IN THE COUNTY OF WATERLOO                              33

water.  The windmill often failed in its duties, therefore a gasoline engine was installed.  A year or two ago the village secured a line of the Hydro-Electric concern which furnishes ample light and power for all purposes.  St. Agatha is likely the only village of its small size five or six miles from the nearest power-reducing station that can boast of having this great convenience.
    Since 1878 the institution receives a Government Grant based on the number of orphans.  In that year it was $176.40. The Orphanage for years has had from 60 to 80 children to care for.  Since the organization of the Provincial Children's Aid Society the Branch of Waterloo County, sends its wards of neglected children, who are Catholics, to St. Agatha for shelter until they can find suitable homes for them.  The non-Catholic wards are sent to the Berlin Orphanage.
    The County also has been giving a substantial grant for many years.  Berlin City since its separation from the County, made a beginning last year, 1915, and gave a grant of $25.00 which, it is expected will be materially increased this year.
    The Orphanage stands there as a splendid monument to the fatherly solicitude of its founder, the Rev.  Eugene Funcken and to the self-sacrifice of the devoted voung ladies and their successors, the Sisters of Notre Dame.  A few years ago, a splendid laundry in a separate building was installed.
                                                                                                  

CHAPT-ER X.-SECTION 6.-OTHER ACTIVITIES OF FATHER E. FUNCKEN.

    The Rev.  E. Funekeia was the first, and one of the most distinguished members of the Congregation of the Resurrection in Canada, and pastor of St. Agatha from 1857 to his death, July, 1888.  As Superior, and for a long time as Provincial in America, he was obliged to make many visits to Rome attending the Chapter of his Community, and also to visit its houses in the States.  By this he became acquainted with many dignitaries of Church and State.  By them he was often charged with important affairs in Rome and elsewhere.
   As a good pastor he was particularly interested in the young people.  In his younger days he loved to gather around him the more promising boys of the parish.  For these he wrote and translated religious plays and farces to be produced by them in the village as well as in other Catholic centres.
    With his brother priests of St. Clement's, New Germany, and Berlin, he inaugurated so-called "Kinder-Feste," Children's Feasts, which, however, might appropriately be called "Volks-Feste, Peoples' Feasts, because young and old of both sexes attended them.
    They were held annually for some years, each year in a different parish, somewhere in the woods near a pasture field.  A stage was erected in a hollow of the forest along the upward slope, the semi-circular elevation forming a natural amphitheatre for the people to sit down comfortably.  Here the plays were given, sometimes with great skill.  Speeches were made by prominent laymen and by one or more of the priests.  In the field, races and other games were run off.  The date and place of the feast was announced from the pulpits of the various churches and mentioned in the local papers.  The time was usually between haying and harvesting time, when the people were not so pressed with work.