of the chapel has been turned into a gymnasium, and twice a week the apparatus is cleared away and we have a dance.  Every other evening it’s used furiously by Father Rowley’s “boys.”  They’re such a jolly lot, and most of them splendid gymnasts.  Quite a few have become professional acrobats since they opened the gymnasium.  The first morning after my arrival I asked Father Rowley if he’d got anything special for me to do and he told me to catalogue the books in his library.  Everybody laughed at this, and I thought at first that some joke was intended, but when I got to his room I found it really was in utter confusion with masses of books lying about everywhere.  So I set to work pretty hard and after about three days I got them catalogued and in good order.  When I told him I had finished he looked very surprised, and a solemn visit of inspection was ordered.  As the room was looking quite tidy at last, I didn’t mind.  I’ve realized since that Father Rowley always sets people the task of cataloguing and arranging his books when he doubts if they are really worth their salt, and now he complains that I have spoilt one of his best ordeals for slackers.  I said to him that he needn’t be afraid because from what I could see of the way he treated books they would be just as untidy as ever in another week.  Everybody laughed, though I was afraid at first they might consider it rather cheek my talking like this, but you’ve got to stand up for yourself here because there never was such a place for turning a man inside out.  It’s a real discipline, and I think if I manage to deserve to stay here three years I shall have the right to feel I’ve had the finest training for Holy Orders anybody could possibly have.

You know enough about Father Rowley yourself to understand how impossible it would be for me to give any impression of his personality in a letter.  I have never felt so strongly the absolute goodness of anybody.  I suppose that some of the great mediaeval saints like St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua must have been like that.  One reads about them and what they did, but the facts one reads don’t really tell anything.  I always feel that what we really depend on is a kind of tradition of their absolute saintliness handed on from the people who experienced it.  I suppose in a way the same applies to Our Lord.  I always feel it wouldn’t matter a bit to me if the four Gospels were proved to be forgeries to-morrow, because I should still be convinced that Our Lord was God.  I know this is a platitude, but I don’t think until I met Father Rowley that I ever realized the force and power that goes with exceptional goodness.  There are so many people who are good because they were born good.  Richard Ford, for example, he couldn’t have ever been anything else but good, but I always feel that people like him remain practically out of reach of the ordinary person and that the goodness is all their own and dies with them just as it was born with them.