did but make an appointment for next week.'"
We have quoted sufficiently to show that amid this welter of words there is fruit worth the plucking. The general tone of the work, however, is coarse; if the canon desired to refer to what is not usually mentioned in the most Catholic of assemblies, he did so in the crudest language. To our age the grossness of his obscenity seems unnecessary; out of place; unpardonable. Is it so? The conversational atmophere of a present-day smokingroom would have made de Verville blush. The old canon wrote as men in those times spoke; we of today write not as we speak, but as we think we ought to speak. It is this pitiful hypocrisy which blinds us to the fact that in Le Moyen de Parvenir we have some of the brightest tales and sayings ever penned by human hand.
Finis.
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