BY PATER ABRAHAM A SANCTA CLARA.

In Two Parts.—Part Two.

The eloquent Pater, after the colloquy between Death and the soldiers of Vienna, as given in a former number, turns from Mars, and, by an easy transition, passes to Venus, and begins his homily to maidens. He mentions the miracle wrought by the prophet with the widow's cruise of oil, and draws from it a reflection we do not recollect to have yet heard 'improved' in the pulpit.

'Now, when this widow found no help in her trouble, she bethought herself of the prophet Elisha, to whom she told her story with tears in her eyes. Elisha was moved by these widow's tears, and asked her, what she had in the house. Think, for the love of heaven, what it was! 'And thereupon she answered, I have nothing in the house but a little oil, to anoint myself withal.' To anoint herself! Only think, in the midst of her poverty, she still took pains to be a pretty creature, even if a poor creature! In a word, beauty is the only aim of womankind!'

'How many long timbers, how many short timbers, how many large timbers, how many small timbers, how many thick timbers, how many thin timbers, how many round timbers, how many square timbers, how many straight timbers, how many crooked timbers, were used in building up the tower of Babel! How many large stones, how many small stones, how many round stones, how many square stones, how many rough stones, how many smooth stones, how many white stones, how many red stones, how many common stones, how many marble stones, were needed to build and adorn the tower of Babel! It is nearly the same with a woman. What taffeta stuffs, what silken stuffs, what worked stuffs, what embroidered stuffs, what flowered stuffs, what wide stuffs, what narrow stuffs, what colored stuffs, doth she not require; and all to be beautiful, to be thought beautiful, to be called beautiful!'

But Death is blind to all their beauty:

'This rude fellow saith, 'I never learned respect for beauty, I never practised it, I never used it! He who will look for modesty in a peacock, honesty in a fox, and fasting in a wolf, may look for respect in me; not a pound, not a half a pound, not a quarter of a pound, not an ounce, not a grain of respect is to be found in all my stock!''

From the maiden we pass to the matron, under which head we find an unhappy married life described with a pungency which savors rather of an experienced husband, than of a bare-footed bachelor:

'As odious as is a lyre, wherein the strings do not accord, so is marriage, where tempers do not agree. What is such an union but a disunion, a battle-ground, a school of affliction, a scolding-match, a grind-stone, a nest of hedge-hogs, a rack, a briar-bush, a clock always striking, a mental harrow, a pepper-mill, a summing up of all wretchedness!'

On the other hand, take his description of a happy marriage:

'It is known how vast was the temple of Solomon. In the first place, there were assembled there seventy thousand laborers, eighty thousand masons and stone-cutters, three thousand overseers. But the most wondrous part is, that during the work, not a stroke of steel or hammer was heard; nec ferrum audie batur. This was a miracle! Some say that this was clearly through God's work and aid; others, that Solomon caused to be got a store of the blood of a certain beast, by which the hardest stones were split in twain, without need of hammer or steel; be this as it may, true it is, that in all the work, neither blow nor stroke was heard.

'To this house of God can we compare the house of two loving spouses, where no sound of strife is heard, but every thing fits itself into place without struggle or labor. Such an union is a clock which always stands at one; a garden wherein nothing grows but hearts'-ease; a grammar in which nothing is conjugated but amo, and rixa is declined; a calendar, whose chiefest saints are St. Pacificus and St. Concordia.'

The following veracious tale we earnestly recommend to the attention of the ladies of the present day, without, however, meaning to insinuate for a moment that they have fallen away in the least from the conjugal devotion of the fair Francisca Romana:

'The holy lady Francisca Romana valued such quietude above all things else; wherefore one day, while she was devoutly, as was her wont, reading the history of our blessed Lady, being called away by her husband to perform some domestic duty, she laid aside her book, leaving the verse she was reading, unfinished, and having fulfilled her lord's commands, hastened back to her devotions, when lo! the verse at which she had broken off had been changed by an angel into letters of gold.'

