I was received at the monastery by a monk, who on learning that I wished to become a guest, took me over to the guest house, and there a white-robed father took my surname, and I began to feel that I had renounced the world, and that perhaps I was trying something that I would regret, and wouldn't mamma come and get me.
But the bearded man before me was kindly, and when I told him (not wishing to sail under false colors) that I was a Protestant, he told me that it was a fast day, and had I dined.
Fortunately I had eaten heartily at noon. "If ye have not dined we can give you something substantial," said he, but I decided that it would be better to be treated as the other guests were to be treated, and so I told him, and he said that at six o'clock there would be tea, and that at eight I would retire to my room, and at ten all lights must be out.
It was raining dismally, but he said that I could go for a walk in the garden, or stay in my room, or go to the "smoke shed," to smoke a pipe or a cigar.
I chose the smoke shed as I understood there were other human beings there, and although I had only been in the monastery five minutes, I felt the need of companionship.
After a brother had taken my traps to my room, I went out to the smoke shed, and found there some ten or twelve guests, five or six of them priests, and all Catholics but myself.
They were very quiet as I came up, and I feared to speak above a whisper myself, but a jolly-looking priest, seeing a newspaper sticking out of my raincoat pocket, said: "Is that to-day's paper?" and on my saying it was, he asked me if he might borrow it, and then he stood up in front of them all and said:
"The news of the day.... 'Irish Ireland. A Leaguer's Point of View.' 'The French Trunk Horror.' 'The Bachelor Tax,' discussed by Mr. Dooley."
"Rade that, father," said a young chap with a twinkling eye.