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THE WIT AND WISDOM
OF JOHN AYSCOUGH








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º Qºbe Eingelug 5eries
THE
VVIT AND VVISDOM
OF
JOHN AYSCOUGH
CHOSEN AND EDITED
By
SCANNELL. O'NEILL
AUTHOR OF
“watchwords FROM Doctor BRownson,”
etc.
NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO
BENZIGER BROTHERS
PUBLISHERs of
PRInters to The
BENZIGER's MAGAZINE
HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE


TO
M. I. M.


FOREWORD
THE selections in this little book
will, the compiler feels certain,
show to the full the real great-
ness of John Ayscough's power
—his originality, his thought, his
insight, his range of experience,
observation, and sympathy;
above all, his never-failing ele-
vation of spiritual feeling and
judgment, speaking in language
brilliant and forcible, rising often
to splendour and magnificence.
The Right Reverend Mon-
signor Bickerstaffe-Drew was
born in 1858, the son of the late
vii


Foreword
Rev. H. Lloyd Bickerstaffe and
Elizabeth Mona Brougham (now
Mrs. Brent), daughter of the Rev.
Pierce William Drew, Rector of
Youghal, County Cork, Ireland.
He was educated at Lichfield
Grammar School and Oxford
University. In 1878 he was
received into the Church, studied
for the priesthood, and was or-
dained in 1884. He became an
army chaplain, and has served
as Senior Chaplain to the Forces
successively at Plymouth, Malta,
and Salisbury Plain. In 1903
he was raised to the dignities
of Privy Chamberlain and
Domestic Prelate to the Pope;
and in 1912 received the higher
title of Protonotary Apostolic.
Hereceived from Pope Leo XIII.,
in 1901, the cross “pro Ecclesia
viii


Foreword
et Pontifice,” and has a personal
Jubilee Medal from Pius X. He
is a Knight Commander of the
Holy Sepulchre, and an original
member of Camera Pontifice
Maltese.
His chief works, written under
the pen-name of “John Ays-
cough,” are — “A Roman
Tragedy,” “Marotz,” “Dro-
mina,” “San Celestino,” “Mez-
zogiorno,” “Hurdcott,” “Saints
and Places,” “Levia Pondera,”
“Faustula,” “Outsiders — and
In,” “Prodigals and Sons,”
“Gracechurch,” and “Monks-
bridge” (1914).
Milwaukee, WISCONSIN, U.S.A.,
Feast of St. Philip Neri, 1914.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE compiler acknowledges his
grateful indebtedness to the
author, publishers, and editors,
who so generously permitted
him the use of extracts for this
book. His thanks are due to
Messrs. Chatto and Windus,
Longmans, Green and Co.,
Smith, Elder and Co., in Eng-
land; to Messrs. Putnam's Sons
Company, B. Herder, Benziger,
and Longmans, Green and Co.,
in the United States; also to
the editors of The Ave Maria,
The Catholic World, The Universe
(London), American Catholic
Quarterly, The Magnificat, etc.
xi


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* …：）：）：）:）：）：）*， **- →→→→


THE WIT AND WISDOM
OF JOHN AYSCOUGH
-º-
A PARTING year cannot go empty-
handed ; three score and ten
are the golden coins life is apt
to promise for our spending,
and one of them (whether our
stock be really seventy or no)
he carries off in his fist. What
has he left us for it 2 Nay, what
did we buy with it? There is
only One who can answer, and
He will not—yet.
The Universe.
Time watching with dry smile
how Eternity draws on.
2. Levia Pondera.
I B


The Wit and Wisdom
We need not too tediously
wander back over the dull,
stubbled fields of the dead year
to scan if there be, after all,
Some forgotten gleanings of good
grain belonging to us: God will
do that for us.
The Universe.
May the Child Jesus bring
you all happiness and grace.
Hurdcotſ.
East and west, north and
south, Thou art, Who art every-
where. Lodestar of the souls
of men, draw my soul to Thine !
Sun of our day, warm my heart
with the rays of Thine !
Marotz.
2


of John Ayscough
- The Past rests somewhere ours:
the future seems
All, all our own in flattery of
dreams;
But still the present mocks us
and escapes.
The bliss we said should be
“to-day” ne'er came.
Live to its birth : abortive and
still-born
It killed its mother, Hope, and
waits forlorn.
Our present hour is mock'd with
silly shapes
Of what we look'd for; but the
promised flames
Die in dull smoulderings and
choking dark
Folds round to-day : and still
the mocking spark
Mocks on and cries, “To-morrow
comes thy bliss,
3


of John Ayscough
It all comes to this, that life
is worship: service is a servile-
sounding word, and service must
really be servile when the master
is not greater than the servant;
so one is brought to look above
man for his only worthy Master.
Mezzogiorno.
The past is a dead king who
makes no peers, and rewards
his living courtiers with no rib-
bons or stars: he has not a penny
in his pocket.
Levia Pondera.
The lips of the Church are
never silent, but from the four
winds the breath of the Sacrifice
goes up for ever from many lands
in one eternal tongue.
Saints and Places.
5


of John Ayscough
Another hour gone—another
trickle of time lapsed into the
bitter ocean of eternity.
Mezzogiorno.
Where have we been all these
truant years P what silly, ugly
things have we been teaching
ourselves were wise and fine,
outside the school where the
humble Master has been asking,
asking that the three and thirty
years of His alphabet might spell
for us the only word we need—
love? Birth and death, miracle
and parable, the long, silent
years after Bethlehem and before
Calvary, pity and patience, heal-
ing and help, His daily toil for
His daily bread, all the thirty
and three letters that made that
7


of John Ayscough
Ah, how mean we are ; we
stab and hurt those we should
cherish, and then look to Heaven
to undo our work. We twist the
thread of life into hard knots and
call on God and His saints to
untie them for us.
The Magnificat.
“I am not very clever at
analysis of rights and wrongs
. . . but it seems to me that what
one has to do is to take our luck,
whatever it is: if it's bad, try
and make it better; if it won't
get better, to do the best one
can with it as it stands. And
bad or good, to remember that
someone else is no doubt worse
off, and do them a decent turn
if one gets the chance.”
Outsiders—and In.
9


