Cura of New Gerona, and his parentage was the only thing remarkable
about him. He was not merely the son of a priest, but his grandfather
was a priest also.

The other was a middle-aged ecclesiastic, with a pleasant face and an
unfailing supply of good-humoured fun. Everybody seemed to get
acquainted with him directly, and to become quite confidential after
the first half-hour; and a drove of young men followed him about
everywhere. His reverence kept up the ball of conversation continually,
and showed considerable skill in amusing his auditors and drawing them
out in their turn. It is true the jokes which passed seemed to us mild,
but they appeared to suit the public exactly; and indeed, the Padre was
quite capable of providing better ones when there was a market for
them.

We found that though a Spaniard by birth, he had been brought up at the
Lazarist College in Paris, which we know as the training-school of the
French missionaries in China; and we soon made friends with him, as
everyone else did. A day or two afterwards we went to see him in
Havana, and found him hard at his work, which was the superintendence
of several of the charitable institutions of the city--the Foundling
Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum, and others. His life was one of incessant
labour, and indeed people said he was killing himself with over-work,
but he seemed always in the same state of chronic hilarity; and when he
took us to see the hospitals, the children and patients received him
with demonstrations of great delight.

I should not have said so much of our friend the Padre, were it not
that I think there is a moral to be got out of him. I believe he may be
taken as a type, not indeed of Roman Catholic missionaries in general,