Oh, the adorable continuity of the Church! In my eyrie in the Rockies, one of the loneliest spots on earth, there came to my door quite unexpectedly one summer evening—it was the 28th of June—a missionary priest, very tired. He had driven some hundred and fifty miles to get to us; his game little horses, his buggy, his coat—everything about him was covered with dust, but his eyes beamed with benevolence as he said, “I have come to say Mass for you.” We could have kissed his feet. The next morning, very early, in the sitting-room that was a bower of wild flowers, my son and I knelt and watched him prepare the altar. From his worn portmanteau the first thing he drew out was a square of white alabaster of which the centre had been removed, replaced, and sealed with a cross sunk into the stone. Very reverently he slipped it under the white linen “corporal,” lighted the blest candles on either side—and began “Introibo ad altare Dei.” The alabaster square contained relics of the Martyrs; and our humble home-made altar was, through them, His friends, as worthy of Him who was about to descend upon it as the High Altar of St. Peter’s on that morning of his Feast in Rome. When St. Boniface cleansed and consecrated the Pantheon, he showed, in the name he gave it, that it was to be the shrine of many valiant ones, a shrine of which, more truly than of any of our battlefields, it could be said: “On Fame’s eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread, And glory guards, with solemn round, The Bivouac of the Dead!”