"Gather round, lads," says the friar, stooping over an odd contraption, with a string fastened at one end, while the other end, laid over a wheel, is fastened to a freestanding weight.

It was Good Friday, 1859.

One of the benefits of a cold day was that it almost smothered the stench of destruction: parched and sodden beams torn out of homes, barns, mills, churches; human and animal waste in the alleys; death in the fields.

Sigrid Undset, for my money, is the greatest woman novelist who ever lived.

"John," said the captain, "you're a fine soldier, and a young man of courage and honor. If you join our cause, I guarantee you an officer's commission."

Many people do not realize that the hospital as it is known today was an invention of the Middle Ages. They were established from the desire to extend Christian charity to the poor and needy.

Who can hold out against the father of lies, without the grace of God?

Why were there no hospitals, for anyone and everyone, in the ancient world?  Because Jesus had yet to give mankind, through his Church, the great directive.