From the March Number of DONAHOE'S MAagazine.

Michael Davitt did well in every part of this country until he got to New York. His dabbling in the McGlynn affair was a great mistake. It reminded us of the man going from Jerusalem to Jericho.

An Apology.

IN my last lecture in the United States, on the occasion of my recent tour, I made some strictures, couched in very strong language, upon Cardinal Simeoni in connection with what I then fully believed to be his Eminence's hostility to the Land League cause in 1882, and to the part which I believed he had taken in the case of my friend, the Rev. Dr. McGlynn. I now learn, both from his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin and from yourself, that my observations were as unjust as they must consequently have been disrespectful, and I am heartily sorry for having uttered them. I learn, both from his Grace and other sources, that my strictures were, in truth, unfounded and that Cardinal Simeoni is and has been a warm sympathizer with the Irish cause. This knowledge lends additional culpability to the heated words which I spoke in New York; and I will thank you if on your return to Rome you will express to Cardinal Simeoni my profound regret for having used such language.

Wishing you a glorious success in your mission to the United States, I remain, yours very truly,

MICHAEL DAVITT.

Stray Cats.

THERE is no more wretched object on the face of the earth than a stray cat. It is always thin, long-legged, and hollow-eyed, and its ears are cut in scallops, and its fur looks as if it had been fired through a molasses hogshead, and its appetite, and its propensity for climbing into second-story windows, and on shed roofs is something wonderful.

Everybody knows what a powerful voice it has, and it keeps well tuned up in the latest feline opera squalls by constant cultivation.

It is impervious to onslaughts from old tin cans, salt boxes, and boot-jacks. You can't hurt its feelings with profanity of the most scientific kind. Moral suasion doesn't have any influence. Its instincts tell it that cold meat with strychnine sauce is not good for digestion. You can't kill it with a shot-gun, because you wouldn't be likely to hit more than one of its nine lives at the first shot, and by the time you got ready for the second shot your game would be over on Johnson's woodshed, sampling the fur on some rival stray cat.

All stray cats do not travel around on four legs. There are any number of men and women in the world, who are, in the fullest sense of the term, stray cats.

Whenever a man attemps to be what nature did not intend him to be, he is a stray cat.

Every human being has a talent for something. That talent should be encouraged and fostered. What is the use of trying to make a boy who has a genius for building saw-mills and miniature steam-engines, into a lawyer? The study of Coke and Blackstone will be as distasteful to him as the study of an old almanac, and the pleas he makes will be dryer than the ordinary run of legal pleas, if such a thing be possible. In the so-called courts of justice he will always be a stray cat.

What use is it to tie down a bright, romping young girl, who couldn't tell the tune of Yankee Doodle from Old Hundred, to the piano for three or four hours a day, trying to make a musician out of her? She has no taste for it. Nature gave her no ear for music, and she hates it! It is time lost, it is opportunity wasted, it is talent perverted; for she has a taste for something, without doubt, and let her follow that taste. It is better to be able to trim a bonnet well, or cook a dinner fit to be eaten, than to play a sonata in only a passable manner. Don't make a stray cat out of your girl.

The people who put on airs, and ape their superiors, are stray cats. Their ear-marks will crop out.

We all respect the hard-handed, industrious farmer, who follows the plough and sows the seed, with pride in his work, and no sense of false modesty because his over-alls are torn, and his boots smell of the barn; but you put that same old farmer into a Prince Albert coat, and tight-fitting pants, and black kid gloves, and give him a little cane to suck, and set him to make morning calls, and where has his independence gone? He is a stray cat.

The man who has sold his freedom of thought, the courage of his convictions, for office, is a stray cat. He has lost his manhood. He has sold his birthright for so much a month and perquisites. And all creation knows it, and sets a just value on him.

