Recollections of My Life and Reflections on Times and Events During It: A Memoir by Father W. J. Howlett

Mass in Niles, MI

"The next year I took a more extended vacation, and passing through St Louis with only a few formal visits I went to  Kentucky to renew acquaintances with my former classmates of seminary days. These were not all in Kentucky, but in Indiana also, and while so near, I went into Michigan to visit the companions of my boyhood days. I fared better than I had expected, for Father Cappon of Niles right royally received me and asked me to supply his place for a week while he attended some of his missions. It became noised abroad that I was there, and on August 15th the high mass was the occasion for all the old and young people of the town and of the Barron Lake district to come and see and hear me. The exhibit was not very wonderful in either way, but it was a very pleasant meeting on both sides. There were not as many of them, and the really young were not in existence when I was young there twenty years before. A goodly number of my old school companions of religions and of no religion came also, and we were as glad to meet as any of the rest. I realized then how rapidly the world slips away from us, and like new wine in old bottles, the surroundings were the same but a fresh installment of life had been fused into them."

View Full Passage Here (part 1)
View Full Passage Here (part 2)

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