Man likes personal distinction—­there in the monastery it is obliterated.  He likes delicious food—­there he gets beans and bread and tea, and not enough of it.  He likes to lie softly—­there he lies on a sand mattress, and has a pillow and a blanket, but no sheet.  When he is dining, in a great company of friends, he likes to laugh and chat—­there a monk reads a holy book aloud during meals, and nobody speaks or laughs.  When a man has a hundred friends about him, evenings, be likes to have a good time and run late—­there he and the rest go silently to bed at 8; and in the dark, too; there is but a loose brown robe to discard, there are no night-clothes to put on, a light is not needed.  Man likes to lie abed late there he gets up once or twice in the night to perform some religious office, and gets up finally for the day at two in the morning.  Man likes light work or none at all—­there he labors all day in the field, or in the blacksmith shop or the other shops devoted to the mechanical trades, such as shoemaking, saddlery, carpentry, and so on.  Man likes the society of girls and women—­there he never has it.  He likes to have his children about him, and pet them and play with them —­there he has none.  He likes billiards—­there is no table there.  He likes outdoor sports and indoor dramatic and musical and social entertainments—­there are none there.  He likes to bet on things—­I was told that betting is forbidden there.  When a man’s temper is up he likes to pour it out upon somebody there this is not allowed.  A man likes animals—­pets; there are none there.  He likes to smoke—­there he cannot do it.  He likes to read the news—­no papers or magazines come there.  A man likes to know how his parents and brothers and sisters are getting along when he is away, and if they miss him—­there he cannot know.  A man likes a pretty house, and pretty furniture, and pretty things, and pretty colors—­there he has nothing but naked aridity and sombre colors.  A man likes—­name it yourself:  whatever it is, it is absent from that place.

From what I could learn, all that a man gets for this is merely the saving of his soul.

It all seems strange, incredible, impossible.  But La Trappe knew the race.  He knew the powerful attraction of unattractiveness; he knew that no life could be imagined, howsoever comfortless and forbidding, but somebody would want to try it.

This parent establishment of Germans began its work fifteen years ago, strangers, poor, and unencouraged; it owns 15,000 acres of land now, and raises grain and fruit, and makes wines, and manufactures all manner of things, and has native apprentices in its shops, and sends them forth able to read and write, and also well equipped to earn their living by their trades.  And this young establishment has set up eleven branches in South Africa, and in them they are christianizing and educating and teaching wage-yielding mechanical trades to 1,200 boys and girls.  Protestant Missionary work is coldly regarded by the commercial white colonist all over the heathen world, as a rule, and its product is nicknamed “rice-Christians” (occupationless incapables who join the church for revenue only), but I think it would be difficult to pick a flaw in the work of these Catholic monks, and I believe that the disposition to attempt it has not shown itself.