earth, but I do hear tell that the floor of
purgatory has given way and all the inhabitants have fallen into hell.'

'Oh, the poor Protestants, that will be all crushed by the weight atop
of them,' was Father Batt's rejoinder.

Few priests in Kerry have been better known or more beloved than he,
almost the last of the old-fashioned school, and he was always warm
friends with his Protestant colleague in Milltown, where he resided.

Father Batt invariably took a few tumblers of hot whisky punch after
dinner, and having got ill was advised by the doctor to give it up and
take to claret.

When the bishop met him some time later, he said:--

'Well, Father Batt, I am afraid you do not like claret so well as the
whisky.'

'It's this way, my lord,' he replied. 'I don't object to the taste so
much as I thought I should, but I find it very tedious.'

It is with some diffidence that I venture upon a convent story. To begin
with, I am a Protestant, and secondly, in relation to one of these
ladies' clubs under sacerdotal patronage I feel like Paul Pry, always
apologetic when putting in an appearance.

Still, the tale is quite innocent and is absolutely true.

The convent is in Kerry and up to recently the order had been an
enclosed one. But a papal edict arrived one day, bidding the nuns go out
to teach, and to collect, as well as to relieve, the suffering in their
own homes.

The Mother Superior was exceedingly wroth.

'What!' quoth she. 'Does the Holy Father want to be interfering with me
after I have been within these walls for the last eight-and-twenty
years? I am not going to begin tramping the roads at my time of life,
not for the Holy Father himself, no, nor all the Cardinals too. A pretty
state of things indeed. Why, he'll be telling me to ride a bicycle
next!'

The county of Cork was at one time so notorious for cattle-stealing that
a Roman Catholic bishop went down specially to admonish them.

When telling one parish priest to be firm with his congregation on the
subject, the bishop observed:--

'Nothing is more clearly laid down in the Bible than that if a man has
possession of another man's property he can never enter the kingdom of
heaven.'

'The Saints preserve us,' exclaimed the priest; 'there'll be plenty of
empty houses there.'

It is not uncommon for a priest to get a bit of truth by accident or by
cunning from one of his flock.

The parish priest was congratulating a man who had married thr