NOT ACCORDING TO SAMPLE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 30, 27 July 1905, Page 24

NOT ACCORDING TO SAMPLE

We were scattered about the smoklng-raoin of the liner in \arious postures of restful negligence. We had a bag passenger list, and there were some odd fish aboard, so we fell to talking about the peculiarities of. some of our fellow-travellers.

Prentice, the purser, broke in dogmatically : A man's face and manner are samples of goods; within. l'\ e been on the North Atlantic run for year.-; and seen a few people, and I never knew a man who didjn't carry the sample of himself either on his face oj: in hi> demeanor.'

' I differ with you, Prentice,' said McGregor, a suntanned Scotchman, who managed the a/fairs of a fruit company in the Carribean, and who had taken a flying trip to his native land. ' I've been knocking about the world for some forty years, and I am not labelling; a man gocd, tad, brave or cowardly on sight. I've teen badly fooled once or twice.'

It happened fifteen years ago,' began McGregpr, lighting a f.esh cigar, ' arid I was chief cook and bottlewasher on a ramshackle old tub of a steamer plying between Mexico and Colombian ports. That is to say, 1 was a mixture of supercargo, purser, and fruit buyer \wi hve reached port. That voyage was "a memorable one, for, besides fi\e passengers in the cabin, I had five tans of gunpowder in the forehoid, and the powder paid a better freight than the passengers, for it was being bmuggled for the use of some Colombian gentlemen who intended lessening the crop of some other Colombian gentljmen whom they styled the government. It's a,bout one of these passengers that my so-called story revolves. There were two Mexicans who, when they were not eating or sleeping, were rolling and smoking cigarettes ; a pompous old Englishman who was trying to get to Demerara, and who had an opinion about everything and wanted everybody to chuck trheir own ideas o.erboard anl adopt his. He had his valet with him. The fifth passenger was- a padre or priest, Father Ambrose. He was the most submissive, humble, no-ac-count so. tof a man I ever met. He was very thin and pock-marked in the fate ; besides, he carried one shoulder higher than the other. Nature had been unkind to Fatt er Ambro-.se. He wore a rusty old soutane that loo' ed as if it haid earned retirement and a pension, and he perpetually carried in his hand a thumb-worn dirty little book which he called his bre\iary. He generally read this book when on deck, but even when he was not reading it he seemed afraid to raise his eyes from his feet Not once, yes, once, but that comes later, did he look me in the face.

' I T e seemrd afraid to assert himself even in defence of his C birch, for the old Englishman was a bigoted Low Chuichman, and several times had criticised the Catholic Chi roh se\erely in the padre's presence withoit (1 citing a word from Father Ambrose. 1 felt a con terni t for the man. I never relished your milk-and-water characters, and I thought here was a man wlio became a i.rie^t because he was unworthy to be anything c'.se amone men.

' I co ire of good old Co\enanter stcck myself, but I'\e no pre-udice against the Catholic priesthood. I've bren most of my life in countries where they are as thick ?s bananas, ana" I've learned to respect them hugely. There's a strange paradoxical mixture of submiss;on to authority and possession of authority among them that is wonderful. I have seen a padre who would incontinently start out for the uttermost ends of the earth at the command of his provincial without daring cwn to thinTf about it; rush into the street and snatch two Mexicans apart ready to carve each other with their matchers, shake his finger under tneir noses and send them slinking away. I'll tell you, gentlemen, the I atm race mu^t be Catholic or nothing ; no other religion can pos,siMy fit it. I've spouted these wise remarks to show I was not pre}udiced against Padre Ambrose because he was a priest, but because he seemed an unworthy one for such a high calling.

' " It's all account of the blooming fasting the^u pniests do," said our captain, pointing to the padre. " I S'ippose that poor beggar has had nothing to eat Wu<t bananas anri garlic all his life till his sm'rit is killed. Tf he'd eaten a round or two of good English roast beef overy day he'd be a different style of a man."

'We were half-way to Colombia when one sultry morning one of the steam pipes blew off with a ban^ and Villed a stoker. We didn't mind this so much, as stoVers a«-e cheap and plenty ; but we were disabled. The engineer tinkered at the machinery, which was fit for scrap iron, atid pave it ur>. Then some one yelled that the boat was afire, and the engineers and stokers came flying up on deck, for they all knew about the