"'Well, ma'am,' says I, feelin' considerably riled, 'I guess I larnt my catechism, not afore you was born, but abeout the same time, I should say; and I'm jist lookin' for somebody else that knows it, and if anybody in York knows what and where the Holy Catholic Church is;' and do you believe she actually turned 'reound to another gal and said I was crazy, and had run away from a 'sylum. I went away disgusted and tried agin, one plase and another. I even tried the Washin'ton cake church in the Fourth avenue, but not a soul would own up to what they ort to believe. You wouldn't get papists sendin' you to their St. Peter's, I'll be bound, if you asked them for a Protestant church."

"Of course not," said Uncle George, "and what conclusion have you come to, sister Pilcher?"

"I've come to the conclusion," said Aunt Pilcher, "that these Yorkers don't know the Apostles' Creed."

"I should say," said Bub Thompson, "that those folks you 'saw didn't believe it."

[{671}]

"Boy!" exclaimed Aunt Pilcher, with an awful expression of countenance, "speak when you air spoken to."

"How is it when you're spoken about?" asked Bub; "'cause I'm a Catholic, a papist as you say, and you've been speaking about my church."

"My! I never!" ejaculated Aunt Pilcher, looking first at one and then at another for explanation.

"Sister Pilcher," said Uncle George, "the truth is, it is no use for us Protestants to call ourselves Catholics, for we are not. You see how everybody denied it. Of course you could never get a Protestant to own to the name of 'Catholic,' either here in New York or anywhere else, any more than you could persuade any one to give us the name; and it seems to me that where the name is, and always has been, the reality is likely to be. As for your experiment to-day, it is just what would have happened thirteen hundred years ago; for I read in a book that Bub Thompson's father lent me, that St. Augustine said, speaking about the sects that tried to call themselves 'Catholics' in his time: 'The very name of Catholic detains me in the Catholic Church, which that church has alone, and not without cause, obtained among so many heretics, in such a way as that while all heretics wish to be called Catholics, nevertheless not one of them will dare to point out his basilica or house to a stranger inquiring for a place of Catholic worship." [Footnote 187]

[Footnote 187: Epist. contra Manich. I. 5, 6.]