My New Curate | Page 6

it would be charitable
to pass over in silence. I was quite well aware, therefore, on that day,
when I had the secret pleasure and the sublime misfortune of seeing my
name in print over some wretched verses, that I was ruining my
prospects in life. The fact of being a litterateur, although in the most
modest and hidden manner, stamped me as a volatile, flighty creature,
who was no more to be depended upon than a feather in the wind; or, as
the Italians say, qu' al piume al vento. It is a curious prejudice, and a
purely insular one. And sometimes I think, or rather I used to think, that
there was something infinitely grotesque in these narrow ideas, that
shut us out from sympathy with the quick moving, subtle world as
completely as if we were fakirs by the banks of the sacred Ganges. For
what does modern literature deal with? Exactly those questions of
philosophy, ethics, and morality which form the staple material of
theological studies and discussions in our own colleges and academies.
Novels, poetry, essays, lectures, treatises on the natural sciences,--all
deal with the great central questions of man's being, his origin, and his
conduct. And surely it is folly to ignore these discussions in the market
places of the world, because they are literature, and not couched in
scholastic syllogisms. Dear me! I am philosophizing,--I, old Daddy
Dan, with the children plucking at my coat-tails and the brown snuff
staining my waistcoat, and, ah, yes! the place already marked in my
little chapel, where I shall sleep at last. I must have been angry, or
gloomy, that day, thirty years ago, when I stepped on the platform at
M----, after my interview with the Bishop, and met my friends, who
had already become aware that I was elevated out of the junior ranks,
and had become an independent officer of the Church Militant.
"You don't mean to say that you have accepted that awful place?" said
one.
"You'll have nothing but fish to eat," said another. "The butcher's van

goes there but once a week."
"And no society but fishermen," said a third. "And they speak nothing
but Irish, and you know you cannot bless yourself in Irish."
"Well," I replied, "my Job's comforters, I have accepted Kilronan, and
am going there. If all things go well, and you are good boys, I may ask
for some of you as curate--"
"You'll be glad to get a curacy yourself in six months," they shouted in
chorus.
And so I came to Kilronan, and here have I been since. The years have
rolled by swiftly. Life is a coach, whose wheels move slowly and
painfully at the start; but, once set moving, particularly when going
down the deep decline of life, the years move so swiftly you cannot see
the spokes in the wheels, which are the days we number so sadly. What
glorious resolutions I made the first months of my residence here! How
I would read and write and burn the midnight oil, and astonish the
world, and grow from dignity to dignity into an honored old age! Alas!
circumstances are too much for us all, and here I am, in my seventieth
year, poor old Daddy Dan, with no great earthly trouble, indeed, and
some few consolations,--my breviary and the grand psalms of
hope,--my daily Mass and its hidden and unutterable sweetness,--the
love of little children and their daily smiles,--the prayers of my old
women, and, I think, the reverence of the men. But there comes a little
sting sometimes, when I see young priests, who served my Masses long
ago, standing in cathedral stalls in all the glory of purple and ermine,
and when I see great parishes passing into the hands of mere boys, and
poor old Daddy Dan passed over in silence. I know, if I were really
good and resigned, I would bless God for it all, and I do. But human
nature will revolt sometimes, and people will say, "What a shame,
Father Dan; why haven't you the red buttons as well as so and so," or,
"What ails the Bishop, passing over one of the most learned men in the
diocese for a parcel of gossoons!" I suppose it was my own fault. I
remember what magnificent ideas I had. I would build factories, I
would ferr the streets, I would establish a fishing station and make
Kilronan the favorite bathing resort on the western coast; I would write

books and be, all round, a model of push, energy, and enterprise. And I
did try. I might as well have tried to remove yonder mountain with a
pitchfork, or stop the roll of the Atlantic with a rope of sand. Nothing
on earth can cure the inertia