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Show ; ; Our Boys -.and (Sirls i j EDITED F.Y AUNT BUSY. j! This department !s conducted solely In the Inter- i f est" or our pirl and boy readers. Aunt Busy Is glad to hear ar.y tlmo from th i nieces r.nd nephews who read this page, and to girt t them all the advice and help In her power. J Write on one side of the paper only. t Do not have letters too Ion. f Original stories and verses will be gladly received V end carefully edited, f The manuscripts of contributions not accepted win be returned. , Address all letters to Aunt Busy. Intel-mountain Catholic. Palt Lake City. "I SCHOOLGIRLS ABROAD. (The Ave Maria.) j . V. J Beautiful as were the churches, -wonderful as I was the Colosseum with its memories of martyrs, j insistent as was the charm of the City of the Ce- I sars and the City of the Saints, there was some- j thing that appealed even more strongly to us. It w-as think of it ! an audience with the Holy j Father. It was a day never to be forgotten.- Aunt Margaret, wore a black dress and a black lace man-' 1 tilla on her head; we were all in white, and at the I nppointcd time stood at the entrance to the Vati- I can palace, laden with rosaries, etc., to be blessed. I and feeling somewhat nervous. As soon as our party had gathered, we were es- s corted up marble stair cases and through vast cor- 4 ridors to the Sala Clementina. At every landing I and doorway stood Papal soldiers in uniforms of I black and red and yellow, designed by Michael An- gelo. So still are these Swiss guards that one might easily mistake them for statues. Arrived in I the Clementine hall, we stood in a half-circle and I waited breathlessly. Soon there was a stir; from 1 the door leading to the Pope's apartments came jj two Swiss guards, then two gold-embroidered sol- I diers, followed my a major domo in black and gold, j and wearing a black hat with a long, white plume: 1 after him walked two more immediate attendants, j all in red silk; then the Tit. Rev. Mgr. Kennedy. I rector of the American college, and the Maestro di I Camera, Mgr. Bisletti; and, last of all, robed in ; , white, the dear Holy Father himself. All sank to their knees as His Holiness ap- f preached. Mgr. Kennedy said a lew words, to which the Holy Father made response ; and all the time he was talking I kept my eyes fixed on that sad I --but kindly face. I was afraid if I looked away for 'H -jf an instant that the scene would vanish. Once I caught a glimpse of Mary's rapt face, and tears i were streaming from her eyes; while Catherine. ' convulsively clasping enough rosaries to stock Ben- v zigers, was, like myself, in an ecstacy. But this j was not all. His Holiness made the circuit, pre- ; senting his ring to be kissed; and each one's confession con-fession later on told that at least four of those in I the Holy Father's audience kissed, not only the Fisherman's Ring,' but the dear hand itself. And the thrill it was like getting first honors, a crown J par excellence and a gold medal all at once, with the feeling afterward of Benediction when the I chapel is dark and the singing is soft and low! . After he had said a word to each, Pope Pius X I turned to us all once more, gave as a general bless ing, while we held out the articles we had brought with us; then, as if by magic, the procession of guards and dignitaries re-formed, and he passed majestically through the doorway; and we well, everyone gazed and gazed in the direction he had taken. And when the epell was broken, everyone was silent, everyone was deeply moved; and as we left the great palace of the Popes we felt that he had seen a greater than any earthly king or emperor. This visit was over by noon, but it more than filled the day; and not until the next morning did we continue our sightseeing, this time going to the Vatican galleries. Here again words serve but to repeat what the guide-books tell the tourist. The beauty of it all, the wonder of it all, must be seen, not once, but often, to be appreciated. From the first steps of the Scala Regia to the last room of the Etruscan museum, one is in a dream. There is the great Sistine chapel, with its beautifully decorated deco-rated marble screens, "its impressive frescoes, its renowned "Last Judgment" by Michael Angelo. Think of one chapel and not a very large one at that containing paintings by Perugino, Botticelli. Ghirlandajo, Raphael and Michael Angelo! Farther Far-ther on, we came to the famous Stange and Logge which immortalize Raphael. Chief of these is, of ! f . course, the Stanza della Segnatura, with its ceiling ceil-ing paintings, under which are the Disputa, Par-nassus Par-nassus and the School of Athens. The picture gallery of the Vatican, lately en- i larged and improved by His Holiness Pius X, is ' a monument to the Papacy, and shows that the . Church has ever been the patron, the conserver of art. To understand, even partially, the paintings, one must remember history, mythology, and the lives and legends of the saints. One could hardly expect fully to grasp the symbolism of some of them; for local traditions and quaint bits of folk- lore have been embodied in many of the pictures I k by the artists who painted, not for posterity, but for their own times and their own people. St. Sebastian is a favorite subject among Italian Ital-ian painters; and standing near a group of tour-. its in the Vatican gallery, before a picture of the martyr, Catherine became interested in a young woman, who, looking in rain for the name of the picture, turned to a companion and asked if it represented Prometheus or William Tell's son. The elder lady told her that it was St. Sebastian's Martyrdom, Mar-tyrdom, whereupon she remarked admiringly: "Dear! I wish I knew the Bible as well as you do!'' This incident was duly chronichled in Catherine's Cath-erine's note-book, followed by the philosophic remark: re-mark: "One can't know everything, but one should know enough not to let others know how little one knows. So there!'' To return to the Vatican treasures. We spent i hours looking at the great Raphael tapestries, the i priceless collections of antiquities, mosaics, sculp- 1 ture and bronzes; and at each step the conviction was more and more forced on us that a lifetime would be too short in which to see and some to ' know the art wealth of this great palace of the f Popes. A morning devoted to the Catacombs of St. fkf Calixtus, and an afternoon to the Church of St. ' Paul's-without-the-Walls, made a day to be remembered. remem-bered. At the Catacombs we applied for entrance J anj guide; and each of us was supplied with a tinv taper for use in the long, narrow, dark underground under-ground passages, where, in tombs, inscriptions and paintings, is recorded a wonderful chapter in. the hjctorv of the Church. The darkness, accentuated bv the flickering tapers, the stillness, the sense of mystery which one feels as one gropes through the narrow streets in this city of the dead, the chill that comes over one after a short stay underground . all were part of a memorable experience. 