While we breakfasted Father Madden said some severe things about Father O'Hara, about the church he had built, and the debt that was still upon it. I suppose my face told Father Madden of the interest I took in his opinions, for during breakfast he continued to speak his mind very frankly on all the subjects I wished to hear him speak on, and when breakfast was over I offered him a cigar and proposed that we should go for a walk on his lawn.
"Yes," he said, "there are people who think I am a reactionist because I put down the ball-alley."
"The ball-alley!"
"There used to be a ball-alley by the church, but the boys wouldn't stop playing ball during Mass, so I put it down. But you will excuse me a moment." The priest darted off, and I saw him climb down the wall into the road; he ran a little way along the road calling at the top of his voice, and when I got to the wall I saw him coming back. "Let me help you," I said. I pulled him up and we continued our walk; and as soon as he had recovered his breath he told me that he had caught sight of a boy and girl loitering.
"And I hunted them home."
I asked him why, knowing well the reason, and he said:—
"Young people should not loiter along the roads. I don't want bastards in my parish."
It seemed to me that perhaps bastards were better than no children at all, even from a religious point of view—one can't have religion without life, and bastards may be saints.
"In every country," I said, "boys and girls walk together, and the only idealism that comes into the lives of peasants is between the ages of eighteen and twenty, when young people meet in the lanes and linger by the stiles. Afterwards hard work in the fields kills aspiration."
"The idealism of the Irish people does not go into sex, it goes into religion."