Ruth’s Reviews > God's Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power--A History of the Jesuits > Status Update

"Missionaries in New France, struggling to master local languages, observed that the first phrases they committed to memory were invariably those they heard most often: 'He looks like a dog's and 'He has a head like a pumpkin.' It took long years for men with beards (disgusting to local eyes), men who were celibate, and men who were patently useless in canoes to be trusted."