PREPARATION 5

pupil without, he claims, there being any special
brilliancy about his studies. We cannot forego men-
tioning that, when in the higher grades of that school,
his future tastes for literature and the publication of
literary productions were forecast by a little venture
which was nothing less than a diminutive, hand-written
newspaper, which he daily composed out of a periodical
pertaining to the teacher. On his way home, our child
journalist would read it out to a group of good old
country folk. This being during the painful days of
the Franco-German war of 1870-71, it can easily be
surmised how greatly valued was the news thus dis-
seminated by the youthful publisher.

He had, however, to face just then a more serious
undertaking. In furtherance of his never-failing
aspirations after the ecclesiastical state, he commenced,
under the tuition of a local clergyman, the Abbé
Modeste Plessard, the study of Latin and Greek, which
opened to him the doors of the Lesser Seminary of
Mayenne. This he entered early in September, 1873.
Again he modestly claims that his success there was
quite ordinary, except in Latin versification and music.

That asylum of science and letters was to be for him
but the stepping-stone to his real vocation, that of a
missionary in foreign parts. During the scholastic
year, 1873-74, the seminary of Mayenne was visited
by two foreign missionaries who addressed the
students. One of them,a Father Horner, was a member
of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, whose special
field is with the blacks of Africa. He hailed from far-
off Zanzibar,° and tried his best to interest his hearers,
but his lecture on his negro charge did not appeal to the
religious nature of young Morice. The fact that,

® Of which we think he ultimately became the Vicar Apostolic,
or ecclesiastical superior,