The Priest's Blessing (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Poor Patrick's Journey Begins. 'HEN Mr O'Brien arrived with his daughter in Patrickstown, and assumed his position as a large landed proprietor in the place, Patrick O'Connor, whose first small adventure in life was described in our prologue, had reached the age of manhood. Nay, more, there was a little Patrick, not to speak of half-a-dozen other olive branches, who were going through the same experiences which had attended their father before them. How often are children exhortedto walk in the footsteps of their progenitors and yet, I fear, if the innocent offspring followed religiously in the father's plodding road, its path through life would by no means be one of roses After that first blessing which he had received from the Priest, the gifts of God- had rarely come Patrick's way. True, the Priest, God bless him, had always taken a kindly interest in his welfare; and when that holy man had passed away and another had come down to fill his place, the spiritual portion of poor Patrick had been- attended to more assiduously still. He had confessed his sins with clockwork punctuality, and he had received absolution; better still, he could always rely upon the Father's advice whenever the tangled skein of his life could not be made to run smooth. So far then as spiritual welfare went, Patrick had no just cause of complaint. But, alas it was his mission to discover that to trust in Providence overmuch was not the way to bring fire to his hearth or food to his lips. There was a corporeal portion to his life as well as a spiritual, and the former was so much the more troublesome of the two He had been the youngest of a long family, and he had had to work his way in life, as his mother and father and brothers and sisters had done before him. At an ear...