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• n  a loose-fitting white ecclesiastical vestment with wide sleeves

• The back of his snowy surplice had burst into flame from a nearby candle.
• There Bishop Swint solemnly handed purple robes, a purple biretta and a white lace cotta (surplice) to a wrinkled-faced, white-haired old priest named Thomas Aquinas Quirk whom .
• The smell of incense, the touch of candle wax, the overly starched cotton of my surplice as I knelt before the sacred mystery of the Eucharist: in the words of the poet Philip .