And so we say to everybody who has life lying in front of him, and not behind, as many of us have, be true to yourself. Do those things that you can do best. Cultivate the talents God has given you, and be thankful for them. Don't want to be somebody else. Be yourself. Find your proper sphere and adapt yourself to it, and, above all, avoid being a stray cat.

The Architect and the Devil.

ALL over the north of Europe the greatest aversion is felt to be the first to enter a new building or go over a newly-built bridge. If to do this is not thought everywhere and in all cases to entail death, it is considered supremely unlucky. Several German legends are connected with this superstition. The reader, if he has been to Aix-la-Chapelle, has doubtless had the rift in the great door pointed out to him, and has been told how it came there. The devil and the architect made a compact that the first should supply the plans and the second gain the kudos; and the devil's pay was to be the first who crossed the threshold when

the church was built. When the building was nearly complete the architect's conscience smote him, and he confessed the compact to the bishop. "We'll do him," said the prelate; that is to say, he said something to this effect in terms more appropriate to the century in which he lived, and to his high ecclesiastical office. When the procession formed to enter the minster for the consecration the devil lurked in ambush behind a pillar, and fixed his wicked eye on a fine fat and succulent little chorister as his destined prey. But alas for his hopes! this fat little boy had been given his instructions, and, as he neared the great door, loosed the chain of a wolf and sent it through. The Evil One uttered a howl of rage, snatched up the wolf, and rushed away, giving the door a kick as he passed it that split the solid oak.

Condition of Catholics in the U. S.

We cannot help admiring the Irish party in the British Parliament. That invincible phalanx of inflexible patriots revives the memory of the celebrated Spartans of antiquity. What immense odds they have to contend against! Tremendous brute force in the hands of the conservative tyrants,- reason and justice on the side of the Irish!

What a pity that the energy and talents of the Irish parliamentary party cannot be utilized at this side of the Atlantic, where abilities have fair play, and may be employed for the national good, and for the good of individuals, in developing the material resources of this great country. But cannot something be done here by Irish talent and enthusiasm? Edmund Burke says that "when bad men conspire, good men must combine." A late learned Catholic writer says that the welfare of the United States may come to depend upon the Irish Catholics of New York, and other large American cities; that as in those great centres of population the anarchists have their strongholds, so also has the Catholic Church her defenders.

Some years ago I pointed out in DONAHOE'S MAGAZINE the advisability of holding the young men of the rising generation to the Church by every possible means. I suggested that the positions which might be sought after by those men, such as the position of a physician mainly dependent on Catholics, etc., might be employed as rewards to those who deserved well of the Church, as faithful and practical Catholics. It makes my heart bleed to see young men who might, by judicious management, be made the leaders of their own people, throwing themselves into the arms of the Freemasons in order to obtain the position to which they fancy their talents and education entitle them. I do not forget that there are literary institutes and young men's societies, but I look for something more practical. The young Catholics of this parish have lately established the "Andrew Jackson Club" for political and other purposes. This will give them occupation. They will take part in whatever may have a tendency to improve the town,

by inviting manufacturers to open shops here and by facilitating their negotiations with property-owners, and by using their influence to procure from the corporation exemption from taxation, for five or ten years, of solvent manufacturing firms which propose to locate in the town. There are many persons, children as well as grown people, who are hardly able, physically, to work at the trades at present available. Would it not be a great boon to them if they could find employment less laborious and equally remunerative? The Catholics are mainly an industrial class, and if additional industries should be introduced here, through inducements held out to parties who find their present location unpleasant or unsuitable, the Catholics being on the ground would have a fair chance of the new positions.

By following the example of Cardinal Manning, in taking an interest in matters that concern the whole community in which we live, we teach Protestants to regard us as good neighbors, and we break down the spirit of bigotry against us. As long as the Catholics are merely isolated units they have not, nor can they have, influence corresponding to their numerical strength, their unsullied patriotism, and natural talent.

Burlington, N. J.

REV. P. A. TREACY.

The Archbishop of Boston.

