyn's "Pansies":

Three, we learned together

At our mother's knee-
Three, through altered weather
The highway travel we—
God send in Heaven's gold ether
We stand before Him three.

The mother's heart would not have ignored so completely the fourth brother, Laurence, who dropped early out of the race of life. Mothers count even

The little child]

That lived a year and holds its parents' hearts

In dimpled hands for ever.

If Mrs. Kelly had been questioned as to the number of her sans, she would probably have said, "Four; but one of them

went to heaven when nine years old." Another instance of the almost literal accuracy of the opening stanza of Longfellow's Resignation," which is corroborated by the first six or seven households that I call up before my memory :—

There is no flock, however watched and tended,

But one dead lamb is there;

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,
But has one vacant chair.

Death, however, is not the only maker of vacancies. Many are called away from the beloved fireside by less urgent messengers. The summons might sometimes be couched in the words whispered to Martha in her grief, "The Master is come and calleth thee." Happy the soul that answers promptly like the boy Samuel, Ecce ego, quia vocasti me, "Here I am, Lord, for Thou hast called me.” This divine call came to each of the three brothers in his turn, to Edward first of all. His elder brother indeed about the same time followed a sacred vocation, but not at first the one that was finally to claim the devotion of his life. William Kelly entered Maynooth College, and studied Scripture and Theology with a brilliant success, which was remembered in the place ten years later. He left the College, however, without receiving Holy Orders; and, when he entered the noviceship of the Society of Jesus, in 1850, his younger brother, Thomas, had preceded him four years.

Writing about two brothers, John and Antony Suffren, French Jesuits of three hundred years ago, Father Ignatius Grant, S.J., remarks in a domestic publication :-" All of us have mastered the eighth rule of the Summary as regards parents, friends, and etceteras which we have once for all bid good-bye to when we entered the Novitiate. But it happens not unfrequently that two brothers enter the Society at the same time or that they enter, the one following the example of the other. A glance back at those whom we know to have done so, or at those whom, even in our own day, we know, tends to show how perfectly religious men know how to change the affections of flesh and blood into supernatural affection and charity-in a word, tends to show, not how to love a brother less, but how to make that love subordinate to the desire of seeing him, along with oneself, do all the good he can for Christ's dear sake, and

to add daily to the treasure which both began to lay up in heaven together."

The Irish Province of the Society of Jesus, one of the smallest of those "provinces," contains surely the largest number of cases in which a single family gives several of its members to Religion. It is indeed remarkable how many of St. Ignatius's Celtic sons are brothers also according to the flesh. I may venture to set down some names that are represented in the Society by two brothers, in some cases by three, and in one by four. Byrne, Colgan, Dalton, Daly, Finlay, Gaffney, Gwynne, Hayden, Hughes, Kane, Keating, Kelly, Lynch, Maher, Murphy, M'Erlean, O'Reilly, Potter, Tuite, St. Leger, and others. Some of these names are represented by five members from two families. To these may be added-as I have remarked elsewhere under cover of Father Grene's name-cousins galore, that is, to n factors. All this would seem to imply that the first comers from all these different firesides had not given to their juniors at home an unfavourable report on the Society as seen from within.

(To be continued.)

M. R.

TO A FRIEND

GOD's peace and love make bright this festival,
O Friend, to whom I would so gladly bring
Comfort and joy and every pleasant thing.
You ask a song that on your ears shall fall
With human sweetness-one you may recall
When life goes sadly, or when memories sting.
Not mine the art thus potently to sing;
Nor mine the power your sorrows to enthrall.

Yet have I power that shall be used for you—

For you and each I claim as friend. In prayer
To Him whose word brings sweetness pure and true,
Whose love makes even the darkest pathway fair.
Lies all the art and power that fruit may bear.
For those I love to Him I daily sue.

S. M. C.

ST. JOHN THE BELOVED

WHO leaned upon thy Master's breast in rest,
Who stood

Beneath the gory rood.

Who writ the code of Love's desire in fire,

Each word

The trumpet of thy Lord.

Beloved of the Holy One, the son

To whom

The Mother did come home.

Poet and priest of Patmos, be for me

A voice

Where seraphim rejoice!

And in thy loving Master's ear my fear
Speak low,

And whisper of my woe.

And all my fields of love make known o'ergrown With tares

Of silences and cares.

Befriend thy namesake, to him prove the love
Thy word

Hath counselled in the Lord!

And with him share thy heritage, Love's wage;

O son

Of Mary, blessed John!

R. M. G.