indeed, the sameness of mankind renders at times not quite untenable), it seems absurd because the progress of the world has gone on other lines—lines which prolonged indefinitely would never meet those which the Jesuits drew. All that I know is I myself, in the deserted missions, five-and-twenty years ago often have met old men who spoke regretfully of Jesuit times, who cherished all the customs left by the company, and though they spoke at secondhand, repeating but the stories they had heard in youth, kept the illusion that the missions in the Jesuits’ time had been a paradise. Into the matter of the Jesuits’ motives I do not propose to enter, holding that the origin of motives is too deeply seated to be worth inquiry until one has more information about the human mind than even modern ‘scientists’ seem able to impart. Yet it is certain the Jesuits in Paraguay had faith fit to remove all mountains, as the brief stories of their lives, so often ending with a rude field-cross by the corner of some forest, and the inscription ‘_hic occissus est_’ survive to show. Some men—such is the complexity of human nature—have undergone trials and persecutions for base motives, and it is open for anyone to say the Jesuits, as they were Jesuits, could do nothing good. Still, I believe that Father Ruiz Montoya—whose story I have told, how falteringly, and with how little justice to his greatness, none knows better than myself—was a good man—that is, a man without ulterior motives, and actuated but by his love to the poor Indians with whom he passed his life. To-day, when no one can see good in anything or anybody outside the somewhat beefy pale of the Anglo-Saxon race, I do not hope that such a mere dabbler in the great mystery of history as I am myself will for an instant change one preconceived opinion; for I am well aware that speeches based on facts are impotent in popular assemblies to change a single vote.