"Well, we're wandering. But set apart, _hic et nunc_, a half-hour for Matins and Lauds; twenty minutes for the Small Hours; a quarter of an hour for Vespers and Compline; and take up no other duty until that time has expired. Then never say your Office from memory, even the parts you know best. Read every line from your Breviary. It is not my advice, but that of St. Charles Borromeo. Take half an hour for the celebration of Mass. It will be difficult at first, but it will come all right. Lastly, train yourself to walk slowly and speak slowly and deliberately--" "You are clipping my wings, Father," said he, "and putting soles of lead on my feet." "Did you ever hear of Michael Montaigne?" I said. "Yes. But that's all I know about him." "Quite enough, indeed. He hardly improves on acquaintance. But his father trained himself to wear leaden shoes in order that he might leap the higher. That's what I want from you. But where's this we were? Oh, yes! You must take these poor people more easily. You cannot undo in a day the operations of three hundred years--" "Yes, but look how these people spring into the very van of civilization when they go to England or America. Why, they seem to assume at once all the graces of the higher life." "Precisely,--the eternal question of environment. But under our circumstances we must be infinitely patient." "What vexes me most," said Father Letheby, "is that we have here the material of saints; and yet--look now at that wretched Deady! I don't mind his insolence, but the shifty dishonesty of the fellow." "Let him alone! By this time he is stung with remorse for what he said. Then he'll make a general confession to his wife. She'll flay him with her tongue for having dared to say a disrespectful word to God's minister. Then he'll go on a desperate spree for a week to stifle conscience, during which orgies he'll beat his wife black and blue; finally, he'll come to you, sick, humbled, and repentant, to apologize and take the pledge for life again. That's the programme." "'T is pitiful," said the young priest. But the following Sunday he recovered all his lost prestige and secured immortal fame at the football match between the "Holy Terrors" of Kilronan and the "Wolfe Tones" of Moydore. For, being asked to "kick off" by these athletes, he sent the ball up in a straight line seventy or eighty feet, and it struck the ground just three feet away from where he stood. There was a shout of acclamation from the whole field, which became a roar of unbounded enthusiasm when he sent the ball flying in a parabola, not six feet from the ground, and right to the hurdles that marked the opposite goal. The Kilronan men were wild about their young curate, and under his eye they beat their opponents hollow; and one admirer, leaning heavily on his _caman_, was heard to say:-- "My God, if he'd only lade us!" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: "A hundred thousand welcomes, Lord."] [Footnote 4: A famous Irish architect.]