ask him concerning their faith. He was one of
the saddest man I ever saw and it made my heart ache
to see him. I knew so well what it was to have
“a heart bowed down with grief and woe,”
and I saw in this poor creature desolation. I
asked him if he should die, what sin he would have
to repent of. He said: “I may have
sinned in trying to fix up a home for poor priests
who come into disfavor with the bishops.”
His words were: “There is no one so helpless
as a catholic priest sent adrift. A boy ten years
old knows as well how to make a living for himself.
I have been from a boy, in a Jesuit College, St. John’s,
near New York. You do not know the sorrows of
a catholic priest. Few know that so many priests
are dying from heart disease. I am trying to
get to San Antonio, for a priest there may help me
some.” He stayed at the hotel five days.
One evening he came in the parlor where there was
quite a company, and I was astonished to see him so
changed. He was no longer the shrinking, crest-fallen
man, but he seemed bright and joined in conversation;
sang and played on the piano. I soon found out
he had been drinking. I wanted to shield him from
the scandal and made an excuse to call him from the
room, and told him what I did this for. Next
morning he came down as “sad as night”.
I said: “Are you going to leave?”
“Yes,” he replied. I wrote a note
to the conductor, whom I knew well; told him the condition
of this poor man; told him to pass him to San Antonio.
I had just three dollars, this I gave to him.
Oh, the gratitude in the face of this poor man.
He raised his hands and asked “Christ, and his
mother, the holy martyrs, and the angels to bless
me.”
In a few days I heard of a priest from Cleveland,
Ohio, who through gambling and drinking, had spent
thirty thousand dollars of the church’s money
and he was sent adrift. The name of this priest
was John Kelly and on our hotel register the name
of this priest was written “John Kelly.”
CHAPTER VI.
Why my name is not on
A church book, and why the
ministers withdrew
from me.—Closing the
dives of medicine Lodge.—Cora
Bennett,
and why she killed Billy
Morris in A dive in Kiowa.—Her
resurrection.—Raiding A joint
drugstore.
I soon saw that I was not popular with the church
at Medicine Lodge. I testified to having received
the “baptism of the Holy Ghost,” and the
minister, Mr. Nicholson, took occasion to say that
I was not sound in the faith. This church at
this time had a board of deacons and elders, who I
knew to be unworthy, some of them addicted to intoxicating
drinks and other flagrant sins. There was one
man whose sincerity I never questioned, Mr. Smith,
who had a good report from those in and out of the
church.