exclusively to the financial affairs of the Church. His great ability in securing contributions and in managing the always difficult task of their distribution made him admirably fitted for this work. But it was personally distasteful to him. "I hold the general purse," he once wrote, "and have to supply all needs; and this purse is never full; the greater part of the time it is flat; while I receive demands from all sides." In another letter to a distant friend he wrote: "Probably we shall never again see each other on this side of the grave. I hope we shall meet in heaven where all ciphering, quibbling and account-making are at an end."
But the principal reason why Father De Smet was not permitted personally to conduct his missions was a growing feeling in Rome that he was planning on too large a scale; that the ends would not justify the means. It had been reported to the Father General by other parties, that the field of work was not at all what had been represented, and that De Smet's descriptions were poetical flights of the imagination and not true pictures of the situation. (1) Father De Smet was deeply hurt at these accusations but promptly and vigorously defended himself, to the apparent satisfaction of the Father General; for soon after sending his reply to the charges against him he speaks with great satisfaction of the certain prospect before him of spending the rest of his life among the Indians.
(1) "When you were my Superior, you frequently corrected me for being too easily dejected when things were said against me, to which I must plead guilty. Something of the kind has occurred again, and from headquarters, which has brought me low indeed - the more so as I have the full conviction in my heart that the charges against me are untrue, false and unjust, and bring along great evil in their train - the neglect, in a great measure, of the Indians, for whom I would gladly have sacrificed the remainder of my days. I stand accused of the following: 1st. That my letters have done a great deal of harm in America; 2d. That they are only imagination and poetry, false and untrue; 3d. That I have lost the mission by over-liberality to the Indians, and by promises to them which the fathers have been unable to fulfill."
Letter to Bishop Van de Velde, Baltimore.