A religious family, like that of Joam Garral's, had availed
themselves enthusiastically of this occasion of taking him with them.
Padre Passanha, then aged seventy, was a man of great worth, full of
evangelical fervor, charitable and good, and in countries where the
representatives of religion are not always examples of the virtues,
he stood out as the accomplished type of those great missionaries who
have done so much for civilization in the interior of the most savage
regions of the world.
For fifty years Padre Passanha had lived at Iquitos, in the mission
of which he was the chief. He was loved by all, and worthily so. The
Garral family held him in great esteem; it was he who had married the
daughter of Farmer Magalha?s to the clerk who had been received at
the fazenda. He had known the children from birth; he had baptized
them, educated them, and hoped to give each of them the nuptial
blessing.
The age of the padre did not allow of his exercising his important
ministry any longer. The horn of retreat for him had sounded; he was
about to be replaced at Iquitos by a younger missionary, and he was
preparing to return to Para, to end his days in one of those convents
which are reserved for the old servants of God.
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