Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1916 — DECIDEDLY NOT HIS HOBBY [ARTICLE]

DECIDEDLY NOT HIS HOBBY

Rheumatic Sufferer Could Not See How His Case Compared With That of the Martyrs. This story is quoted by Mrs. Maude M. C. Ffoulkes in “My Own Past,” apropos of people who make their misfortunes their hobby. A Roman Catholic priest told it to Mrs. Ffoulkes of one of his parishioners. This old man was a confirmed grumbler who suffered from acute rheumatism, and whenever the priest chanced to visit him he inveighed bitterly against the cruelty of the Creator who permitted rheumatism to rack the bones of the aged. “Now, Cassidy,” reproved the good father, “I don’t like to hear this constant grumbling. What, after all, is your pain in comparison with the agonies endured by the blessed martyrs? Think of them,” he added, as holy zeal inspired his words; “think of that noble army who were tortured without uttering a word of complaint! Some of them were plunged into boiling oil,-others were devoured slowly by the wild beasts, many were crucified—but is it not recorded that they glorified in their sufferings? Why, then, rebel at such a trifle as rheumatism?” ' He paused. Probably he expected Cassidy to see presently, with the eye of faith, the palm of martyrdom which is the reward of uncomplaining merit. But the old man was not of the stuff of which saints age composed, and very crossly he grunted: “Shure, an’ I’m not sayin’ a wurrd against all you’re tellin’ be. But the sufferin’s of thim martyrs don’t count nothin’, you see —it was just their hol> by. Rheumatism ain’t a hobby of mine.”