An Unlucky Question

New Zealand Tablet, 16 February 1911, Page 305

An Unlucky Question

The inconvenience which often results from asking too many questions (says the Catholic Weekly) was sorely felt the other day by Mr. George Wise, the well known Orange Protestant stalwart of Liverpool, whose name has appeared in undesirable connection with religious rioting in that city. _ Mr. George Wisesuch is the account now enlivening the columns of the Liverpool papersentered a tramcar. He is a man of somewhat large proportions, and, the car being full, was at a loss where to deposit his Eerson. A small boy, however, rose and courteously offered is place to the newcomer. The latter was effusive in his recognition of the courtesy. 'lt is nice to find such politeness nowadays among schoolboys. Your, behaviour is a credit to yourself and to your school. May I ask what school you attend ?' Prompt and deadly came the reply: 'Saint Francis Xavier's School, sir.' That, asj many of our readers know, is a school under Jesuit management, and anyone who has read the gruesome chronicle of Mr. Wise's public speeches and militant deeds will see at once that praise of Jesuits—even of an indirect kindwas the last thing he would willingly have accorded. So keenly did his fellow-passenger appreciate this irony of fatefor Wise is well known in Liverpool—that the boy's answer was greeted with general laughter. Mr. Wise subsided moodily into the place which he owed to Jesuit training, regretting, no doubt, his indiscreet curiosity. Had the teacher of A Kempis entered into his philosophy, he might have meditated fruitlessly upon the words: ' I have often regretted having spoken, but seldom having kept silence.'