Most Reverend James Gibbons was born in Baltimore, in 1836. His parents were Irish, and, when a boy, he was taken to Ireland, where he remained several years. At the age of seventeen he returned to America, and soon after entered St. Charles' College, near Ellicott City, Md., to commence his studies for the priesthood. Here he remained four years, and was then transferred to St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, to pursue the study of theology and philosophy. He was ordained in 1860, his first mission being the obscure parish of St. Bridget's, Baltimore. Archbishop Spalding soon discovered his merits, and he transferred him to the Cathedral and made him his secretary. His rise was rapid and brilliant. In 1868 he was made Vicar Apostolic of North Carolina, with the rank of bishop, and in a few years he was elected to the See of Richmond. When Archbishop Bayley died, in 1875, Right Rev. Dr. Gibbons was appointed his successor in the See of Baltimore. Thus, at the early age of forty he had attained the highest ecclesiastical position in the United States, for Baltimore is the oldest, and, therefore, the primary American See. To it belongs the highest dignity in the American Catholic Church. The archbishops of Baltimore have always been men of distinguished ability. The immediate predecessor of Archbishop Gibbons was James Roosevelt Bayley, a member of a prominent New York family. He was the nephew of Mother Seton, the founder of the Order of Sisters of Charity in the United States. His predecessor was the learned Spalding, whose elegant voice was conspicuous in the great Council of the Vatican. Some Incidents of His Life. While Archbishop Gibbons presided over the small country parish of Elkridge, near Baltimore, an incident occurred which gave him a large measure of local fame. Small-pox broke out in the village, and a general exodus immediately followed. An old negro man at the point of death was deserted by his family, who left him neither food nor medicines. Fr. Gibbons heard of the case, hastened to the bedside of the dying man and remained with him to the last. Nor was this all. No one could be procured to carry the corpse to the grave. Fr. Gibbons, seeing no other alternative, determined to act as undertaker as well as minister; so, having obtained a coffin, he placed the body therein, dragged it as well as he could to the grave, performed the funeral rites and buried it. His career as vicar of North Carolina was filled with occurrences equally as noteworthy, but of a humorous rather than pathetic nature. He still talks with zest of his all-day rides on horseback through the North Carolina pines; of nights spent in the flea-covered log cabins of the negroes, whose best accommodations consisted of a corn-husk bed, meals spread out on the floor and gourds for drinking cups; of savory dinners of fat bacon and hoe cakes, and of other accompaniments of missionary life among the negroes of that region.