Daniel E. Hudson, C.S.C.

A Memoir

by
Rev. John W. Cavanaugh, C.S.C.
Ave Maria Press
Notre Dame, Indiana

NIHIL OBSTAT
John J. Reedy, C.S.C.
Censor Deputatus

IMPRIMATUR
Most Rev. Leo A. Pursley, D.D.
Bishop of Fort Wayne

I have just come from the deathbed of Father Hudson. Lying on a narrow hospital bed, in a tiny room of our Community House, his close-trimmed white Van Dyke beard matching his pointed white pompadour hair against the spotless sheets, his almost alabaster, unwrinkled face most faintly tinted with lustrous pink, his breathing only a bit heavy with coming death, his large, innocent grey-blue eyes open and upturned to Heaven, his strong, nervous hands clasping his crucifix, his sweet voice strongly answering the prayers for the dying, painless and fearless he gave up the ghost. His beloved Longfellow had said of Evangeline: "When she had passed it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music." When the end came at ten o'clock Friday morning, January 12, 1934, all of us thought the most exquisite music we had ever known had ceased forever on this earth. Not but that we all knew it was best he should go. Four years earlier, on the brink of eighty, he underwent a major operation. For a few years before there had been occasional sudden dizzy spells, and a few times he had toppled over in his chair. All his life long he had but grudgingly and parsimoniously nourished his frail body, and now when reserve power was demanded to struggle against the effects of the operation, he had no gathered resources. In March, 1929, ill health obliged him to abandon his beautiful labors -- he would have said privileges -- as editor of THE AVE MARIA, though for many months afterwards, the old habit of jotting down literary items or editorial notes placidly pursued him. He never read the proofs of these items, nor did he ever know whether they were actually used. Indeed, he never looked at a copy of THE AVE MARIA after he discontinued the work -- such was his fine notion of obedience and religious detachment. But he said the beads incessantly and with almost quivering fervor for the work, and he had a poignant interest in the success of the young editor who succeeded him.

For two and a half years after his severe hospital experience, Father Hudson was able to move gently about the house, to go to the chapel frequently, or to walk on the sunny paths near our monastery home. Except when he was talking with one of the Community, he was found almost invariably reciting Our Lady's Rosary. Then came a day early in last February when we found him fallen to the floor, and though happily there was neither bruise nor break from that time on he was bedfast, with only regular intermissions for a short smoke. To the end of his life, like his beloved friend, Father Fidelis, C. P. (James Kent Stone), this exquisite ascetic relished a good cigar. It was the one lingering trace of the old aristocratic tastes, and it was the only indulgence of any kind he ever knew in the years of his health. Little by little the bed sapped his strength: toxins from impaired digestion at times momentarily clouded his memory, and far less frequently his understanding. The next hour he would amaze you by a flash of the ancient brilliance, charm, delicacy and distinction of speech. We noted that from week to week he was drawing visibly closer to the skies. We had seen other distinguished and saintly deaths at Notre Dame. When Father Sorin, the Founder of the University breathed his last in 1893, Father Hudson had said, "I feel as if the bottom had dropped out of the world." Father Hudson's death impressed us in the same way. It is "the supreme tribute."

Daniel Eldred Hudson was born at Nahant, Mass., a suburb of Boston, December 18, 1849. His father, Samuel Henry Hudson, was of Methodist stock settled in Vinal Haven, Maine. His mother, Mary Hawkes, first saw the light in Ireland and was of a most devout Catholic family. The earliest Irish folk to settle in Nahant came in the late forties, and Mary Hawkes after her marriage in Boston, September 4, 1845 -- Father P. F. Lynden of Holy Cross Cathedral performing the ceremony, and the witnesses being G. F. Francis (friend of the groom) and Ellen Driscoll (friend of the bride) -- was among the first dozen of them. There were ten children in the Hudson family, five boys and five girls, and they followed in this order: Mary, Harriet, Daniel, Elizabeth, John, James, Joseph Ezra,{1} Martha, Samuel Henry, and Julia. Two of the boys, James and Joseph Ezra, died in infancy. At thirty, John died in the Far West, whither he had gone in quest of adventure and gold and health; all the others reached a good age.

There was no race suicide in the Hudson family, and no shrinking from motherhood on the part of the valiant woman; these ten children were born within the space of fifteen years. At least two of the girls bore the same middle name as Father Hudson -- Harriet Eldred and Elizabeth Eldred. It was an old family name, and a favorite of Mr. Hudson, Senior. Julia, the youngest, was more commonly known as Evangeline, because of the family's admiration for their Nahant summer neighbor, Longfellow. There remain living only three members of the family -- Miss Harriet, older than Father Hudson; Mrs. Julia Hawley; and the youngest son, namesake of the father, Samuel Henry Hudson, who has had a distinguished career as an attorney and as First Assistant to the City Solicitor of Boston. He is a Dartmouth man of exceptionally fine mind, cultured speech and manner, and wholly charming character and personality. All the Hudson children were baptized within two weeks of their birth in St. Mary's Church, Lynn -- four miles from Nahant -- by the very earnest and competent (as well as Very Reverend) Father Patrick Strain, later Monsignor. In a brief and delicately humorous memorandum, Father Hudson says this was done "surreptitiously," by which he must have meant that, according to a custom often tolerated then in the case of mixed marriages, the boys were expected to follow the religion of their father, and the girls the religion of their mother. The father of the Hudson family was in no sense a narrow-minded man. His formal education, as was natural in his time and place, was not without its limitations, but he was very intelligent, a reading and thinking man. He was also a positive man, not disposed too readily to relinquish what seemed his authentic claims and rights. Daniel, first son, was naturally the family's earliest experiment in bringing up the boys in the father's strong Methodist principles. Mr. Hudson may have made no objection to the baptism of the boy, nor of any of the other children: the question of upbringing was delayed at least a few years, but not for long. When Daniel was five, Mr. Hudson took him to the only church in town -- it was conveniently Methodist -- and at this point there are two schools of history as to what took place. In his whimsical memorandum, Father Hudson declares that when he approached the church, the unmelodious peal from the tower distressed his sensitive nerves, and he shrank back in tears and fears, and had to be taken home. Humorously he recalls the incident in print. "I then and there, at the age of about four \[five\] years, abjured Protestantism! A girl who worked for us solemnly declared that 'the devil had undoubtedly frightened the poor child,' and I was much impressed by this view of the matter. My father never again spoke of taking me to church, and so I became 'a convert!' I remember the incident vividly and still have a horror of Protestant church bells! They never seem to ring out but to toll solemnly, ruefully." When Father Hudson wrote these amusing words in 1910 as a contribution to "Some Roads to Rome in America,"{2} he was twenty years older than when I first heard from him the details of his "conversion," and his memory had undoubtedly slipped a bit. He actually did enter the conventicle, plainly furnished after the manner of meeting-houses of that day, without lights or pictures or flowers, and -- I recall his expression "with only a perspiring clergyman and a perspiring water pitcher to beguile the tedium of a long, solemn sermon" for an imaginative child. Result: the boy diverted himself by drawing pictures of most extraordinary animals entering Noah's Ark "two by two." Mr. Hudson was a reverential man. His distinguished son told me more than once that when a loud thunderclap sometimes frightened him half to death, he would run to his father's knee to ask the meaning of it. "That," the father would say in solemn recitative, "is thunder. Thunder is the voice of God. God hates a liar." It was merely Mr. Hudson's way of bringing home a lesson to the child's mind. Not unnaturally, therefore, when the father was distracted from the theological thrills of the sermon and saw how his fidgeting young hopeful was employed, he grievously despaired of his future. Taking him by the hand to the saintly mother he said, "I can't do anything with this young scoundrel. Will you try what you can do?" Never fell sweeter words on any mother's heart And surely the world knows what the mother did with that son! This is the story frequently heard from Father Hudson's lips in my young days, and verified a short time before his death.

