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 It is related that some Dominicans, while on a journey, had to take shelter with the Franciscans. There was so little in the house, that one of the Franciscans ran out to beg food for the guests, and returned with a jug of beer. They sat down to the table and tried their best to behave as if it was tolerably well furnished, until at last the humour of the situation struck them so forcibly that they all burst into shouts of laughter, to the great astonishment of their Dominican guests. More characteristic still is a beautiful epilogue by an English friar who, when ill, saw his guardian angel enter the room and seat himself by his bedside. After him came two devils, who accused the friar of all the things that he had done amiss in his life. At last one of the devils said to the other: "Besides he is so frivolous; he laughs and makes jokes and cuts all manner of capers". Then the guardian angel rose up and said to the devils: "Begone, so far you have spoken the truth, but now you find fault with his cheerfulness, and if you make out religion to be a sad and gloomy thing, you will drive his soul into the recklessness of despair and strangle his spiritual life". And so saying the guardian angel drove the fiends forth.

The tone of these anecdotes shows what was the mode of the friars' preaching. Their familiar style was unlike anything that had been heard before. They preached in the vulgar tongue, and it is doubtful whether this was not a new thing. Their preaching was at first of a very crude description—of the same kind as goes on at a Methodist revival in an English village—strong denunciation of sin, mixed with stories