""Born in Boston, the descendant of a grim old Puritan immigrant, Charles Fairbanks was brought up a strict Protestant, but while still at college he became interested in the Oxford movement which brought Newman and so many other brilliant men into the Church, and like them he became a convert. He entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice in 1856 as a candidate for the priesthood and received minor orders, but, owing to ill-health, he was obliged to abandon his studies. He afterwards devoted himself to literary work, becoming a contributor of sketches, essays and letters of travel to the Boston Gazette over the signature ""Aguecheek."" Some of these essays and letters have been gathered together in the volume mentioned...they are all of them charming and well worth reading for their delightful style and cheerful, helpful philosophy as well as for the clear pictures they give of places we all long to see some time. The three essays, 'The Old Cathedral.' 'Sacred to the Memory of Theater Alley, ' and 'The Old Corner' should be of particular interest to Boston Catholics, treating as they do of the early days of the Church in New England."" -- Sacred Heart Review