Donahoe's Magazine.

Vol. XV. BOSTON, FEBRUARY, 1886. No. 2

"The future of the Irish race in this country, will depend largely upon their capability of assuming an independent attitude in American politics."—Right Rev. Doctor Ireland, St. Paul, Minn.

CONTENTS

Transcriber's Note: The Table of Contents for this issue is in the Vol I., so all the main divisions have been added to this etext for ease of navigation.

The Columbian Abbey of Derry.

One bright sunny day last summer I found myself in the city of Derry, with some hours to spare. I passed them in rambling aimlessly about whither fancy or accident led me,—now on the walls, endeavoring to recall the particulars of that siege so graphically described by Macaulay, now in the Protestant Cathedral musing on the proximity of luxuriously-cushioned pew and cold sepulchral monument along which the sun, streaming through the stained windows, threw a mellow glow that softened but did not remove the hideousness of the death's emblems on them—now wandering down the busy street and admiring the beauties of the Casino College, which, like the alien cathedral a little distance up, rejoices in the patronage of St. Columb and is built on the site of his old monastery. Here I lingered long, trying to picture to myself the olden glories of the spot on which I stood, for

"I do love these ancient ruins;
We never tread upon them
But we set our foot upon some reverend history;"

although here not an ivy-clasped gable, or even a mossy stone remains to claim the "passing tribute" of a sigh, or a vain regret for the golden days of our Irish Church. Yet its very barrenness of ruins made it dearer to my heart, for one never clings more fondly to the memory of a dear friend than when all mementoes of him are lost. As warned by the stroke of the town-clock, I hurried down to the station to be whirled away to Dublin, I thought that perhaps my fellow-readers of the Magazine would bear with me while I gossiped for half an hour on the story of this grand old monastery, the mother-house of Iona.

You know where Derry is, or if you don't your atlas will tell you, that it is away up in the north of Ireland, where, situated on the shores of the Lough Foyle, coiling its streets round the slopes of a hill till on the very summit they culminate in the cross-crowned tower of St. Columb's Cathedral, it lies in the midst of a beautiful country just like a cameo fallen into a basket of flowers. The houses cluster round the base of the hill on the land side, spread themselves in irregular masses over the adjoining level, or clamber up the opposite rise on the brow of which stands St. Eugene's Cathedral, yet unfinished, and the pile of turrets which constitute Magee College. A noble bridge spans the Foyle, and through a forest of shipmasts one may see on the other side the city rising up from the water, and stretching along the bending shore till it becomes lost in the villa-studded woods of Prehen.

The massive walls, half hidden by encroaching commerce, the grim-looking gates, and the old rusty cannon whose mouth thundered the "No" of the "Maiden City" to the rough advances of James, in 1689, give the city a mediæval air that well accords with its monastic origin. For, let her citizens gild the bitter pill as they may, the cradle of Derry—the Rochelle of Irish Protestantism—was rocked by monks—aye, by monks in as close communion with Rome as are the dread Jesuits to-day.

Fourteen hundred years ago the Foyle flowed on to mingle its waters with ocean as calmly as it does to-day, but its peaceful bosom reflected a far different scene. Then the fair, fresh face of nature was unsullied by the hand of man. "The tides flowed round the hill which was of an oval form, and rose 119 feet above the level of the sea, thus forming an island of about 200 acres."[1] A Daire or oak grove spread its leafy shade over the whole, and gave shelter to the red deer and an unceasing choir of little songsters. It was called in the language of the time "Daire-Calgachi." The first part of the name in the modern form of Derry, still remains—though now the stately rows of oak have given way to the streets of a busy city, and the smoke of numerous factories clouds the atmosphere.

One day, in the early part of 546, there visited the grove, in company with the local chieftain, a youth named Columba, a scion of the royal race of the O'Donnells. He was captivated by its beauty. It seemed the very spot for the monastery he was anxious to establish. He was only a deacon; but the fame of his sanctity had already filled the land, and the princes of his family were ever urging him to found a monastery whose monks, they hoped, would reflect his virtues and increase the faith and piety of their clan. This seemed the very spot for such an establishment. The neighborhood of the royal fortress of Aileach, that

"Sits evermore like a queen on her throne
And smiles on the valleys of green Innishowen,"

promised security; the river an unfailing supply of fish; the woods material to build with; and, better than all, the lord of the district was his cousin Ainmire, from whom Columba had only to ask to receive. He did ask the island for God, and his request was joyfully complied with.

