not considered; I naturally took up the latter
alternative; if there was a hope of comfort for any moment, the heart
or head of no human being in this house could yield it; only under the
lid of my desk could it harbour, nestling between the leaves of some
book, gilding a pencil-point, the nib of a pen, or tinging the black
fluid in that ink-glass. With a heavy heart I opened my desk-lid; with
a weary hand I turned up its contents.

One by one, well-accustomed books, volumes sewn in familiar covers,
were taken out and put back hopeless: they had no charm; they could not
comfort. Is this something new, this pamphlet in lilac? I had not seen
it before, and I re-arranged my desk this very day--this very
afternoon; the tract must have been introduced within the last hour,
while we were at dinner.

I opened it. What was it? What would it say to me?

It was neither tale nor poem, neither essay nor history; it neither
sung, nor related, not discussed. It was a theological work; it
preached and it persuaded.

I lent to it my ear very willingly, for, small as it was, it possessed
its own spell, and bound my attention at once. It preached Romanism; it
persuaded to conversion. The voice of that sly little book was a
honeyed voice; its accents were all unction and balm. Here roared no
utterance of Rome's thunders, no blasting of the breath of her
displeasure. The Protestant was to turn Papist, not so much in fear of
the heretic's hell, as on account of the comfort, the indulgence, the
tenderness Holy Church offered: far be it from her to threaten or to
coerce; her wish was to guide and win. _She_ persecute? Oh dear no! not
on any account!

This meek volume was not addressed to the hardened and worldly; it was
not even strong meat for the strong: it was milk for babes: the mild
effluence of a mother's love towards her tenderest and her youngest;
intended wholly and solely for those whose head is to be reached
through the heart. Its appeal was not to intellect; it sought to win
the affectionate through their affections, the sympathizing through
their sympathies: St. Vincent de Paul, gathering his orphans about him,
never spoke more sweetly.

I remember one capital inducement to apostacy was held out in the fact
that the Catholic who had lost dear friends by death could enjoy the
unspeakable solace of praying them out of purgatory. The writer did not
touch on the firmer peace of those whose belief dispenses with
purgatory alto