Father Hudson received his earliest instruction in the public school of Nahant, and his few remaining contemporaries, now ancients, remember him as a shy and brilliant boy. He once told me that the Reverend Samuel Longfellow, "a tall, lean clergyman with many freckles and a shock of sandy hair" taught him to swim. This was a brother of the poet, and his best biographer. Nahant was a favorite watering place for the famous and the well-to-do during the summer heats, and so well did Daniel Hudson advance in the learning of the schools that during several vacations in his middle "teens" he tutored the sons of wealthy visitors. I find among notes gathered from conversations with rare survivors among his old neighbors that he was a punctilious dresser, sweet tempered, energetic, reticent and refinedwords that describe his whole life until his last hours. The schoolhouse was almost directly opposite the Hudson home,{3} and there Father Hudson did his grade work. The period now covered by the grades, and the high school was mostly telescoped and scrambled -- much like an accordion of variable length as it functioned -- over the entire country until fifty years ago. In later years Father Hudson thought he remembered that as a child he had seen Lincoln in Boston. It is worth adverting to the story because it has sometimes been referred to in print. It was, of course, natural that the future Emancipator should go to that seething center of civil strife over slavery, home then of most of the literary, oratorical and governmental genius of the country. According to the printed story the moment occurred when the boy was about ten years old. All Boston and the countryside had turned out to get a glimpse of "the uncouth woodchopper from the wild west" who was lecturing the country about freedom for the slaves. A boy of ten would ordinarily have little show in that mob, but in his ancient years Father Hudson thought he remembered (and the printed accounts always said) that just when Mr. Lincoln's carriage was passing, someone -- at times he thought it was his father, at other times, a friendly police man -- hoisted the small boy on his shoulder, and he caught a glimpse of the greatest American since the Founders. For a long time I could find no mention of a speech-making visit of Lincoln to Boston, but recently, Mayor Curley assured me, Lincoln did visit Boston in 1848, and that a bronze tablet commemorating the occasion has been erected on the spot where his address was delivered. There are not so many men alive now who authentically saw Lincoln, and besides the incident would be interesting because among purely secular figures in human history, the one whom Father Hudson most admired and oftenest quoted both in print and conversation, was Lincoln. But alas for the romance of history! Lincoln's only known visit to Boston occurred almost exactly one year before Father Hudson was born. Mrs. Hudson was so delicately reverential that she could endure nothing even remotely disrespectful to things Catholic or to things Irish -- synonymous terms in New England fifty years ago. Once a younger brother was regaling his sisters with what was then a rollicking new song, "Finnegan's Wake." The mother approached unobserved and listened with some amusement until the lines which declared, "There were thirteen candles at his head, And a bushel of 'taties' at his feet." At that moment a liturgical protest, a simple but sufficient manual admonition, fell upon the offending singer's ear!

Father Hudson used to tell with mingled compunction and humor how a distant relative of his, the rather notorious "Angel Gabriel," went walking up and down the earth (like Satan in the Book of Job), yowling fanatical yowls and stirring up evil passion against the Catholic Church and the Catholic people. To a great extent Father Hudson believed his kinsman, the very reverend Angel, was responsible for the outrage perpetrated upon Father Bapst, S.J., who, out of insane mob hatred for the Church was tarred and feathered in Ellsworth, Maine, in 1854, and who in the eccentric rhetoric of that school of Christianity, was "rode out of town on a rail." Later on while at Holy Cross, Worcester, Father Hudson often served the Mass of Father Bapst, who playfully called him "my litle Angel Gabriel"; and Father Hudson always believed the holy man was especially kind to him on account of the celestial cousin's misconduct. Another intense but misguided ancestor of his seems to have been responsible for the burning of a church in Philadelphia during the good old Know Nothing Days. The whole country seemed violent and irrational in many respects during that period of church-burning and convent-mobbing.

There was no Catholic church in Nahant then, nor for many years afterwards, but every Sunday, even in the bitterest cold, the wonderful mother traveled four miles round the windy, sandy beach to St. Mary's Church in Lynn; and as one by one the children became competent they accompanied her. That was heroic. There was no satisfactory way of teaching catechism in the town, but in the summer months a very unusual woman, Miss Emma Forbes Cary,{4} a wealthy, refined and aristocratic Bostonian, used to frequent Nahant for the bathing and the breezes. Herself a convert, she zealously undertook the catechism of the children preparing for First Communion.