It was just three years after the deacon-abbot of Monte Casino had passed to his reward, that the young Irish deacon began his monastery. To erect monastic buildings in those days was a work of very little labor. A wooden church, destined in the course of time to give place to a more durable edifice—the seat of a bishopric—was first erected. Then the cells of the monks were put up. They were of circular form and of the simplest construction. A stout post was firmly planted in what was to be the centre, and a number of slighter poles were then placed at equal distances round it. The interstices—space however having been left for a door—were filled up with willow or hazel saplings in the form of basketwork. From the outer poles rafters sprang to the centre-posts, and across them were laid rows of laths over which a fibry web of sod was thrown, and the whole thatched with straw or rushes. The inside of the wall was lined with moss—the outside plastered with soft clay. A rough wooden bed—and in the case of Columba himself and many of his monks—a stone pillow, a polaire or leathern satchel for holding books, a writing-desk and seat, formed the furniture of this rude cell, which was the ordinary dwelling of monk and student during the golden age of the Irish Church.

Only a few weeks elapsed from the time that the first tree was felled till the new community, or rather order, took up their abode in it, and the swelling strain of their vespers was borne down the Lough by the rippling breeze and echoed by the religious, whose convents, presided over by SS. Frigidian and Cardens sentinelled the mouth of the Lough at Moville and Coleraine. The habit of these monks—similar to that of Iona and Lindisfarne, consisted of "[2]the cowl—of coarse texture, made of wool, retaining its natural color and the tunic, or under habit, which was also white. If the weather was particularly severe an amphibalus, or double mantle, was permitted. When engaged at work on the farm the brethern wore sandals which were not used within the monastery."

Though their time was mainly devoted to prayer, meditation and the various other religious exercises, yet their rule made them apply every spare moment to copying and illuminating MSS. or some other kind of manual or intellectual labor, according as their strength and talents permitted. By this, people were attracted to the spot. Houses sprang up in the neighborhood of the monastery, that continually increasing in number, at length grew into a city, just as from a similar monastic germ have sprung nearly all the great German cities.

Columba in the busy years that elapsed between 546 and his final departure from Ireland in 563, looked upon Derry as his home. It was his first and dearest monastery. It was in his own Tyrconnell, but a few miles from that home by Lough Gartan, where he first saw the light, and from his foster home amid the mountains of Kilmacrenan, that, rising with their green belts of trees and purple mantles of heather over the valleys, seemed like huge festoons hung from the blue-patched horizon. Then the very air was redolent of sanctity. If he turned to the south, the warm breezes that swayed his cowl reminded him that away behind those wooded hills in Ardstraw, prayed Eugene, destined to share with him the patronage of the diocese, and that farther up, St. Creggan, whose name the Presbyterian farmers unconsciously preserve in the designation of their townland, Magheracreggan, presided over Scarrabern, the daughter-house of Ardstraw. Then turning slowly northwards he would meet with the persons, or relics, of St. O'Heney in Banagher, St. Sura in Maghera, St. Martin in Desertmartin, St. Canice in Limavady, St. Goar in Aghadoey, St. Cardens in Coleraine, St. Frigidian in Moville, St. Comgell in Culdaff, St. McCartin in Donagh, St. Egneach in the wildly beautiful pass of Mamore, St. Mura in Fahan, and his own old teacher, St. Cruithnecan in Kilmacrenan. All these, and many others, whose names tradition but feebly echoes, were contemporary, or nearly so, with him; and with many of them, he was united in the warmest bonds of friendship,—a friendship that served to rivet him the more to Derry. Even the budding glories of Durrow and Kells could not draw him away from his "loved oak-grove;" and at length, when the time had come for him to go forth and plant the faith in a foreign land, it was the monks of Derry who received his last embrace ere he seated himself with his twelve companions, also monks of Derry, in his little osier coracle, and with tearful eyes watched his grove till the topmost leaf had sunk beneath the curving wave.

