asks Shakespeare, " that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." For once, at least, his philosophy is at fault. For, as on second thought, he adds: " A good name in man or woman is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash, but he that filches from me my good name, robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed." Take away from the Christian world the saving names of Jesus and Mary and Joseph, and you dash the sun from the firmament, you snatch the moon from her nightly vigils, and deprive the storm-tossed mariner of his guiding star. So true is it, as Longfellow remarks, that these sacred names forever stand a landmark and a symbol of the power that lies concentrated in a single word.
Joseph — the name speaks to us of old and new. Of Joseph, patriarch, erstwhile the lowliest of his brethren but soon become by virtue and by wisdom next to Pharao the mightiest in the kingdom; the guardian of the king and his treasures, whose chaste intent, abhorring carnal pleasure, applied itself solely to garner in the fruits of seven years of plenty that he might become, ere long, the saviour of his famished people. Of Joseph, saint, humble, yet of men second only to the Man-God, model of chastity and protector of the Virgin of virgins and Virginity Incarnate, and ruler, withal, of that treasury— the Holy Family — from whose accumulated merits the Christian world has been enriched. Though but a word, it vividly portrays an ideal
