Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images produced by the Wright American Fiction Project.) THE CROSS AND THE SHAMROCK, OR, HOW TO DEFEND THE FAITH. AN IRISH-AMERICAN CATHOLIC TALE OF REAL LIFE, DESCRIPTIVE OF THE TEMPTATIONS, SUFFERINGS, TRIALS, AND TRIUMPHS OF THE CHILDREN OF ST. PATRICK IN THE GREAT REPUBLIC OF WASHINGTON. A BOOK FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT AND SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CATHOLIC MALE AND FEMALE SERVANTS OF THE UNITED STATES. WRITTEN BY A MISSIONARY PRIEST. [Transcriber's Note: a pseudonym for Hugh Quigley.] BOSTON: PATRICK DONAHOE, 3 FRANKLIN STREET. 1853. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by PATRICK DONAHOE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY. DEDICATION. To the faithful Irish-American Catholic citizens of the whole Union, and especially to the working portion of them, on account of their piety, their liberality, their patriotism, and their steady loyalty to the virtues symbolized by the "Cross and the Shamrock,"--on account of their attachment to the land of St. Patrick, and to the religion of her patriot princes and martyrs,--this work, written for their encouragement and instruction, is respectfully inscribed by Their humble servant, And devoted friend and fellow-citizen, THE AUTHOR. September, 1853. PREFACE. "There are moments when every citizen who feels that he can say something promotive of the welfare of his countrymen and of advantage to his country is authorized to give _public_ utterance to his sentiments, how humble soever he may be."--_Letter of Archbishop Hughes on the Madiai_, February, 1853. "There may be, in public opinion, an Inquisition a thousand times more galling to the soul than the gloomy prison or the weight of chains."--_National Democrat_, March, 1853. 1st. The above extracts, from different but respectable sources, comprise the author's chief motives in the publication of the following work. It is a well-known fact, that thousands of our fellow-Christians, in all parts of this vast _free country_, are continually subjected to a most trying ordeal of temptation and persecution on account of their religion, and that the wonderful progress of Catholicity and renewed power of the church only add to the malice, if not to the influence, of sectarians, in their efforts to make use of this odious persecution of servant boys and servant girls, of widows and orphans, to build up their own tottering conventicles, and to circumscribe the giant strides of what they call "the man of sin."