The Wit and Wisdom
. . . Death is but a sharp corner
near the beginning of life's pro-
cession down eternity. . . .
Outsiders—and In.
There are days in our lives
which never fade into age, but
keep, in our deepest memory,
a perennial youth ; and such
days have mostly been marked,
not by any great event of special
importance to our earthly career,
advancement, wealth, or what
not, but simply by a peculiar
beauty that hangs about them—
like an aura. They were not
worldly days; and so, as we
olden with our passage through
the world, they stay young, and
we love them as pure youthful
things are loved.
Saints and Places.
IO


of John Ayscough
To many this life is the porch
of Heaven, full of its overheard
harmonies, shining already in
its sure dawn.
Dromina.
From many lands there come
the silly noise of war, and sordid
wranglings of race and dynasty,
but still, year in, year out, the
Fisherman keeps ward in his
lonely watch-tower among the
Seven Hills beside the yellow
Tiber, and straining ever eager
eyes athwart the waste of waters,
tempest-borne and darkling, he
watches for his Master, and if
perchance he may, to catch the
souls of men.
Saints and Places.
i i


of John Ayscough
The reason why scruples are
a mischief is that they are a
forgetfulness of God's kindness.
Marotz.
I have stood in St. Peter's
when, in a late autumn after-
noon, fifty thousand pilgrims
showed like a dark shadow on
its floor, and only high up, hun-
dreds of feet above our heads,
long yellow shafts of lightseemed
caught in a mesh of gold; the
crowd was of many nations and
many tongues, of conflicting
political aims and interests; the
wise, maybe, and the unwise,
lettered and unlearned, the
tender and the rough, the refined
and the coarse. Then, from the
great chapel, where Sixtus and
I3


The Wit and Wisdom
Julius lie before the Blessed
Sacrament for ever, came forth
a procession, not striking by
force of numbers, but striking
in all besides. A soldier-group,
that seemed ending a march
started in the Renaissance, tall,
stalwart, manly, erect, strong in
all the gracious strength of
youth; a group of prelates, in
princely purple; courtiers in
grave Spanish dress, sedately
black; more soldiers, and in
their midst, a carrying-chair
closely shut, whose occupant
the people could not yet see.
Slowly, to the bottom of the
shadowy great church, the pro-
cession moved down, and there
the chair gave up its burden,
and the old, old man that had
sat hidden within it crept forth
I4


of John Ayscough
and took his seat in another,
like a throne, resting on a broad,
flat stage, that now was raised
on to men's shoulders, so that in
the dim light the bent, white
figure could at last be seen.
Then, in all the packed crowd,
for a moment was a hush, like a
gasp; and then a rustle, as when
a gust of wind shakes the forest,
and all the black mass was
whitened with a flutter like
Snow, but that it was flung
upward; and one great cry, in a
hundred tongues, broke, like a
moan or a sigh at first, and burst
into such acclaim as gripped the
heart and made the ears swim
and tingle that heard only a
single word: “The Pope 1"
Levia Pondera.
15


of John Ayscough
Your tongue is a bad sword in
other people's hands.
Faustula.
This, then, was the new and
true office of all Arts in the
Church: they were to be her
mouthpiece and her witness,
bearing, under her impression
a lovely testimony to Divine
beauty. In all the ugly and
mean jostle of common life they
were to remind man of the
eternal and ineffable serenity of
God's perfection. Man's worship
they should no longer seize
halfway to Heaven: but, with
fingers ever pointed upward,
they were to bid him look above
the world for the supreme and
sole object of adoration.
Levia Pondera.
17 C


The Wit and Wisdom
The Catholic Church has been
the best guardian of liberty,
because she has been the best
guardian of law.
Mezzogiorno.
The world can, I think, be
bought, if you are ready to pay
its price, which is your own self.
Monksbridge.
Make little of a trouble, which,
dark as it seems, must come
from God, in Whose every pur-
pose there is pity and most
fatherly remembrance.
Dromina.
18


of John Ayscough
The ripe fruit of the old ways
was in literature such poets as
Dante, in sculpture and painting
such masters as Michaelangelo
and Rafael; the latest, but for-
ever unripe and unwholesome
fruit of the new revolt, is in
Art—God save the mark l—the
Post-Impressionists and Futur-
ists; in literature the Massa
Damnata of current fiction—if
that can be called current which
loves to crawl and sniff its
inspiration from the dung and
slime of a civilization turned
rotten. Pointing no longer up-
ward beyond man, they seek to
reflect man only, and him they
reflect, littled and more mean,
more bestial and more base.
Levia Pondera.
I9


of John Ayscough
Charity is always called
feminine, but it is in reality
bi-sexual, and one single charity
is always very liable to breed
another. Once you have allowed
the charity microbe to get into
your system, it propagates
alarmingly.
Outsiders—and In.
We must, I know, live in the
present and act in it, but by
realizing that other ages were
as much alive once as we are
now, we are made to realize that
matters which absorb us to-day
may not, after all, be of such
final significance as we suppose;
that our fuss and fume, our
rancours and our jealousies, are
not of eternal importance? It
23


The Wit and Wisdom
seems to me that from the pages
of high romance we may draw a
more serene patience, and a more
practical remembrance that it is
by God, and not by us, that the
world is ruled; that somehow,
after all our boggling and our
crossness, His providence unties
our knots, and may correct our
blunders. We see our own
follies and our own violence
reflected in the calm mirror of
the past, and yet see that the
world was there then, as it is
now, and that God was over the
world all the time; as the world
is here now, and God is over us
all still.
Levia Pondera.
24


of John Ayscough
The libellers of the Church's
moral rectitude are not the
learned, and the sincere, nor the
clear-minded, but the shallow
and ignorant, the malignant, and
they who invert the quality of
charity that thinketh no evil and
rejoiceth not in iniquity.
Irish Ecclesiastical Review.
The White Disguise God
wears among us, littling Him-
self to us, that the soul may not
lack that which the body needs—
food: that no one may be alone,
in life, or in the narrow pass
between life-partial and life-
complete.
Mezzogiorno.
27