Thus Father Hudson was able to write:{5} "I was taught the Catechism by Miss Emma Forbes Cary. That was long, long ago; however, I yet remember -- I hope she has forgotten -- all the trouble she had in getting me to pronounce 'Epiphany' and 'Transubstantiation' correctly." Thus, too, Miss Cary was able to say in the same volume: "There is one result of my conversion in which I take an honest pride. It enabled me to teach the Catechism to the Reverend Editor of THE AVE MARIA" Father Hudson never ceased to wonder why Agassiz, with the example of Miss Cary constantly before him in his own family, did not follow Newman and Brownson into the Church. In explanation of Father Hudson's wonderment it should be said that there were three remarkable Cary girls. Besides the one already mentioned, another, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, became the wife of the illustrious Louis Agassiz, Professor of Zoology and Geology at Harvard, whose study of glaciers and their movements at first astonished the scientific world, though it has since become a commonplace in geology. Another sister, Mary Louisa Cary, became the second wife of Professor Cornelius C. Felton, famous professor of Greek language and literature in Harvard. The last two years of his life, Professor Felton served as President of the University. Neither Mrs. Agassiz nor Mrs. Felton ever became Catholics.

Agassiz, who shared with Felton a large double bungalow next door to the Hudsons at Nahant during summers, was a most interesting neighbor. His brilliant and holy sister-in-law, Father Hudson's catechist, who had exceptional opportunities to observe the man and his ways, writes of him: "Agassiz lived much in his laboratory, but he could sit among a throng of boys and girls laughing and talking as completely secluded in his own thoughts as if he were on the glacier of the Aar. His power of concentration seemed to have no limit, but he could come out of this state of absorption and join in the merriment of the young people like a boy free from care and responsibility. The fishermen of Nahant were the Professor's stanch friends and allies, and the pick of their spoils was his, whether taken by net or line. They aided him, too, in dredging for the endless treasures of the deep. Then hour after hour passed uncounted in the laboratory while he examined his treasures with the microscope, delighted if any of the family came to share his enjoyment."{6} Father Hudson's father was a fisherman and went "down to the sea" every day in his own modest sailing craft. Neither his kind of work nor his opportunities nor his personal temperament ever permitted him to become a "money-making man." There were ten children to be provided for by the sturdy father, and the little mother pieced out the family income by making room for very select summer boarders at some cost to the family comfort, and by assisting the nabobs in certain domestic details during the hot months. It was by such beautiful sacrifices that Daniel Hudson was able to go to college. As the eldest son, he sought employment early; therefore, at fourteen, he was at work in what was anciently called "The Burnham Antique Boke Shop," at that time situated at 143 Washington Street, Boston, opposite the Old South Church.{7} In later years, Father Hudson loved to talk about this quaint, astute, hard-fisted, yet most generous book lover, who once -- when he was still wealthy -- dreamed (hopelessly, of course,) of adopting the attractive Daniel Hudson and making him his heir. It was during the brief employment under Burnham that the future editor and literary connoisseur acquired his delicate appreciation of the best old and rare books.

Father Hudson's next occupation was with the publishing house of Lee and Shepherd, when he was fifteen years of age. Influence or favoritism of any kind never opened any door to him in life. Passing by the publishing house one day he saw a sign, "Boy Wanted," offered himself for the place, and, to his great delight, was accepted. He remained with Lee & Shepherd for three years, and it was chiefly during that period that he came into some intimacy not only with Longfellow, already grave, grey and lovable, who received him into a tender and very special friendship, but with practically all the other writers of the old New England school. With some of the more shy ones he had only a courteous acquaintance, as, for example, the dreamy, mystic Hawthorne; but all of them -- Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Emerson -- he remembered vividly and picturesquely in his old age. What impressed him most, as he often said, was the modesty of these great writers, their willingness to make friends with a young man. Most of them were published by Lee & Shepherd, the great House of that day, and it was a pleasant way of writing folk (even as now!) to drop in on their publishers occasionally to inquire how their books were going. So it befell that Longfellow fancied this gentle, delicate and imaginative young man in many beautiful ways so like himself, and permitted a beautiful intimacy to grow between them. One day the poet found him resting in the shadows of a little park, and pleasantly greeted him. Daniel Hudson swiftly stood at attention, adroitly slipping a book into his coat pocket. The poet inquired what the book might be, and Father Hudson always recalled with satisfaction Longfellow's smile when it was found to be one of the great poet's own books. He remembered many little touches of Longfellow's kindness; such things, for example, as calling him across the street to meet John Lothrop Motley, the historian, then making one of his many visits to his boyhood home in Nahant. Father Hudson in his tiny memorandum says: "My vocation to the priesthood was encouraged by Longfellow. He once asked me in his kindly way what I intended to be when I became a man. My prompt answer was, 'A Catholic priest and missionary among the Indians.' He smiled, probably at the presumptuousness of the idea, but there was something impressive in his voice when, looking down at me he said: 'I am very glad you have such an intention.' Of course I felt sure of being on the right path since Mr. Longfellow had given his approval. Later on I decided that it would be better to be a Trappist monk than an Indian missionary."

In 1867, at the age of eighteen Daniel Hudson entered Holy Cross College, Worcester, where among other fine experiences he joined the Blessed Virgin's Sociality, and had for associates the boys who subsequently became Bishops Beaven of Springfield, Michaud of Burlington, Hoban of Scranton, and Conaty of Los Angeles -- certainly a distinguished group of undergraduates for any college in a single generation. Holy Cross left its stamp on him, for as late as fifteen years ago, nearly half a century after he came to Notre Dame, Father Hudson wrote to Father Michael Earls, S. J.: "I still say a daily prayer to St. Joseph which I learned from Father Ciampi in 1869." Father Ciampi had been a brilliant Roman student, and was then rector of Holy Cross College. Another exquisite friend of that day was Father Edward Holker Welch, S. J., who in his extreme old age visited Father Hudson at Notre Dame during the Golden Jubilee Exercises of 1893, and received such gentle and affectionate ministrations from his old pupil as impressed me deeply. "I never give Holy Communion," wrote Father Hudson in the same letter, "without recalling the reverential manner of Father Welch in giving Holy Communion."{8}

