Having eaten the friendless orphan--having driven away his comrades

-having grown calm and reflective at length--I now feel in a kindlier

mood. I feel that after talking so freely about the priests and the

churches, justice demands that if I know any thing good about either I

ought to say it. I have heard of many things that redound to the credit

of the priesthood, but the most notable matter that occurs to me now is

the devotion one of the mendicant orders showed during the prevalence of

the cholera last year. I speak of the Dominican friars--men who wear a

coarse, heavy brown robe and a cowl, in this hot climate, and go

barefoot. They live on alms altogether, I believe. They must

unquestionably love their religion, to suffer so much for it. When the

cholera was raging in Naples; when the people were dying by hundreds and

hundreds every day; when every concern for the public welfare was

swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every citizen made the

taking care of himself his sole object, these men banded themselves

together and went about nursing the sick and burying the dead. Their

noble efforts cost many of them their lives. They laid them down

cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds mathematically precise, and

hair-splitting niceties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for the

salvation of some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the purity, the

unselfishness that are in the hearts of men like these would save their

souls though they were bankrupt in the true religion--which is ours.

One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with us

in the little French steamer. There were only half a dozen of us in the

293

The Innocents Abroad