THREE STORIES

New Zealand Tablet, 16 May 1918, Page 23

THREE STORIES

The following story of Cardinal Manning, will interest teetotallers. Manning was an enthusiastic patrdn of the League of the Cross which used to organise monster gatherings at the Crystal Palace. While talking with Lady Herbert of Lea, in the grounds, the secretary informed his Eminence that the assembly was far too large for him to address in. the open air, as he had intended to do. “If I might venture to propose the Palace Theatre continued the secretary, halting, for even the word “theatre” shocked the great churchman. But the Cardinal, all smiles, said, Certainly I will speak anywhere in so good a cause. The auditorium was filled with the Leaguers, while his Eminence and his friends were escorted behind the scenes, whereupon he remarked, “This is the first time in my long life I have ever found myself on the stage of a theatre waiting for the curtain to rise.” Near the end of the stirring address occurred an incident, now almost classic. “I only wish,” he had justsaid, “that I could myself set you an example of total abstinence, but I am sorry to say I cannot—my doctor won t allow me.” From the topmost gallery, a voice (an Irish voice) came like a falling star, “Change your doctor, your Eminence!”—“Thank y<su, my friend, for your good advice,” was the genial answer. He did change his doctor, it is said, and lived a total abstainer ever after.

The Abbot records this of Leo XIII., believed to be the only joke credited to that Pope. Among the improvements introduced into Rome by the new regime were tramways. The Pope sold all the horses which were eating their heads off in the pontifical stables; and certain prelates, possibly cardinals, complained that papal carriages were no longer sent to bring them from their residences to the Vatican. “The Cisalpine Government,” rejoined his Holiness, “has done some deplorable things in our city of Rome, but one good thing it has done—l am told it has established an excellent service of trams, so that your Eminences can now come all the way to the Vatican, and back, for two-pence.”

Of Pope Pio Nono, Blair tells several excellent anecdotes. On the occasion of a public audience an elderly lady seized the Pope’s hand to detain him as he passed along the line of .visitors, while she explained how she had been cured of inveterate rheumatism by wearing one of the Papal stocking she had surreptitiously obtained from some underling of the household. The Pope frowned on hearing of this violation of a well-known rule but when the lady insisted that her cure was a real miracle, he said with a twinkle in his eye, “Praise be to God, my,daughter, but my stocking had certainly nothing to do with it. How could it have ? I have worn two stockings all my life, and I have’ had rheumatism in both legs for twenty years. So it certainly was not the stocking.”— Watchman .