A TOUCHING EULOGY.

Patea Mail, Volume XLIV, 1 December 1920, Page 2

A TOUCHING EULOGY.

Eulogistic reference was made to the late Row Father Dully by the Jiev. W. A. Ollan, 8.D., in St. George’s Church on Sunday evening. Shaking with considerable emotion, Mr. Allan said:—l knew Father Duffy, and to know him, ever so remotely, was a privilege. Hut I know him more person-ally, and with the passing of months together in Paten my respect for him grew the more. Truly Irish, with the sparkling humour of Ireland running freely in his conversation, ho was ever gracious and alluring a personality sjanding out clear, almost, remote, indeed, from among his fellowpriests, with whom I had conversation and association in England, Ireland, and elsewhere. A man was he, greater than his creed. The humanity of him v. ns never more fully revealed than I lint first glimpse of him in a Patean street —a flock of laughing, rollicking children surrounding him; children he hud probably (aught (to because he, too, loved. To-night I reverently [dace him among God Almighty’s gentlemen. We may dimly discover men who have acquired sufficient wealth to buy gentility, but daily experience proves that very few possess the virtues which ennoble human nature —that constitute a gentleman. Father Duffy wa.s Nature’s gentleman, "hose aims wore -ever generous, with an equal manly sympathy for the small and the great. I saw him last Tuesday just prior to his operation. The same cheerful optimism was yet his—and now he has passed on. Death is • tho great destroyer of our poor narrow creeds and shibboleths; yet death has for all of us its inexorable creed: “Dust to dust.” Before that unyielding fact of Life and Death, our banners—Roman and Anglican—droop to the posture of acquiescence and homage, for the open grave is tho ulti-

mate boundary of our mental and religious differences —Death accentuating the greater vastness of Cod’s Truth. And if a good influence outlives the centuries, then the quickening influence of the life “just, passed in’* will remain for all time in the constitution of Palea so long as Patea remains. May he rest in ponce, and I lie light perpetual ever shine on him. "m.