In 1870, when he was about twenty-one years old, he came to Notre Dame. The manner of it was dramatic, and, as all of us believe, providential. There was among our old padres at Notre Dame a Father Paul Gillen, earlier a very distinguished war chaplain. As a boy, during some years when his seminary studies had been interrupted by ill health, Father Gillen had earned a fair livelihood and carried on what was to him a beautiful Catholic vocation by soliciting subscriptions for The Pilot and selling such ancient religious classics as Bishop Milner's "End of Controversy" and Bishop Hornyold's "Catechism." His apostolic merchandising one day brought him to the campus of West Point, where he chanced upon a young cadet to whom he offered his wares. "Why, I've never seen a Catholic book in my life," said the cadet. -- "Then 'tis time for you to begin, Sir!" A purchase was made; the cadet read Milner's classic text; and two years after graduation in 1844, when Assistant Professor of Engineering at West Point, that same cadet offered himself to the local Priest for Baptism. When word reached his home, there was naturally a palpitating family council, and his brother, himself already tainted with Catholic teaching and feeling, hurried up to West Point to visit, to inquire, perhaps to remonstrate. There was much talk, and at last the former young cadet said, "Let's walk in the open air. I'm weary." Purposely, no doubt, he led his brother towards the little Catholic church on the Reservation, and said, "I'm going in for a mouthful of prayers.

Why don't you come in too?" Mild protest first, and then tolerant acquiescence. Telling the story, the professor's brother afterwards declared that when he had sat vacantly in the church for a short time he felt overwhelmingly conscious of some mysterious Presence, and flinging himself on his knees, prayed earnestly. He too became a convert. The young professor was no other than General William Stark Rosecrans, of illustrious record in the Civil War; and his brother, the almost equally famous and even more scholarly Bishop Rosecrans of Columbus, Ohio.

But all this is about Father Paul Gillen, who on a certain day was making a return from Albany to Notre Dame, when he entered into converse with an attractive youth on the train. Father Gillen learned that the young man was on his way to Mount Melleray, Iowa, to become a Trappist. So impressed was the famous old chaplain with Daniel Hudson that he scrupled not to paint colorfully the great need of holy Priests in the active ministry, the beauties of Notre Dame and the Holy Cross Community, and especially the opportunity to spend his life in glorifying the Blessed Virgin. The last card was a winner. The young man's eyes flashed! All his life Father Hudson had felt a tender devotion to our Blessed Mother. On the suggestion of Father Gillen, Daniel Hudson descended from the train at South Bend to "visit" Notre Dame. He did indeed!

That visit lasted just sixty-three years, with hardly a day's interruption! Certainly during all his life since 1870, Father Hudson never spent a total of ten days off the campus. Once he gave two whole days to a visit to his brilliant friend Bishop (later Archbishop) John Lancaster Spalding, and for years after was twitted about "that summer you spent in Peoria." When he was seventy-six years old, his first Alma Mater, Holy Cross (Worcester), had it in mind to confer on him an honorary degree, but, though delighted with the remembrance and applause of his old teachers, he pleaded that he was "no traveler, and could not go so great a distance." Even when his own venerable mother died in 1900;{9} though bowed in grief before and after, and with tender messages to the family during the last illness, he felt unable to go to Nahant. I think I understand. THE AVE MARIA is a weekly publication, and was then edited by Father Hudson without assistance. From an intimate knowledge of more than forty years, I can say that he always felt himself just one jump ahead of the printer's devil. This most affectionate and grateful of sons could ' not take time out even to go to his mother's funeral! Later on, of course, he was better provided with assistance. Father Hudson received the habit of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, March 7, 1871. He was professed March 19, 1872, and ordained June 4, 1875.{10} That same year he was appointed editor of this magazine, then just ten years old. As if that work were not enough for a frail young man, he was given an English class to teach in the University of Notre Dame, and for one year was made superior of the tiny Community Seminary, then called The Scholasticate.

III.

When THE AVE MARIA was founded, May 1st, 1865, every Bishop within the friendship of Father Sorin counselled him urgently against it, all of them prophesying the subscribers would be confined to the Founder's own personal friends. Catholics were so few; the hostility of "a people contradicting and not understanding" was so easily aroused by the very suggestion of what they called "Mariolatry"; Catholic writers were so rare, and Catholic readers, for that matter, were also rare. Even the illustrious Archbishop Martin John Spalding, of Baltimore, in his introductory essay prefixed to the first volume, was moved to say: "A weekly periodical devoted to the Blessed Virgin, successfully established in this cold, calculating age of mammonism, and in these United States of America, in which, perhaps more than anywhere else, the interests of this world are held as paramount and those of eternity are kept in the background; this is truly one of the wonders of this wonderful Nineteenth Century." Whoever writes the Life of Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., will have to say these two things among others: his unsurpassed devotion to the Mother of God was as deep and as boundless as the sea; also, he never completely turned away from any great project in her honor on which he had set his heart. He might have to detour here or there for a little space, but he always got back again on the main road.

The earliest numbers as well as the title-page of the first bound volume of the magazine claim editorship by "The Reverend Edward Sorin and Religious Assistants." Father Sorin's share in the work was the use of his large acquaintance and influence among notable men to secure contributions, and to select important articles from the European magazines for translation. Thus he secured as an early contributor the most masterful publicist of the day, Doctor Orestes A. Brownson, who became his friend, and at the close of his life expressed the desire to be buried at Notre Dame (as was done) where he might have the prayers of the Community.

Other contributors were Archbishop Martin John Spalding, of Baltimore, Bishop Timon, of Buffalo, Donald Xavier MacLeod, Mrs. Anna Hanson Dorsey, and a very respectable group of similar distinguished figures. But much of the heaviest and best material was selected from other publications -- direct reprints in the case of Cardinals Wiseman, Manning and Newman, and the beloved Father Faber; translations in the case of writers like Father Ventura, the Count de Segur, De Montfort, Bishop Dupanloup, the great Louis Veuillot, and the most learned Dom Gueranger, as well as Chateaubriand and Montalembert. The selections were remarkably well done. The magazine was sixteen pages, and it was very like Lytell's Living Age at its very best a clientele fed regularly on the product of these great and distinguished minds was well taken care of. Of course, in addition to these familiar names, there was a great store of legends, short stories and serials, solid theological articles on the great questions of Catholic faith, liturgy and practice, and in general a well-assorted and rich table of contents for a Catholic magazine.

