DUNEDIN REMEMBERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 292, 10 December 1929, Page 8

DUNEDIN REMEMBERS.

FATHER CLEARY'S LABOURS. i , MARK TWAIN'S TRIBUTE RECALLED. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) i DUNEDIN, this day. , The "Evening Star," in an editorial, says it is nineteen years since the Rev. Father Cleary, as he was then, left Dunedin to become Bishop of Auckland. He had been a resident of this city for only twelve years. It says much for the vigour of his mind and the keenness and variety of his personality that his death will be regretted by no small number of the older generation of this city, outside his own faith, with as close and intimate recollection as if it was a Dunedin man who had passed away. The "Star" recalls that a chance encounter with Father Cleary moved Mark Twain to a tribute of admiration not often to be found in his mirthful pages. Mark Twain was travelling in Victoria on the tour of the Colonies, including New Zealand, which he made in the late 'nineties, and Father Cleary was his chance companion on a railway journey. The humorist wrote: "Waited several hours for train. Left at 3.40, and reached Bendigo in an hour. For a comrade, a Catholic priest, who was better than I was, but didn't seem to know it. A man full of graces of the heart, the mind and the spirit; lovable man. He will rise. He will be a bishop some day, later an archbishop, later a cardinal, and finally an archangel, I hope, and then he will recall, when I say, 'Do you remember that trip we made from Ballarat to Bendigo, when you were nothing but Father C, and I was nothing to what I am now V " At the close of its tribute the "Star" says: "Mark Twain was not wrong in his quick judgment of him."