550 RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT -III 



when suddenly there dashed by us a fine traveling-coach 

 drawn by four horses ridden by postilions. Hardly had 

 it passed when there came a scream, and our carriage 

 stopped. We at first took it for granted that it was an 

 attack by bandits, but, on getting out and approaching the 

 other coach, found that one of the postilions, a beautiful 

 Italian boy of sixteen, in jaunty costume, had been thrown 

 from his horse, had been run over by the wheels of the 

 coach, and now lay at the roadside gasping his last. We 

 stood about him, trying to ease his pain, when a young 

 priest came running from a neighboring church. He 

 showed no deference to the gorgeously dressed person 

 ages who had descended from the coach ; he was regard 

 less of all conventionalities, oblivious of all surroundings, 

 his one thought being evidently of his duty to the poor 

 sufferer stretched out before him. He knelt, tenderly 

 kissed the boy, administered extreme unction, and re 

 peated softly and earnestly the prayers for the dying, 

 to which fervent responses came from the peasants kneel 

 ing about him. The whole scene did much to tone down 

 the feelings which had been aroused the previous day by 

 the filth and beggary at the papal port where we had 

 landed, and to prepare me for a more charitable judg 

 ment of what I was to see in the papal city. 



But an early experience in Rome showed a less beau 

 tiful manifestation of Christian zeal. We were a band 

 of students, six in number, who had just closed a year 

 of study at the University of Berlin; and the youngest, 

 whom I will call Jack Smith, was a bright young fellow, 

 son of a wealthy New England manufacturer. The even 

 ing after arriving in Rome, Jack, calling on an American 

 aunt, was introduced to a priest who happened to be 

 making her a visit. It was instantly evident that the 

 priest, Father Cataldi, knew what Jack s worldly pros 

 pects were ; for from the first he was excessively polite to 

 the youth, and when the latter remarked that during his 

 stay in Rome he would like to take Italian lessons, the 

 priest volunteered to send him a teacher. Next day, at 



