I did not speak nor move. At the door he said:
"You are a stranger in the city?"
"No—yes—that is, I have lived here several years, but I have no friends; I am indeed a stranger."
"You understand and attend to your religious duties?"
"I have no religious duties; I have no particular religion. I am beginning to think myself a heathen."
"And have you not been brought up a Catholic?" he questioned in surprise, returning to where I still sat.
"The furthest from it. If you have time to listen, I will tell you what has brought me to you." And I went on to tell him of the advice of my friend, received in the depth of my afflictions and despair. If my conversion to the Catholic faith, entire, absolute, blessed, thanks be to God! was not instantaneous; if, being blind, I received not sight, being deaf, I received not hearing, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as did those whom Christ himself touched and healed, still do I believe it to have been the work of Almighty God, and marvellous unto my own eyes. If God commissioned Miriam Bell, instead of his own holy angel, to direct me to the priest of his own anointing, I believe myself no less to have been sent to pious F. Corrigan than was Paul sent to Annanias, or Cornelius to Simon.
From regrets and lamentations, from dulness and despair, my heart bowed low unto God in rejoicing and thanksgiving.
Aside from this, the Catholic religion and the history of the church became to me an attractive, fascinating study. I seemed philosophizing with sages, praying with religious, meditating with saints. The whole world seemed newly peopled, unnumbered voices joining in that grand chant that the church for almost nineteen centuries hath sung: "Glory be unto God, and on earth peace to men of good-will."
F. Corrigan had sent a young priest to a new town in the interior, made by the opening up of new railroads. Here F. McDevitt had built a small church, and, in his report to his superior, spoke of having need of a teacher for a parish school. F. Corrigan offered me the situation, and in one week I was at Dillon's Station.