Dear me! what a mercurial race we are; and how the mercury runs up and down in the barometer of our human hearts! I could see the young priests' faces whitening at the words: "God prosper old Ireland! You'd think them afraid, So pale grew the chiefs of the Irish Brigade!" and softening out in lines of tenderness when the end came: "For, on far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade, Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade." Then we had "The West's Awake," and "Dear Land," and then we all arose and sang together, "God bless the Pope, the great, the good." I was going to say "sang in unison," but I am afraid I should be trespassing on the sacred precincts of truth; yet if that grand old man in Rome, that electric spark in the vase of alabaster, sitting in that lonely chamber, behind the long, empty, gas-lit state apartments, could hear those voices there above the western seas, he would surely realize more keenly what he understands already, that he can always call upon his Irish reserves to ring, as with a fence of steel, the chair and the prerogatives of Peter. Then came the "Good nights." I pulled aside an old friend, a great theologian, who has all kinds of musty, dusty, leather-bound, water-stained volumes on his shelves. "Did you ever hear," I whispered, "of a mysterious thing, called the _Kampaner Thal?_" "Never," he said, emphatically. "You couldn't conjecture what it is?" "No," he said, with deliberation; "but I can aver it is neither Greek, Latin, nor Irish." "Would you mind looking up your cyclopædias," I pleaded, "and letting me know immediately that you find it?" "Of course," he replied. Then, jerking his thumb over his shoulder: "I suppose it is this chap?" "It is," I said. "He reads a good deal--" "Look here, Father Dan, I don't know what we're coming to. Did you ever see such a sight as that table to-night?" "Never," I replied, resignedly. "Would any one believe, when we came on the mission, that we'd live to see such things? Why, these fellows talk up to us as if we were their equals. Don't you remember when a curate daren't open his mouth at table?" "Of course," I replied, demurely. "And it is only now I am beginning to discover the vagaries of this chap of mine. Do you know what he wants? A shrine, if you please,--some kind of picture, with candles lighting before it all day. 'Can't you say your Rosary,' I said, 'like your betters?' No, he should have the shrine. And now he wants to force on Benediction every Sunday,--not every first Sunday of the month, but every Sunday, if you please. And he has a big red lamp, burning in what he calls his oratory. You can see it miles away. I say to the boys, 'Don't be afraid to put to sea at night now, boys. Begor, ye've got a lighthouse at last.' Well, good by! What's this thing you want?"