Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/110

104 It takes about three hours to chant it in the ordinary monotone, and no normal human being could continue in real prayer so long. Indeed, the facility with which the solemn rows of chanting friars could be thrown into fits of laughter gave little token of their great earnestness. Incidents abounded and were highly appreciated. In Killarney we had a priest who read the prayers so furiously that he invariably got inextricably wrapped up in them and threw us novices into convulsions. At London, one day, our instructor, who led one side of the choir, suddenly raised the tone about an octave in the middle of the psalm. The head superior, who led the other side, disagreed with him (as usual); we were afraid to join with either, for they were both equally formidable to us, so we listened with interest as they continued the psalm to the end, chanting alternate verses at a distance of an octave and a half.

There was an asterisk, too, in the middle of each verse which occasioned much distraction; one of our friars received the permanent title of ‘The star’ in connection with it. F. Cuthbert, an amiable and excellent old friar, was superior of the small friary at Stratford; one member of the community was a stone-deaf old friar who had naturally dropped into the habit of going straight ahead with his share of the chanting, in sweet unconsciousness of the doings of his colleagues. As he paid little or no attention to the asterisk—which was a signal for pause—he was