The Wit and Wisdom
His knowledge of the people
was like a gallery of rough but
sympathetic portraits, wanting
neither in character nor origin-
ality. He neither puffed their
virtues nor glossed over their
faults, and some of the latter he
knew to be, plainly, vices. But
even these he took for granted,
without surprise or much dis-
comfort. That God had made
people as they were, he assumed
with a scandalous disregard of
theology, but a most practical
result of tolerance.
Marotz.
The loss of faith does not tend
to cheerfulness in individuals,
and never will tend that way in
nations.
Levia Pondera.
28


of John Ayscough
Though in His Name you
moved mountains; though you
called to yonder far-off sea in
His Name and bade it come
hither, and it obeyed; though
you sold every little thing you
have . . . and gave the money
to the poor; though you let
them who deny His Name take
your bodies and burn them, He
would not be content if you held
back one thing—one coin in all
this great price; just the one
thing every man wants to keep
—himself: his heart, his own
dear secret will.
The Catholic World.
The Pope is barely Catholic
enough for some converts.
Mezzogiorno.
29


The Wit and Wisdom
“Some folks enjoys turble bad
health; but I've lived out-a-doors
all my days, and I reckon it keeps
me sweet. I don't ketch cold;
times it rains for weeks, times
it snows a lot ; but I'm friends
wi' all the sorts o' weather, and
don't quarrel wi' 'em, nor they
wi' me.”
Gracechurch.
Life is not all tears, though
tears are often needed as long
as sin and sorrow last ; but
neither is life all lamentation.
God sends iPHis kindly breath
to dry our tears, and smiles out
of Heaven to see us doing our
best.
The Magnificat.


of John Ayscough
When one has been out-of-
doors in early morning on such
a day as this, when the pearl
and silver and opal of the dawn
have yielded to a grayness like
wool, a kind of wistful regret-
fulness is apt to come against
the spirits: the morning seems
far away, as if it belonged to a
former part of life: its trivial
events and features hang in the
memory like a picture.
Hurdcott.
Really good manners are a
delicate bloom on the ripest
fruit of Christianity : a last
refinement of the civilization
Christianity brought into the
world. That is why they are
grown old-fashioned.
Levia Pondera.
31


The Wit and Wisdom
There are a few to whom
nothing is meaningless, to
whom life itself is so noble
that everyone brought into their
sphere of it is ennobled.
Hurdcott.
The true artist attempts no
more than a corner, a group, a
single trivial-seeming, character-
teaching episode. We know
better what Holland was like,
in his day, from a tiny panel by
Tèniers, than we could learn
from a contemporary map of
the Low Countries as big as
a dining-table.
American Catholic Quarterly.
|
32


of John Ayscough
I hate new things. Old, old
things, nearly worn out as they
look, are those that make you
comfortable.
Ave Maria.
Some men and women are
born with a tendency to the
supernatural, to intimacy with
God. Such people are not always
“good”; they may commit sin
on sin, until sin becomes a habit,
but an acquired habit, and it may
need a huge, almost miraculous,
interposition of grace to save
them. But often the super-
natural habit is stronger with
such people than the sins into
which they slip, and through all
their faults one perceives plainly
a religious cast of heart or mind.
Mezzogiorno.
33 D


The Wit and Wisdom
One of the Sisters, a dear
little Austrian countess, showed
me over it (Nazareth House,
London). I found her scrubbing
a passage, with her habit tidily
“kilted up,” as they say in Scot-
land—the merriest creature, who
seemed to make homely little
jokes for the sake of laughing
rather than as if she thought
them very witty. But she was
as tender and reverent with the
broken-down old men and women
as if they were ex-kings and ex-
queens in exile. And to see her
with the orphan children was
quite enough to prove the silli-
ness of calling nuns “old maids,
dressed alike, in a big house."
It seemed ridiculous to call those
children orphans with such
mothers as God had found for
34


of John Ayscough
them. And yet if those ladies
had really been old maids, living
alone with their cats and their
crotchets, contributing to the
universe a little whist and a
little vinegar, no one on earth
would find fault with them, or
want Government inspectors to
go and see whether they beat
or starved or bullied their maid-
Servants.
“Letters from Home,” in
“The Ave Maria.”
. Beauty is accounted meri-
torious because no one by any
degree of merit can achieve it.
Levia Pondera.
35


The Wit and Wisdom
Each sand that helps to make
the yellow girdle round the sea,
or unseen to pave her deepest
floor, each worm that weaves
her silken arras ere she dies,
each leaf that whispers to the
night, each gale that trumpets
“God"—each has succeeded.
Only man, made in God's image
—only he has twisted the Divine
purpose and ruined the Divine
likeness.
Marotz.
I have always felt rich enough.
No one with unnumbered friends
can feel poor.
The Ave Maria.
36


of John Ayscough
Heresy and schism produce no
saints. Protestantism, begin-
ning most disreputably, has
never attained a height greater
than respectability: sanctity re-
mains one of the Four Prero-
gatives of the Church.
Saints and Places.
Thou that givest me to-day,
make it Thine own. When Life's
day sets may my day dawn to
Thee.
Marotz.
“No healthy man ever was
meek yet. “As meek as Moses!'
Why, if ever a man had a tem-
per!" -
Mezzogiorno.
37


The Wit and Wisdom
The hurrying minutes sped,
the night grew cold, but there
was a happy light already shin-
ing on the face of the dying
woman—some first flushing of
that light that fills the City
where is need of neither sun
nor moon, for the Lamb is the
Light thereof. The warmth of
His Divine pity and compassion
was in her willing soul, and the
long night was almost past. High
above the sobbing of the wintry
winds the heavenly harmonies
were breaking, the Voice of the
Beloved was clear within herears.
And so, out into the great radi-
ance that ends this night of ours,
she passed. A valley of tears
had this brief journey been, and
now all tears were wiped away.
Prodigals and Sons.
38


of John Ayscough
We mostly weep for happi-
ness here below, as if remem-
bering how sorrow jostles all
our joy, and how swiftly one
melts into the shadow of the
other. - -
The Catholic World.
The first Adam had no child-
hood, but stood up near the tree
of ruin a complete man. The
second Adam came step by step
to His tree of reconciliation by
all the slow humility of dumb
babyhood, childhood, boyhood,
and youth. Even redemption
was not enough. God and man
must be identified in every phase
of human life, so that man could
never say: “God was never
this. This cross I bear alone.”
Faustula.
39


