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Hudson, W. H. (William Henry), 1841-1922

"Far Away and Long Ago"

Some friends of my
father, on one of his periodical visits to Buenos Ayres, mentioned
this person to him-this priest who in his wanderings about the world
had drifted hither and was anxious to find some place to stay at out
on the plains while waiting for something to turn up. As he was
without means he said he would be glad of the position of schoolmaster
in the house for a time, that it would exactly suit him.
Father O'Keefe, who now appeared on the scene, was very unlike Mr.
Trigg; he was a very big man in black but rusty clerical garments. He
also had an extraordinarily big head and face, all of a dull, reddish
colour, usually covered with a three or four days' growth of grizzly
hair. Although his large face was unmistakably, intensely Irish, it
was not the gorilla-like countenance so common in the Irish peasant-
priest--the priest one sees every day in the streets of Dublin. He
was, perhaps, of a better class, as his features were all good. A
heavy man as well as a big one, he was not so amusing and so fluent a
talker out of school as his predecessor, nor, as we were delighted to
discover, so exacting and tyrannical in school. On the contrary, in
and out of school he was always the same, mild and placid in temper,
with a gentle sort of humour, and he was also very absent-minded.


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