To make amends, and
as compensation, the extraction is surer; the long process by which a
child is withdrawn and instructed for the priesthood goes on and is
finished with less uncertainty. Neither the light nor the murmur of
the century finds its way to these low depths; nobody
ever reads the newspaper, even the penny paper; vocations can here
shape themselves and become fixed like crystals, intact and rigid, and
all of a piece; they are better protected than in the upper layers,
less exposed to mundane infiltrations; they run less risk of being
disturbed or thwarted by curiosity, reason and skepticism, by modern
ideas; the outside world and family surroundings do not, as elsewhere,
interfere with their silent internal workings.[66] When the choir-
boy comes home after the service, when the seminarian returns to his
parents in his vacations, he does not here en-counter so many
disintegrating influences, various kinds of information, free and easy
talk, comparisons between careers, concern about advancement, habits
of comfort, maternal solicitude, the shrugs of the shoulder and the
half-smile of the strong-minded neighbor.
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