The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 6, 1902, Page 14

ONE OF THE MOST SROMINENT MEN AT THE VRTICAN a4 GUEST OF THE CATHOLIC CLERGY OF CRALIFORNIA. ———— be for many years a staff secre- XIII, and so to e influence of nt character- great figures privilege that many One of the most matic secretaries M. Antonini benefit his f America, a ns has been pe Lec e t eel of s being the 0 for early Ro- during the noted remains the site of the les on the Roma » of the Via Sa- Maxima, built by Romulus years B. C foOPEYYE cus on the in the center stang slope almost also c s t relic known per! he chalice of St. Je- third century.’ is also preserved to the No one who has visited this country f m s been closer to the Pope g ay dur- (3 brought him into at with the holy father. and the “The so simple e for me he is indeed nd the prestige of ble. Yet he re- years the great in- eness and pru- always been so marked I hear constan from he word comes that his Holi- when I left, when he t be considered as good ad- the demands which are he is a very about his health. He is t by the attendants run- om to another regardiess ences in temperature. And, e seldom contracts se- s at 6, and, after say- simple break- receives people from 9§ o'clock I 1 in the afternoon.” Antonini told of the thou- who come to the Vati- every week or month in the ning a conference with the deration aving a ve “People with ell kinds of prejudices against him come there. First, many of them come out of curiosity; then their curiosity turns to reverence, and when they have heard his gentle voice and have holy father. according to different circumstances in THE SUNDAY CALL. people to be present. Of course, you know b aring their reverence gifferent chapels, and when thére are peo- that the Pope never goes abroad beyond Tection. No man can resist the ple that he deigns to receive the hall of the large gardens of the Vatican. It o e . i ”"”""""""’%‘l‘l-)—l—l—l——i—l—[-l-}—]—]—(—[- SEQCRETS OF HIDDEN ROOMS. RE lived long ago in the old 2 Jesult named who devoted the his life to con- places for perse- Nicholas Owen, reater part of ucting hiding e places and we great pal ( As £ ere called “priests’ holes,” n various ways with the and ingenuity in the princi- lic houses all over England. "ea shows in his very interest- ing book on “The Secret Rooms of Eng- land,” no precedents were allowed to bias the choice of hiding places in Those who designed them, for the more remarkable the place the less likelihood there was of its being discovered. One house would have its secret room in a chimney, en- tered from the hearthstone, though cases are recorded in which a chimney pot un- sullied by smoke has led to the detection of the prey, another would utilize a sliding or swinging picture, like that one in Lyme Hall, Cheshire; an 1mnocent looking “settle” would prove the entrance to a bole, or a false fioor would accommodate refugees. At Upton court & curious place for con- cealment exists in one of the gables close to the ceiling. It is triangular in shape and is opened by & spring bolt that can be unlatched by pulling a string which runs through & tiny hole pierced in the framework of the door of the adjoining room. The door of the hiding place swings upon & pivot and externally is thickly covered with plas- ter, 80 as to resemble the rest of the wall and is so solid that when sounded there is no hollow sound from the cavity behind, where, no doubt, the crucifix and sacred vessels were secreted. Not far off, in an upper garret, is & hid- ing place in the thickness of the wall large enough to contain a man standing upright. Like the other, the door or en- trance forms part of the plaster wall, Again, in one of the passages of this curi- ous old mansion are further evidences of the hardships to which Roman priests were subjected—a trap in the floor, which can only be opened by pulling up what ex- teriorly appears to be the head of one of the nails of the flooring; by ralsing this & spring Is released and a trap door opened, revealing a large hole with a'nar- row ladder leading down into it. When this hiding place was discovered in 1830 its contents were significant-=Viz., a cru- cifix and two anclent petronels. On the occasion that mass was to be celebrated in these secret chapels it was customary to inform the neighborhood by some such understood signs as the hang- ing out of linen to dry on the hedges hard by. The narrow escapes of soms of the per. secuted priests would fill several volumes, and for thrilling excitement that of Father Blount at Scotney Castle, the old bouse of the Darralls on the borders of Kent and Sussex, is a good example. One Christmas night, toward the close of Elizabeth’s reign, the castle was seized by & party of priest hunters, who, with their usual mode of procedure, locked up the members of the lamily securely be: fore starting on their operations. In th inner quadnnile of the mansion was a very remarkable and ingenious device. A large stone of the solid wall could be pushed aside. Though of immense weight, it was so balanced and adjusted that it required only .a slight pressure upon one side to effect an entrance to the hiding place within. Upon the approach of the enemy Father Blount and his servant hastened to the cpurtyard and entered the vault, but in their hurry to close the weighty door a small portion of one of their girdles got jammed in, so that a When he holds mass it is audience is selected to fit the number of would not be well in a capital like Rome, and it is possible that he might be sub- Jected to insult or discomfort. “A life more simple than that of the art was visible from the outside. For- unately for the fugitives, some one in the secret in passing the spot happened to catch sight of this telitale fragment and called gently to those within to en- deavor to pull it in, which they eventu- ally succeeded in doing. At this moment the pursuers were at Wwork In another part of the castle, but heering the voice in the courtyard rushed into it and commenced battering the walls, and at times upon the very door of the hiding place, which would have glven way had not those within put their combined weight against it to keep it from yielding. It was 8 pitchy dark night and it was pelting with rain, so after a time, discouraged at finding noth- ll}f and wet to the skin, the soldiers put off further search until the following morning. Few hiding places are associated with 80 tragic a story as that at Moyles Court, Hants, where the venerable Lady Alice Lisle, in pure charity, hid twe