7 We had not shaken off the impression of the Catacombs when we visited St. Paul's, but here was beauty and brightness. Everything is modern L tWreat basilica. The vastness of the interior i is imposing, and one is impressed at once by the wealth of marble, alabaster and malachite. But the cloisters ! Framing a quaint old garden, the roof is supported by rows of beautiful marble columns, col-umns, exquisitely carved, some fluted, others spirals spi-rals ; all melting into shadowy arches, and all speaking of centuries of silence in the sunshine and in the shadows. We were like the little boy t of our first reader days who wanted each season as it came to be only one. While we were under the spell of the cloisters, we thought we had never seen anything more impressively beautiful. In Rome one is receiving impressions from all sides and at all times, so the effect is, perhaps, kaleidoscopic; but even the fragments of pictures one carries away are worth it. One does not soon forget the piazzas, most of them bearing names reminiscent of Rome's better days ; the religious statutes in public places, the quaint little shrines, some only a metal bracket, holding a statue or pic-tur?, pic-tur?, before which a tiny lamp flickers ; the cos-niopital cos-niopital street crowds, among them priests in sou- , tanes and monks wearing their religious habits: the names of the parts of the city, one recalling the Apostle Peter, a second the maiden Tarpeia. another Pancratius, still another Rienza. The very streets are alive with memories. Along some of. the old winding, narrow ways, every though is of the long ago; and one feels that today will never dispossess the yesterday that owns the dark stone buildings, with their fortress-like fronts, small windows win-dows set high above the streets, and metal-bound doors that look as if made to resist even the attacks at-tacks of Time. One doesn't get very far from the Tiber in Rome; and while as a river it was distinctly disappointing dis-appointing to us, as a stream out of the lr'story and romance of the past, it was full of cliirm. Leaning over its yellow waters ore afternoon, Mary, in mild Macaulay fashion, recalled our elocution days by reciting: Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may; 1, with two more to help me, ' Will hold the foe in play. In yon straight, path, a thousand May well be stopped by three : , Xow who will stand on either hand, And keep the bVidge with me? And never to us had the old ballad seemed so stirring as there on the bridge, while automobiles and carriages were passing in tmbroken procession. We did not see them. We thought only of How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old. There is a charm about even the beggars and street-venders in Rome. We found it necessary to provide ourselves with an amount- of small change before venturing out each day; the demands are many, and one is alarmed to see how soon a handful hand-ful of coins are spent. But five big centimes mean only .on penny; so ore's caution soon wears off. and one s stock 01 souvenirs, cameos, mosaics and post cards, etc.. increases. Speaking of post cards, we had an amusing scene the day before we left Rome. We were, goirg to drive to the Colosseum in order to see it by moonlight, and we stopped at a desk to stsmp some post cards. It was a busy moment, and one of ihe clerks hurriedly took up a box from behind the desk, opened it, put the cover on hastily and was about to return it to its rccsss, when Catherine, who bad caught a glimpse of her own unmistakable unmistak-able writing, took the box and exposed its 'contents 'con-tents at least sixty post cards which we had handed hand-ed in for mailing at different times, and for the ' stamps of which we had paid! There followed a dramatic scene in English and Italian; and, before it closed, bell boys, porters, guides and the proprietor pro-prietor were on the stage, when, to the sound of apologies and explanations, the Americans withdrew with-drew in triumph. It was a funny scene, and we enjoyed en-joyed it to the full as we drove to the Colosseum: but there were only grave thoughts and feelings of awe when we stepped into the shadows of the archways and on into the arena flooded with silver light. There was a witchery about the play of lights and shadows. High up to the east towered the . walls, and against the tiers and ruins of the arcades ar-cades the moon shone white. Standing there in the stillness of the summer night, it was easy to conjure up a scene from the long ago. We could see emperors, senators, vestal virgins and the multitude multi-tude round about; and there, on the stand, the Christian martyrs waiting the signal which would open on of the great doorways from which Death was ready to spring upon them. An early Mass at S. Andrea the next morning, a last prayer at the Confession in St. Peter's, and we turned toward the station." Somehow, it was not with "sadness of farewell" that we left Rome; for part of its charm is the hope that it wakens in the hearts of its lovers to come back once more to this Xiobe of Nations, this City of the soul. But should we never again walk its streets in reality. Rome is ours forever, as all best things are, in the memory of the heart. YARN AND TEXTILES' MADE OF PAPER. Consul General Edward D. Winslow of Stockholm, Stock-holm, under date of Juue 8, reports in regard to a new industry which is about to be established in Sweden. He writes: "In Halmstad (south part of Sweden) Mr. Pon-tas Pon-tas Holmstrom will soon start a spinning mill for making yarn out of paper. Such mills already exist in Germany and France, and have drawn some attention in England as well as in the United States. So far the manufacture of rugs and carpets car-pets seem to be the best practical use of this new paper yarn. People in the provinces here, especially in Ostergotland, are already making carpets with paper welt." |
