Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/59

 the life of the priests. At that time it was a hopeless mystery to me, and it is principally from later observation and information that I am able to describe it. That it was far from a life of industry will be readily understood; occasional visits to the sick poor and the rendering of services to the secular clergy of the diocese constituted the whole of their external work. In our own church there was only one sermon per week, and there were six friars to share the work. Hence the greater portion of the day was at the personal disposal of the priest; and, as manual labour was considered beneath the dignity of the priest, and their irregular education had left them, with few exceptions, little or no taste for study, they were always eager for distractions to occupy their time. They were frequently to be met rowing or sailing on the lakes (always in their brown habits), or driving on side-cars through the loveliest parts of Kerry; and, in return, the parish priests whom they visited or assisted, paid frequent visits to the friary and helped them to fill up an idle hour with a cigar and a glass of whisky. A few years later, indeed, a large-minded superior transformed a conservatory in the centre of the garden into a cosy smoking-room, and his generosity was warmly and practically appreciated.

In point of fact, both whisky and tobacco were forbidden in our constitutions, but I have never yet seen a constitution in which a theologian could not find a loophole and pass through it with unruffled