on the platform stilled the church, and their noble rhetoric clothed appeals to the intelligence and to the heart in most attractive garb.  In Father Hecker you saw a man who wanted to persuade you because he was right and knew it, and because he was deeply interested in your welfare.  He sought no display, and yet held you fast to him by eye and ear.  He had no tricks to catch applause, for he had no vanity.  He said what he liked, for he was totally devoid of diffidence or awkwardness, and his best aid was his invariable equipment of an earnest purpose.  “But I don’t believe,” said Father Walworth to the writer, “that Demosthenes ever worked through greater difficulties than Father Hecker in making himself a good public speaker.”

Father Bernard managed the missions for the first year, and dealt with the pastors as superior of the band, meanwhile devouring more than his share of the work in the confessional.  The least experience shows that there can be little of the discipline of the barracks order on the missions, and all the fathers must of necessity consult together, the superior leading in the observance of such community devotional customs as are possible, and setting a good example in stooping to the burdens which all must bear.  As to Father Bernard, the Americans could only admire and love him.  In his own tongue a renowned orator, he yet never preached in English while with these three men unless on rare occasions, such as when one of them was prevented by sickness.  From him they received the manner of giving missions handed down from St. Alphonsus, and they have transmitted the tradition to their spiritual children in all its integrity.

Nearly two years passed of hard missionary campaigning under Father Bernard, when he was recalled to Europe, and Father Alexander Cvitcovicz took his place.  His last name was seldom used, for the same evident reason as in his predecessor’s case.  Father Alexander was a Magyar, past the meridian of life, long accustomed to missions in Europe, learned, devout, kindly, and of a zeal which seemed to aspire at utter self-annihilation in the service of sinners. ’"It was not unusual for Father Alexander,” says Father Hewit in his memoir of Father Baker, “to sit in his confessional for ten days in succession for fifteen or sixteen hours each day.  He instructed the little children who were preparing for the sacraments, but never preached any of the great sermons.  In his government of the fathers who were under him he was gentleness, consideration, and indulgence itself.  In his own life and example he presented a pattern of the most perfect religious virtue, in its most attractive form, without constraint, austerity, or moroseness, and yet without relaxation from the most ascetic principles.  He was a most thoroughly accomplished and learned man in many branches of secular and sacred science and in the fine arts; and in the German language, which was as familiar to him as his native language, he was among the best preachers of his order. . . .  We went through several long and hard missionary campaigns under his direction, until at last we left him, in the year 1854, in the convent at New Orleans, worn out with labor, to exchange his arduous missionary work for the lighter duties of the parish.”