partisans of Monmouth, John Hicks and Richard Nelthorpe, after the battle of Sedgemoor, for which humane action she was con- demned to be burned alive by Judge Jef- frevs—a sentence commuted afterward to beheading. It is difficult to associate this peaceful old Jacobin mansion and_ the simple tomb in the churchyard hard by, with so terrible a history. A dark hole in the wall of the kitchen is traditionally sald to be the place of concealment of the fugitives who threw themselves on Lady ALISKY PHOTO. Pope could not well be imagined, though it is full of overwhelming toil—all of it for the good and glory of the church. There are few apartments in the world Alice’s mercy, but a dungeon-like cellar looks a much more likely place. A weird story clings to the ruins of Min. ster Lovel manor house, Oxfordshire, the ancient seat of the Lords Lovel. After the battle of Stoke Francis, the last vis. count, who had sided 'with the cause of Simnel against King Henry VII, fled back to his house in disguise, but from the night of his return was never seen or heard of again, and for nearly two cen~ turies his disappearance remained a mys- tery. the meantime the manor house dismantled and the remains ten- anted by a farmer, but a strange dis- covery was made in the year 1708. A con- cealed vault was found and in it, seated before a table with a prayer book lying open upon it, was the entire skeieton of a man. In the secret chamber were cer~ tain barrels and jars, which had con- tained food sufficient to last perhaps some weeks, but the mansion having been. seized by the king soon after the unfor- tunate Lord Lovel is supposed to have concealed himself, the probability is that, unable to regain his liberty, the neglect ofds servant brought about this tragie end. Hale House, Islington, had a concealea recess behind the wainscot over the man- teipiece, in which the Lord Protector was hidden. A dark hole in one of the gable ends of Cromwell House, Mortlake (taken down in 1860), locally known as *“Oid Noli's Hole,” also afforded him shelter when his life was in danger. more simple than the private rooms of the holy father. In the sleeping-room the furnishings are only what is necessary—a bed, a table and chair, and a prieu dieu HE most highly developed of ma- chine tools is the automatic sérew machine and, like many another contrivance for saving labor, its home is New England. It is a de- velopment of the ordinary steel working lathe, thé intermediate step being the monitor lathe, in which the various cut- ting tools protrude from the side of a steel turret like 13-inch guns from a bat- tleship turret. In the non-automatic screw machine the turret is revolved by the operator, so as to bring each tool into play, just as the turret on the old Mon- itor was revolved to bring one gun after another into action. But in the automatie mechine the work is done without human guidance, In making screws, nuts, bolts, studs and other small pieces that must be turned, drilled or threaded for watches, clocks, typewriters, electrical instruments and other mechanisms, all the operator has to do is to feed the “stocF—a long, thin rod of steel or brass—to the machine. The feeding mechanism carries the rod slowly forward into the field of action. The tur- ret advances and puts its first tool at work on the end of the rod. When this e | A TOOL THAT ALMOST TALKS. @gf TN The next apartment before the crucifix is his study, equally green baiz the Pope has compo verses which the best Latin 80 that he is these beautifu When he pas richer by many wc has still in his private s few other rooms affairs. In the daily 1 allowed dines al simple, as is lbrary is perhaps ings of all the private rooms, wonderful with t volumes. B: books that dinal before chair, there ar him by auth of the finest literature. bound in w coat-of-arm the Pope, purest the it is won to spectacles unpubli: to p place pla own were dlec his read “These rooms of the holy father have many magnificent no connection with official apartments of the Vatican, about which so been writ It is among the are. ihe self a pose noted comes t he at ( 1s life of the P time ness that mu is able as the; ences n 3 s Cath € and briefs, most finishe: erature. For recreation takes drives ¥ only the w one who has granted the the Pope w sculp d f: and eyes of genius of the and when th telligent kind as it called soul ¥he “Seated i resti 1y on th the Pe nediately his visitor at at into the best His is a blems of ti the formec world an the m is st and cheered up despond supported by th stretched peace of 1 i draws out one before him all the mind in- the 1 well ice s stu s wonderful s words ¥ apon you, h a soul who ged and S0— you have been gesture of th and the o with me, form alm Pope, and if moved, we would still me, tlLere seems Simplicity and purity that seem to to describe the h near secretaries | necessar. even no me most a matter life and surroundt of impossibility to say whom the mantle of the holy fat Id fall in the event of his I do neot think it would be possible for the Sistine Chapel to ever see a m beneficent or lovely presence within its sacred walls.” This American tour is the first vacation of any Jength in Monsignor Antonint's busy life, and was undertaken solely for his health. Her but a short time for Salt Lake City, W on a tour of the . and then le: nce he will ern cities tool has done its task - draws it, turns and v tool into action. around the turret has S’ w to perform—one cutting a thread, another shaping a head, another putting on a point, another drilling a hole, st nother putting on knurling. The turret auto- matically brings each of, perhaps, _six tools into action, and whén the work is finished the compieted screw drops into a pan, while the “stock” is automatically fed forward to begin the complex opera~ tion again. A stream of machine oil pours continuously on t k to carry away the heat and ittle metal cut- tings collect in a heap under the ma- chine. Hour after hour this wonderful automa- ton goes through its cycle of ations, the turret clicking every moment as it brings a new tool forward. Small brass pieces, on wh tool cuts, are dropped at the rate of four a second Large screws of complicated design, upon which a whole| turretful of tools must work, are cut from a steel rod at the rate of one or two a minute. So perfectiy are these screw machines constructe that an unskilied workman can operate a row of them. All he is required to do is to keep them fed with “stock. n_somo shops girls tend the machines.—Fra Hix Fayaat, in February Success.