The necessity of holding the rod over children, he thus illustrates:

'So long as Aaron, at Pharaoh's court, held the rod in his hand, it remained a rod; but when he cast it on the ground, it became a serpent. Remember this, ye parents! and cast it not away.'

Next comes the turn of the rich man, at whom our worthy apostle hammers away without mercy:

'MARK—RICH MAN!'

'If it were allowed to Samson to propound a riddle for the delectation of his guests, it will perhaps be not ill taken in me to question my hearers as follows: What is it? It hath not feet, yet travelleth through the whole world; it hath no hands, yet overmasters whole armies; it hath no tongue, yet discourseth more eloquently than Bartolus or Baldus; it hath no sense, yet is more mighty than all the wise men of the earth: 'tis a thing which, both in its German and Latin names, comes near to God. Well now what is it? Crack me this nut, if you can. It is nothing else than Gold. Take away the L from it, and we have God, and in Latin numen is God, and nummus money, which two names are near akin.

'In the days of Noah, when the weary waters were deluging the world, the patriarch sent forth a dove to see how the rains stood upon the earth. This pious and simple bird, more obedient than the raven, returned speedily, and lighted on the ark. After a time, he sent her forth again, and she returned with an olive branch in her mouth; and here the holy book doth not say that Noah this time laid hands on her, and took her into the ark; whence it is reasonable to conclude that she flew in the second time of her own accord, wherein lies no small mystery. The first time, Noah was obliged to draw her into the ark by force, the second time she flew freely in. Reason: the first time, the dovelet had nothing; the dovelet was a poor devil, and durst not venture into the ark,

Si nihil attuleris, ibis, Homere, foras.

The second time, it had an olive branch, and flew straight in, well knowing that door and portal stand open to him that bringeth any thing.'

'Here can I not omit to berate the miser a little. Dearest reader! thou hast doubtless seen somewhat beyond the hedge of thy father's garden, and wandered through many provinces and regions; tell me then, if thou hast ever seen a living purse of money? Such a rarity you have scarcely encountered. But lo! in Matthew, xvii. 23, it is described, how our blessed Lord and his disciples arrived at Capernaum, and the tax-money was demanded of them, and as neither our Lord nor Peter had any silver, he ordered the apostle to cast into the sea, and in the mouth of the first fish he caught he would find money—as indeed it happened, and thus the fish's mouth became a living purse. It is with misers as with this fish; they have nothing but gold in their mouths. They snap at gold, they talk of gold, they fight for gold, they sing of gold, they praise gold, they sigh for gold, they forget not gold, even on their death-bed. Yea, we have an instance in that bold scoffer, who, when the priest visited him in his last hour with the solemn rites of the church, said to him: 'Sir parson, I need not what the cup contains, but if you would have me loan you money on the golden cup itself, I am at your service;' and with these wicked words, gave up the ghost. So that we see that gold, gold is the miser's only thought. O ye fools! ye toil and ye moil, ye chase and ye race, ye sweat and ye fret, ye hurry and ye worry, ye wear and ye tear—and all for gold! Ye drink not, ye eat not, ye sleep not—for gold; till your eyes sink in your head like two hollow nut-shells, till your cheeks are pale as a lawyer's parchment, your hair ragged as a plundered swallow's nest, your legs covered only with skin, like an old drum-head!'

After despatching the misers in this style, he draws to a conclusion, and apostrophizes the world at large, telling them that all their misfortunes arise from sin, a text which he illustrates in this wise:

'I seem to see in fancy holy Bachomius in the wilderness, where he chose him a dwelling among hollow clefts of rocks, which abode consisted in nought but four crooked posts, with a transparent covering of dried boughs. And he, when wearied with singing psalms, resorting to labor lest the old serpent should catch him unemployed, and weaving rude coverings of thatch, sits by a rock, wherefrom flow forth silver veins of water, which make a pleasing murmur in their crystal descent, while around him on the green boughs play the birds of the forest, who with their natural cadences, and the clear-sounding flutes of their throats joining pleno choro, transform the wood into a concert; and the agile deer, the bleating hares, the chirping insects, are his constant companions, unharmed and unharming, all which furnishes him with solace and contentment. But it seemeth to me that our devout hermit delighteth himself more especially in the echo which sends him back his loud sighs and petitions, as when the holy anchorite cries, 'O merciful Christ!' the echo, that unembodied thief, steals away the words, and returns them back to him. But is he too sorely tempted, and doth he exclaim, in holy impatience, 'O thou accursed devil!' the echo lays aside its devout language and sounds back to him, 'Thou accursed devil!' In a word, as a man treats Echo so does Echo treat him.

