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Show LA SALLE ONCE A JESUIT. La Salle, the explorer of the Mississippi, Missis-sippi, was once a Jesuit scholastic, but owing to the unconquerable desire to travel that led him into the wilderness and the restless ardor of his spirit, he could not brook the restraints of the re.ligious life, and so he. cast aside his habit and book of rules, and plunged into the virgin fqrests of the new world. After much traveling he built Fort Creve-Coeur, on the Illinois river, within easy view of the modern city of Peoria. The completion of Chicago's thirty-odd million dollar canal directs attention anew to the fcrt, and Father Frank J. O'Reilly of the Peoria diocese writes an entertaining article on the fort and its founder in the April issue of the Catholic World Magazine. lie introduces into his article a description of the riches of Illinois apropos of the Corn Exposition. He says of the growth of the Church there: "The Church, too, has had a growth steady and virile. In the state where La Salle stopped at Creve-Coeur to gather up the shr-ds of broken fortune, we number today upwards of a million. In keeping with the phenomenal growth of Chicago has been that of the Church for whose pioneer life stand Marquette, Hennepin, Rebourde, Membrev Allouez, Gravier, Marest, Charlevoix, Rasle, Jo-liet, Jo-liet, Tonti, La Salle. Chicago today has more organized centers of religion-parishes religion-parishes than any other city in the world. The avowed resolution of its devoted metropolitan, as expressed at the consecration of his auxiliary, furnishes fur-nishes the key-note to its present vigorous vig-orous and harmonious growth. If there be any suggestiveneas in the spot where first in the discovery of the great west civilized life flashed its light, however how-ever brief, that will be borne out not only in the thriving second city of Illinois, Illi-nois, but symbolized in her chaste Gothic cathedral, whose great uplifted arms cast shadows in the golden sunlight sun-light of the long summer afternoons, as if to bless the very spot where our ancestors an-cestors first landed and took hope again. And if one seek a proof of light and life leeo material, surely there will be no disappointment in Peoria's first prelate, whose luminous mind, in touch with all that has been wrought, pleads t always for 'education and the higher life.' " |