'It's this way, my lord,' he replied. 'I don't object to the taste so much as I thought I should, but I find it very tedious.'
It is with some diffidence that I venture upon a convent story. To begin with, I am a Protestant, and secondly, in relation to one of these ladies' clubs under sacerdotal patronage I feel like Paul Pry, always apologetic when putting in an appearance.
Still, the tale is quite innocent and is absolutely true.
The convent is in Kerry and up to recently the order had been an enclosed one. But a papal edict arrived one day, bidding the nuns go out to teach, and to collect, as well as to relieve, the suffering in their own homes.
The Mother Superior was exceedingly wroth.
'What!' quoth she. 'Does the Holy Father want to be interfering with me after I have been within these walls for the last eight-and-twenty years? I am not going to begin tramping the roads at my time of life, not for the Holy Father himself, no, nor all the Cardinals too. A pretty state of things indeed. Why, he'll be telling me to ride a bicycle next!'
The county of Cork was at one time so notorious for cattle-stealing that a Roman Catholic bishop went down specially to admonish them.
When telling one parish priest to be firm with his congregation on the subject, the bishop observed:—
'Nothing is more clearly laid down in the Bible than that if a man has possession of another man's property he can never enter the kingdom of heaven.'
'The Saints preserve us,' exclaimed the priest; 'there'll be plenty of empty houses there.'