the risk of having a revolver presented at him, or having his
character maligned by the slanders of the moneyed ruffians whose crimes
and excesses he may feel it his duty to reprimand. Father Ugo was not
the man to wink at the cruel treatment to which, in the part of the
railroad that ran through his mission, his poor fellow-men and
fellow-Christians were submitted; and he had, consequently, often to
experience no small share of the malice, and a _tolerable_ share of
outrage, in the shape of threats and insulting language, from our
independent company, Lofin, Van Stingey, Whinny, & Co.

CHAPTER XII.

MASS IN A SHANTY.

There was great bustle and preparation in the valley of R---- Creek, on
Ascension Thursday. Hired men were up at _three_ o'clock that morning to
do "chores," and hired girls were busy the night before in arranging the
household, so that the female _bosses_ of the several farm-houses would
be able to find all things in order. Many and violent also were the
arguments that passed between Catholic servants and their heretical
masters and mistresses, on one hand to ignore, and on the other to
assert, the right to worship according to one's conscience. Yes, to
their shame be it told, the Protestant sects in America, as they do in
all countries where they have sway or are tolerated, practically deny
that article of the federal constitution that guarantees the right to
every citizen to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or
individual judgment. With the word _liberty_ ever on their lips, like
the lion's skin on the ass, to deceive, the sects, great and small, from
the Church of England down, down, down to the Mormons or
Transcendentalists, through the grades of Presbyterian, Methodist,
Baptist, all play the tyrant in their own way. All act the despot, and
would exercise spiritual tyranny, if in their power. For proof of this,
the history of the "Blue Laws" in the land of the Pilgrims is only to be
consulted on this side of the Atlantic; and at the other side, modern as
well as by-gone records show, that, wherever Protestantism had the
power, _there_ the few were oppressed by the many. Every sovereign, from
Elizabeth down to Victoria, acted the tyrant over the Catholics; and in
Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and the Protestant Swiss cantons, persecution
is now a part of the laws of these several states. Persecution is not
sanctioned by the laws of the United States, if we except the
prescrip