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Blest by the pope, sent forth amid the prayers and the fastings of the people, the fleet had been cleared of every unclean thing, for haughty England who styled herself the mistress of the seas was to be humbled upon her own element and made to yield her lands to the foreigners.

Every hymn, every prayer, was still in Latin; confession, penance, fastings and feastings, extreme unction, went on as before. There was little to show that any change had taken place; and yet every ploughman felt that all was changed. The bishop, gorgeous as he might be in mitre and cope, was a mere tool of the king. The priest was trembling before heretics he used to burn.

In due time and with all possible secrecy, they visited the region where this great mine was said to be emboweled in the earth. Here the wily Shawanoe spent some time in seclusion, in order to humble himself by fastings, purifications and pow-wowings, with a view to propitiate the Great Spirit; and to get His permission to disclose the grand secret of the mine.

At the sight of this horrible sacrilege my grandfather was filled with deep remorse and consternation, from which it was a long time ere he recovered; and it was not until he had undergone many severe penances, fastings, and caused numberless masses to be said, that he felt himself at all relieved from the weight of his crime.

To this end, watchings, fastings, hair-shirts, remote and solitary banishments, perpetual imprisonments, whips and other afflictions, have been introduced amongst men: but so, that they should carry a sting with them, and be real afflictions indeed; and not fall out as it once did to one Gallio, who having been sent an exile into the isle of Lesbos, news was not long after brought to Rome, that he there lived as merry as the day was long; and that what had been enjoined him for a penance, turned to his pleasure and satisfaction: whereupon the Senate thought fit to recall him home to his wife and family, and confine him to his own house, to accommodate their punishment to his feeling and apprehension.

They will observe, in the first place, his natural advantages: 'Has he a healthy frame, capable of enduring long-continued exertion of mind and body, the confinement of the study, the excitement of practice, the crowded court by day, the vigil of thought by night? Can he subsist with a sleep of five hours? Can he, without dyspepsy, endure irregular meals hasty eatings and long fastings?

Multitudes of men retired to the desert and to the protective walls of monasteries. There, by constant privations, fastings, continual prayer, flagellation, and introspection, they spent their lives.

Thus wearing out his tender body in fastings, in many watchings, and in the pious exercise of holy labors, he offered up himself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God; and thus passing his days in the flesh, against the flesh, and above the flesh, in his conversation he represented an angel. How Saint Patrick was Carried into Ireland.

Hadj had caught the aroma of their meditations with the perfume of the incense, for his eyes had lost their mischief and become gloomily profound, as if they stared on bygone centuries or watched a far-off future. Even the child began to look elderly, and worn as with fastings and with watchings.

And he sent the letters unto all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace and truth, To confirm these days of Purim in their times appointed, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them, and as they had decreed for themselves and for their seed, the matters of the fastings and their cry.