I copied the Bishop's angry reply, plead my ignorance and that of Protestants in general for all that seemed irreverent, and called upon him for explanations. What did it all mean? What was the spiritual significance of those externals? I ignored his evident anger; had no reason to be other than personally respectful to him, yet my second article irritated him more than the first.
I had stated that the men in the procession were the most villainous-looking set I had ever seen; that every head and face save those of the Bishops of Orleans and Pittsburg, were more or less stamped by sensuality and low cunning. In Bishop O'Conner's reply, he said I had gone to look for handsome men. I answered that I had, and that it was right to do so. The Church, in her works of art, had labored to represent Christ and his apostles as perfectly-formed men—men with spiritual faces. She had never represented any of her saints as a wine-bibber, a gross beef-eater, or a narrow-headed, crafty, cringing creature. These living men could not be the rightful successors of those whose statues and pictures adorned that cathedral. Archbishop Hughes, in his sermon on that occasion, had argued that all the forms of the church had a holy significance. What was that significance? Moreover, in the days of John there were seven churches. Whatever had the Church of Rome done with the other six owned on the Isle of Patmos by him who stood in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks?
For two months every issue of the Visiter copied and replied to one of the Bishop's articles, but never could bring him to the point of explaining any portion of that great mystery. But the discussion marked me as the subject of a hatred I had not deemed possible, and I have seldom, if ever, met a Catholic so obscure that he did not recognize my name as that of an enemy. So bitter was the feeling, that when my only baby came great fears were felt lest she should be abducted; but this I knew never could be done with Bishop O'Conner's consent.
CHAPTER XXXII.
POLITICS AND PRINTERS.
When the Pittsburg National Convention, which formed the Free Democratic party, had finished its labors, a committee waited on the Visiter, to bespeak that support which had already been resolved upon, and soon after a State Convention in Harrisburg indorsed it by formal resolution as a party organ. It did its best to spread the principles of the party, and its services called out commendations, as well as the higher compliments of stalwart opposition, from the foes of those principles. Allegheny county was overwhelmingly Whig. The Visiter worked against the party, and the cry from the Whig press became:
"Why attack our party? It is better than the Democratic. If you were honest, you would devote yourself to its destruction, not to that of the Whig."
To this, the answer was:
"The Whig party is a gold-bearing quartz rock, and we mean to pound it into the smallest possible pieces, in order to get out the gold. The Democratic party is an old red sandstone, and there is plenty of sand lying all around about."
In the summer of 1852 the editor visited the World's Fair, held in New York, and on her return found the office machinery at a stand-still. She had a contract with two printers, who, in making it, had given no notice that they were the irresponsible agents of a union, and therefore had no right to dispose of their own labor. They professed to be entirely satisfied with their work and wages, and loath to leave them; but Mars' Union had cracked his whip, and disobedience was ruin, if not death. For these poor Pennsylvania self-made slaves the Visiter had no pity, although they plead for it. It advertised for women to take their places, stating that its editor was in its composing-room. Other, if not all other city papers, did likewise, and there was a rush of women to the printing offices; but ninety out of a hundred had not passed that stage of development in which women live by wheedling men. Those who wheedled most winningly got the places, and the result in less than two months was such a mess of scandal, as drove them, like whipped curs, back to their kennels; but the editor of the Visiter took a good look at each of the hundred applicants, and from them selected three, who had heads, not hat pins, on their shoulders.