"God bless you!" said I, thankfully and humbly. "You have taken a load off my heart. Now, let me see would this do."
I took down from the dusty shelves a favorite little volume,—a kind of Anthology of the early Fathers, and I opened it.
"We'll try the sortes Virgilianæ" I said, and read slowly and with emphasis:—
"At nunc, etiam sacerdotes Dei, omissis Evangeliis et Prophetis, vidimus comœdias legere, amatoria Bucolicorum versuum verba cantare, tenere Virgilium, et id quod in pueris necessitatis est, crimen in se facere voluptatis."
"That's not bad," said my hearer, critically, whilst I held the book open with horror and amazement. "That applies to him, I'm sure. But what's the matter, Father Dan? You are not ill?"
"No," said I, "I'm not; but I'm slightly disconcerted. That anathema strikes me between the two eyes. What else have I been doing for fifty years but thumbing Horace and Virgil?"
"Oh, never mind," he said, airily. "Who wrote that? That's extreme, you know."
"An altogether wise and holy man, called St. Jerome," I said.
"Ah, well, he was a crank. I don't mean that. That sounds disrespectful. But he was a reformer, you know."
"A kind of innovator, like this young man of mine?" I said.