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THE Pope was dead, and, feeling in the same condition as to my examinations, I determined to go into Boston to see the services. I had a vague impression, arising perhaps from my experience of St. Patrick's Day, that something green would be appropriate. Accordingly, I borrowed a green necktie from a Freshman friend next door, and set forth. Arriving at my destination, I succeeded in forcing a way through an immense crowd of the faithful with what clothing a reasonable man would expect to have left at such a time. Once in, I saw around me all sorts and conditions of people. There were men with collars and without neckties, and vice versa; women with beards, and women with elbows seemingly enlarged for the time; women with bandaged faces, and women without, but bearing marks of one life-long toothache. What I particularly noticed was the grief that seemed to pervade all. One woman with a face like a baked apple called in the greatest despair, unceasingly, "Miss Flynn, O Miss Flynn !" Presently she burst into tears, and propounded two questions to her neighbors in general, the first relative to a mother's feelings, and, failing to receive an answer, the next whether any one had anything about them to keep a poor widow from fainting. It transpired shortly after that Miss Flynn, affected by the solemnity of the day, had given free license to a craving appetite; and, having inadvertently fallen asleep, had been propped up against a neighboring pillar, whence she was rescued and dragged away by her friend the Baked Apple.
I took the seat left vacant by a stout man who had been ejected for loudly disputing a friend who asserted that Rome was in Egypt. Here I was addressed by a person who began a voluntary monologue upon the evils of Catholicism. "Beginning," he said, "with Asia, and spreading through England, Italy, and its islands, the bigotry of the Catholic church came over to - " His geography failing him, I suggested Samoa. Unhappy venture! He began with Samoa, and opened a controversy upon the question of our country's buying it. As he turned his head, however, at the sound of the Introit, I slipped out. As I followed in the steps of my friends, "Alas! Miss Flynn," said I, "the bigotry of Catholicism has made too many like you. If your only religion is in the rosary and the credo, God help you, the blame lies not at your door.
H. R.
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