I record with joy that as early as the third volume (1868) Father Sorin manifested his enterprise by inspiring a prize competition for the best poem and the best prose manuscript to be offered by contributors. A committee was appointed to decide on the prize, and -was it tact or just accident? -- the first prize for the poem was awarded ex aequo to the distinguished bard, George H. Miles of Mount St. Mary's, Emmettsburg, and the equally distinguished Mrs. Anna Hanson Dorsey. More remarkable still, in that same contest the prize awarded for the prose essay was also awarded ex aequo to Orestes A. Brownson and Louis Constantine! Yet in an editorial note, Father Sorin declares that the best committee he could select studied long and earnestly, and could do no better than distribute the honors thus. Father Sorin's shadowy editorship and that of his "Religious Assistants" lasted a year and a half. The "Religious Assistants"{11} who did the strictly editorial work was the revered and worshipful Mother Angela, foundress of St. Mary's College, Notre Dame. The historian of those early days must in all candor record something like consecrated kidnapping -- of course, always for the greater glory of God! We have seen that Father Hudson himself as a young man was on his way to join the Trappists in Iowa when the venerable Father Paul Gillen met him on the railroad train and persuaded him to make a permanent visit to Notre Dame. Something of the same kind happened in the case of the great Mother Angela. She had already been accepted for membership among the Sisters of Mercy in Chicago, and started from her home in Ohio with her mother to reach the convent on the appointed day. Very naturally mother and daughter stopped off at St. Mary's to visit their son and brother, Father Neil Gillespie, C.S.C., then a novice at Notre Dame, editing the college paper and teaching a class of mathematics as a holy diversion -- as is the excellent way of primitive Communities when they are hard pressed!

Miss Eliza Gillespie was a brilliant and accomplished young woman who had enjoyed the best training of great schools. The Gillespies were intimately bound either by blood relationship or close hereditary friendship with the Blaines and the Browns, the Ewings and the Shermans around Lancaster, Ohio. No wonder Father Sorin, looking about for the right young woman to take charge of St. Mary's Academy (now college) at Notre Dame, recognized in Eliza Gillespie the providential messenger from heaven.

It was all done in the best form of saintly practice. There was a religious retreat to search out the Will of God. There was no comparison of the relative merits of Communities, no less perfect motives suggested, but only from the venerable Founder a passionate and persuasive exposition of the needs and opportunities at St. Mary's. Undoubtedly the cords of Adam in some measure drew Miss Gillespie to a spot with which her beloved brother, Father Neil Gillespie, was already honorably associated. The result was that the young woman notified the Sisters in Chicago that she had decided to cast her fortunes with the Community of the Holy Cross at St. Mary's. She was carefully trained in the Community life in France, and her education continued.

Though the Community had already been laboring in this country for ten years, she is generally regarded as the Foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in the United States and the Foundress of St. Mary's great college for women at Notre Dame. Nevertheless, it is not without interest that both Father Hudson and Mother Angela, who were to have so much to do with the development of THE AVE MARIA, were both secured for the work by the operation of a very odd and original form of zeal.

But both Father Sorin and Mother Angela were fully preoccupied with the regular details of the administration of their communities, and it was not long before Father Neil Gillespie{12} was appointed editor of the magazine. At that time this young priest was editor of The Scholastic, which issued 1150 copies weekly, a remarkable circulation for a college paper in 1874. When Father Gillespie died in 1874 after distinctly high-class work on the magazine for eight years, the direction of THE AVE MARIA was intrusted to a "Faculty Committee." This lax arrangement endured only a few months when Father Hudson was named editor. It was his first religious "obedience" immediately after his ordination. It was the only "obedience" he ever received in the course of his sixty-four years as a priest of Holy Cross. The circulation of THE AVE MARIA then was eight thousand. It is now acclaimed by all editors and publishers as the best-known and most widely-circulated Catholic magazine in the English language.

A marked excellence of THE AVE MARIA has been its entire aloofness from personal puffery or holy gangdom or any participation in pious cliques. Father Hudson's confreres in the Community have derived much amusement from the fact that the University of Notre Dame was never mentioned except in annually announcing the recipient of the Lcetare Medal or other large historical event, and that hardly anything short of a scandal or having a book put on the Index could induce Father Hudson to mention the Congregation of Holy Cross or any member thereof! He was so different!

It would be obviously impossible to deal with the editorial career of Father Hudson as a fragment of another article. It must suffice to say here that from the beginning of his work, the lifting over of articles from European publications whether by direct seizure or translation abruptly ceased. Also that the quality of the contributions, both as to matter and form, showed great and immediate improvement.

I have already recorded that this saintly son could not manage the time even to attend his mother's funeral. In explanation let me say that from his own lips I have it that during the early years when he was alone, he was usually obliged to continue his labors far into the night -- until two o'clock in the morning, though he was required by Community rule to rise again at five. By campus practice, all heat was turned off in winter time at ten o'clock, and it was his habit to use a pair of large rubber boots into which he stuffed as much straw as he could to keep his poor feet warm. It is fine to talk about the talents with which he was endowed and his genius for editorial work. It is finer to record this bit of heroism as whispered in a leisure moment into the ears of a friend. I don't know where The Catholic Universe Bulletin of Cleveland, got its information, but there is a paragraph in the middle of the little editorial I am going to quote that helps greatly to explain the enormous labors of those early days.

"The passing of Father Hudson for fifty and more years editor of THE AVE MARIA, was like the sudden putting out of the only light in a large room. Just that much did Father Hudson mean to American Catholic letters.