When twenty-seven years after he visited his native land, as the deputy of an infant nation and the saviour of the bards, on whom, but for his kindly intercession, the hand of infuriated justice had heavily fallen, his first visit was to Derry. It was probably during this visit that he founded that church on the other side of the Foyle, whose ivy-clad walls and gravelled area the reader of "Thackeray's Sketch Book" may remember; but few know that it was wantonly demolished by Dr. Weston (1467-1484), the only Englishman who ever held the See of Derry; and "who," adds Colgan, "began out of the ruins to build a palace for himself, which the avenging hand of God did not allow him to complete."

Columba's heart ever yearned to Derry. In one of his poems he tells us "how my boat would fly if its prow were turned to my Irish oak grove." And one day when "that grey eye, which ever turned to Erin," was gazing wistfully at the horizon, where Ireland ought to appear, his love for Derry found expression in a little poem, the English version of which I transcribed from Cardinal Moran's "Irish Saints."

"Were the tribute of all Alba mine,
From its centre to its border,
I would prefer the sight of one cell
In the middle of fair Derry.
"The reason I love Derry is
For its quietness, for its purity;
Crowded full of heaven's angels,
Is every leaf of the oaks of Derry.
"My Derry, my little oak grove,
My abode and my little cell,
O eternal God in heaven above,
Woe be to him who violates it."

With the same love that he himself had for his "little oak grove," he seems to have inspired the annalists of his race, for on turning over the pages of the Four Masters, the eye is arrested by such entries as,—

"1146, a violent tempest blew down sixty oaks in Derry-Columbkille."
"1178, a storm prostrated one hundred and twenty oaks in Derry-Columbkille."

These little tokens of reverence for the trees, which had been sanctified by his presence and love, show us how deep a root his memory had in the affections of the Donegal Franciscans, when they paused in their serious and compendious work to record every little accident that happened to his monastery. But, alas, all the protection that O'Donnell's clan might afford, all the fear that Columba's "Woe" might inspire, could not save his grove. Like many a similar one in Ireland, storms, and the destructive hand of man, have combined to blot it off the face of the landscape, and nothing now remains but the name.

The monastery, too, shared the same fate. Burned by the Danes in 812, 989, 997 and 1095, phœnix-like it rose again from its ashes, each time in greater beauty. The church, after one of these burnings, was rebuilt of stone; and from its charred and blackened appearance after the next burning, received the name of Dubh-Regles or Black Church of the Abbey—a name by which in the Annals the monastery itself is often called.

But Derry had other enemies than the Danes. In 1124 we find "Ardgar, Prince of Aileach, killed by the ecclesiastics of Doire-Columbkille in the defence of their church. His followers in revenge burned the town and churches." The then abbot was St. Gelasius, who, after presiding sixteen years over the monastery, which he had entered a novice in early youth, was, in 1137, raised to the Primatial See of Armagh; and dying in 1174, nearly closes the long calendar of Irish Saints. The first year of his abbacy (1121) had been marked by the death in the monastery of "Domwald Magloughlin Ardrigh of Erin, a generous prince, charitable to the poor and liberal to the rich, who, feeling his end approaching, had withdrawn thither,"—a fact which shows the great veneration in which this monastery was held.

The name of the next abbot, Flathbert O'Brolcan, or Bradley, is one of the brightest in the Annals of Derry. He was greatly distinguished for his sanctity and learning, but still more for his administrative abilities. As abbot of Derry he was present at the Synod of Kells in 1152. Six years after, at the Synod of Brightaig (near Trim, county Meath), a continuation or prorogation of that of Kells, Derry was created an Episcopal See and Flathbert appointed its first bishop. A much more honorable distinction was given him, when by the same synod, he was appointed "prefect general of all the abbeys of Ireland," an appointment which must probably be limited to the Columbian Abbeys, which were at the time very numerous. Some idea of the wealth and power of the Columbian order may be gathered from the records that the Masters have given us of Flathbert's visitations. "In 1150 he visited Tireoghain (Tyrone), and obtained a horse from every chieftain; a cow from every two biataghs; a cow from every three freeholders; a cow from every four villeins; and twenty cows from the king himself; a gold ring of five ounces, his horse and battle-dregs from the son of O'Lochlain, king of Ireland." "In 1153 he visited Down and Antrim and got a horse from every chieftain; a sheep from every hearth; a horse and five cows from O'Dunlevy, and an ounce of gold from his wife." And in 1161 he visited Ossory, and "in lieu of the tribute of seven score oxen due to him, accepted four hundred and twenty ounces of pure silver."

