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Irish Jesuit Province
YesterdayAuthor(s): Mary CorbettSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 38, No. 439 (Jan., 1910), pp. 6-7Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20502732 .
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6 THE IRISH MONTHLY
number of hundreds, our library will be augmented by the addition of two hundred volumes, our own debts will be paid, we will give them receipts, ask no questions, and bid them go in peace.
"
Now why should these people treat a borrowed book differently from a borrowed umbrella ? Why not return them both punctually with thanks ? Why should not a subscription for a magazine be paid as scrupulously as a grocer's bill ? I have never forgiven an old P.P. in Co. Clare who is dead this
many a year-I never knew his name-who, when J. F. O'Gorman, the Limerick bookseller, could not get him to pay his bill for the Dublin Review, and threatened to cut him off his list, replied, " Thank God, Mr. O'Gorman, you are neither
my butcher nor my baker. " His beef and mutton and his bread-he could not let these;be stopped; but.literature, and especially religious literature, does not come, it seems, under the rules of common honesty.
I wonder are these and other similar social shortcomings more rife among us Catholics than among corresponding classes of Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Anglicans, and the various other sects?
This is as much as I have been able to fasten down on paper of the thoughts suggested to me by the question: " Are Catholic writers handicapped ? " The Catholic writer and the Catholic everything-else are handicapped chiefly by themselves-by their sloth, by their want of earnest purpose and quiet perseverance, by their readiness to be content with much less than their best; worse still, by positive neglect of duty, by idleness, by dissipation, by shameful weakness and sin. Let us take it seriously to heart, and see how far we can, with God's help, be free from all such handicaps and impediments in a, far more important matter than the wvriting of books-the making sure that our names be wvritten in the Book of Life.
YESTERDAY
NESTLING among the woods it lay, The home our happy childhood knew,
Where all the livelong summer day We sported where the hazels grew:
When we were gayest of the gay Dear heart 1 it seems but yesterday.
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YESTERDAY 7
And to those woods came back the days Of old Romance, and we were knights,
Who sought among " untrodden ways To rescue damsels in sore plights.
And we were gayest of the gay Dear heart! it seems but yesterday.
Sometimes Crusaders brave were we, And bound for distant Palestine,
On prancing steeds, armed cap-a-pie, And at our breast the Holy Sign.
Still we were gayest of the gay Dear heart! it seems but yesterday.
And ours was the enchanted wood, You were Rinaldo, bravest knight,
Who at behest of Godfrey, good, Broke old Ismeno's charm of might.
Ah ! we were gayest of the gay Dear heart ! it seems but yesterday.
In fiercer mood were Pirates bold Out yonder roared the surging sea
But here we stored the plundered gold, And here we rested peacefully.
And we were gayest of the gay Dear heart! it seems but yesterday.
To-day I walk these woods alone; - T-heir paths are haunted by your face;
Loud in the wind the branches moan; Dear Lord! is this the selfsame place
Where we were gayest of the gay, That unforgotten yesterday ?
MARY CORBETT.
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