Letheby. He is very far-seeing."

"Well, good-by, Father Dan. Pray for me. And won't you go see our little
saint, and tell her? I have no time to-day."

"Good-by, and God bless you!" I said fervently.

It is these white souls that brighten the gray landscapes of life, and
make death desirable; for shall we not meet their sisters and compeers
in Heaven?

CHAPTER XXII

THE MAY CONFERENCE

My mail is not generally a heavy one, thank God! and when I do see a
sheaf of letters on my table, I feel pretty certain that there is
something unpleasant amongst them. I make it a rule, therefore, never to
read a letter until breakfast is over; for I think we ought take our
food, as the Lord intended, with a calm mind. And I am not one of those
ascetics whom every mouthful they swallow seems to choke. I take what
God sends with a thankful heart, and bless Him for it. And sure it was
well I followed this wholesome practice the following morning; for I do
not think I ever lost my equanimity so thoroughly as when, on opening a
circular, I saw a formal and extended and appalling syllabus of our
Conferences for that year. Up to this, our Conferences had been
conferences--informal conventions, where we met, talked over our little
troubles, discussed a rubrical or theological question in an academic
fashion, and listened with patience and edification to some young man,
who nervously read for an hour or so some carefully prepared paper on a
given subject. Then, if the Master of Conferences wanted to show how
well read he was, he put a few questions here and there around the
table. But if he was very persistent, and the chase became too hot, it
was easy to draw a red herring across the track, the aforesaid red
herring generally taking the shape of one of those venerable questions,
which, like the trisection of an angle, or the quadrature of a circle,
or the secret of perpetual motion, shall never be finally solved. The
red herring that did us most service, and was now, after the lapse of
forty years' discussion, a battered skeleton, was "whether invincible
ignorance on the part of the penitent as to the reservation of a
particular sin excused from the reservation, or whether faculties in
every case were withdrawn from the confessor." I believe the question
has been warmly debated in the schools; but there it remains, suspended,
like the Prophet's coffin (I am afraid my metaphors are getting mixed),
between heaven and earth.

B