Are its folds not emblazoned with deeds of renown?"

When he was seven or eight years old, his parents removed to St. Louis.
He is said to have shown great aptitude in acquiring knowledge; and his
superior intellectual gifts, associated with an unusual reverence for
sacred things, early indicated the priesthood as his future vocation. In
the autobiographic poem, _Their Story Runneth Thus_, we have a
picture of his youthful character. With a warm heart, he had more than
the changefulness of the Celtic temperament. In his boyhood, as
throughout his maturity, he was strangely restless. As he says himself:--

"The boy was full of moods.
Upon his soul and face the dark and bright
Were strangely intermingled. Hours would pass
Rippling with his bright prattle--and then, hours
Would come and go, and never hear a word
Fall from his lips, and never see a smile
Upon his face. He was so like a cloud
With ever-changeful hues."

When his preliminary training was ended, he entered the Roman Catholic
seminary at Niagara, New York. He was moved to the priesthood by a spirit
of deep consecration. The writer of his memoir dwells on the regret with
which he severed the ties binding him to home. No doubt he loved and
honored his parents. But there was a still stronger attachment, which,
broken by his call to the priesthood, filled all his subsequent life with
a consecrated sorrow. It was his love for Ethel:--

"A fair, sweet girl, with great, brown, wond'ring eyes
That seemed to listen just as if they held