charity of their fellow-men.

There is an anecdote contained in the _Fioretti_, reflecting the great
superiority and lucidity of his mind. On a cold winter's day he and
Brother Leo were tramping through the deep snow. "Brother Leo," said St.
Francis, "if we could restore sight to all blind men, heal all cripples,
expel evil spirits and recall the dead to life--it would not be perfect
joy." And after a while: "And if we knew all the secrets of science, the
course of the stars, the ways of the beasts--it would not be perfect
joy--and if by our preaching we could convert all infidels to the true
faith--even that would not be perfect joy." "Tell me then, Father," said
Brother Leo, "what would be perfect joy?" "If we now knocked at the
convent gates, cold and wet and faint with hunger, and the porter sent
us away with harsh words, so that we should have to stand in the snow
until the evening; if we thus waited, bearing all things patiently
without murmuring--that would be perfect joy: the mercy of
self-control."

"He met death singing," says his biographer, Thomas of Celano, the
author of the magnificent _Dies irae, dies illa_. On his deathbed St.
Francis composed and sang without interruption the Hymn to the Sun, that
lofty song of praise in which the sum total of his noble life, love for
all created things,--is comprised and transfigured. It expresses a new
form of devotion, composed of the ecstasy of love and perfect humility.
He embraced in his heart his brother Sun, his sister Moon, the dear
Stars; his brother Wind, his sister and mother Earth; and on the day of
his death this _brother seraphicus_ added to it a powerful and touching
song of praise of his "brother Death." The legend has it that a flock of
singing-birds descended on the roof of the cottage in which he lay
dying; the songs of his "little sisters" accompanied him to the world
beyond the grave.

We are justified in comparing this death, which was sustained by the
fundamental forces of that era, soul and emotion, to that other, more
famous, death of antiquity. Socrates died without in the least
succumbing to any personal feeling, supported by the purely logical
consideration that it was expedient to obey the laws of the State. His
death was the application of a universal proposition to an individual
case, and because no one could accuse Socrates of a dialectical error,
the conclusion, his death, had to take place.

Francis and some of his successors reali