"Back in 1875, that is before the vast majority of us were born, he took over the editing and managing of THE AVE MARIA, a weekly magazine, struggling for existence and aspiring to national circulation. He gave it life and gained for it nation-wide recognition. "Any editor of a Catholic periodical knows the up-hf.ll fight he must wage continually. This warfare was Father Hudson's daily fare for more than a half century. For a great part of that time he was editor, manager, circulation force, and advertising department combined. (Surely he rests in heaven this day!)

"It is not too much to say that Father Hudson made Catholic literature respected in America. Grandmothers and grandchildren welcome the weekly appearance of THE AVE MARIA and profit from its perusal. Its many-sided editor of many years has counselled wisely with hundreds of thousands of Catholic adults and juveniles."

I am happy to say that the spirit in which the publication was carried on from the very beginning was disinterested, lofty and utterly unselfish. The great passion of Father Sorin's life was devotion to our Blessed Mother. Half a century ago it was his daily habit to walk from Notre Dame to St. Mary's and back again, and there was not a moment of the time going or coming but his Rosary might be seen trickling through his fingers while his lips moved in prayer. He was in the habit, in good weather, of passing an hour in prayer and meditation each day in the peace and seclusion of the long porch behind the presbytery. Every moment of that time the beads were in his hands. Ofter, as Father Hudson told me, the venerable Founder would bring him an article in which some ill-formed or illdisposed writer used disrespectful language about the Blessed Virgin, her place in the Christian religion, her heavenly virtues and prerogatives -- each time, Father Hudson often told me, the Founder's eyes were swimming in tears as he directed the editor to rebuke the offender and vindicate the honor of the Mother of God. It is a large saying that there has never been in America a more tender or devoted Knight of Our Lady than Father Sorin, but it is a faithful saying also. In that spirit of absolute devotion to the Blessed Virgin, THE AVE MARIA was conceived and, thanks be to God! in that spirit it has lived and labored faithfully until this hour.

It is pleasant to recall that even before Father Hudson took the magazine in hand its spirit was beautifully spacious, charitable, Catholic. It must be nearly three-quarters of a century since there was established at Notre Dame The Association of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and each number of THE AVE MARIA carried a department, the purpose of which was to promote devotion to the Sacred Heart. It is not necessary to point out not only the good to be done by such a department, but from a material point of view the great advantage to be derived from it as a circulation builder. Yet when the American Messenger was founded by the Jesuit Fathers, THE AVE MARIA performed an act of characteristic magnanimity. The beloved Father Matthew Russell, S.J., -- so like Father Hudson in many beautiful ways! -- reviewing the golden jubilee of the Messenger nearly twenty years ago referred to it in this pleasant way: "It started in April, 1866, and to its staff there was accorded an edifying act of editorial charity. THE AVE MARIA, founded about a year before, had been publishing each week, articles of the Messenger type. But when the new organ was announced its editor{13} generously handed over the publishing of all such matter to the new-comer. 'With all our heart,' he wrote, 'we exhort our readers to take the liveliest interest in the apostleship of prayer and its admirable Messenger, of which all should be regular subscribers.'" Truly there were saints as well as giants in those days.

Besides the strictly editorial work done by Father Hudson, there were a group of activities which of themselves would constitute a large life-work. He was one of the first to discover and draw the attention of the world to the work of Father Damien among the lepers at Molokai. It was he who at Notre Dame gave the late Brother Joseph Dutton his final retreat and spiritual direction, deciding his vocation to go to the assistance of Father Damien in Molokai. He was a brilliant preacher, a perfect confessor and spiritual director. He was an active promoter of foreign missions and usually conducted a "contribution box" in their behalf. He was one of the most ardent and indefatigable promoters (by contribution of literature and alms) to the canonization of the Cure of Ars.

Naturally Lourdes was a favorite theme and the Cause of her who lately was named St. Bernadette. Besides doing the actual work of an editor, he devoted much time, energy and enthusiasm to the development of Catholic writers, and there is a large school of them who joyously acknowledge him as their literary godfather. Catholic education had no stouter advocate or defender. So far as time and resources permitted, he engaged in the publication of useful Catholic books. All these things are facets of this great Hudson diamond of purest ray serene. It is hoped that from time to time in subsequent issues each of these activities may receive adequate treatment in turn. On the other hand one great secret of Father Hudson's unapproachable success as an editor was his intense concentration on his own particular work: he never attended conventions or made speeches, and never once in his sixty-four years of religious life took a day's vacation. He never scattered his shot, and could seldom be distracted from his own particular field of labor. But these other works, the by-products of his zeal and piety in his own domain help to explain why he filled such a large space in the world.

IV.

Father Hudson was that perfect being: a combination of the masculine principle of strength, with the feminine principle of grace. Never was there a stouter, harder, more iron exponent of rugged manhood, never one who more indignantly scorned anything savoring of coddling in food, in labor, in living conditions or the commonplace details. of life. There never was a rocking-chair in his room, and in all his life he could never be persuaded to sit in one, nor in anything like a morris-chair nor in anything else save the old-fashioned, hard, straight-back reminiscence of seventy-five years ago. Never under any circumstances did he ever take food or refreshment between meals. He could not endure the thought of extra ministrations of any kind -- and this not necessarily as an ascetic religious ideal, but because that was in the ancient ancestral blood, the home-training, the life-long habits. His father, he once told me, would have thought it sacrilegious to sit in a rocking-chair while reading the Bible.

Like all the strongest best men I have ever known, he was fond of little children, and when possible eagerly secured "goodies" of some kind for them. But never did he show the slightest tendency to caress them even with a pat on the cheek. His favorite method with them was to lay his hand in blessing on their heads and to whisper to them, "Keep on being good." At the same time the refinements of religion and the courtesies of culture in speech, in spirit or in manner, never appeared to better advantage in any Christian gentleman. That is why all real men felt a special idolatry for Father Hudson.

