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20 the 'revival' services for the good of souls, he has several important functions to discharge for his monastery—the procuring of funds and the attraction of neophytes. Five pounds per week, besides a large amount of alms for masses to be said, is the lowest price a friar will accept for his pious services: and in proportion to his success in inspiring vocations will be his superior's thoughtfulness in appointing him to the more comfortable missions. For the modern missionary is not so insensible to the charms of hospitality as his mediæval forerunner.

The ranks of the secular clergy are recruited by similar methods. Large numbers of boys, usually of the middle and poorer classes, are drafted annually into the preparatory seminaries to be preserved jealously in their vocation if they have one, or inspired with one if they have not. Parents and parish priests are continually on the watch for symptoms of the Divine call, and in the case of clever quiet boys the wish is not infrequently father to the thought.

Finally, a word must be here said of the vocation of nuns: more will be said of them in the following chapter. It is true that the proportion of women who take the veil in maturer years is much larger than that of men; whatever may be their ultimate attitude it must be admitted that there is a large amount of earnestness and religious sincerity in the vocations of women. Still the number of young girls who are received into nunneries is lamentably high, and the