In fact the temper of the mob has betrayed itself on more than one occasion. On the night of July 12, 1881, as the remains of the late Pope Pius IX were being borne to their last resting place in the cemetery of San Lorenzo. The event was made the occasion of rowdyism unimpeded by any surveillance on the part of the government authorities. As the funeral cortege moved along, the chorus of mockery and insult was raised on all sides. The police did nothing to silence the disturbers. Encouraged by this tolerance the mob went still farther. Insults were succeeded by threats. Then followed violence; stones were hurled and blows rained upon the members of the cortege. The faithful followed piously chanting the Miserere or reciting the Rosary, while the enemy howled the Garibaldian song. In the Piazza dei Termi the crowd hurled showers of stones. The attending prelates were insulted, threatened with death, and struck upon the face. The faithful gathered around the funeral car determined to resent the profanations of the savage mob. It was only when the Church of San Lorenzo was reached that the police at length thought fit to intervene. The danger was then over, and the funeral obsequies proceeded in comparative peace. _LEO XIII. AND LABOR._ The true genius of the prisoner of the Vatican began first to manifest itself in his attitude towards the Knights of Labor in the States of America and Canada. Cardinal Taschereau of Quebec, and the Canadian prelates, as well as some prelates of the extreme party in the United States had almost secured the condemnation of this great labor organization by the Sacred Congregation at Rome. This body, it was claimed, was constituted somewhat after the model of Freemasonry; it had its secrets hidden from the outside world, and it had likewise a code of signs and passwords known only to the initiated. Catholics numbered largely among its members, and for this reason it was considered that the characteristics of this organization were those of a secret society which brought it under the ban of the Church. [Illustration: POPE LEO XIII.] But for the Pope the condemnation of the Knights of Labor by the Sacred Congregation would no doubt have been pronounced. Freemasonry, with its stupendous oaths and its invocations of dire and dreadful penalties in case of the violation of such oaths, with its liturgical services and elaborate ceremonial--not to mention Continental Freemasonry with its factional political policy and aims--was an altogether different thing from the constitution and workings of the society known as the Knights of Labor. The avowed object of the Knights of Labor was the right of the laborer to a voice in determining the price at which he should part with his labor. It had no suggestion of anything revolutionary or anti-Christian. To have condemned this particular organization would have meant the condemnation of labor unionism everywhere.