[44] THE CATHOLIC WORLD for May, 1871, first article.
VOILA CE QUI FAIT QUE VOTRE FILLE EST MUETTE.
Madame Swetchine says: “The wrongs which the heart resents most keenly are impalpable and invisible.” We may parody this, and say, with equal truth, that the troubles most difficult to bear are frequently those which, to indifferent observers, seem scarcely worth mention. There is dignity, and a certain stimulating excitement, in great affliction and great wrong; but a petty persecution, which we would fain treat with contempt, but which, in spite of us, pierces with small, envenomed points to our very hearts, is capable of testing our utmost endurance. Who does not know how one malicious, intriguing woman can poison a whole community, break friendship that would have stood the test of death, and destroy a confidence that seemed as firm as the hills? The smiling malice, the affected candor, the smooth insinuation, the more than infantine innocence--happy he who has not learned by bitter experience these tactics of the devil’s sharpshooters!
Of such a nature was the earlier stage of the persecution suffered by the Catholics of Seaton. Servants were daily insulted by mistresses less well-bred than themselves. They had to swallow a gibe with their Friday’s eggs or fish; they were entertained with slanderous stories regarding the priest they loved and reverenced. This was, of course, without provocation. Who ever knew an Irish servant-girl who attacked the religion or irreligion of her employers? Workingmen could not go through the streets to and from their work without being forced to listen to revilings of their church. This was carried to such an extent that they soon found themselves obliged to relinquish their open-air lounging-places, where they had smoked and talked after the day’s work was done, and shut themselves into their houses. Nor were they allowed to remain in peace there. Nearly all the Irish lived on one street, running from the bridge up the west side of the river, and called Irish Lane. When it was found that they would not come out to be insulted, the mob that gathered in the streets every evening marched up this lane, calling out to the Irish, challenging, taunting them. But not one word or act of retaliation could they provoke to give them an excuse for the violence which they were thirsting to commit. Father Rasle had given his people stringent orders to remain in their houses, and make no reply, no matter what was said to them, and to defend themselves only if their houses were broken into. They obeyed him with astonishing docility.