The Wit and Wisdom
“Even good people,” said Poor
Sister, “sometimes seem unable
to mount higher on the ladder of
perfection than a chronic abhor-
rence of sin. They are always
thinking of it. On the ladder
that Jacob saw there were only
angels."
Marotz.
He had guessed long ago the
answer to life's great riddle of
happiness, knowing that it is to
be secured most surely by him
who is determined to seek it in
striving to add to the happiness
of others for the love of God.
Prodigals and Sons.
4O


The Wit and Wisdom
raised to God. Is that an acci-
dent? The simple will not be-
lieve it one. They believe, not
in accident, but in Providence
and His inspiration.
So the stones preach : if they,
being dedicated to a Divine
service, can be so noble and so
exquisite that men are fain to
confess that they who built such
places at all events believed in
God, what service should not we
render, who know what we are
about, who need not wait for
others to build us up into a
Temple of the Holy Spirit of
God, or let chance decide
whether from the quarry we go
to make a part of His Church
or go to help build some new
devil-temple on earth P
Levia Pondera.
42


The Wit and Wisdom
To the bulk of mankind the
absence of law appears freedom;
it is only a minority that has
ever willingly recognized that
in the most perfect law is the
most perfect liberty.
The Universe.
God Himself has no history,
being eternal ; but man's history
is the complete record of his
relations with God, in which
the patience of His love is the
connecting thread on which it
is strung.
Mezzogiorno.
I hate the man who wrote
footnotes; they are a plague and
a nuisance.
Levia Pondera.
44


of John Ayscough
Honestly, I confess that the
first attraction of the Catholic
Church itself lay, for me, in the
glamour that lay around it as a
great, wonderful thing, belong-
ing to the old, noble past, when
all the world was gilded with a
light since faded from sea and
land. I only mention this be-
cause I think it has been so with
many others: that at first they
drew near with reverent step to
do homage to an incomparable
relic . . . and presently found
that the relic was more, that
the Campo Santo for which they
had brought only wistful sighs
and tears was alive; that it spoke
still, and with a living voice.
Gracechurch.
45


The Wit and Wisdom
Is it pretended that our emo-
tions were all given us by Satan?
He certainly aims at getting hold
of them : why should we not
pre-occupy them for God? Only
let the emotion be honest and
genuine. . . .
Irish Ecclesiastical Review.
God made the world, and all
men in it; all they have is His,
and all their good comes from
Him. All their ill is of their
own making ; and yet they
cannot mend it by themselves.
Only He Who created can re-
create. Men can make them-
selves sick, but perfect health
can come back only at the word
of the Divine Physician.
Devia Pondera.
46


of John Ayscough
Mankind insists on being
happy; if it can't believe in
the happiness God's Church
promises, it will run to the devil
for whatever he has to give
instead.
Mezzogiorno.
He does not ask us to do what
we cannot do. When we know
He asks us to do something,
then we know that we can do it,
though we have thought it a
moral impossibility or a physi-
cal: it is a physical impossibility
for a man with a withered hand
to stretch it out : but He bade
the man stretch it out, and he
did. . . .
Irish Ecclesiastical Review.
47


The Wit and Wisdom
Man was made in God's Image
that we, who cannot see the
God, may divine Him beyond
the man—by condescension of
the absolutely spiritual to the
half-spiritual, half-material, that
can rise beyond the material
only by steps. And by a more
stupendous condescension God,
knowing man's proneness to
adore man, to rest in the image,
instead of hastening upward to
the Divine Original, became
Man Himself, that we might
adore man and be blameless.
Mezzogiorno.
Those two meek gates of
God's life on earth, Bethlehem
and Calvary.
Faustula.
48


of John Ayscough
To her no less a breath than
God's moved every leaf that
fluttered; every flower was a
hint of greater loveliness, every
fruitful vine an instalment of
infinite bestowal.
Marotz.
The alliance between vanity
and shame is of so long standing
that they appear to be almost
naturally related. And there is
a sort of shame that is merely
vanity: such is the shame of not
being in the fashion.
Levia Pondera.
God has use for tools of all
sorts: all fit the Divine Work-
man's Hand, and will not break
in it, or wound it, if they are of
true temper. -
Hurdcott.
49 E


The Wit and Wisdom
One really good Catholic does
more, I honestly believe, to con-
vert his non-Catholic neighbours
than a whole course of sermons.
The Universe.
A nun in domestic life is very
trying to her family. . . . The
life of the cloister is only con-
venient in the cloister. Some
good girls try and lead it at
home, and it is very tiresome
for their mothers and sisters to
be treated as lay-sisters.
Marotz.
The greatest thing about every
Catholic is that he is one.
Levia Pondera.
5o


of John Ayscough
Ritualism always did seem to
me as poor a substitute for
Catholicity as marmalade proved
to the Eton boy for butter.
Don't you remember, in a “Day
of My Life,” the big Etonian
finding his fag trying to fry his
morning rasher in marmalade,
because it said on the pot it
formed an excellent substitute
for butter P
“Letters from Home,” in
“The Ave Maria.”
One only finishes up argu-
ments with dull persons.
Faustula.
I am always happy among
treeS.
Dromina.
5 I


The Wit and Wisdom
The Church's claim lies in
what she is, not in what the
most eloquent tongue can say of
her; it is a finer work to help
in making true the best that
could be said of her effect upon
her children than to run about
declaring what that effect is.
American Catholic Quarterly.
Not always does God allow
men to be His almoners, or even
an angel bring His message;
sometimes He comes Himself.
Mezzogiorno.
In love is no vexing; that
belongs to the petty: the thorns
we set ourselves upon the stalk
of the Divine perfect flower.
Faustula.
52