But though thus honored by the hierarchy and people, enemies were not wanting to him. In 1144 the monastery had been burned and hostile clouds were again gathering round it, when in 1163 Flathbert erected a cashel or series of earthen fortifications, which baffled for a time the enmity of the plunderer. A passing calm was thus assured him, of which he took advantage, in 1164, to commence the building of his Cathedral, called in Irish "Teampull-mor," a name which one of the city parishes still retains. But the times were troublous, and hardly was the Cathedral finished than we find in 1166 "O'More burning Derry as far as the church Dubh-Regles."

In 1175, on the death of their abbot the monks of Iona elected Flathbert; but he felt that the shadows of death were gathering round him, and he would not leave his own monastery of Derry. He died the same year, and "was buried in the monastery, leaving a great reputation for wisdom and liberality;" but before his death he had the pleasure of knowing that "1175, Donough O'Carolan perfected a treaty of friendship with the abbey and town, and gave to the abbey a betagh townland of Donoughmore and certain duties."

Some years before his death Flathbert had resigned the See of Derry in favor of Dr. Muredach O'Coffey,[3] who, having been consecrated bishop of Ardstraw had, in 1150, transferred that See to Maghera or Rathlure, thus uniting Ardstraw and Rathlure. His accession to Derry joined the three into one, to which under Dr. O'Carolan in the next century, Innishowen was added, thus forming the modern diocese.

Dr. O'Coffey took up his residence in the abbey where, on the 10th of February, 1173, he breathed his last. Archdall in his Monasticon calls him "St. Muredach;" but the old Annalists content themselves with saying that "he was the sun of science, the precious stone and resplendent gem of knowledge, the bright star and rich treasury of learning; and as in charity so, too, was he powerful in pilgrimage and prayer." The Masters add that "a great miracle was performed on the night of his death; the dark night was illumined from midnight to day-break; and the neighboring parts of the world which were visible were in one blaze of light; and all persons arose from their beds imagining it was day."

But I must now hasten to the end, for there is little in the history of the next four centuries over which one loves to linger. The story it tells is the old one of robberies and murders and burnings. It records the first rumblings of that storm so soon to break over that land and make of our island a vast coliseum, drenching it with the blood of martyrs. I have often thought what a pang it must have cost the heart of Brother Michael Oblery to pen such entries as these:

"1195, Rury, son of Dunlere, chief of Ulidia, plunders Derry-Columbkille with an English force."

"1197, Sir John De Courcy plunders the abbey of Derry."

"1198, Sir John De Courcy again plunders Derry abbey."

How his eyes must have filled as he glanced in memory over the long tale of his country's sufferings, on the record of which he was about to enter. 'Twas bad enough to see the Dane lay sacrilegious hands on the sacred vessels; but it was worse still to behold one's fellow-Catholic apply the robber's torch to the church of God where, perhaps, at that very moment our Lord himself lay hid under the sacramental veils. Yet these were the men who, from the Loire to the Jordan had fought the church's battle so gallantly,—whose countrymen would only hold the Calabrian kingdom, that their lances had purchased so dearly, as vassals of the Pope,—the very men who themselves were studding the Pale with those architectural gems, of which the ruins of Dunbrody and its sister abbeys still speak so eloquently. It was a strange fancy that made them tumble the Irish monastery to-day, and lay the foundation of an Anglo-Irish one to-morrow. Yet so it was; for in the charters of many of those monasteries, in which, it was enacted in 1380, that no mere Irishman should be allowed to take vows, the name of John De Courcy is entered as founder or benefactor. One hardly knows whether to condemn him for destroying Columba's favorite abbey, or praise him for the solicitude he expresses in his letter to the Pope for the proper preservation of Columba's relics. The acts of the man and his nation are so contradictory, that the only reasonable conclusion we can draw from them is the practical one, never again to wonder that the faith of such men withered at the first blast of persecution.

