men are alike, you would not gain by getting rid of these." "Well then, they must have come into this world not that I might save their souls, but to discipline mine through this earthly Purgatory. My friends, you must admit that no lot is so hard as that of a country priest who has to struggle to knock the truths of our holy religion into the thick skulls of these stupid peasants; they may take in the Catechism with their mother's milk but it does not stay by them, for such rude natures need coarse provender. They will fill their mouths with aves and litanies, often just for the sake of hearing themselves; they will bray out vespers and complines, but the sacred words seldom get any farther than their thirsty jaws; for all the good done to their hearts and stomachs they might as well have held their tongues; pagans they were before, and pagans they remain. We have been striving for hundreds of years to drive out the gnomes and fairies from our fields, woods, and streams; but though we crack our cheeks and lungs in the effort to blow out these infernal fires, so that we can make God's true light to shine in the black darkness of the world, we cannot prevail over these base spirits, vulgar superstitions, of the earth earthy. The people will still find some of this brood of Satan hidden in the trunks of aged oaks, or under