The Wit and Wisdom
It is odd to see ladies who
would not read a “suggestive"
novel, parade themselves in
costumes that are simply not
modest, with no better excuse
than that such dress is the
fashion, which means that it was
recently novel.
Levia Pondera.
Happiness was inalienable,
his birthright; but to attain it
he must fling away the desire
for it. At all events, every effort
to catch it in a human net must
be given up as childish. Being
infinite it must proceed from
infinity, and there is nothing
infinite but God.
San Celestino.
54


of John Ayscough
Nothing wears like pride.
Mezzogiorno.
It is a good thing to tell out
one's notions. Then, if neces-
sary, they are likely to dry up,
like puddles when the sun gets
at them.
Dromina.
One who knew books well
said that he knew no spiritual
reading better than Thackeray's
“Vanity Fair.” That I honour
as a great saying. . . . Yet
“Vanity Fair" is by no means
all white light; it would never
satisfy those critics who demand
of the romanticist that he should
paint only white figures in clear
relief against a white back-
ground.
Levia Pondera.
55


The Wit and Wisdom
That the loss of her visible
presence must be a deep sorrow
to them she knew ; but she could
not think of it as an absence:
being with God could not re-
move her from them, since He
is everywhere. With God she
could be nearer to them and
more useful.
Faustula.
Friends who love each other,
and keep together, grow like
one another, because they love
the same sort of things, and do
the same sort of things, and talk
of the same sort of things, and
think of the same sort of things.
Are you grown like Jesus Christ,
or are you growing like the
devil P You can judge by your
habits.
The Catholic World.
56


The Wit and Wisdom
The Weaker Brethren. They
are decent people in general,
and never give scandal: they
take it about once a week. To
do so they esteem a sign of deli-
cacy of conscience. The Saints
were singularly backward in
taking scandal: it was their own
faults that shocked them; but
the Saints were never Weaker
Brethren.
Levia Pondera.
'Tis those who have no tears
for Time that must weep in
Eternity.
The Ave Maria.


of John Ayscough
What the Weaker Brethren
would insist upon is that all
Catholics should be, like them-
selves, Superior Persons, where-
as the Church only wants to
lead us all to perfection, and that
by many mean streets; for all
decent people cannot inhabit the
best quarters of the town. The
Church's purview includes noisy
places, and vulgar, too; she has
never proclaimed herself a mono-
poly of the genteel.
Ecclesiastical Review.
The plough must be the work
God puts into our hands to do.
But he who finds that he has set
his plough to the wrong field
and moves it away is only brave,
and is worthy of Him.
Marotz.
61


of John Ayscough
say, “To-morrow !" You try to
catch hold of the “four ends of
sacrifice"; and the first thought
of the first gets hold of you in-
stead, and swallows you up as
if it were a distraction. You say
to yourself, “I want to hear
Mass"; and it is the Conse-
cration and the Elevation before
you have got ready to adore
Him when He shall come. It
is hopeless, because it is fruition,
and like heaven, where there is
no hope. You cannot be in
time to greet the King. His
Majesty has been there, and has
passed, before you have hung
out your little scraps of loyalty
at the windows to let Him see
you know He will come.
“Letters from Home,” in
“The Ave Maria.”
63


of John Ayscough
- Do we remember that after all
we live in an atmosphere alien
from our faith ? That the com-
mon opinion about us is founded
on the assumptions that we have
always denied: that every news-
paper breathes them, almost
every public speech of orators
and politicians? That the more
we grow like our pleasant neight
bours, the less we may be re-
sembling Catholics 2
Levia Pondera.
For three centuries and a half
the pulpits of all the old Catholic
cathedrals in England have been
listening to an alien teaching,
but the cathedrals have never
turned Protestant.
Levia Pondera.
65 F


The Wit and Wisdom
God knows what He is about,
and gives us most of what is
necessary, and only a little of
what we could do without alto-
gether.
Marotz.
Her great loneliness in the
world gave her a Friend whom
otherwise she might never have
known so well, and her quiet
and sweet trust in Him, when
she might have felt friendless
altogether, He rewarded by
sending her many other friends.
Fernando.
We are always assuming that
people who are good in little
things are sure to be good in
great. -
s Mezzogiorno.
68


of John Ayscough
Against the Church hell's
gates shall not prevail ; but
against you and me they may
prevail, unless we take good
heed. She shall be always one;
let us mind ourselves, that in
everything we are one with her.
There is, then, the influence of
environment to beware of.
Levia Pondera.
Youth must go; every golden
day of it must be paid out, and
cannot be taken back ; but need
its treasures be spent for
nothing 2
Prodigals and Sons.
No letters spell love, no words
can express it. That's why there
are so few good poets.
Dromina.
69


The Wit and Wisdom
Vanity, having made herself
thoroughly at home, sought a
mate and found one in the irrit-
able spirit of Novelty: their
union produced Fashion, now
very old, but condemned to a
chronic second-childhood.
Levia Pondera.
The whisper of breeze and
tree must mean to her God's
benediction, or it would be mean-
ingless; the smile of summer was
nothing to her except as trans-
lating the unseen smile of the
Lord of earth and sun.
Gracechurch.
That sharp twist in Life's road
which we call Death.
Faustula.
7o


of John Ayscough
This little house is a low porch
of heaven to those whom God
wills should wait here, till the
golden gate opens, and we can
pass out of this shadowy dawn
into the full day.
Marotz.
There was nothing to moan
about, no matter for tears; the
heart within him was a hearth
where God sat at home with
him, warmly.
San Celestino.
What a thing love is 1 After
all, it is God, for God is it. No
wonder it makes the most un-
likely almost Divine.
Dromina.
71


The Wit and Wisdom
The modern sinner has a spite
against the authority that makes
sins of things he resolves to do;
he therefore flings the Old Man
of the Woods off his back alto-
gether; but not on that account
will he condone your offences
should they lie in directions
whither his own desires do not
tend. Your Agnostic is not hard
to shock.
Levia Pondera.
The unbelievers have no
Aquinas, agnosticism can have
no pope; though unnumbered
antipopes of agnosticism bid the
people take ship with them, on
a stormy voyage, for the dull
and bleak haven of indecision.
Levia Pondera.
72


of John Ayscough
Pleasure is the cheating
preface of pain, youth is the
prologue to dull age, time is
but a silly porch of inexorable
eternity, like the blind infancy
of death.
Marotz,
God does not give unfit goods
as we do; so even the final gift
of Heaven is not given till we
are ready, till we can accept it
without the burden of unfitness.
Mezzogiorno.
Charity does not blunt our
moral sense, but sheathes it :
cold steel needs a scabbard.
Marotz.
73


of John Ayscough
There are countless devout
persons whose worship of God
consists in nothing but asking
favours of Him. But there are
others who scarcely think of
asking anything, because it
seems to their ever-growing
appreciation that everything has
been done unasked, and every-
thing given out of an imperial
generosity that has never needed
reminder.
Hurdcott.
It is hopeless trying to bandy
generosities with God. We
soon cease to be so stupid as
to imagine He will be outdone.
Marotz.
Pleasure—base-born sister of
happiness.
Prodigals and Sons.
75