Bishop Spalding, the hard, flashing diamond of the American hierarchy from the beginning till this day, came often and eagerly from Peoria to talk to him, and there are hundreds of letters pleading with Father Fludson to come to Peoria for a visit. Other greatest prelates -- Monsignori Gibbons, Ireland, Riordan, McQuaid, Muldoon, John J. ("Sugar") Keane, great churchmen from over the seas, missionary bishops from Africa and India and China and Australia, all our Cardinals and Apostolic delegates were eager to come to his campus, and happy to seek out the old-fashioned and somewhat tawdry room (filled with most interesting literary and historical mementoes from every corner of the world), where for more than half a century his work as editor was done. Into that sanctuary almost never did any visitor penetrate by day- to save his time and his sight he would receive some distinguished man only after night prayer. Into that sanctuary mad, wide-eyed servants and fanatic Religious with brooms and brushes yearned passionately to enter on missionary errands, but always in vain -- though to do him justice there was always a little corner worn free of dust where the exquisite and meticulous editor might work and the rare visitor might be comfortable.

I fancy this blend of vigor and refinement was in the warp and woof of everything he wrote, and that therefore not merely Catholic scholars but other choice spirits gladly stood by his side. There never was a time when his contributors did not count many non-Catholic spirits, some of whom were drawn by his influence into the Church. One of the last messages received by him was this kindly card sent by a distinguished layman, Mr. S. H. Horgan, of Albany, N. Y. "The priest in Atlanta, Ga., who received Joel Chandler Harris into the Church wrote me that 'Uncle Remus' told him that he always read THE AVE MARIA; and it was a publication that influenced him most. The priest found that Harris knew the Catholic faith better than most of us Catholics."

The saying that if you make a better sonnet or mouse trap than any other man, the world will make a path to your hut was fulfilled in him. Here was a man who in youth set forth to a Trappist monastery to spend his life in silence and remoteness, and as a matter of simple record really lived the life of a Trappist on Broadway. Here a man who seldom visited dear friends in the neighboring town -- and when he did, had to borrow presentable trousers from one priest, a coat from another and a hat from a third -- and not a dozen times in sixty-five years ever took the briefest railway journey or spent a night away from home. A man here, who, of the forty large University buildings on the Notre Dame campus, in all his long life with us certainly never entered more than six- the only time he ever entered the College Theatre, Washington Hall, was when he crept stealthily behind the curtains once to hear his beloved old "chum," Father Walter Eliott, make a fervent religious address. A man -- charming and cordial in talk and manner -- but whose door was almost invariably sealed against visitors whether they came for personal or business reasons. A man who probably never sent a dozen telegrams of any kind or telephoned long distance in all his life.

This was Father Hudson, and yet the distinguished and venerable pilgrims who came from everywhere to spend a few hours of recreation with him after the day's work was done were so intimate, so trustful, so confidential with this wise and holy and prudent old priest that he was almost the Father Confessor of the Church in the United States, and often held in his bosom knowledge of men, movements, tendencies, sayings and conditions that even our best-informed prelates, our Cardinals and Delegates did not always possess. Hence the brilliant Abbe Felix Klein could most truthfully write in his study of America,{14} "I must give special mention to Father Hudson, editor of THE AVE MARIA, the most widely circulated Catholic periodical in the English language. It is wonderful how this gentle and winning man, in his country abode, has at his fingers' ends the contemporary religious history of the world; even such facts as only the initiated few are supposed to know are familiar to him. And his vast information is so easily grasped and dexterously handled that it flows with charming ease into his conversation; so that to listen to him is to lose all sense of the fleeting hours." A brilliant priest, a veteran journalist and keen critic of men and moods and movements, gives a variant touch to what others have said of the hermit who lived on the top of the world and in the midst of it. The unique Father John Talbot Smith called THE AVE MARIA "the Voice of Notre Dame."

"Happy the Community and Society which owns such a voice, so sincere, so penetrative, so sweet; I liken the influence of that publication to the silver stream flowing from the depths of the everlasting hills, through the shades of the virgin forest, into the arid world; preserving its crystal beauty from all stain, communicating to those who use its sparkling waters of its own clearness, sweetness and repose. In the forty-odd years of its life \[now sixty-nine\] the magazine world has seen many revolutions in principles, tastes, methods; its leaders have been mired often enough by will-o'-the-wisps; but THE AVE MARIA has never swerved from its course, never changed its wholesome waters.

"The personality behind it for many years, Rev. Daniel Hudson, seems to avoid the highway, content to sit watching the source and flow of this perennial stream, like an ancient hermit, for whom it is the only connection with the outside world. The practical topics discussed in the magazine, its literary and other judgments, and its general matter, prove the editor anything but a hermit in knowledge of his times. Its studied moderation, discreet avoidance of controversy, delicate stories and poems, and persistent encouragement of the right and fit, undoubtedly represent his convictions, experience and temperament. Since 1865 THE AVE MARIA has scattered its sweetness in the world, and many of us, old lovers of the printed word, jarred and confused by the magazine babel of the time, turn to it at the close of the day for that refreshment elsewhere denied. Father Hudson reminded me somewhat of Father Hecker in his last days by his silver hair and beard and the intense expression of his eyes; but these unimportant details fail before the expression of the priest in the pages of THE AVE MARIA."{15} On June 4, 1925, somebody discovered that it was the . Golden Jubilee of Father Hudson's priesthood and of his work as editor of THE AVE MARIA. A fascinating talker on almost any other subject, Father Hudson was dumb unto silence about anything concerning himself. The brilliant writer{16} who describes this strange jubilee occasion -- the most unusual Golden Jubilee ever experienced by a man of international fame -- in a local report humorously calls attention to Father Hudson's reticence. "Once, in a rare mood of communicativeness, when the barriers of his reticence were completely swept away, he owned up to being an orphan. Locally, he does rate rather as the typical Melchisedech, without father or mother, so remote does he seem from the run of men. Acutely sentitive to attention, he has kept consistently in the background, yet he has hosts of friends all over the world. . . . In this home of records of various kinds, Father Hudson's record is unique, indeed. At the age of seventyfive \[1925\] he is doing the same work he did at the age of twentyfive. More wonderful still, each day of the fifty years in between he has been at the same work. Moreover he is doing that work as well now as he did it at any time in his career. There is, perhaps, no need to point out how well he has done it at all times." And so they had what was pleasantly called a Jubilee. -- "The Sisters sent in a sumptuous repast for this gentle old man for whom one egg is a full meal and two prunes a banquet. Of course, it was the jubilarian himself who insisted that the occasion be muted. There must be no lou.d and strident note of jubilation, and, therefore, out of respect for his wishes, there really was no celebration at all. Yet Cardinals in Rome, and Bishops and Cardinals in America, somehow learned of the happy date and sent stately letters of greeting and congratulation. One of these, which bears the signature of Cardinal Gasparri, really comes from the Father of all the Faithful." It has its place in this brief notice.

