The first symptom one notices about them is their complete disregard of the natty little idol we call “respectability”—the Church calls it “human respect.” We quite understand that great men should kick it out of the way—who ever heard of Wellington or Kitchener asking “What are people going to say?” Their gifts and their calling place them above the reach of considerations by which we ordinary mortals are content to regulate our actions. We admire, rave over, their splendid carelessness. But when it comes to the Saints we take our shrunken measure, try to fit it to their conduct, and shake our heads. Their whole-heartedness is eccentricity, they thought nothing of inflicting most damaging shocks on public opinion—what a pity! And if we see any of our acquaintances beginning to follow in their steps we look the other way, as if the poor dears had come out into the street half-dressed. I wonder how many of her friends cared to bow to the late Countess of Denbigh when, a few years ago, she took Bridget’s place at the crossing near Farm Street, and swept it diligently, and stretched out her blessed hand for the pennies, and never thought she was doing anything heroic—just keeping old Bridget’s crossing for her while she went to Mass! I believe the very angels wanted to throw down their shining mantles for her to walk over when she went to heaven—but I am sure some of her friends on earth thought she was putting them in a most embarrassing position. Lady Georgiana Fullerton, in her “Life of Santa Francesca Romana,” has described very truly and sympathetically these—to us—puzzling stages in the development of saintship. They vary in degree, of course, in each individual case, but the same note runs through all. “Permission to labour first—the result far distant, but clear; the vision of that result when once He had said, ‘Begin and work.’ To tarry patiently for that signal, to obey it unhesitatingly when once given, is the rule of the Saints. How marvellous is their instinct! How accordant their practice! First, the hidden life, the common life; the silence of the house of Nazareth; the carpenter’s shop: the marriage-feast, it may be, for some; and at last ‘the hour is come,’ and the true work for which they are sent into the world has to be done, in the desert or in the cloister, in the temple or in the market-place, on Mount Tabor or on Mount Calvary; and the martyr or the confessor, the founder or the reformer of a religious order, comes forth, and in an instant, or in a few years, performs a work at which earth wonders and angels rejoice.” CHAPTER IX PEOPLE OF THE HILLS