Note 192 — Chapter VIII · A STARTLING DISCLOSURE. (continued 4)

The Dominican Fathers, assisted by their novices, with their own hands performed a great deal of the work on their monastery and the beautiful church of S. Rose. Like them, the scholastics afterwards made bricks and lime, cut the wood, etc., to build that of S. Thomas, the seminary, and convent of Nazareth. The poverty of our establishment forces them to devote their hours of recreation to this work. Every day they spend three hours in gardening, in working in the fields or in the woods. Nothing could be more frugal than their table, and that of the two bishops is no better; pure water from a spring is their ordinary drink. Neither could anything be more humble than their clothing—imagine fifty poor scholastics who are obliged to cover themselves with rags, and to borrow decent clothes with which to appear in the town.

Bishop Flaget hopes that pious and charitable persons who are not able to send him money for his cathedral will endeavor to send clothes or books necessary for the studies and the clothing of his beloved scholastics.