"No complaint is more commonly heard among our clergy," he writes, "than that those who have been educated in our schools are lost to the Church by scores, if not by hundreds, as soon as the school time is over. This complaint I fear is but too well grounded, but I think that it suggests some important topics of self-examination to ourselves. Are we sufficiently careful to follow with our eye the children of both sexes who have ceased to come under daily observation by entering on the duties of their secular callings? This enquiry applies most forcibly to the young men of our flocks, who for many reasons are less likely to come under the protection of watchful guides than young persons of the other sex, and who are at the same time exposed to a more dangerous class of temptations." And he gives his own experience as to a possible remedy:-- "The interest which both sexes alike demand at our hands consists not merely in using means to preserve them in the practice of their formal religious duties, but in keeping up their attachment to the Church to which they belong by engaging them in some practical form of connection with it, such as association with confraternities, or participation in offices or works of which it is the centre and spring. I have myself" (he adds) "witnessed in various ways and in more than one place the incalculable advantage of maintaining by some such definite and practical bond of union the tie between young persons, but especially young men, and their church. I have found that the privileges of the sanctuary or the choir have been prized as the most precious of distinctions, and that the Offices of the Church have proved successful rivals, not to say powerful antagonists, of the theatre or the music-hall. I have known young men who have been, to my undoubting belief, kept harmless amid the manifold temptations of the metropolis through influences directly received in, or by means of, the Catholic Church." [5] In many cases where men have allowed their religion to lapse, the steadying influence required is happily supplied when the time comes for a man to marry and to devote himself to bringing up a Christian family. The wedding-day is a day of rejoicing; it is the priest's privilege to assist at the ceremony in church, and in many cases to join in the festivities afterwards. It is much to be regretted that the nuptial mass has almost died out with us--this being apparently in great part due to our Protestant surroundings; the two ostensible reasons being the custom of having the ceremony at a late hour, in order to enable people to come, and the wish for a short service so as not to overburden the non-Catholics present. It is the more to be regretted because it is such a beautiful service that if people were accustomed to seeing it, few Catholics would be content to omit it. However, taking the service as we find it, short though it is, it can be made very devotional [6] and joyful.