"True! He was not obliged to, but He is the abyss of all perfection and therefore He is all good and filled with love. It was His goodness, His infinite love and mercy that prompted Him to stoop so low. He was not obliged to become man. In His infinite wisdom, He knew a thousand other ways of drawing us to Himself, yet His surpassing liberty and tender compassion led Him to choose that one that would appeal to us most. That is to say, He chose to become human to save human man.”

"So He condescended like a schoolmaster." Lorenzo seemed absorbed in the thought.

Father Tinniens left the dentist in meditation. By this time the two continents of Europe and Africa had been sighted. All eyes were turned towards them. Kodaks, field-glasses and telescopes were being displayed on all sides. A few of the younger passengers were filling their note-books while others were engaged in sketching. Some found the sight "lovely," others "grand," a few others "sublime," and a slender banker from New England "divine."

At this climax, the little group of ecclesiastics, Father Tinniens included, set about excogitating an epithet that would rival all others. But before they succeeded, the Spaniard, who was far from being lost in admiration, strutted by rather proudly and exclaimed: “I can afford to throw Shakespeare overboard now. I land in four hours." He passed on unnoticed. The students felt that his departure would be to their advantage, for he could then no longer molest them. Four hours later he dis

"Indeed, Sir, if, as I believe, you are at heart sincere, your prayer of hope will be answered. Christ is as good and merciful now as when He was on earth. All that is required of any of us is that we do what lies in our power to discover the truth, and abide by it. If one does that, the chances are that the amiable and adorable Christ will surely enlighten him sooner or later."

"Yes! and me, too," exclaimed the dentist, "because I love Him." Lorenzo seemed to be totally enrapt in pious reflection. From that on, he grew even more serious than he had been before, and Father Tinniens began to feel with confidence that his new friend was a stray sheep seeking the true fold. “And me, too, because I love Him!" simple words and how full of hope! They seemed to be inspired by deep thought and deeper sentiment, such as could spring only from a tender heart.

from the little group than when he had boarded the steamer at New York.

Lorenzo frequently spoke to the ecclesiastics during the few remaining days of the voyage, but always with much reserve and with increased respect. However, he refrained from touching further on religious matters. Whether he had really been moved by the discussions he had brought about is known to himself and to God. Father Tinniens thought he was, for the last words of the dentist seemed to him more eloquent than an open admission. "And me, too, because I love Him."

Indeed, may our Saviour enlighten Lorenzo, for he showed himself at least a man of good will. Yet he was a man who had not tasted of the peace that was heralded by the angels at Bethlehem, and since that is the peace that Christ came to establish, let us pray that our Saviour's mission may not prove ineffectual in Lorenzo's regard.

官

I..

N the summer of 1817 an Irish emigrant named John Hughes

landed in the city of Baltimore. He was the third member of a

family of seven children, the others being Michael, Patrick, Mary, Peter, Ellen and Margaret. His father, Patrick, was, to use the future prelate's own words, "a farmer of limited means," who, like millions of his countrymen, chose voluntary exile to a life of political servitude and religious proscription.

Ardently as they loved their native land its condition had become so unendurable that the family determined to exercise the only right left to them,the right of expatriation, the right to transfer their allegiance, so-called, under which they were held in political vassalage, to a country where they would enjoy equal rights with their fellow citizens, free, under the Supreme Law of the Republic, to worship God according to the dictates of conscience.

At the time of the emigration of the Hughes family the Penal Laws were still in force in Ireland, though somewhat relaxed in their application under the influence of the political changes produced by the American Revolution and the immortal Declaration of Independence.

In his lecture on the Irish famine, about twenty years after his arrival, when he was Bishop of New York, he outlined some of the atrocious features of the Penal system, which his illustrious fellow countryman, Edmund Burke, stigmatized as the most fiendish system of legislation that was ever devised to oppress and degrade human nature.

"The law," said Bishop Hughes, "put it in the power of any son, by declaring himself a Protestant, to enter immediately upon the rights of property enjoyed by his father and his family; but no son of Irish parents was ever known to have availed himself of this law. Filial reverence, domestic affections, always congenial to the Irish heart, had here ample opportunity of proving themselves and were never found wanting. As a matter of expediency, it was customary for the Catholic proprietor, for the protection of his property, to vest the legal title in some Protestant neighbor; and again," said the Bishop, "it is consoling to know that, notwithstanding the temptation, by these iniquitous laws, there is no instance of that private confidence having been violated."

This, however, was but one of the provisions of the Penal Code, which by still another clause prohibited education in Ireland by a Catholic schoolmaster, under the penalty of banishment for the first offence and hanging for its repetition, while the pupil, no matter of what age, foreited his right to all property, present or prospective. By still another provision ecclesiastical jurisdiction was not only prohibited to a Catholic archbishop, or bishop, but punished by transportation, and if the offender returned, he was guilty, by that act, of high treason, the penalty for which was hanging, disemboweling, while alive, and afterwards quartering. At one period during the operation of this diabolical system priests were hunted like wolves, and a prize of five pounds paid to their murderers for each head brought to the designated official.

that the Hughes family, as already stated, resolved to transfer their fortunes to the great Republic of the West, which had opened wide its doors to the oppressed of all nations.

An incident that occurred on the occasion of the death of one of the children had so embittered the feelings of the

layman as it was deposited in the grave. The remembrance of this heartless outrage was never erased from the mind of John Hughes. And so at the age of nineteen the future prelate left Annaloghan in the County Tyrone, where he was born on the 24th of June, 1797, and where he had spent the greater portion

of his life in Ireland, working on his father's farm and acquiring such education as he could obtain in a grammar school some three or four miles from his home, and from such hours of study as could be spared from the labors of the day, or from the night's rest.

