ST. THOMAS' SEMINARY.



tuary, if that goal did not appear so distant. It is a
far cry from the humble fireside to the altar of God,
and a long road separates the serving altar boy from
the celebrating priest, but surely, not longer now than
it was a hundred years ago, when the youth of that
day started out over the road that was then as rough
and untraveled as his native hills. The distance is
not greater in one sense than that which separates the
railpile, the tailor shop, the tannery, the canal boat
or the cowboy's saddle from the White House and the
President's chair, and that distance has been covered
from these various starting points.
   It was Jeremias, the future prophet, who said:
   Ah, ah, ah, Lord God, behold I cannot speak, for I
am a child. " David was the least of the sons of Isai
the Bethlehemite, and the last to be presented to
Samuel; Pius X was not of the aristocrats. All men,
with a single exception, began life in a cradle, and
that exception made a wreck of his own and other
lives
   The signs of a vocation are innocence, frankness,
intelligence, piety, and a love for the altar and sanc-
tuary. If these germs of a vocation are felt in the
soul, the door of some friendly St. Thomas' will open
at the knock of an earnest aspirant, nd God will do
again what He did so many times for those who
applied in the past. It is not too much to hope that
God will spread even more widely the holy inspira-
tion that He has given to many a good priest, whom
He has blessed with a greater abundance of the
world's goods in his riper years than he had in his
youth, to share his good fortune with one who might
become his own worthy successor. Many, in thus



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