discussions in the market places of the world, because they are literature, and not couched in scholastic syllogisms. Dear me! I am philosophizing,--I, old Daddy Dan, with the children plucking at my coat-tails and the brown snuff staining my waistcoat, and, ah, yes! the place already marked in my little chapel, where I shall sleep at last. I must have been angry, or gloomy, that day, thirty years ago, when I stepped on the platform at M----, after my interview with the Bishop, and met my friends, who had already become aware that I was elevated out of the junior ranks, and had become an independent officer of the Church Militant. "You don't mean to say that you have accepted that awful place?" said one. "You'll have nothing but fish to eat," said another. "The butcher's van goes there but once a week." "And no society but fishermen," said a third. "And they speak nothing but Irish, and you know you cannot bless yourself in Irish." "Well," I replied, "my Job's comforters, I have accepted Kilronan, and am going there. If all things go well, and you are good boys, I may ask for some of you as curate--" "You'll be glad to get a curacy yourself in six months," they shouted in chorus. And so I came to Kilronan, and here have I been since. The years have rolled by swiftly. Life is a coach, whose wheels move slowly and painfully at the start; but, once set moving, particularly when going down the deep decline of life, the years move so swiftly you cannot see the spokes in the wheels, which are the days we number so sadly. What glorious resolutions I made the first months of my residence here! How I would read and write and burn the midnight oil, and astonish the world, and grow from dignity to dignity into an honored old age! Alas! circumstances are too much for us all, and here I am, in my seventieth year, poor old Daddy Dan, with no great earthly trouble, indeed, and some few consolations,--my breviary and the grand psalms of hope,--my daily Mass and its hidden and unutterable sweetness,--the love of little children and their daily smiles,--the prayers of my old women, and, I think, the reverence of the men. But there comes a little sting sometimes, when I see young priests, who served my Masses long ago, standing in cathedral stalls in all the glory of purple and ermine, and when I see great parishes passing into the hands of mere boys, and poor old Daddy Dan passed over in silence. I know, if I were really good and resigned, I would bless God for it all, and I do. But human nature will revolt sometimes, and people will say, "What a shame, Father Dan; why haven't you the red buttons as well as so and so," or, "What ails the Bishop, passing over one of the most learned men in the diocese for a parcel of gossoons!" I suppose it was my own fault. I remember what magnificent ideas I had. I would build factories, I would ferr the streets, I would establish a fishing station and make Kilronan the