Nevertheless, the monastery survived these attacks; for in the early part of the fifteenth century, we find the then abbot of Derry negotiating a peace between the English and O'Donnell. But in its subsequent annals nothing more than the mere date of an inmate's death meets us till we come to the great catastrophe, which ended at once the monastery and order of Columba. Cox thus tells the story: "Colonel Saintlow succeeded Randolph in the command of the garrison and lived as quietly as could be desired, for the rebels were so daunted by the former defeat that they did not dare to make any new attempt; but unluckily on the 24th of April, 1566, the ammunition took fire and blew up the town and fort of Derry, so that the soldiers were obliged to embark for Dublin."[4] "This disaster was regarded at the time as a divine chastisement for the profanation of St. Columba's church and cell, the latter being used by the heretical soldiery as a repository of ammunition, while the former was defiled by their profane worship."[5]

J. McH.

An actor once delivered a letter of introduction to a manager, which described him as an actor of great merit, and concluded: "He plays Virginius, Richelieu, Hamlet, Shylock, and billiards. He plays billiards the best."

The Penitent on the Cross.

Few deeds of guilt are strangers to my eyes,
These hands of mine have wrought full share of sin,
My very heart seemed steeled to pity's cries:
Whence then this thought that melts my soul within?
What is there in that Form that moves me so?
So sweet a victim ne'er mine eyes beheld;
That beauteous face, that majesty of woe,
That hidden something from my sight withheld.
Cease thou at least, nor join the mocking throng,
Thou heartless sharer in our common doom!
Just meed for us, but He hath done no wrong;
All seems so strange—what means the gathering gloom?
That lonely mother, there oppressed with woe,
O'erheard me now I saw her raise her eyes;
To bless me—and with clasping hands as though
She craved a something, through the darkening skies.
Hear how the priests discuss with mocking scorn
The triple scroll above His crownèd head.
"Jesus of Nazareth," the lowly born;
"King of the Jews," in Royal David's stead.
Ah, me; but I have heard that name of old
From waylaid victims in my outlaw den.
They won me from fell purpose as they told
His deeds of love and wonder amongst men.
They told me how the sea in billows dashed
Became as marble smooth beneath His feet;
How He rebuked the winds to fury lashed,
And they were hushed to murmurs low and sweet.
He, then it was that gave the blind their sight,
And made the palsied leap with bounding tread;
And as you'd wake the sleeping in the night
From even their sleep awoke the slumbering dead.
Oh, Master, had I known Thee in those days,
Fain might I too have followed Thee as Friend;
But then I was an outlaw by the ways,
And now 'tis late—my days are at an end.
"No, not too late." Oh, God! whose is that voice
That sounds within me such a heavenly strain,
And makes my being to its depths rejoice
As if it felt creation's touch again?
What is that light, that glorious light which brings
Such wondrous knowledge of things all unseen,
And yet wherein I see fair, far-off things
To mortal vision hid, however keen.
And centred in that flood of golden light,
One truth that catches all its scattered beams—
Illumed above the rest so fair, so bright:
It is thy God whose blood beside thee streams.
Oh, God of glory! hear the outlaw's prayer,
And in Thy home but kindly think of me;
I dare but ask to be remembered there,
Nor heaven I seek, but to be loved by Thee.
From off the Cross whereon the Saviour hung
Fell on his ears response of wondrous love,
More sweet than though the cherubim had sung
The sweetest songs they sing in heaven above.
Yes, loved but not remembered thou shalt be—
The absent only may remembrance claim—
But in my kingdom thou shalt dwell with me,
Companion of my glory as my shame.
Amen, amen, I say to thee that thou,
Ere yet another day illume the skies,
With crown unlike to this that binds my brow
Shalt share the glories of my paradise.
F. E. Emon.

