But before eight the good father came and asked me if I'd like to see the interior of the monastery, and he showed me the bakeshop with its most up to date ovens, and oh, how hungry the smell of baking made me, and the steam-saw, and the creamery, and the library with its old newspaper telling to Irishmen that Cromwell had departed to his rest the day before. Not very sorrowful news, that, I imagine, to the Irishman of that day.
And Father David showed me and the other Americans an incubator, and explained the process, with an innocent circumstantiality that we respected. Why tell him that the woods were full of incubators in America? The things that appealed most to him, however, was the big circular saw that would saw up a log of wood in a "minyit."
With his permission I took a photograph of a beautiful Irish cross in the graveyard, but when I suggested my taking him, he averted his palms at me. Such vanities were not for him.
At breakfast there were eggs and milk and tea, and delicious butter in abundance, and the reading of some holy book by Father David, which did not stop all conversation. Being a feast day, there was one priest who felt his tongue could be loosened, and he kept up an undercurrent of conversation, to Father David's annoyance, but it was a human touch that was not out of place.
The monks are themselves vegetarians, but a school is run in connection with the monastery, and the students are allowed meats.
At nine my jarvey called for me and took me to the boat for Youghal, and I made my offering and shook hands with Father David, and felt that I had been benefited by my stay in the retreat. I even felt that had I more time at my disposal, I would stay on for several days, talking with the guests, pitching stones into the hole, and looking at the rolling landscape and the awe-inspiring hills behind the chapel spire.
One thing in America had interested Father David—the Thaw trial—and he wanted to know if Thaw would be hanged.
One day the only American news in the 'Derry papers was to the effect that Evelyn Thaw thought of going on the stage.
Not our art, or our literature, or our suppression of the boss, but the Thaw trial, is the thing that has made a deep impress on Great Britain and Ireland, and everywhere I am asked to give an opinion.
The Thaw trial was a matter of moment to the good old man, with his incubators and his steam saw and his absence of personal vanity.