Note 6 — XII

A secular priest in the Philippines once related to me, quite of his own accord, what had led him to the choice of his profession. One day, when he was a non-commissioned officer in the army, he was playing cards with some comrades in a shady balcony. “See,” cried one of his friends, observing a peasant occupied in tilling the fields in the full heat of the sun, “how the donkey yonder is toiling and perspiring while we are lolling in the shade.” The happy conceit of letting the donkeys work while the idle enjoyed life made such a deep impression on him that he determined to turn priest; and it is the same felicitous thought that has impelled so many impecunious gentlemen to become colonial officials. The little opening for civil labor in Spain and Portugal, and the prospect of comfortable perquisites in the colonies, have sent many a starving caballero across the ocean.