The Celt in America.

It is the common delusion of our day that Americans as a people are of Anglo-Saxon lineage. This has been said and reiterated, until it descends into the lowest depths of sycophancy and utter folly. It is false in fact, for above all other claimants, that of the Celt is by far the best. Glancing back to our primeval history, we find the Kelt to be the centre-figure of its legends and traditions. We are told by an old chronicle, that Brendan, an Irishman, discovered this continent about 550 A. D., and named it Irland-Kir-Mikla, or Great Eire; this is corroborated by the Scandinavians. Iceland was settled in the sixth century by Irish, and when the Norsemen settled there, they found the remains of an Irish civilization in churches, ruins, crosses and urns: thus, it is not at all improbable that the Celts of those islands sent out exploring parties who discovered for the first time the American continent. Passing over the myths and legends of that curious and quaint era, let us read the pages of authentic American history.

On that memorable October day, when the caravels of Columbus came to anchor in the New World, the Celt acted well his part in that great drama. He who first reached land, from the ships of Columbus, was a Patrick Maguiras, an Irishman. Columbus in his second voyage had on board an Irish priest, Father Boyle, and several of his crew were Celts. In the early discoveries and settlements the Kelt was ever in the van of the pioneers of Western civilization; he explored rivers, bays, and forests, while the Anglo-Saxon scarce tread on American soil until the close of the sixteenth century. The first gateway to civilization for the West, was made by priests from France, among whom were many Irish missionaries, who were forced to fly their native land and seek shelter elsewhere. St. Augustine and New Mexico were founded by the Spaniards long before a cabin was built in Jamestown, and the Spanish and French sovereigns ruled numerous flourishing dependencies in the New World ere the English Pilgrims had seen Plymouth. The Anglo-Saxons, then, were not so forward in explorations and discoveries as their neighbors, the Celts and Latins. Review the epoch of the colonial development, and we find that the Celt surpasses the Saxon.

The Huguenots fled from France; the Scotchman left his native heather to escape despotism; the Irishman exiled from his patrimony sought a home in the American wilds. Many a Spaniard made his Nova Iberia in the South, and the log-cabins of the French pioneers dotted the north-western wilderness. The Swedes founded Delaware, and New York was created by the stolid Dutch. The Moravians and the Welsh came hither likewise; the Puritans fled Merry England and Quakers sought religious freedom in America; but the great body of the English people believing in the State and the religion of their sovereign, had no desire to risk fortune here, especially when the laws were made for their benefit even if at the expense of the colonists. Thus, with exceptions of the Quaker and the Puritan, some few Cavaliers and the paupers, the great body of the Anglo-Saxon people remained at home. In American colonization, Anglo-Saxonism was but a drop in the bucket. Among all the famous thirteen colonies there was not one settled by Saxons exclusively; and in all of the colonies the Celt predominated. The Puritans when they founded Massachusetts, rigorously excluded all who differed from them; nevertheless the Celt waxed strong in New England. "It was," says Hawthorne, "no uncommon thing in those days to see an advertisement in the colonial paper, of the arrival of fresh Irish slaves and potatoes." Bunker Hill itself was named after a knoll in county Antrim. Faneuil Hall was the gift of a Celt, and the plan of it was drawn by Berkeley, the Irish philosopher, who said prophetically,

"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest empire is the last."

The Boston Irish Charitable Society was organized near a century and a half ago, and the first paper mill in Massachusetts was built by a Celt named Thomas Smith. The names of Belfast, Londonderry, Ulster, Sullivan and Bangor show the nationality of their settlers. The founders of the Empire State were Teutons; but when it passed to the English realm, James II. sent over as Governor, Colonel Dongan, an Irishman. This Governor during his term of office, brought over large numbers of Irish emigrants. Pennsylvania was the most Keltic of the colonies. The first daily paper in the United States was founded by John Dunlap, an Irishman. So great was Celtic emigration to this State that in one year (1729) there came to Pennsylvania no fewer than 6,208 persons, of whom 242 were Germans, 247 English, and 5,653 Irishmen. So numerous were Celts that Washington once said, "Put me in Rockbridge County, and I'll find men enough to save the Revolution." In Maryland it was the same. The first ship that sailed into Baltimore was Irish, though the figure-head, Cecil Calvert, was English; but the town from which he derived his title, and after which the metropolis of Maryland is named, is in Galway, Ireland. In the Old Dominion, the first settlers were in good part English. The Scotch and Welsh were very powerful, and the Irish were very numerous. The impress if the Celts in Virginia is seen in Carroll and Logan counties, Lynchburg, Burkesville, Brucktown and Wheeling.

