Our Blessed Father wished that all these four classes could be merged in a fifth, that of which the watchword should be holy equality according to that precept both of nature and of the Gospel: "Do to others as you would be done by; treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and treat yourself as you know you ought to be treated." In fact, since each man is to himself his nearest neighbour, we all recognise the injustice of demanding in the life of others what we do not practise in our own. To command others to do what we do not ourselves do is to be like Urias, who carried his own condemnation and death-warrant in his bosom. One day, in his presence, I was praising a certain Superior for his extreme goodness, gentleness, patience, and condescension, which attracted all hearts to him, just as flies are attracted to a honeycomb. He answered, "Goodness is not good when it puts up with evil; on the contrary, it is bad when it allows evils to go on which it can, and should, prevent. Gentleness in such a case is not gentleness, but weakness and cowardice. Patience in such a case is not patience, but absolute stupidity. "When we suffer evil which we could prevent, we do not merely tolerate but become accomplices in wrong-doing. I am of opinion that subjects are made good by bad, I mean, by harsh and disagreeable Superiors. The severity of a mother is more wholesome for a child than the petting of an indulgent nurse, and the firmness of a father is always more useful to his children than their mother's tenderness. The rougher the file the better it smoothes the iron, and the more rust it rubs off; the hotter the iron, the better the surface it gives to the cloth." He related with regard to this subject an anecdote which will both please and profit you. The head of a certain Religious Order, which was at the time undergoing a vigorous reform, had, with the consent of the Provincial Chapter, established a Novitiate House which was to serve as the one only Seminary for the whole province. It was decided that no novice should be clothed until he had been examined by three Fathers of the Order appointed for that purpose. The first was to enquire into the birth and condition of those who presented themselves for examination, the second into their literary capacity, and the third into their manner of life and vocation. This last, in order to get a firm grip on the pulse of the postulants, and to sound their vocation to the very quick almost always asked them if they would have courage and patience enough to put up with bad Superiors, bad in the extreme, cruel, rude, peevish, choleric, melancholy, captious, pitiless, those, in a word, whom they would find it impossible to please or satisfy.