one, and kind and good-natured
condescension of the other, producing the like effects in the hearts of
both respectively--that is, disinterested friendship. Yet strong as this
friendship was, and enthusiastic as was the love of Judy for her
"rosy-cheeked" favorite, they were not sufficient to cause her to reveal
the secret of her birth and adoption, even at this hour of Alia's
deepest grief and affliction.

There were two causes for this her unaccountable silence. Firstly, she
had promised not to mention the slightest circumstance connected with
the adopted child, and she feared punishment from the anger of her proud
massa, whose disgrace might be the consequence. And again, having been
in the habit of hearing all sorts of reflections on the "Irish," whom
some mad abolitionists would gladly enslave in place of the blacks, poor
Judy thought to save Alia from the mortification of finding herself
"Irish," by her equivocation and falsehood.

CHAPTER XXIV.

SHOWS HOW THE CROSS AND SHAMROCK WERE PERMANENTLY UNITED AFTER A LONG
SEPARATION.

Paul O'Clery had been appointed pastor of one of the principal churches
in the second city in the Union, as we have before mentioned, and
already the evidences of the "care of souls" with which he was charged
for several years began to manifest themselves on his placid brow. His
was a life of unceasing activity. The visitations of the sick, the calls
of charity, the hearing of confessions, together with the instruction of
youth and the preaching of God's word,--these, the ordinary lot of
pastors, constituted but a share, and not the largest one, of his
onerous duties. Ever mindful of his own destitute condition while an
orphan deprived of both parents, all the orphans of the
thickly-inhabited district that constituted his mission became objects
of his special care. And at a time when such an institution as a
Catholic orphanage was regarded as visionary, or the ephemeral creation
of a too ardent zeal, this good pastor succeeded in founding and
supporting an asylum which has since become of incalculable value, not
only to the Catholics as a body, but to the inhabitants of the whole
city and state. A house of refuge for repentant Magdalens, placed under
the care of the Sisters of Mercy, commanded his next care. In a word,
the founding of schools, hospitals, confraternities, guilds, and other
pious institutions exercised all of his time that was not devoted to
his strictly ecclesi