The Wit and Wisdom
Against many books much
may be urged, but the buying
of books has led few to financial
embarrassment.
Levia Pondera.
There was a warm smell from
the cedars like incense, only
cleaner and more subtle ; the
lights, netted with soft shadows,
hung above the high branches;
the pale mid-day twilight under-
neath had a colour of devout
silence.
Dromina.
He obeyed Joseph in the Holy
House where, of its three in-
mates, He was least, Who was
God and Master.
Faustula.
76


of John Ayscough
She loved the young and the
hopeful, always praying that
God would shelter their hopes,
and bring them to fragrant
blossom in the wide garden of
His providence.
Dromina.
Pope-folk are Peter-folk, and
Catholics are Peter's folk, hold-
ing unspilt and unsullied the
Peter-faith which Christ prom-
ised he should carry in his
storm-vexed ship unwrecked, till
this bitter sea of time is crossed
at last, and Peter's passengers
shall have been landed by him
on the shores of that other sea,
unvexed by cloud or storm, that
smiles beneath the great White
Throne of God.
Levia Pondera.
77


The Wit and Wisdom
Is the best home most sump-
tuous 2 Is it costly plenishing
or love that makes the home 2
Sam Celestino.
I often hear people declare
that they love reading, but have
no time for it, though they spend
most of their waking hours in
talking about nothing in parti-
cular.
Fernando.
Half the philanthropy of our
time is founded on disbelief in
God and the immortality of the
soul of man. When “charity”
becomes a department of the
Modern State, it is mostly be-
cause the State has no faith in
anything higher than man.
Levia Pondera.
78


The Wit and Wisdom
Oh purblind race of men I
How bitter are the punishments
we give ourselves, whereas
God's are always tender and
sweet, if we will take them with
sweetness and tenderness.
Mezzogiorno.
What was the use of friend-
ship if it were for fair weather
wear only 2
Hurdcott.
This marvellous sacredness of
youth—how the Beloved of Love
Himself felt it. He, who had
leant near the Heart of the Son
of Man, though he lived to so
great age, could not grow old,
nor wither with wintry carpings
at youth.
Levia Pondera.
8o


of John Ayscough
The world hung for her one
small lamp in the darkness of
God's creation, lighting but a
little path marked by the
splendour of His footsteps.
Dromina.
All real goodness is from
above, of course, but there is
something visibly supernatural
about the goodness of the Irish.
Mezzogiorno.
God Himself can lighten in a
brief moment the darkness of
a long life, as He can pardon in
a moment a life's offence.
Faustula.
8I G


The Wit and Wisdom
Faith has not intricate pro-
blems, but she has hidden
treasures; and to her children
she lets the shine of them peep
forth, the golden gleam of sub-
stance of things to be hoped for,
evidence of things that appear
not. Levia Pondera.
The devil can damn no one;
it is men who damn themselves.
Marotz.
It is a shame to speak as if
only bad influences are con-
tagious; unbelief has its mi-
crobes, and they attack souls
made ready for them by spiritual
apathy and evil living; but faith
is infectious, too.
The Universe.
82


of John Ayscough
He had always loved the
world : not exactly that which
proud people mean when they
talk of it, but the visible world
of mountains and plains and
valleys, of sapphire sea and opal
cloud, of secret-telling woods
and sedgy meadows by flat
streams, of flowers and winds,
and sunrise and noon, sunset
and sweet night. And in a way
he had loved God for making all
these things.
San Celestino.
Food and clothing and home-
shelter never have won love
yet.
Faustula.
83


The Wit and Wisdom
For my part I should be glad
if all the comic papers (one need
not read them) were written by
Catholics, and all the funny
plays, all the fairy-tales and
nursery-books, all the novels
that walk in hurried procession
through the libraries and cannot
walk too quick for me, and all
the other stuff one sees people
reading in trains . . . which is
certainly not literature, but
might be free of any graver
fault.
Levia Pondera.
The dear old realm of fairy-
land where nothing base is met,
only the strange, the deliciously
impossible, the lovely, and the
gloriously happy. . . .
Ecclesiastical Review.
84


of John Ayscough
We ought to be heroic, but
we are not all heroes; and it
calls for a singular degree of
courage to face the strict criticism
of our fellow-religionists who
are, as I think, ever ready to
demand of every Catholic that
may appear that he should prove
himself a Catholic Hercules—
or get out.
Ecclesiastical Review.
A man's thoughts are often
a truer picture of himself than
anything he does: for no man
ever yet rose above his highest
thought, or fell beneath his
lowest, and millions of men are
lower than their external con-
duct, as many are really higher
than sudden and isolated acts
of theirs.
The Universe.
85


of John Ayscough
He abhorred sentiment, and
through its light-wreathed morn-
ing mist I regarded everything
then. To this day it seems to
me that people are too hard on
it: it wears out quickly enough,
and the “realities of life” are
not always noble. Even a little
illusion is only a tenderness of
atmosphere that fills the horizon
with hope, and adds some beauty
to landscapes that are like to run
out plain enough.
Gracechurch.
I have always been a Royalist,
and had a great, loyal veneration
for kings; but I never thought
of any king with the extra-
ordinary passion of veneration
I had, as a young Protestant boy,
for the Pope.
The Ave Maria.
87


of John Ayscough
“In your sorrow we pray that
God may comfort you, and that
He, Whose only crown was of
thorns, may teach you that the
Way of Sorrows is the Royal
Road of the Most Holy Cross,
walking in which we are sure of
Him for our Fellow-Traveller,
Who never trod the path of
flowers, Whose empty palace
was a wind-swept Stable, Whose
first Throne was the Manger,
and Whose last was the out-
cast's Cross."
Dromina.
They talk at large about
education, but their first princi-
ple in education is elimination
of God.
Levia Pondera.
89