THE MOST Rev. John J. Williams, the fourth bishop and first Archbishop of Boston, was born on April 27, 1822. After the usual classical education in Montreal and at St. Sulpice in Paris, he was elevated to the priesthood by Rt. Rev. Bishop Fenwick in 1843. Among his other missions was that of the chapel on Beach Street, Boston (January, 1852), which had been built in 1850 to meet the increasing Catholic population in the vicinity of the South Cove. Under his ministration the congregation grew so rapidly that in one year it was found necessary to erect a large Gothic church, which was dedicated in 1855, by Bishop Fitzpatrick. The Very Rev. J. J. Williams was Vicar-General and pastor of this church at the time he was made Coadjutor Bishop of Boston, having also been Rector of the old Cathedral in Franklin Street, which was pulled down in the fall of 1860, the last Mass being celebrated on Sunday, Sept. 16, of that year, on which occasion the present Archbishop acted as assistant priest. In 1866, the Very Rev. John J. Williams, on account of the failing health of Bishop Fitzpatrick, was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Boston, with the right of succession. Bishop Fitzpatrick died on Feb. 13, 1866, and on March 11, of the same year Bishop Williams was consecrated at St. James Church, of which he had been so long the pastor. From Oct. 19, 1869, to June 27, 1870, Bishop Williams was in Europe attending the Vatican Council. On May 2, 1875, he received the pallium from the hands of the late Cardinal McCloskey. The Solemn High Mass was celebrated by Bishop McNierny of Albany; Bishop Goesbriand, of Burlington, Vt., preaching the sermon. It was

the grandest religious ceremony ever seen in New England. On the same day, the first American cardinal celebrated his first Mass in Boston. The Cathedral of the Holy Cross was solemnly dedicated by Archbishop Williams Dec. 8, 1875, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

At the time of his consecration, the diocese of Boston included all the State of Massachusetts. Since then, the diocese of Springfield (including the counties of Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire, Hampden, and Worcester), and part of the diocese of Providence (including Bristol, Barnstable, and part of Plymouth counties), were created. To-day the Archdiocese of Boston has over 160 churches, 320 priests, and 25,000 children in the parochial schools. The churches throughout the Archdiocese are, for the most part, objects of pride to the Catholic heart, because of their beauty and elegance. After years of patient struggle, their financial condition is such as to warrant the belief that before many years have passed they will be entirely relieved of debt. Schools are multiplying every year; the sick, the orphan, and the outcast are provided for; while last, but not least, the new seminary at Brighton is doing excellent work in preparing candidates for the work of the ministry. This work has been for years the subject of the Archbishop's thoughts. Not a detail of its construction escaped his notice; and it stands to-day a monument to the zeal and piety of the clergy of Boston, their tribute of love and affection to their well-beloved Archbishop. In the building of the Cathedral, he received valuable aid from the late Vicar-Gen. P. F. Lyndon; but the seminary is his own work, to which he has given his heart and brain. May he live to see his plans realized, and to know that he has established here, in his diocese, a system of ecclesiastical training and education second to none in the country. It is estimated that there are in New England a million of Catholics.

First Mass in America.

ONE OF THE "HERALD'S" CUSTOMARY BLUNDERS ABOUT CATHOLIC MATTErs.

To the Editor of the Catholic Review: —

SOME of the daily papers, speaking of the recent destruction of the Cathedral of St. Augustine, which we all regret, indulge in a stream of twaddle exceeding even the usual ignorance of American history. One paper heads an article "First Mass in America," and pretends that the first Mass in America was chanted by monks of St. Augustine, on the site of the Cathedral, in 1665. Just think of it! Columbus discovered America in 1492; St. Domingo was made a bishop's see in 1513; Puebla in 1519; Mexico in 1530, and yet these dunderheads would tell a credulous public that Mass was never said in America till 1665! It was not even the first Mass said in the territory of the United States. Mass was said at Pensacola and many points from the Savannah to