Short Dialogues Overheard by the Listener

New Zealand Tablet, 31 March 1910, Page 513

Short Dialogues Overheard by the Listener

A. # It’s all the same, anyway, where a man gets his education. B. Is it? I disagree there. ■ The whole thing is different. A. How? A man has to make his own way in the world. ■B. Oh, yes. But it makes a difference whether he has religious principles, doesn’t it? You certainly don’t mean to say that it’s quite the same whether your, boy comes out of college an infidel or a Mohametan? A. Nonsense! Tom will come out as he went in. B. He certainly will not. Tom will either come out a very strong Catholic against sheer odds and everything against him, or he will come out an agnostic, even though he doesn’t openly avow it." As he went in, with simple, trusting, unsuspecting faith, he will not come out, take my word. A. Why—it’s not a proselytising college. Every boy is free. B. Too free. The whole atmosphere is against Faith; the teachings, the talk, the clubs. He lives entirely in no antidotes, no moral restraints, no Catholic influences, no Catholic books. The whole trend is away from faith and religion. Do you expect flowers to bloom in winter? A. But the education is so much better than we got. B. Is it? That is mere assumption. Give me facts. What, and who and where? A. I think you are prejudiced. B. I am. I have reasons, however. When I see these chaps lose their faith and sneer at religion I confess I am against it. It costs too much. A. You know Smith. He’s a good Catholic, and ho studied there. B. 01 yes. Smith is Smith. But there, too, is Jones and Brown and Black. Not a grain of faith left. Are yop willing to let Tom risk it? And for what? I say, old man, don’t he a shoddy to-day. Tom will make you very sorry some day for all this cheap «-nonsense, which begins in foppery and snobbery, and ends in infidelity. Send the boy where his faith will be secure and his education sound. The rest is humbug when it isn’t worse. A. To tell the truth, my wife is getting a bit uneasy about Tom lately. A good woman has better instincts than we. B. Always. Just let her have her way in this and think it over for Tom’s sake. —The Boston Pilot.