In 1652, Cromwell recommended that Irishwomen be sold to merchants, and shipped to New England and Virginia, there to be sold as wives to the colonists. A manuscript of Dr. Lingard's puts the number sold, at about 60,000; Brondin, a contemporary, places the number at 100,000. The names of these women have become anglicized, for the English law forbade the Irish to have an Irish name, and commanded them to assume English names. North Carolina was settled mainly by the Scotch and Welsh, with English and Irish additions. So was Georgia. In South Carolina the Irish predominated. "Of all the countries," says the historian of South Carolina, "none has furnished this province with so many inhabitants as Ireland. Scarce a ship leaves any of its ports for Charleston that is not crowded with men, women, and children." So much for the so-called English colonies. Among the foremost of distinguished men in the colonial times were the Celts. The first man elected to an office, not appointed by the Crown, was James Moore, Governor of North Carolina. James Logan, the successor of Penn, and William Thompson, were both Celts. Let us glance at the Revolution; it is in this struggle that the Celt was covered with glory; and either on the field or in the forum he was always in the van. The Celts of Mecklenburg made a declaration of freedom over a year before the Declaration of Independence was made.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was of Welsh ancestry, and thus a Celt. John Hancock inherited Celtic blood from his mother, Nora O'Flaherty. Behold the array of Celts who signed the Declaration in 1776: Carroll, Thornton, McKean, Rutledge, Lewis, Hart, Lynch, Jefferson and Reed. A merchant of Philadelphia, John Nixon, first read to the people that immortal paper. Charles Thompson, Thomas McHenry and Patrick Henry, the Demosthenes of the Revolution, were Celts. The poetry of the loyal English writers afford abundant proof of the influence and numbers of the Celts in those days. The first blow for Independence was struck by James Sullivan of New Hampshire, and the first blow on sea was struck by Jeremiah O'Brien, of Machias, Maine. A Celt, Thomas Cargill, of Ballyshannon, saved the records of Concord when the British soldiery went out from Boston to destroy the military stores in Middlesex. Nor was it in the opening scenes alone that the Celts were prominent; but from the death of McClary on Bunker Hill, to the close of the war, they fought with a vigor and bravery unsurpassed. Who charged through the snowdrifts around Quebec but Montgomery, a Celt.

Who fought so bravely at Brandywine? at Bemis's Heights, who saved the day but Morgan's Irish Rifles. Was it not mad Anthony Wayne, a Celt, who won Stony Point? General Sullivan, a Celt, avenged the Wyoming Massacre. General Hand, a Celt, first routed the Hessians. The hero of Bennington was a Celt, General Stark; so were Generals Conway, Knox, Greene, Lewis, Brigadier Generals Moore, Fitzgerald, Hogan, Colonels Moylan and Butler. In fact, American annals are so replete with trophies of Celtic valor that it would be vain to narrate them all.

"A hundred battlefields attest, a hundred victories show,
How well at liberty's behest they fought our country's foe."

The only society that ever had the honor of enrolling the name of Washington among its members was the Friendly Knights of St. Patrick. It is an incident worthy of remark that at Yorktown it was a Celt, General O'Hara, who gave to America the symbol of England's final defeat. When the war of the Revolution was ended the Celt laid aside the sword to engage in the arts of peace and build up the industries of the country.

