ONE

NE thing can be said of our Roman Catholic brethren, and especially of our Roman Catholic sisters, without exciting controversy,-they begin early in the morning. St. Stephen's, the largest Catholic church in New York, which will hold five thousand persons and seat four thousand, was filled to overflowing every morning of last November at five o'clock. That, however, was an extraordinary occasion. The first mass, as housekeepers are well aware, usually takes place at six o'clock, summer and winter; and it was this that I attended on Sunday morning, December 8, 1867, one of the coldest mornings of that remarkably cold month.

It is not so easy a matter to wake at a certain hour before the dawn of day. One half, perhaps, of all the inhabitants of the earth, and two thirds of the grown people of the United States, get up in the winter months before daylight; and yet a person unaccustomed to the feat will be utterly at a loss how to set about it. At five o'clock of a December morning it is as dark as it ever is. The most reckless milkman has not then begun his matutinal whoop, and the noise of the bakers' carts is not heard in the streets. And if there should be a family in the middle of the block who keep chickens, there is no dependence to be placed upon the crowing of the cocks; for they crow at all odd, irrational times both of night and day. Neither in the heavens above nor in the yards beneath, neither in the house nor in the street, is there any sign or sound by which a wakeful expectant can distinguish five o'clock from four, or three, or one. It is true, madam, as you remark, that there is such a thing as an alarm-clock. But who ever has one when it is wanted? People who get up at five every morning can do without; and those who get up at five once in five years, even if by any chance

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they should possess an alarm-clock, forget in the five years of disuse how the little fury is set so as to hold in all night and burst forth in frenzy at the moment required. This was my case. The alarm went off admirably an hour too late, and woke up the wrong perIt was only a most vociferous crowing of the cocks just now reviled as unreliable that caused me to suspect that possibly it might be time for me to strike a light and see how the alarm-clock was getting on. Our Roman Catholic brethren, in some way or ways unknown, habitually overcome this difficulty; for fifty thousand of them, in New York alone, are frequently at church and on their knees before there are any audible or visible indications of the coming day.

It was a very cold and brilliant morning,- stars glittering, moon resplendent, pavement icy, roofs snowy, wind north-northwest, and, of course, cutting right into the faces of people bound up the Third Avenue. An empty car went rattling over the frozen-in rails with an astonishing noise, the conductor trotting alongside, and the miserable driver beating his breast with one hand and pounding the floor with one foot. The highly ornamental policeman on the first corner was singing to keep himself warm; but, seeing a solitary wayfarer in a cloak scudding along on the ice, he conceived a suspicion of that untimely seeker after knowledge; he paused in his song; he stooped and eyed him closely, evidently unable to settle upon a rational explanation of his presence; and only resumed his song when the suspected person was five houses off. There was scarcely any one astir to keep an adventurer in countenance, and I began to think it was all a delusion about the six-o'clock mass. At ten minutes to six, when I stood in front of the spacious St. Stephen's Church in Twenty

Eighth Street, there seemed to be no one going in; and, the vestibule being unlighted, I was confirmed in the impression that early mass did not take place on such cold mornings. To be quite sure of the fact, however, I did just go up the steps and push at the door. It yielded to pressure, and its opening disclosed a vast interior, dimly lighted at the altar end, where knelt or sat, scattered about one or two in a pew, about a hundred women and ten men, all well muffled up in hoods, shawls, and overcoats, and breathing visibly. There was just light enough to see the new blue ceiling and its silver stars; but the sexton was busy lighting the gas, and got on with his work about as fast as the church filled. That church extends through the block, and has two fronts. As six o'clock approached, female figures in increasing numbers crept silently in by several doors, all making the usual courtesy, and all kneeling as soon as they reached a pew. At last the lower part of the church was pretty well filled, and there were some people in the galleries; in all, about one thousand women and about one hundred men. Nearly all the women were servant-girls, and all of them were dressed properly and abundantly for such a morning. There was not a squalid or miserable-looking person present. Most of the men appeared to be grooms and coachmen. Among these occupants of the kitchen, the nursery, and the stable there were a few persons from the parlor, evidently of the class whom Voltaire speaks of with so much wrath and contempt as d'vots et dévotes. There were two or three men near me who might or might not have been ecclesiastics or theological students; upon the pale and luminous face of each was most legibly written, This man prays continually, and enjoys it.

There is a difference between Catholics and Protestants in this matter of praying. When a Protestant prays in public, he is apt to hide his face, and bend low in an awkward, uncomfortable attitude; and, when he would pray in VOL. XXI.NO. 126. 28

private, he retires into 'some secret place, where, if any one should catch him at it, he would blush like a guilty thing. It is not so with our Roman Catholic brethren. They kneel, it is true, but the body above the knees is bolt upright, and the face is never hidden; and, as if this were not enough, they make certain movements of the hand which distinctly announce their purpose to every beholder. The same freedom and boldness are observable in Catholic children when they say their nightly prayers. Your little Protestant buries its face in the bed, and whispers its prayer to the counterpane; but our small Catholic brethren and sisters kneel upright, make the sign of the cross, and are not in the least ashamed or disturbed if any one sees them. Another thing strikes a Protestant spectator of Catholic worship,-the whole congregation, without exception, observe the etiquette of the occasion. When kneeling is in order, all kneel; when it is the etiquette to stand, all stand; when the prayer-book says bow, every head is low. These two peculiarities are cause and effect. A Protestant child often has some reason to doubt whether saying its prayers is, after all, "the thing," since it is aware that some of its most valued friends and relations do not say theirs. But among Catholics there is not the distinction (so familiar to us) between those who "belong to the church" and those who do not; still less the distinction (nearly as familiar in some communities) between believers and unbelievers. From the hour of baptism, every Catholic is a member of the church, and he is expected to behave as such. This is evidently one reason for that open, matter-of-course manner in which all the requirements of their religion are fulfilled. No one is ashamed of doing what is done by every one in the world whom he respects, and what he has himself been in the habit of doing from the time of his earliest recollection. A Catholic appears to be no more ashamed of saying his prayers than he is of eating his dinner, and he