And so we parted, and in the afternoon my English friend and I went to a Catholic church, and sat down among a crowd of very attentive worshippers, all of whom were reading their prayer-books. My friend opened his, and pointed out the Psalm the choir was singing; it was one I knew very well: “The Lord said to my Lord.” The people about us were all French; their books had the same Latin Psalm on one column as my friend’s book showed, while the French translation was in the place of the English one which he had on the opposite page. Many of the congregation were singing alternately with the choristers at the altar. My friend sang too; he did not mumble, but said the words distinctly, so that I heard each syllable, though I could not understand the meaning. He gave me his book presently, and chanted by heart. As we came out, there was a group of dark-skinned men, talking eagerly near the door. They were Spaniards; they too seemed quite at home. The next day, I was curious enough to go to Low Mass with my friend; as the ceremony went on, he showed me every word, and made me follow everything, even the introit, collects, gradual, communion, which he looked out for me in a missal he had with him. I was puzzled by all these names then, though they are A B C to me now. My friend had to leave in a day or two, but I had bought a book like his in the meanwhile at an English library, and continued through curiosity to go to the different Catholic services, just to assure myself that the Latin was not gibberish. It struck me as strange that three-quarters of the prayers should be my own Bible texts!
Well, to make a long story short, I left Lyons soon after, and travelled to many other places, European and Asiatic. At last one day I was in Canton, in high spirits, for I was to go home soon and be a partner in the firm whose foreign business I had been managing. Sunday came, and I went to church; I was just as anxious as ever about my Sunday duties, but somehow it was not for a Presbyterian church that I was looking. I knew my way very well to my church, and my church had a cross on its gable end, and was called “The Church of the Holy Childhood.” There were plenty of Chinese there, a few English, a few Americans, and a good many French people. They all had the Latin on one page of their books, and their respective languages on the opposite page. But I did not need to look at my English translation, for I knew the Latin by heart now. I am sorry to say I had distractions, and during one of them I suddenly perceived my old friend of Lyons. When Mass was over, I went to him and called him by name; he stared and did not recognize me; we had never met since, and I had a beard of many years’ growth. I told him my name, and asked him if he had forgotten St. Vincent’s Church at Lyons? I can tell you we had a good long talk over the past, and he congratulated me heartily, while I thanked him eagerly for the best lesson I ever learned in my life.
And that, boys, was how I learned Latin.
But I have only told you about one reason which our church has for keeping to the Latin tongue; that particular reason struck me most, because it was through that I was converted; but of course, when I came to examine things thoroughly, I learnt all about the other very good reasons assigned by the church for this practice. You know how modern languages are always changing, and how the same word will mean a different thing in two separate centuries; there is the word “prevent,” for instance, which now means to hinder, but which formerly was used in the Anglican liturgy in its Latin sense, to succor and to help. Well, it would not do for the dogmas or the rites of the church to be subject to these apparent changes, which would lead most likely to misunderstandings and perhaps heresies, so the church chose to fix her liturgy in a language whose rules and construction undergo no alteration from century to century. You know the law, also, has Latin terms, probably used for the same reason. Then, besides, it is not necessary for the people to be able to join in the absolute words of the Mass and other services, provided they join heartily in the intention of the sacrifice and prayers. As I have told you already, the fact is that most Catholics do understand the words themselves, and not very imperfectly; still, the theory remains that such comprehension (which after all is more a grammatical accomplishment than a devout necessity) is not absolutely required. If it were otherwise, you see, the doctrine of intention would suffer. In the old days, the Hebrews—on whose ritual all non-Catholics claim to take their stand, or by which at least they measure their standard of adequate worship—used to stand outside the temple, where they could neither see nor hear, though they knew that by their presence alone they were participating in the sacrifice and receiving the blessing attached to it. Then, again, we forgot, when as Protestants we used to object to the Latin liturgy, that the Catholic ceremony of Mass is essentially a sacrifice offered to God for the people, the priest being the sole representative of the people and interceding in their name. Long ago, at the English court of the Plantagenet kings. French was the language universally spoken, while the Saxons, the subjects, adhered to their own tongue. The petitions of the people were offered to the king in the language of the court, that is, French; but the result was identical with that which would have been the consequence had the prayer been in a tongue the people could understand. So in the church it is sufficient for God to hear the petition of his children; they themselves would not be benefited the more for understanding every word of the pleading of the priest. The things that are said to us, not for us, the sermons and instructions which are to explain God’s will and our duty to us, are always in the tongue common to each particular country; and when there is a large foreign settlement in a town, it has a church of its own where such instruction is administered. Look at this large city of New York: have we not German churches and a French church besides our English-speaking churches? The Mass is identically the same in each, but for those who are to be taught the language is varied according to their nationality. And so for all offices which the priests perform toward us, as, for instance, confession. In the great church of which you have all heard, St. Peter’s at Rome, there are confessionals where priests of every nation are ever ready to receive and console the sinners of every clime, while above each box is plainly written “For the English,” “For the Spaniards,” “For the French,” “For the Germans,” “For the Greeks,” “For the Poles,” etc., etc. So, you see, the church, after all, is quite as wise as she is loving, and indicates her claim to be our mother in every way. Take my advice, and always look well into things before you condemn them; for, if I had done so when a boy, I should have saved myself a great deal of trouble in getting rid of prejudices which every year increased and deepened, till it needed a miracle of the grace of God to strip the tightening garment they were wrapping round my fettered soul.
THE HANDKERCHIEF.
If there is one article of the toilette that, more than another, appeals particularly to the imagination, it is certainly the handkerchief. The favored glove that has encased a fair hand is often treasured up by a sentimental admirer; a broidered scarf or a knot of ribbon has been worn by many a gallant knight as the colors of the lady of his choice; the collar encircling some ivory neck is envied to such a degree as to almost warrant the ambition of Winnifred Jenkins: “God he nose what havoc I shall make among the mail sects when I make my first appearance in this killing collar”; but a thousand killing collars bear no comparison to that delicate fabric of muslin and lace which plays as important a part in the flirtations of fashionable life here as the fan among the ladies of Spain. Who could imagine so small a square of cloth—if it be not profanity to apply so common a term to so wondrous a tissue—could be made to express or conceal so much in the hands of its fair owner? Such an expressive toss or whisk could only be the result of the profoundest study. And what a delicate attractive odor it gives out, suggestive of roses, and violets, and all the flora of occidental as well as oriental gallantry. And then the touching rôle it plays in the pathetic—it is the recipient of some timely tear—perhaps too, vain coxcomb, a screen for many a yawn. We can never be too sure of what is confided to this bosom companion.
The sacredness imputed to the handkerchief is no modern idea. It came to us from the East, whence sprang religion, science, and romance itself. Ages ago the handkerchief was regarded in Egypt as a kind of amulet. The fair one of later days, who interweaves a thread of her own life into the handkerchief she intends for some favored knight, hopes it may prove like the magic handkerchief given by the Egyptian charmer to Othello’s mother, endued with a power to subdue him “entirely to her love.”
“There’s magic in the web of it:
A sibyl that had number’d in the world
The sun to make two hundred compasses
In her prophetic fury sew’d the work:
The worms were hallow’d that did breed the silk:
And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful
Conserved of maidens’ hearts.”
The handkerchief is the strongest proof of love, not only among the Moors, but among all Eastern nations, says Byron, who approved of Shakespeare’s making the jealousy of Othello turn on this point. But poor Desdemona found the inherited talisman she “kissed and talked to” a fatal gift.