Mr. Hughes had left Ireland with his second son, Patrick, in the year 1816, and having by incessant industry and thrift, saved a considerable sum, he finally decided after a tour of inspection through several States, to purchase a piece of land at Chambersburgh, in Pennsylvania, some thirty miles from St. Mary's, Emmittsburgh. After selecting the desired tract, he inquired the terms of purchase, when the owner, Mr. Chambers, replied that he would only dispose of it on lease for a number of years. To this Mr. Hughes instantly and emphatically objected.

"I shall buy," he said, "such portions of your land outright as I want, or not at all. If, however, you are not willing to sell on this condition, I can, doubtless find a suitable piece of land elsewhere. I shall never submit to the same system here which I left behind me and which was one of the causes that compelled me to leave my native country."

Mr. Chambers, strongly and favorably impressed with the manner of Mr. Hughes, concluded then and there to sell him the land on his own terms.

The following year John Hughes left Ireland. "I was afloat on the ocean," he wrote, "looking for a home and at country in which no stigma of inferiority would be impressed on my brow, simply because I professed one creed or another."

The year after his arrival Mrs. Hughes and the rest of the family reached Chambersburgh, and by dint of hard work, finally acquired what he had so laboriously and vainly toiled for in the land of his birth, a competence and independence of the slavish yoke of landlord and governmental tyranny.

At last the family were united under the one roof and that roof their own. They, had, it is true, after the purchase of the land, but little left for what might be called working capital, to stock and to till the farm; but they had that without which capital is of comparatively little value-they had integrity and industry and, before long, they were independent as to worldly goods and had saved enough to enable them to give the younger members of the family the advantages of the best instruction that could be obtained at St. Mary's Academy, Emmittsburgh, then the first institution of the kind in the country.

Some time after graduating Miss Ellen Hughes became a Sister of Charity, taking the name of Sister Angela. She was the first Superioress of St. Vincent's Hospital, and subsequently of Mt. St. Vincent's Academy.

The other daughter, Miss Margaret Hughes, married Mr. Rodrigue of Philadelphia; and both sisters, with whom the writer had the honor of many years of friendship, bore a striking resemblance to their illustrious brother, not only in personal appearance, but in their intellectual and moral traits.

Of Mr. and Mrs. Hughes it can be truly said that they were much superior to the generality of those in the same station of life, and that they were beloved by their friends not only for their virtues and stainless lives but for their intellectual qualifications and force of character.

Although Mr. Hughes' time was mainly occupied with the care of his farm, and that of Mrs. Hughes with her domestic duties, they were not indifferent to the cultivation of their minds, but as much of their time as could be spared from the necessary work of the day was given to reading and the study of works of a serious character. Theirs was, in reality, a Catholic home, and its character may be judged from the inflexible rule that no harsh or censorious

word against their friends or neighbors should be heard within its walls. They had literally carried into practice the spirit of the warning inscribed on the walls of the refectory of the great Bishop of Hippo :

"This board allows no vile detractor

place

Whose tongue would charge the absent with disgrace."

It was the intention of Mr. Hughes to bring his son up to the practice of agriculture, especially as he had already acquired a partial knowledge of gardening; but John Hughes had other views and had already made a choice more in consonance with his aspirations and abilities. He had decided on his vocation, and, as he tells us, his most fervent prayer was that he would realize his earnest desire of being one day ordained a priest of the Holy Catholic Church. As he has related this eventful incident in his life I prefer to quote his own words, serving as they do, to correct much misapprehension of the conditions under which he entered Mt. St. Mary's College at Emmittsburgh:

"I am aware," he wrote, in a letter addressed to Mayor Harper of New York, under date of May 17, 1844, "that a certain lady who writes for one of the Boston papers, has given both her own name and mine in connection with the statement that I entered the service of Bishop Dubois as a gardener and that he, having discovered in me the stuff that Bishops are made of, with intellect to have governed the Church in its most prosperous times, educated me on the strength of this discovery,-I would just remark, with all respect for this amiable, but, as I must say, silly lady, that she is mistaken and exhibits only 'the stuff' the Boston papers are made of. My connection with Bishop Dubois was in virtue of a regular contract between us, in which neither was required to acknowledge any obligations to the other.

I, however, felt the kindness of that saintly and venerable prelate and the friendship which included me with so many other young men to whom it was extended. I entered the College the first day, an utter stranger to Bishop Dubois until then. I was to superintend the garden as a compensation for my services in the house, until a vacancy should occur, by which I might be appointed teacher for such classes as I should be fit to take charge of. I continued in this way the first nine months of my stay at college, prosecuting my studies under a private preceptor. The rest of the time, between seven and eight years, I continued to teach the classes that were assigned to me. At the end of this period I was ordained priest and stationed in Philadelphia. Here my public life commenced. After eleven years from this time I was sent, not by my own choice, to be the Assistant Bishop of New York. I had formed during these years friendships ever to be cherished in the memory of the most respectable families, Protestant as well as Catholic."

In another part of the same letter he exhibits that spirit of self-respect and independence that characterized him throughout the whole of his eventful life.

"I landed on these shores," he says, "friendless and with but a few guineas in my purse. I never received of the charity of any man. I never borrowed of any man without repaying; I never borrowed more than a few dollars at a time; I never had a patron in the Church, or out of it. I am not a man of strife, or contention. My disposition is, I trust, both pacific and benevolent. As a proof of this, I may mention that I never had a personal altercation with a human being in my life; that I never had occasion to call others, or to be called myself before any civil tribunal on earth."

After devoting between seven and eight years to the studies necessary for