Maime o' the Corner. The Making of Abbotsford.-The Round Table of Representative Irish and English Catholic Novelists.-Dr. Joseph Smith's Beata Maria.-Our Boys' and Girls' Annual.-Carmel in Ireland.-Moral Principles and Medical Practice.-Fenian, Nights' Entertainment.-That Football Game and What Came of it. -Poems of the Hon. Roden Noel.-Clear Waters.-Short History of the Catholic Church.-Oxford Conferences.-Two Little Pilgrims.—Mission Book.- Spicilegium Benedictinum.--Mrs. Clement Shorter's Poems, etc. 657 A Prayer (written during a severe illness). By R. Blake NOTICE. The many kind friends who take a personal interest in the prosperity of this Magazine can serve it best by forwarding at once their subscription of Seven Shillings for the year 1898, to the REV. MATTHEW RUSSELL, S.J., 86 Stephen's Green, Dublin, who will be glad of the opportunity of thanking them individually. JANUARY, 1897. SILVER JUBILEE RETROSPECTS. I. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' STORYTELLING. WHEN this page takes its place in front of our twenty-fifth yearly volume, it will occupy the position that might naturally be filled by a preface. But the arrangement of our December Number does not allow a preface; and therefore we may now anticipate it by twelve months, making these first pages a real preface or foreword, and not a postscript, as prefaces generally are. The memorial of our silver jubilee which we should like to present to our readers at the end of the year now begun would be a full and exact index to our first five and twenty yearly volumes. But this would cost more time and money than the uninitiated can conjecture and would in the end be appreciated by only a few of our readers. Yet those few we value so highly that for their sake and for the sake of an occasional student in such public collections as the British Museum of London, the National Library of Dublin, the Public Library of Chicago, etc., we still cherish the ambition to produce this guide to the treasures amassed by THE IRISH MONTHLY in the first quarter-century of its existence. Meanwhile we shall give a brief survey now and then of one or other of our departments. Let us begin with our storytellers. When THE IRISH MONTHLY was first planned, those chiefly concerned in it were connected with the Church of the Sacred Heart, Crescent, Limerick; and to this circumstance is due the rather strange fact that our first novelist was the Dean of VOL. XXV. No. 283 1 Limerick, Richard Baptist O'Brien, D.D., who had already published separately the Irish story, "Ailey Moore." His "Jack Hazlitt" began in our first Number, July 1873, and ran to twentyseven chapters, ending in the middle of our second volume, in August 1874. It was republished in book-form by Messrs. James Duffy and Co., of Wellington Quay, Dublin. Our first volume was also enriched by "The Two Muleteers of Mollares," translated with exquisite skill from the Spanish of Fernan Caballero by our Irish poet, Denis Florence MacCarthy. The thirteen chapters ran from August to December, 1873. As our first novelist was a dignitary of the Church, so our next was a Nun-Mother Aloysius, who, with the help of Lady Georgiana Fullerton and Father Augustus Dignam, S.J., established in these countries the pious institute of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God Incarnate.* In the present context she will be better recognized as Miss Fanny Taylor, author of "Eastern Hospitals and English Nurses," "Tyborne," "Irish Hearts and Irish Homes," etc. Her novel in THE IRISH MONTHLY was "A Pearl in Dark Waters," which ran to twenty-eight chapters, from December, 1873, to April, 1875. It was republished in book-form by Burns and Oates of London, but the titlepage bore the name of a less prettily named story, "The Stoneleighs of Stoneleigh." Another long tale in these aboriginal days was "John Richardson's Relatives" by a very clever lady of the south of Ireland who died many years ago-Miss Julia O'Ryan. This tale began at page 447 of our second volume and ran through the whole of the third. In the middle of our third volume (1875) began "The Chances of War," running to forty chapters and coming to an end in our fifth volume, February, 1877. This is an Irish historical novel of the days of Owen Roe O'Neill, by "A. Whitelock," who at this distance of time will allow himself to be recognized as the Rev. Thomas A. Finlay, S J., then a very young man with the priesthood still long before him. "The Chances of War" was brought out by Messrs. M. H. Gill and Son in book-form, but only from the unsuitable type and page of the Magazine. A proper reprint would be a good addition to our not over rich stock of Irish historical novels. * Their Irish houses are at Carrigtwohill, Co. Cork, and St. Joseph's, Port-land Row, Dublin, |