Many were the anecdotes he told us about his begging adventures; but it is next to impossible to remember them. In every case, however, we could see the saint through the veil his humility tried to cast over himself. Whether he was received well or ill, he always tried to turn his reception to the spiritual benefit of those who received him. He made more friends than any person living, perhaps, and never was known to make an enemy; his very simplicity and holiness disarmed malice. He says, in a letter, upon getting his first commission to go and quest: "I am to be a great beggar!" His prognostication began to be verified. Strange fact, the Honourable George Spencer a beggar! And happier, under all the trials and crosses incident to such a life, than if he had lived in the luxury of Althorp. Religion is carrying out to-day what its Founder began eighteen hundred years ago. He left the kingdom of heaven to live on the charity of His own creatures. {374} CHAPTER IV. Death Of Father Dominic. We group the incidents of this chapter around this sad event: some of them were the last these two bosom friends did together, and the others were occasioned by their separation. Early in January, 1849, Father Ignatius went, at the invitation of Mr. John Smith, of Button, to see a spot of ground upon which that worthy man intended building a church and house for a community of Passionists. Father Ignatius did not like the situation; but as soon as he spoke to Father Dominic about it, they both came to St. Helen's Junction to see if two heads might not be wiser than one. Father Dominic landed on the platform a little before Father Ignatius, who had been delayed somewhere on the way. He went immediately to look for the great benefactor. A fine-looking, open, plain man saluted him, and he thought this must be a Catholic, and likely he knows the person I am looking for. "Do you know where lives a certain Mr. Smith?" asked Father Dominic. "I should think I did," answered his new friend, and after a few minutes' conversation the father was satisfied, for he was no other than Mr. Smith himself. They both walked over a considerable extent of ground, within which Mr. Smith told the good father to make his choice of a site. He had selected that whereon St. Anne's Retreat now stands, when Father Ignatius arrived. Father Ignatius hesitated a little before giving his consent, and it was only when Father Dominic said emphatically, "The house that is to be built here will yet be the largest and best we shall have in England," that he fully agreed. That prophecy is noted in a {375} journal Father Ignatius kept at the time, and he wondered afterwards how the church and monastery that arose on that dreary spot verified it to the letter. It is the best and largest we have in England at the present moment, and Father Dominic never saw a stone of its foundations laid.