The Wit and Wisdom
There will always be, in every
society, a certain number of
people to whom it is a horrible
pleasure to think evil, and they
are seldom content to let their
evil ideas rot away in silence
within their own minds. What
they think, out of the wicked
treasure of their hearts, they
cruelly speak. Perhaps at the
Day of Judgment they will be
surprised at the extent and
gravity of the ruin their malice
has occasioned.
Prodigals and Sons.
The golden bridge of absence
on which we can go out to meet
our unchanged friends, who are
never any older.
Gracechurch.
90


of John Ayscough
In one sense I would submit
that there is no such a thing, aside
from such specialized subjects
as theology, as Catholic litera-
ture: in another that all litera-
ture, that is true literature at all,
is Catholic: that is, that all true
literature is a part of the common
inheritance which belongs to us
and to all men.
Levia Pondera.
The Church is a mother with
every sort of child, and she will
not shoulder out the imperfect,
though the perfect reflect her
inner mind and heart. Her
patience has to last as long as
the world.
The Universe.
9I


The Wit and Wisdom
God sets one here and another
there, and never asks one to do
another's work, or demands that
the adept with one tool or
weapon should bungle with
another.
American Catholic Quarterly.
To forget at will is beyond
our powers, but we can ignore.
The prerogative of memory
cannot be abdicated ; neverthe-
less we can, if our will be strong
enough, refuse to indulge in its
exercise : each individual act of
remembrance may be smothered
in its birth. Whether this would
in the long run save pain is
another question. To stifle an
insufferable memory does not
wear it out.
Mezzogiorno.
92


of John Ayscough
The more inward a man's
greatness, in proportion to the
external show of it, the more
substantial, and therefore last-
ing, his fame; the more he ex-
hausts his actual stock of himself
in visible production, the more
his immediate notoriety will be
perceived ; but, as most of his
acts and words are put out to
meet a temporary occasion, so
when the occasion has gone by,
his reputation is liable to fall
obsolete. In the matter of fame
you cannot have your cake and
eat it too.
Levia Pondera.
A pain shared equally by two,
who seem one, is borne so
tenderly that it cannot remain
bitter.
Dromina.
93


The Wit and Wisdom
That night he said the Rosary.
It cannot be said that the
chaplet he laid at the feet of
God's great Mother was worthy
of her: its roses were huddled
together, crumpled and stale,
with no sweet dew of tender-
ness and innocence to make
them sweeter. Yet he laid them
there, and she did not turn away
her sinless face and refuse them.
She stooped from Heaven and
raised them, hiding them, per-
haps, among fresher, more frag-
rant, flowers given her by better
children, and fitter for angel
eyes to see.
The Magnificat.
God help us all, that take to
ourselves Christ's Name for a
nickname.
Dromina.
96


of John Ayscough
Lent, among many other
things, . . . is a time of pre-
paration for the great Easter
duties; a time of unhurried
recollection and consideration
of the Passion; a time of candid
reading of the Tragedy of sin
and its consequences; a time of
survey of one's travelled road
and the road still to travel; a
time of spiritual stock-taking. . . .
“Letters from Home,” in
“The Ave Maria.”
Men look on marriage as the
goal and conclusion of court-
ship ; women hope it is the
beginning.
g g Marotz.
97 H


The Wit and Wisdom
The Voice that speaks from
the Seven Hills beside the
yellow river has sent its sound
into all lands, insisting on the
Apostolate of the Press, and
every Catholic ear is listening.
But the message cannot, in the
nature of things, be to the
Christian Press alone; it implies
the correspondence of the Chris-
tian public. A duty is never
like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,
all on one side.
Levia Pondera.
People cannot safely yield
themselves to much real devo-
tion who do not intend to amend
their ways: they find by ex-
perience it leads to much self-
reproach and self-questioning.
The Magnificat.
98


of John Ayscough
To stand still beautifully is
given to as few as to walk
beautifully.
Dromina.
There are some of us so timid
of spirit that we abandon, almost
at the first assault, anyone who
is gravely attacked. We are
nervous of misconstruction,
afraid of being identified with
anything of poor or tainted
repute. . . . It may cost us
something to give up our friend,
but our acquaintance are more
to us than any friend : our own
repute more than anything. So
we pay the cost, though it mean
all our reality.
Hurdcott.
99


The Wit and Wisdom
Above all, one must fear the
danger of thinking others be-
neath ourselves. We learn a
little lesson, and are immediately
in danger of condemning those
who have not learned the same
page, as if God put all His
children at once into the same
class. We, who know scarcely
anything of ourselves, are so
ready to decide about the other
people, whose faces we have
only seen in certain lights.
Marolz.
In some of our moods we are
less lonely by ourselves.
Hurdcott.
Sorrow is no more than the
shadow of a great joy.
Faustula.
IOO


The Wit and Wisdom
He had given himself to our
Lord, as he saw Him, and the
little gift had been accepted and
kept: it was not flouted, as of
mean and silly account, and
flung back. He never got back
exactly what he had given, only
something greater in its place.
God never gives us back our
wretched selves, unless we
grudge and snatch the gift back,
and insist on that miserable
restitution. He gives Himself
instead.
Monksbridge.
No one can play Divine Pro-
vidence for others. Good people
sometimes try, and sometimes
are obstinate, even when He
Himself remonstrates.
Marotz.
IO2


of John Ayscough
“One must think of one's
sins,” he suggested.
“So as to repent of them, yes.
After that as little as possible.
They are part of oneself: it is
better once they are repented
of, to think of God—they are no
part of Him.”
Hurdcott.
Do we remember that the
Sacraments, and not Institutes
for this and that, are our way of
salvation ?
Levia Pondera.
With all their differences of
natural character, tastes, and
peculiar vocations, there is a
family likeness among the saints
that breaks out touchingly.
The Ave Maria.
IoS


