Recollections Book

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 III DAYDREAMS After drinking deeply of the Pierian spring which " Old Edward's " classic wand struck from the rock, I was removed to the Cloyne Diocesan College, the principal High School of the district. The expense was serious, but I think my parents were much impressed by the verdict of a lady phrenologist of much celebrity in her hour, who made a singularly accurate estimate in writing of my brother's mental equipment, and, as my own cranium was then in too undeveloped a condition for a detailed judgment, could only be got to say of me that whatever was spent on my education would not be wasted. The new school was a pretentious villa affair, in a park, and the Principal, Mr. J. Wilson Wright, was a Trinity College graduate of distinction. His French usher, who was a bit of a dandy, was also a man of parts. His class, I am afraid, paid less attention to Telemachus than to the poor man's clumsy way of dyeing his moustache, the black evidences of which were painfully visible to the least observant eye. Three-fourths of the pupils were Protestant. Here, again, my experience of the commingling of classes and creeds was of the same happy character as all my early recollections of Mallow. During my three years at the Diocesan College, I never heard a jarring word on any religious topic. We Catholics had the advantage of an additional half-hour's liberty while our brother pupils were shut up for Scripture lessons. The fact did more to sharpen their sense of the attractions of Catholicity in the eyes of some of our young Scripture-reading comrades than to inspire them with any theological ambition to proselytise us. Nor did the College books of history, which were almost inevitably hostile to our own prepossessions, have any effect except to harden us hopelessly ...Read More