above the congregation, he began once more:

"To you, fathers and mothers, I also wish a cordial _proficiat_; for you
also this is a glad and memorable day. How long is it not since you were
kneeling there! And yet that day always lingers in your memory. Since
that time you have been plunged into the world, have had to struggle and
have perhaps fallen and more than once have known your courage fail you.
Now your children are sitting there! For years you have left them to our
care and to-day we give them back to you, instructed, enriched and
supplied with all that they can need to pass onward. You receive them
this day from our hands pure and innocent as on the day of their baptism.
It is for you henceforth to preserve and to maintain that virtue and
purity in them; it is for you to bring up these children so that later
they may be exemplary Christians. See to it that your own conduct edifies
them: it is according to you and all your actions that they will order
their lives and take example. Admonish them in good season and chastise
them when necessary: 'He that spareth the rod hateth his son,' says the
Holy Ghost. And keep your eyes open, for God will ask an account of your
stewardship and will reward or punish you according as you have brought
them up well or ill. A good son, a virtuous daughter are the joy and the
comfort of their parents."

The congregation were greatly impressed. The mothers wept: the priest was
such a good, worthy old man, whom they had known all their lives; and
they liked hearing him say all those beautiful things: that reference to
their own childhood and to their youngsters, whom they now saw sitting
there so good and saintlike, waiting to receive Our Lord, brought the
tears to their eyes; and it did them good to feel their hearts throb, to
feel that lump in their throats; and they let the tears flow: after all,
it was from gladness.