The Irish in America [pp. 765-776]

The Irish ini America.
mination; but this much is well ascertained
-that scarcely had he reached the sick
man's bed, and performed the functions of
his ministry, when he was conscious of his
own approaching dissolution; and there
being no brother priest to minister to him
in his last hour, he administered the viaticum to himself, and died on the floor of
what was then, indeed, a chamber of death.
Here was a glorious ending of a life only well
begun.
"Bermuda is included within the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Halifax, and to
this fact is owing one of the most extraordinary instances of a'sick call' on record. A
Catholic lady in Bermuda was dying of a lingering disease, and knowing that further delay might be attended with consequences
which she regarded as worse than death,
she availed herself of the opportunity of a
vessel then about to sail for Halifax to send
for a clergyman of that city. The day the
.message was delivered to the clergyman, a
vessel was to sail from Halifax to Bermuda,
and he went on board at once, arrived in
due course at the latter place, found the dying lady still alive, administered to her the
rites of the church, and returned as soon as
possible to his duties in Halifax; having, in
obedience to this remarkable'sick call,' accomplished a journey of i6oo miles."-P. i6.
Not quite so interesting as this is
the somewhat prolix account Mr.
Maguire gives of his visit to Pictou,
N. S., where he took passage for
Prince Edward's Island. We do
not think his readers would have sustained any loss by his omission of
several pages in which a certain
"Peter," resident in those parts,
acted as his cice-oitne. "Peter" may
have interested Mr. Maguire, but he
will not interest his readers. There
is one paragraph, however, in connection with the visit to Prince Edward's Island that we may not pass
over here, for the reason that it, too, is
of general application. Mr. Maguire
is speaking of St. Dunstan's College
in Charlottetown:
"This college is supplied with every mo dern requirement and appliance, and is un der the able presidency of the Rev. Angus
McDonald, a man well qualified for his im portant task, and whose title of'Father
Angus' is as affectionately pronounced by
the most Irish of the Irish as if it were' Father Larry,' or'Father Pat.' The Irish
love their own priests; but let the priest
of any other nationality-English, Scotch,
French, Belgian, or American-only exhibit
sympathy with them, or treat them with
kindness and affection, and at once he is as
thoroughly' their priest' as if he had been
born on the banks of the Boyne or the
Shannon.'Father Dan' McDonald, the
vicar-general, is a striking instance of the
attachment borne by an Irish congregation
to a good and kindly priest; and I now the
more dwell on this thorough fusion of priest
and people in love and sympathy, because of
having witnessed with pain and sorrow the
injurious results, alike to my countrymen
and to the church, of forcing upon almost
exclusively Irish congregations clergymen
who, from their imperfect knowledge of the
Irish tongue, could not for a long time
make themselves understood by those over
whom it was essential they should acquire
a beneficial influence."-Pp. 46, 47.
Very interesting is our author's account of the Irish settlements in
Prince Edward's Island and New
Brunswick; one of the latter, Johnville, commenced within a few years,
under the auspices of Right Rev. Dr.
Sweeny, Bishop of New Brunswick,
furnishes a striking proof of the advantages to be gained by settling on
the land, instead of congregating in
the over-crowded cities. The beneficent effect on their morals, the cultivation of kind feeling and fraternal
charity amongst the settlers by the
formation of these rural colonies is
happily described in the following
passage:
"The settlers of Johnville are invariably
kind to each other, freely lending to a neighbor the aid which they may have the next
day to solicit for themselves. By this mutual and ungrudging assistance, the construction of a dwelling, or the rolling of logs and
piling them in a heap for future burning, has
been quickly and easily accomplished; and
crops have been cut and gathered in safety,
which, without such neighborly aid, might
have been irrecoverably lost. This necessary
dependence on each other for mutual help
in the hour of difficulty draws the scattered
settlers together by ties of sympathy and
friendship; and while none envy the progress of a neighbor, whose success is rather
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