The Wit and Wisdom
To the dull it (poetry) may
seem the mere science of fine
and fair words, but in reality it
is a golden bridge that carries
us, by high speech, arched far
above the low swamps of petty
ideals, into an enchanted, half-
unearthly land of nobler, and so
truer, thoughts, whose fruit must
be nobler desires and less sordid
deeds. For noble speech can be
born only of noble thoughts, and
be in turn their mother, and from
nobler thinking noble doing is
fain to spring.
Levia Pondera.
We make our own counte-
nances, though God gives us
our faces.
* Prodigals and Sons.
IO6


of John Ayscough
No decent human being can
read any true poem without a
lifting of his soul, and that at
its best is prayer: at its worst
it is better than lying among the
pots. The poet's clear song
lights a clearer fire among the
thorns of our commonplace; we
catch from him alpine glimpses
that touch upon the heavens,
his high thought begets a higher
thought in us than our own, and
each higher thought, by the
Divine Compassion, tends up-
ward to the highest.
Levia Pondera.
Even if an ambition, it need
not be selfish or ignoble.
San Celestino.
loy


The Wit and Wisdom
God greet thee! Mary, God
greet thee! Thirty-three thou-
sand times I greet thee! As He
greeted thee that was born of
thee, and thirty-three years
shared His exile with thee,
Mary, God greet thee! In the
Name of the Father Whose
Eldest Daughter thou art : in
the Name of the Son Whose
Mother thou art: in the Name
of the Holy Ghost Whose
Spouse thou art: in the Name
of the Blessed Trinity Whose
Mirror thou art. As He is in
His Heart may I, in my heart,
greet thee, Our Lady!
Maroi2.
Honour can only be attained
by one who is indifferent to it.
Dromina.
Io8


The Wit and Wisdom
Every good man's life is a
protest against the mean cry
that goodness is beyond our
mark.
Levia Pondera.
I never read prefaces till I've
finished the books. When there's
anything in them, they spoil the
Story.
Hurdcott.
The Bread that comes from
Heaven, the small, round, White
Thing, the Red Wine and the
White that the soldier's lance
let loose, upon whose double
tide of Love and Sorrow we are
carried out beyond these swamps
of time into the deep, deep ocean
that is God.
Levia Pondera.
II4


The Wit and Wisdom
Is it ignorance to hold fast
the Church's serene, unearthly
certitude, where one clear voice
says always one sure thing,
rather than run out, like wanton
babes, to play at bursting bub-
bles of conjecture ? The most
brilliant conjecture may be false:
if it turn out right, it has but
caught a little truth upon the
wing. Can we not bear to be
called fools for the sake of being
on the side of Omniscience?
Levia Pondera.
When shall God write Finis
to the book of His long patience
and of man's thankless inso-
lence 2
The Universe.
I24


of John Ayscough
Zia had often wondered why
priests and missioners insisted
so seldom from the pulpit on
the economy of being good.
When you come to think of it,
almost all vices are expensive,
and nearly all virtues cheap.
Why pay money to be damned,
when one can get to Heaven
almost for nothing 2
Maroi2.
Every man who spares his
penny to buy a Catholic paper
is helping the utterance of clean
words: doing his share in the
work of a great missionary
enterprise : helping the Voice
that teaches from the Seven
Hills.
Levia Pondera.
125


The Wit and Wisdom
Self-indulgence is the real root
of what we may call Easy Cath-
olicism, and it leads to the final
loss of faith much more com-
monly and much more simply
than the intellectual alertness
and spirit of inquiry which are
supposed to suggest “diffi-
culties.”
Levia Pondera.
The good in people is as
genuine as the bad. Incon-
sistency or incompleteness is
not hypocrisy.
Marotz.
Teach man he is an animal
only, and he sees no point in
being more than an animal.
Mezzogiorno.
13o


of John Ayscough
Pleasure and happiness are
synonymous terms to the vulgar,
though one need not be a mystic
to know that they who secure
the most pleasure are often the
least happy. Nor is mere satis-
faction happiness.
Maroiz.
It is not true that the best
way of fighting the devil is by
borrowing his own weapons.
God has His own armoury, and
needs no borrowing.
Levia Pondera.
What right have we to expect
Heaven to begin on earth? The
Beatific Vision immediately is
no part of Christ's promise to
those who take up His cross and
follow after Him.
Maroiz.
I33


The Wit and Wisdom
It was an odd fashion of
arriving at the idea of God; but
there are many ways, as various
as men and the needs of men.
The perfect may rise to the
Divine Idea perfectly, but the
imperfect by a crooked ladder,
oddly fashioned of an incon-
gruous tree.
Mezzogiorno.
It is odd that they who are
most disposed to pretend there
is no God, and that man needs
none but himself, are the most
inveterate in stripping man of
all Divine resemblance or remin-
iscence. You would suppose
they would depict man a demi-
God, whereas it is precisely they
who insist on writing him down
a pig. -
Levia Pondera.
I34


of John Ayscough
We are to hope, till this part
of our life, that death ends, is
over : when the part comes
that death begins, then hope is
no more needed.
Dromina.
My heart beats again, nearly
fifty years after, with the
memory, more than a memory,
the repetition of that first elation,
when the snow comes again and
brings back the first snowstorm
I remember. It came on Christ-
mas Eve: and, at bed-time, all
outside lay white and silent, as
though the world was hiding its
dark spots from the eyes of the
Child that midnight brought:
and holding her peace to let the
angels' carol be heard unspoiled.
Gracechurch.
I35


The Wit and Wisdom
We must fain think of the
child that was once ourself, and
fain regret him ; but the cure of
the wounds we have put upon
him lies in the little hand of the
other Child : the scars in it can
take out all ours. Only the
Baby in the Manger can give us
back what we grown men have
wasted.
The Universe.
When He came here, He did
not swoop down like a know-all,
but crept in in the middle of the
night, just a little bambino, as
each of us was : and He learned
things, as if He needed to learn
to encourage us to be patient,
and not to be in a hurry about
being wise.
San Celestino.
136


of John Ayscough
It was a happy walk home. . . .
The sun and the frost met in
the winter fields and danced
before the Christmas Child. . . .
The winter weather seemed to
be more manly and jocund than
hot and tired summer: the keen
bright air, to bid me have a more
robust purpose. If my world
outside looked cold, I must warm
it, and my Fellow-Traveller
would teach me.
The Ave Maria.
A few more Yules, and, if we
will, we may keep our Christmas
with the Master of it, and hear
the same angels singing who
welcomed Him to churlish
Bethlehem.
The Universe.
I37