'Now God is just like this voice of the woods. For it is an unquestioned truth, that as we demean ourselves toward God, so he demeaneth himself toward us.'

In the opinion of our author, and he is not singular in it, procrastination is the great foe to piety and repentance:

'By permission of the Almighty, I knock at the door of hell, and ask this or that one the reason of his condemnation. Holla! thou who art boiling in red hot iron, like a pea in a hot kettle, what was the cause of thy condemnation? 'I,' said he, 'was given to wild lusts, but resolved to leave off my wicked life, and repent, but was suddenly cut off, so that procrastination caused my eternal death.

'The same answer I received from a hundred thousand wretched sinners. Oh how true is it, as the poet says:

'The raven cras oft closes the pass
Unto our souls' salvation;
The fatal 'to-morrow' produceth sorrow,
And final condemnation.'

'And even, silly souls, if you are not cut off by sudden death, but have time to repent given you on your death-bed, still such late repentance seldom availeth much in the sight of God; as Saint Augustine saith, 'The repentance of a sick man, I fear, is generally sickly; that of a dying man, generally dies away. For when thou canst sin no longer, it is not that thou desertest sin, but that sin deserts thee.'

'God in the Old Testament has admitted all kinds of beasts as acceptable offerings; but he excludeth the swan alone, though the swan with its white vesture agreeth well with the livery of the angels, because this feathered creature is the image of a sinner who puts off repentance till death; for the swan is silent through his whole life, and doth not sing till his life is at its close.

'When Eve let herself be led astray so foolishly by the serpent, God reproved the malice of the enemy with the words: 'Thou shalt bruise the heel of Eve and her seed.' * * * Why then is it said that the serpent shall bruise man's heel? It is here to be observed, that every thing in the Scripture is not to be taken according to the letter, for if so, almost every man would be a cripple; for the Bible telleth us, 'If thy foot offend thee, cut it off.' But often in such words, the Holy Spirit concealeth the profoundest doctrine. So in this passage, as Lorinus wisely expoundeth it, we are not to understand by the heel, the lower part of the human body, but the last hours of man, which Satan pursueth most earnestly.'

Now for the conclusion:

'There are doubtless but few to be found among you so simple that they cannot count three. And if heaven has been so gracious as to endow you with wit enough to count three and upward, I still hope ye cannot go so far as to count among ye three-times-three, that is nine, I mean those nine, who were cured by the healing hand of Christ, and of whom only one returned to render to the Lord his Deo Gratias, while the other nine made off with themselves.'

The peroration runs on in this strain of quaint allusion at some length, but we are admonished that it is time to bring our labors to a close. The candle is flickering away its little life in uncertain flashes, and the quiet that surrounds us, warns us of like repose. Farewell then, Pater Abraham! Back to thy old abode, in yonder nook of our library, where few will disturb thee, save some prying book-worm like ourself. Thy quaint conceits have beguiled us of more than one hour of weariness; nor while we love thee the more for thy fun, do we respect thee less. Thou wert a true apostle of thy Master. The pestilence that ravaged the city, found thee laboring in thy calling, carrying the consolations of religion, and the hope of another life, to those to whom all other comfort and hope were denied, as fearlessly as ever stood a soldier of an earthly captain while his comrades were dropping round him. Far thee well! and may posterity think none the worse of thee, that with thy talents and thy piety were mingled some of the weaknesses of our nature; weaknesses which were but the overflowings of a merry and a kindly spirit. Would that all thy cloth had no other or worse foibles than thy bad jokes, thy cumbrous learning, and thy plethora of wit!

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