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This is an incredible autobiography of a man devoted to forming children both in schools and in literature. His legacy lives on in his books, especially the Tom Playfair series.
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CHAPTER III
Happy Days as a Novice
MONDAY, July 10, 1877, I left home with a happy heart to consecrate my life to God in the Order of the Society of Jesus. With a happy heart, I say. I was entering into a new life; there was the mystery, the fascination, of venturing into the unknown. Of course there was much of the spiritual in it too. I did most earnestly desire to follow the higher life. Yet it must be admitted that the prospect of linking myself with older men whom I had known and loved and with young men who had gone to school with me and preceded me into the Society contributed much to my leaving home and surroundings with a gay heart. Three other young men of the university came with me Michael Owens, Joseph Gillick, and a young fellow who left the novitiate shortly on account of ill health. I have never seen him since. Fathers Owens and Gillick died many years ago.
We were welcomed at the novitiate by the novice master, Father Isadore Boudreaux, one of the saintliest and most engaging men I have ever met. Also there were novices who had entered before us and who had been at school with us. We were very happy that day.
Then we were all put into what is called first probation-that is, for a few days we were to learn what we had to do in order to become Jesuits, what we had to give up, what we had to aspire to. Furthermore, the novice master took us each aside and went into the story of our lives, endeavoring to find out our strong points and our weaknesses and thus learn how to develop us in one way and to safeguard us in other ways.
During these days we first got an idea of what silence meant. It was a new experience to all of us, and a hard one too, to go about from early morning until noon without talking to everybody we met. For one hour after dinner and for another hour after supper we each had the company of an older Jesuit novice, who was called our guardian angel. It was his duty to entertain us, to keep up our spirits, and to supplement the work of the novice master. The term of our probation was to end with our being vested in the cassock, after which we were to be introduced to the older novices and assigned our desks in the ascetery, a large room in which all the novices performed together their exercises of prayer, study, reading and meditation.
I still remember vividly the day of my investiture. To me the cassock was a curious thing. It is true that in my earlier days at the university I had undertaken to be an acolyte, but I had not made a success of it. Assigned, when I was a boy of about thirteen, to serve Mass in the presence of the other students, I had made all manner of blunders. I was very sensitive at that time, and when I overheard someone make fun of my efforts as an altar boy, that settled me. Never again could I be persuaded to assist the priest at the altar.
When the novice cassock was put upon me, I found it an awkward thing to manage. I nearly broke my neck going up the stairs on the way to the novices’ ascetery. I was then and there, if I remember aright, instructed by the novice master to raise my cassock in front as I ascended the steps. It took me a long time to learn the lesson perfectly.