We watched him as day by day, night by night, he drifted down the ever-widening river to the Great Ocean. We thought not of what might come to him, so spotless, so divine, but only of what we were so soon to lose: like the disciples of St. Paul, "the Ancients of Ephesus," when they followed him down to the departing boat "and there was much weeping among them, being grieved most of all that they should see him no more." Acts xx: 37-38.

Nothing in all Father Hudson's life and work was of a more heavenly beauty than his sweet and uncomplaining patience during the bedridden years in which he could read only occasionally and for a short space -- it was usually the Following of Christ. It is a pleasure to remember that he received perfect ministration from his devoted old-time friend, Dr. John B. Berteling. Nothing could exceed the skill and fidelity and kindly cheerfulness with which he was nursed constantly and watchfully by Sister M. Amalia, C.S.C., R.N., nor the happy enslavement and service of good, loyal Brother Canute, C.S.C., who took care of him during the night and indeed seemed to be hovering near him most of the day also! Father Hudson himself showed tender appreciation of these services and often spoke of them with pathetic humility and gratitude.

The funeral took place in the beautiful college church Monday, January 15th, at ten o'clock. The Most Rev. John F. Noll, Bishop of Fort Wayne, celebrated a Solemn Pontifical Mass of Requiem; his devoted friend, Most Reverend Philip R. McDevitt, Bishop of Harrisburg, gave the absolution, and the perfect liturgical music of the seminarians touched all hearts. There was no sermon. There could have been none! A new grave is made in the community cemetery, and all that remains on earth of beautiful and unique Father Hudson lies close by the grave of our lovely young Bishop Finnigan, close to the grave of his beloved friend, Father Thomas E. \Yaish, President of the University, fifty years ago, and of the scholarly and famous Father John A. Zahm, C.S.C., who was ordained with Father Hudson at the same altar on the same morning, very close to the grave of the idolized Founder of Notre Dame, Father Sorin, Superior-General whom Father Hudson almost literally worshipped. May his soul, their souls, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the Mercy of God rest in peace!

Father Cavanaugh died on March 22, 1935. It was his intention to write other chapters about Father Hudson but failing health prevented.

{1} Old Testament names, a natural flavor among Puritan folk, have always abounded in the history of Nahant. Scattered freely over the pages of the "Annals" occur such baptismal names as Moses, Solomon, Daniel, Samuel, Ezra, Jacob, Joseph, Jabed, Nehemiah, Abner, Jonathan, Keziah, Benjamin, Ebenezer, Caleb, Welcome. Popular names among the women were: Rebecca, Deliverance, Patience, Prudence, Ruth, Sarah.

{3} Pleasant Street. Now occupied by William F. Waters, for many years the Town Clerk.

{4} Author of "The Dayspring from on High," and other precious volumes. She dedicated her life during twenty-five continuous years to charitable work among prison inmates. She had been received into the Church by the wise, learned and affable Bishop Fitzpatrick of Boston, universally called "Bishop John."

{7} A newspaper scribe thus wrote of Burnham's nearly a hundred years ago: "This is a Bookstore of all Bookstores that I have ev:er happened into. The store itself is an oddity, long, narrow, six stories high and without beauty of architecture or furniture. But the contents are more extraordinary than the store itself. Verily it is a genuine Boston, notion, original, peculiar, magnifique." At Burnham's death his store contained 450,000 volumes, and one-third as many pamphlets.

{8} "This Welch was a genuine Yankee of the Boston Back Bay, a Harvard graduate with a Coolidge Shaw, and facetiously it used to be said that these two went to Rome to convert the Pope. But they were downright honest lads, and they were converted to the Church by Father Faber of the Oratory. Welch, whom I had in a postgraduate course at Georgetown, was something to be near; we used to go down the street to meet him, just to note the way he would lift his hat when we saluted him. No wonder Father Hudson always remembered him."-Father Earls, in a letter to Father C. L. O'Donnell, C.S.C.

{9} Father Hudson's father died at the age of sixty-eight (1812-1880); his mother passed away twenty years later at the age of seventy-eight (1822-1900). They are buried in the only cemetery in Nahant, Greenlawn. On an arch of ornamental ironwork over the gate is the name of the cemetery, and on a tablet on the side this sentiment:

On Mr. Hudson's tombstone, besides name and dates, are carved the familiar lines,

{11} Generous acknowledgment must here be made of the noble part played by the Sisters of the Holy Cross in helping to perfect THE AVE MARIA not only in the beginning but throughout its entire course. Some of the most brilliant contributors have been members of this community, but I desire specially to pay tribute to the very remarkable nuns who from the beginning took charge of the typesetting, the proofreading, the make-up and the binding. With full appreciation of the excellent work done on secular magazines, it may be truly said that no other publication ever has been so consistently free from typographical errors or slips in proof-reading. Only love of God and His Holy Mother could inspire such devotion! Similarly noble has been the work of the Brothers of Holy Cross who have been willing to leave the peace of their quiet monastery homes and become wanderers over the world as canvassers to secure subscribers for THE AVE MARIA. God reward them!

{12} Member of the first class of Notre Dame University, A. B., 1849; entered the novitiate 1851, at work finishing his studies in Rome, 1854, ordained June 29, 1856, and Vice-President of Notre Dame from that date to 1859. President of St. Mary's College, Chicago, for one year, and recalled to Notre Dame, 1860, to become VicePresident again. Student in Paris one year, 1863. Member of the General Administration of the Community at the mother-house in Le Mans, 1864-1866, when he returned to Notre Dame to become editor of THE AVE MARIA and Master of Novices. Died, 1874, at the age of forty-three.