Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/259

Rh to a priest to have many "houses to eat and drink in," and it is a grace to others to have none.

Those mission-houses are the happiest in which all things are, as far as possible, in common, where each is content with his honorarium, and his share of the Easter offerings, and of all oblations thrown into one sum, so as to exclude the unwise partialities of the people, and sometimes the temptations of priests.

8. "It is to be desired that the common recreation of priests should be made, as a rule, one with another at home rather than abroad. 'How good and how pleasant it is that brethren dwell in unity.' For to be present at the recreation in common confirms and strengthens charity, and gives day by day occasions of exercising it in word and deed."

Men are hardly known until they unbend themselves. Official relations are distant and artificial. In recreation the man comes out through the priest. There is no greater or surer test of humility, charity, and human kindliness. Pride, haughty manners, high looks, fastidiousness, contempt of what they think below them, criticism, and the habit of slighting inferiors in birth, culture, or refinement, are detected as by a chemical test in recreation—that is, in the easy talk at the common table or after it.