But he didn't know, and in any case
he would like to correspond on these important matters with one on the
other side. This letter met with a warm response, and there was much
correspondence and meetings with other clerics-Anglican or
Episcopalian, I forget which. But there were also Presbyterians,
Lutherans, and Methodist ministers, all with churches of their own in
the town, and he may have flirted a little with all of them. Then he
came for his year of waiting to us, during which he amused himself by
teaching the little ones, smoothing the way for my mathematical
brother, and fishing. But the authorities of the church had not got
rid of him; they heard not infrequently from him, and it was not
pleasant hearing. He had come, he told them, a Roman Catholic priest
to a Roman Catholic country, and had found himself a stranger in a
strange land. He had waited patiently for months, and had been put off
with idle promises or thrust aside, while every greedy pushing priest
that arrived from Spain and Italy was received with open arms and a
place provided for him. Then, when his patience and private means had
been exhausted, he had accidently been thrown among those who were not
of the Faith, yet had received him with open arms. He had been
humiliated and pained at the disinterested hospitality and Christian
charity shown to him by those outside the pale, after the treatment he
had received from his fellow-priests.
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