Father Gaspara had been for many years at San Diego. Although
not a Franciscan, having, indeed, no especial love for the order, he
had been from the first deeply impressed by the holy associations
of the place. He had a nature at once fiery and poetic; there were
but three things he could have been,-- a soldier, a poet, or a priest.
Circumstances had made him a priest; and the fire and the poetry
which would have wielded the sword or kindled the verse, had he
found himself set either to fight or to sing, had all gathered into
added force in his priestly vocation. The look of a soldier he had
never quite lost,-- neither the look nor the tread; and his flashing
dark eyes, heavy black hair and beard, and quick elastic step,
seemed sometimes strangely out of harmony with his priest's
gown. And it was the sensitive soul of the poet in him which had
made him withdraw within himself more and more, year after year,
as he found himself comparatively powerless to do anything for
the hundreds of Indians that he would fain have seen gathered once
more, as of old, into the keeping of the Church.
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