ss. Rumour spoke of a fortune of many thousands which had
been spent wholly on others in the building or maintenance of school and
hospital, shelter and refuge. He lived a life of more than Christian
simplicity, and was seen to treat himself with constant disregard of
comfort and convenience. His only home was two rooms (formerly assigned
to the choir) on the ground floor under his church, and it was understood
that he slept on a hospital bed, wrapped in the cloak which in winter he
wore over his cassock. His personal servant in these cell-like quarters
was a lay brother from his society--a big ungainly boy with sprawling
features who served him and loved him and looked up to him with the
devotion of a dog. A dog of other kind he had also--a bloodhound, whose
affection for him was a terror to all who awakened its jealousy or
provoked its master's wrath. People said he had learned renunciation and
was the most Christlike man they had ever known. He was called "The
Father."

Such was the man with whom the popular imagination associated the idea of
the panic, but what specific ground there was for laying upon him the
responsibility of the precise predictions which led to it none could
rightly say. It was remembered afterward that every new folly had been
ascribed to him. "The Father says so and so," or "The Father says such
and such will come to pass," and then came prophecies which were the
remotest from his thoughts. No matter how wild or extravagant the
assertion, if it was laid upon him there were people ready to believe it,
so deep was the impression made on the public mind by this priest in the
black cassock with the bloodhound at his heels, so strong was the
assurance that he was a man with the breath of God in him.

What was known with certainty was that the Father preached against the
impurities and injustices of the age with a vehemence never heard before,
and that when he spoke of the wickedness of the world toward woman, of
the temptations that were laid before her--temptations of dress, of
luxury, of false work and false fame--and then of the cruel neglect and
abandonment of woman when her summer had gone and her winter had come,
his lips seemed to be touched as by a live coal from the altar and his
eyes to blaze as with Pentecostal fire. Cities and nations which
countenanced and upheld such corruptions of a false civilization would be
overtaken by the judgment of God. That judgment was near, it was
imminent;