f Roman dancing girls. He was a most industrious reader of
books and a great lover of debate. Monks from far and near visited him,
and together they discussed questions of theology and philosophy.

But we may not follow this varied and eventful life in all its details.
After a year or two spent at Constantinople, and three years at Rome, he
returned to the East, visiting the hermits of Egypt on his way, and
finally settled at Bethlehem. His fame soon drew around him a great
company of monks. These he organized into monasteries. He built a
hospital, and established an inn for travelers. Lacking the necessary
funds to carry out his projects, he dispatched his brother to the West
with instructions to sell what was left of his property, and the
proceeds of this sale he devoted to the cause. While in Bethlehem he
wrote defences of orthodoxy, eulogies of the dead, lives of saints and
commentaries on the Bible. He also completed his translation of the
Scriptures, and wrote numerous letters to persons dwelling in various
parts of the empire.

Jerome rendered great service to monasticism by his literary labors. He
invested the dullest of lives with a halo of glory; under the magic
touch of his rhetoric the wilderness became a gladsome place and the
desert blossomed as the rose. His glowing language transfigured the pale
face and sunken eyes of the starved hermit into features positively
beautiful, while the rags that hung loosely upon his emaciated frame
became garments of lustrous white. "Oh, that I could behold the desert,"
he cries, "lovelier than any city! Oh, that I could see those lonely
spots made into a paradise by the saints that throng them!" Without
detracting from the bitterness of the prospect, he glorifies the courage
that can face the horrors of the desert, and the heart that can rejoice
midst the solitude of the seas. Hear him describe the home of Bonosus, a
hermit on an isle in the Adriatic:

"Bonosus, your friend, is now climbing the ladder foreshown in Jacob's
dream. He is bearing his cross, neither taking thought for the morrow,
nor looking back at what he has left. Here you have a youth, educated
with us in the refining accomplishments of the world, with abundance of
wealth and in rank inferior to none of his associates; yet he forsakes
his mother, his sister, and his dearly loved brother, and settles like a
new tiller of Eden on a dangerous island, with the sea roaring round its
reefs, while its rough cra