The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1914-11-21

The wonder of which Sargent had
spoken to himself, that these people
in whose lives he was so large a fac
tor should be able to put him so COM
pletely out of mind at such a time,
must always be unexplainable to the
outsider. These people were just a
crowd of Catholic men and women,
saying their prayers, simply and with
out any self-consciousness, for the soul
of boy who had gone to his death
without warning. The things remote
and immediate, the leading up to his
death were, to them, important in
their way. The fact that any one, or
that many, of themselves might have
fallen in the same way; that, too,
was important. But the one thing
that put all other things aside was
that the boy had gone without sac.
rament.
Every mans own problem, whether
of work or worry or danger, fades to
a very small significance in the Cath.
olic mind when placed beside the idea
of a souls going before God un.
shriven. The thought revolts the
whole nature of the Catholic.
The foundation, in human nature,
of the same thought terrifes every
man in the world when he thinks of
dying. But only the Catholic knows
what it really means. The Protestant,
the pagan, if he prays, asks not to die
without a loving hand to support his
head and to close his eyes. It is the
only sacrament of love and forgive
ness and blessing that he knows
about. Whatever he may call it, his
soul cringes in the fear of dying un-
blessed.
From Father Driscoll, walking at
the head of the coffin, to the last
Catholic child, trailing away at the
end of the procession, every soul was
awed and absorbed in that one idea
that life should thus be snatched
out Of the world. Harry Lloyd, as a
part Of life, as man who had been
deliberately murdered or had been
killed by the accidental discharge of
a gun in the hands of one of John
Sargent's guards, could be forgotten
for the time.
The Catholic mind, trained as it is
and stepped in the mysteries, the mind
that is illumined, for instance, to
sense the Real Presence under the
veil of bread, looks naturally through
the attendant wrappings of death, sees
the body tragedy for what it is, but
knows that the soul of experience is
the reality. This is why-and the out
slider is never able to understand it
a crowd of Catholics can walk the
street and pray as unaffectedly as if
each were kneeling alone in the dark.
1t Is not mysticism in any usual sense.
1t is not mysticism at all. Your
Catholic is the veriest realist of all
the world But the real for him has
infinitely wider meaning than it has
for his neighbors. That is the diff
ference.
Jane Lloyd knelt alone at the head
of the coffin when it had come to rest
over the grave. So she had walked
alone all the way from. her home to
the church and from the church here.
Her grief was her own. She was in
every way the sister of the big, grim
man who had now for four months
been the body and soul of the strike
in Milton-Jim Lloyd, who was now
in jail accused, falsely, as all knew, of
having conspired to blow up John
Sargent's mill. She was tall, tense
faced, dark girl, as like her elder
brother as a. woman is ever like a
man. Neither of them had ever
thought of depending upon anyone in
the world for anything. The young
brother, Harry, had been her care
since the time when Jim Lloyd had
been big enough to go to work in
John Sargent's mill.
The mill had taken the years of her
own girlhood and turned them into a
mere succession of gray, slavish days,
which began and ended with the
punching of clock. The mill had
taken her father. The mill had taken
this brother, her baby, from her. The
mill and John Sargent, under the
name of law, had, in the very hour OF
her speeches. grief, taken her big
brother from her side. But none OF
these things had place in her mind
They were the mere marks and hedg
ings of life, some of them inevitable
some of them the patent sins of men
The reality was in following the
soul of the merry-eyed young brother
as she had so many times followed
the ways of his busy little feet-ur
the high dim path, to God. She had
business there. She had explanations
to make. Certain things must be
made clear. God should know that
the boy had not had the best Of
chances. Many times she had been
tired at night and had not seen that
he learned his Catechism. She was