s quite true, indeed, that he disturbs, now and again, the comforts
of senile lethargy. And sometimes the old Adam will cry out, and sigh
for the leaden ages, for he is pursuing with invincible determination
his great work of revival in the parish. He has doubled, trebled, the
confessions of the people on Saturday, and the subsequent Sunday
Communions. He has seized the hearts of all the young men. He is forever
preaching to them on the _manliness_ of Christ,--His truthfulness, His
honor, His fearlessness, His tenderness. He insists that Christ had a
particular affection for the young. Witness how He chose His Apostles,
and how He attached them to His Sacred Person. And thus my curate's
confessional is thronged every Saturday night by silent, humble,
thoughtful young fellows, sitting there in the dark, for the two candles
at the altar rails throw but a feeble light into the blackness; and Mrs.
Darcy, under all improvements, has retained her sense of economy.

"Where's the use," she says, "of lighting more than wan candle, for wan
candle is as good as fifty?"

She has compromised with Father Letheby for two, for his slightest wish
is now a command.

And so the young girls and all the men go to Father Letheby's
confessional. The old women and the little children come to me. They
don't mind an occasional growl, which will escape me sometimes. Indeed,
they say they'd rather hear one roar from the "ould man" than if Father
Letheby, "wid his gran' accent," was preaching forever. But young men
are sensitive; and I am not sorry.

Yet, if my Guardian Angel were to ask me, What in the world have you to
grumble about? I couldn't tell him. For I never come away from that
awful and sacred duty of the confessional without a sense of the deepest
humiliation. I never sit in "the box," as the people call the
confessional. A slight deafness in one ear, and the necessity of
stretching occasionally a rheumatized foot, make it more convenient for
me to sit over there, near and under the statue of our Blessed Mother.
There in my arm-chair I sit, with the old cloak wrapped round me that
sheltered me many a night on the mountains. And there the little
children come, not a bit shy or afraid of old "Daddy Dan." They pick
their way across the new carpet with a certain feeling of awkwardness,
as if there were pins and needles hidden somewhere; but when they arrive
at safe anchorage, they put their dirty clasped fingers on my old
cassock, toss