ging details, experiences
a renewal of confidence, and all because Father Feron's good humour
is of the common kind which we can best understand, and with which
it befits every one of us to meet the vicissitudes of life.

I have said that the ardent reformer is seldom gay. Small wonder,
when his eyes are turned upon the dark places of earth, and his whole
strength is consumed in combat. Yet Saint Teresa, the most
redoubtable reformer of her day, was gay. No other word expresses
the quality of her gladness. She was not only spiritually serene,
she was humanly gay, and this in the face of acute ill-health, and
many profound discouragements. We have the evidence of all her
contemporaries,--friends, nuns, patrons, and confessors; and we
have the far more enduring testimony of her letters, in proof of this
mirthfulness of spirit, which won its way into hearts, and lightened
the austerities of her rule. "A very cheerful and gentle disposition,
an excellent temper, and absolutely void of melancholy," wrote
Ribera. "So merry that when she laughed, every one laughed with her,
but very grave when she was serious."

There is a strain of humour, a delicate and somewhat biting wit in
the correspondence of Saint Teresa, and in her admonitions to her
nuns. There is also an inspired common sense which we hardly expect
to find in the writings of a religious and a mystic. But Teresa was
not withdrawn from the world. She travelled incessantly from one end
of Spain to the other, establishing new foundations, visiting her
convents, and dealing with all classes of men, from the soldier to
the priest, from the prince to the peasant. The severity of her
discipline was tempered by a tolerant and half-amused insight into
the pardonable foibles of humanity. She held back her nuns with one
hand from "the frenzy of self-mortification," which is the mainstay
of spiritual vanity, and with the other hand from a too solicitous
regard for their own comfort and convenience. They were not to
consider that the fear of a headache,--a non-existent headache
threatening the future--was sufficient excuse for absenting
themselves from choir; and, if they were too ailing to practise any
other austerities, the rule of silence, she reminded them, could do
the feeblest no harm. "Do not contend wordily over matters of no
consequence," was her counsel of perfection. "Fly a thousand leagues
from such observations as 'You see I was right,' or 'They did me an
injustic