The episode interested me; I sympathised with that priest. In spite of his unsavoury physical condition my heart went out to him. His life must have been appallingly empty, for he had not, like Father Simon, the saving grace of responsibility and the opportunity of expressing his individuality in administrative work. He was nothing but a more or less superfluous cog in the wheel of a cranky machine driven by a despotic hand. The Adam within him cried out for an opportunity of attracting the attention of the only visitor from the outside world he was likely to see for the next six months. I found that little trifle of deception very human--very pitiful. I wonder did he, after all, read his Aquinas at times; perhaps he did. But I fear his development would rather have been in the direction of the "dumb ox" than towards the angels. Poor, lonely, unwashed human creature. The only way to save one's soul alive in the desert is to wrestle with and overcome difficulties--as Jacob wrestled with the angel, and all the cobwebs ever spun by all the Schoolmen would not give so much strength to the human spirit as a gallop of ten miles over the plains, among the whispering shocks of the "toa." That this was the case was evinced by a young lay-brother with whom I was able to converse in Dutch. He, of peasant origin and with quite a lot of fire glowing through his clay, found scope for his abounding energies in looking after the stock belonging to the Mission and generally carrying on the outside administrative work. It was he who shepherded the tribe from one water-place to another; it was he who took venturesome journeys across wide stretches of desert for the purpose of reporting as to the condition of the pasturage surrounding the far-outlying oases. This man was brown and muscular; his eye was steady and masterful-- because his life was spent in action, not in futile dreaming. If he should have looked upon one of the daughters of the desert and found her fair, I would not have given much for his vocation. I sincerely hoped he might do so. The daughters of the desert are not, as a rule, comely--but, after all, beauty is relative. I imply nothing discreditable; this man had taken no irrevocable vow of celibacy. The Pella Mission was engaged in the hopeless task of endeavouring to make oil and water mix--or rather, to change the metaphor--to graft an archaic but vigorous and highly-specialised organism upon a rudimentary one of thin blood and low vitality. A creed rooted in and nourished by the most ancient human traditions could not possibly develop among people who possessed no traditions and had not enough positive original sin in them to make their asthenic souls worth the saving.