Paulists in South America.—Rev. Edmund Hill, now associated with the Rev. Father Fidelis (Dr. Kent Stone) in the Passionist monastery at Buenos Ayres, had the happiness of seeing his brother, Percival G. Hill, received into the Church in that city. Father Hill was formerly a member of the Paulist community in New York city. Recently the Passionists Fathers opened their new monastery in Calle Cariaod, Buenos Ayres. They have now in South America a retreat which will stand comparison with the houses of their North American province, and is worthy to be numbered with those they possess in Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, England and Ireland.
Rev. James Keegan, of St. Louis, Mo., in a late article in the Western Watchman, says of the peasant dwellers among the hills of Connaught: "They have a higher civilization than perhaps any Teutonic people can ever attain. Yet they live in mud-wall, clay floor cabins, and many of them even out of doors—being evicted. How is their civilization higher? They live continually in the presence of God, realizing this fact as no other people do; so they enjoy the best of company; they act up to the spirit of Catholicity better than any other people, and so have the best code of manners in the world; they are a most polite and chivalrous people, never offending strangers by word or deed, if the strangers behave properly. They have a most beautiful and refined national music and poetry, which all know and thoroughly appreciate; they are all poets, inasmuch as they perceive and enjoy the poetry of nature as no other people but the old Athenians ever did."
Mothers and Daughters.
The London Tablet has a lengthy review of Most Rev. Archbishop O'Brien's book, "After Weary Hours," from which we make the following extract: After describing St. Agnes, and her short but brilliant career, he sets her before us as a model worthy of our imitation, though he expresses some doubt as to whether her example will be likely to excite much emulation among young ladies of these days. Among modern young ladies whose sense of womanly delicacy is not startled by being frequently, and for long hours, alone with "that most useless and uninteresting of the human species, a moon-struck lover.... Young ladies who have had day dreams of matrimony while yet in short clothes." While on this topic we may as well give the reader the benefit of the following remarks, which the Archbishop makes a little further on, and which, we regret to say, are almost as applicable in England as in America. "How many young Catholic girls and boys hang entranced over a filthy tale—love tale. They experience no sense of shame in reading vile books, or in flaunting in a ball-room where youthful charms are as really prostituted as in any den of iniquity, and where even aged women expose their scraggy necks and freckled shoulders to the unspeakable disgust of all right-thinking men.... It is true that custom may excuse certain modes of dress not openly immodest; but no custom can excuse certain ball-room toilets; and no girl ever appeared for the first time in one of these diabolically suggested dresses without experiencing a thrill of shame, and showing a conscious flush of outraged modesty." Let Catholic mothers take these words to heart, and when bringing out their daughters or chaperoning them to balls and parties, let them show an example more worthy of that Virgin Immaculate whom they profess to imitate then at present contains.
Mgr. Healey, Bishop of Portland, Me., was received in private audience by his Holiness the Pope, recently.
Padre Protasi, S. J., is dead. His name is well known in Piedmont. When the Jesuits were attacked in 1848, and in 1860, he was cast into prison. Cavour sought him, and asked him to reveal the secrets of Jesuitism. He replied that the "Spiritual Exercises" contained all their secrets. In 1866 he was again arrested, and exiled to Elba. His end was tranquil, and amidst his brethren he passed away.
New Carpet Warehouse.