exhortation on Sunday. Some of them were for returning home, while two
or three, of a different complexion, wished to be Jesuits themselves.
The Fathers, in their intervals of leisure, worked with their men,
spade in hand. For the rest, they were busied in preaching, singing
vespers, saying mass and hearing confessions at the fort of Quebec,
catechizing a few Indians, and striving to master the enormous
difficulties of the Huron and Algonquin languages.

[ 1 "Le P. Masse, que je nomme quelquefois en riant le Pere Utile,
est bien cognu de V. R. Il a soin des choses domestiques et du bestail
que nous avons, en quoy il a tres-bien reussy."--Lettre du P. Paul le
Jeune au R. P. Provincial, in Carayon, 122.--Le Jeune does not fail to
send an inventory of the "bestail" to his Superior, namely: "Deux grosses
truies qui nourissent chacune quatre petits cochons, deux vaches, deux
petites genisses, et un petit taureau." ]

[ 2 The methodical Le Jeune sets down the causes of their discontent
under six different heads, each duly numbered. Thus:--
"1. C'est le naturel des artisans de se plaindre et de gronder."
"2. La diversite des gages les fait murmurer," etc. ]

Well might Father Le Jeune write to his Superior, "The harvest is
plentiful, and the laborers few." These men aimed at the conversion of a
continent. From their hovel on the St. Charles they surveyed a field of
labor whose vastness might tire the wings of thought itself; a scene
repellent and appalling, darkened with omens of peril and woe. They were
an advance-guard of the great army of Loyola, strong in a discipline that
controlled not alone the body and the will, but the intellect, the heart,
the soul, and the inmost consciousness. The lives of these early
Canadian Jesuits attest the earnestness of their faith and the intensity