received checks from members of the building and loan association, in payment of monthly dues and interest. He cashed these checks at a bank where he was acquainted, and continued the practice until his defalcations were discovered. The bank that cashed the checks was compelled to make restitution for all these checks. The bank officials should have known that the secretary of a building and loan association was not authorized to endorse the name of the association for the purpose of receiving cash. The signatures of three officials, the president, the secretary, and the treasurer were necessary. After the customer has made his deposit, he should invariably examine the pass-book, and satisfy himself that he has been correctly credited with the amount of his deposit. If this has not been done, he should immediately call the teller's attention to the error and have it corrected at once. The depositor himself should never alter the figures in the pass-book. The Larks of Glendalough By Thomas Walsh All night the gentle saint had prayed, To hear the seraph choirs above. So still he knelt-his arms outspread, His head thrown backward from his breast A lark across the casement sped, And in his fingers built its nest. The angel music from his soul 'Twas then the saint beheld the bird Then, soft again he turned to pray; Or matin call from day to day Until their nestling voices rose. And when his loving task was done, We bear to heaven thy soul's reply!" By CHARLES J. O'MALLEY HAVE we a Catholic literary cen ter in the United States? In the secular field, often it is and that New York now is. In the nation a score of distinguished names. secular letters the alleged center seems to shift from time to time. He would be a hardy critic, however, who would venture to assert that a Catholic literary center exists anywhere. The Catholic mind is doing splendid work in Boston. Instance the productions of Miss Louise Imogen Guiney, James Jeffrey Roche, Miss Katherine E. Con San Francisco has her Catholic literary group in the Far West and so has New Orleans in the Far South. Wherever the Church establishes schools, academies and colleges, straightway a literary dawn begins to rise. Accepting this as true, it is safe to predict that in the years to come the great Catholic literary center of the United States will be Chicago. Take up the Catholic directory and note the im REV. J. E. COPUS, S. J. mense number of parochial schools, highschools, academies and colleges that exist in that rapidly growing second-largest city in the country. It has no university, nevertheless the great institution of Notre Dame is in easy reach. Fifty years hence it may be classed a suburb. The excellence of Chicago Catholic schools is well known. Time and again have parochial schools here, in fair competition, and a proved themselves superior to the to say that in every Catholic high- way, Denis A. McCarthy dozen more. It is doing splendid work in New York. Look at the activity of Father John Talbot Smith, Thomas Walsh, Charles Hanson Towne, Conde B. Pallen, Marion Ames Taggart and a score of others. In Philadelphia Miss Eleanor C. Donnelly, Mrs. Isabel Nixon Whiteley, Mrs. Honor Walsh, Miss Margaret M. Hal-Kelts, Teutons, Italians, Poles, Bovey, John J. O'Shea and a number more are making a morning pleasant to see. hemians, French, Syrians, Greeks, Spaniards-the genius-producing races, in a and Latin masters down to Yeats, Fiona McLeod and the most promising moderns. Music she knew, and art she knew, and the ablest critics in the country acknowledged her superiority as a critic in both fields. As a philologist she had few equals in America-her range comprising a knowledge of Sanscrit, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, German and somewhat of Dutch. Philosophy she knew, and her grasp of politics was equalled by very few men in the country. For years she wrote the leading editorials for the Chicago Record-Herald, and afterwards went over to the Daily Chronicle, yet on both journals she was recognized a masterful writer. Whatever she stated was relied upon as a fact. "There is no one in America equal to Mrs. Sullivan in scholarship and intellect," declared the publisher of one of the great dailies to the present writer on one occasion. It is regrettable that she left behind no work in which her phenomenal ability is exhibited in full. America now has three famous Jesuit novelists, and one of them lives in Chicago. Everybody knows Father Finn, and many know Father Henry S. Spalding, but Father J. E. Copus, S. J., is the coming great Catholic novelist of the country. No first book ever made such a hit as did his "Harry Russell." It was something new-full of incident, full of purpose, full of deft characterization. His boys were not mere automatons. They had blood in their veins-warm, rich, buoyant blood. The book came as a surprise, followed the next year by "Saint Cuthbert's." This, too, was judged phenomenally graphic. You seemed to hear his people talking-you heard them laughing, just as, in the pages of Theocritus, you always hear Thestylis singing in the dewey morning meads of Sicily. And there is something besides a photographic reproduction of human beings in Father Copus' novels. Deftly, unpretentiously, he takes us out loitering amid green fields and woods and along picturesque watercourses, and shows us that he knows nature and her secret haunts. In his sequel to "Saint Cuthbert's," "Shadows Lifted," just published, he is singularly happy in this respect. The book is a distinct advance, compared with its predecessors. Young people will read it because of the story and character-drawing; but older folk will find in its pages much of their lost youth and many hearttouches that are irresistible. And you would expect this of this new wizard who possesses the secret of reproducing youth and its gladness, if you' knew him personally. Born and reared, at least in part, in, England, Father Copus has seen a great deal of the world, both in its heights and its depths. He has been a journalist, an editor, a traveler, and is now a professor of English Literature at St. Ignatius' College, Chicago. A man of fine scholarship, a student of men, with a vast field of observation, gifted and distinguished, personally he is one of the most amiable and unpretentious literary men in the country. Even Maurice Francis Egan is not more fascinating as a conversationalist, although Dr. Thomas O'Hagan possibly equals him in this respect. He is not as young as Father Spalding, but he is more boyish in heart. His voice is low and musical, and both tears and laughter are always close to it. He is a hard worker. He writes, he teaches, he does missionary work down in the slums, striving to uplift the fallen. That Catholic Chicago is glad because of the presence of such a sincere, strong man in her field of activity need not be said. The readers of THE ROSARY do not need any introduction to Mrs. Mary F. Nixon-Roulet. They have been reading her art-papers in the pages of this maga P. G. SMYTH. zine for months; they have been reading her short stories for years. She first won fame in the field of secular letters as author of "With a Pessimist in Spain," an inimitable record of travel in the land of the Cid. Aside from this she has nearly a dozen books to her credit; "A Harp of Many Chords," "The Blue Lady's Knight," "Lasca and Other Stories," and many more. She is author, also, of a slender volume of poems, and has contributed travel-papers enough to Catholic and secular periodicals to fill two or three large volumes. For Mrs. Nixon-Roulet has traveled much, not only on beaten paths, but in out-of-theway corners of the world. Splendid opportunities were hers early in life and she made the most of them. With a fine knowledge of languages, she possesses also a keen faculty of observation, and has a literary style that is graphic and forceful, yet withal unique. You could pick her work out of a score of No-Name novels after reading the first chapterso picturesque and original it is. And yet there is no straining after effect-no wringing of passionate hands, no agonies, no convulsions. She is not a writer of problem-novels. Her lovers make love in the good, old-fashioned way and marry, or fail to do so, or do heroic deeds, or fail to do so, just as sane people do every day in real life. There are few. dark-browed villains in Mrs. NixonRoulet's pages. Her books are healthy and pure, just as her own life is pure and healthy. Although a convert, of Puritan descent, she lives in a beautiful home in one of Chicago's picturesque French parishes and hears French spoken to her every day in the week and listens to French sermons on Sunday. If her neighbors spoke Spanish or German or Italian, she could answer 'them in kind. One of the most distinguished Catholic women in the country, within her home she is one of the most unassuming, cheerful, amiable people you ever saw. Known personally to fully one-half the famous literary men and women of the land, she is playful as a girl among her children. There are times when great literary people enter her home and find her an entertaining hostess, but these once shut out she becomes playmate and sympathizer-in-general with all the wait |