Twenty Irish merchants subscribed $500,000 to pay the soldiers, and they aided in every possible way the young and weak government. Then the Celtic statesmen rose to view Hamilton, Jefferson, Gov. Sullivan of New Hampshire, Gov. Sullivan of Massachusetts, De Witt Clinton of New York, John Armstrong, jr., of Pennsylvania, Calhoun, Louis McLane and George Campbell. Since those days the numbers and influence of the Celts has been constantly increasing, and were it not for the sturdy Scotchman, the Welshman, and Irishman our nation would still be a conjury of the future. On the battlefield Grant, Meade, McClellan, Scott, Sheridan, McDowell, Shields, Butler, McCook, McPherson, Kearney, Stonewall Jackson, McClernand, Rowan, Corcoran, Porter, Claiborne and Logan show the valor of the Celt. Jones, Barry, Decatur, McDonough, Stewart and Blakely are the ideals of the American sailor. Morse, McCormack, Fulton are among our greatest inventors. Jackson, Pierce, Buchanan, Wilson, Cameron, Douglas, Blaine, Arthur and Hill are our Celtic statesmen. Charles O'Conor, McVeagh, Stuart, Black, Campbell, McKinley, McLean, Rutledge are our greatest jurists. Poe, Greeley, Shea, Baker, Savage, England, Hughes, Spalding, O'Rielly, Barrett, Purcell, Keene, McCullough, Boucicault, Bennett, Connery and Jones are Celts, names famous in journalism, religion, literature and drama. The Celt, in the words of Henry Clay, are "bone of our bone" and "flesh of our flesh," thus acknowledging him to be part and parcel of our nation.

Let us leave the flowery field of rhetoric and strike the hard pan of statistics. The official census of 1870 numbers the Celts at 24,000,000, the Saxons at 5,000,000, and the whole population at 38,500,000. In proportion the Celts were five-eighths and the Saxons one-eighth of the people of the country, two-eighths being of other origin. There are now 50,000,000 inhabitants, of which (20,000,000 are Irish-Americans) five-eighths are Celts who number 32,500,000, and one-eighth Saxon, or 7,000,000, and the residue being filled with other races. Thus we see that in numbers the nation is Celtic or nearly so. Let not national vanity or prejudice of race assert itself too strongly, for here came all to obtain their just and lawful liberty.

Worcester, Mass.

J. Sullivan.

Southern Sketches.

XVII.

IN HAVANA, CUBA.—DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY, ITS PEOPLE, CHURCHES AND CIVIL INSTITUTIONS.

On approaching the Isle of Cuba, the sight of this queen of the Antilles seemed like the realization of some beautiful Eastern dream. As our vessel neared the verdant, palm-clad hills, our party were caressed by warm, odorous breezes. The softest of blue skies looked down upon us, and we gazed on the smoothest and clearest of seas. No wonder that the brave and holy Columbus, with his crew, should feel transported with joy at the sight of the tropical isles on which they first set foot. The poetic effect of the scenes then viewed must have been greatly increased by the appearance of the native Indians, whose costumes and wild graces were so strange to European eyes.

Richly painted boats filled with gay, chattering Cubans moved briskly over the waters as we neared the entrance to the harbor. A beautiful picture now appeared before us. It seemed as if enchanted palaces, gardens, castles and towers had suddenly issued from the depths of the green, transparent waves. Nearly every building had a peculiarly exquisite tint, and all were flooded and enriched with the mellow, tropical sunlight. Fort Morro, to the left, beetled over the waves like some sombre and impregnable defence of the Middle Ages. Its golden-brown and colossal walls sprung like a master-piece of feudal art from the dark, wave-washed, slippery rocks below. The tall, slender light-house connected with it greatly added to its attractions. Soldiers in bright uniforms paced to and fro on the ramparts, while the flag of old Spain, with its mingled hues of blood and gold, floated proudly above the battlements. The harbor was narrow at the entrance and widened further on, appearing in shape like the palm of one's hand. I felt so dazzled with the splendors around me, that I could not grasp at once the beauties of individual objects.

Opposite Fort Morro stood El Castillo de La Punta, an older, but smaller defence erected by Philip II., in 1589. Immediately behind the Morro, Fort La Cahanas spread away for nearly half a mile on the top of a picturesque range of hills. This is one of the largest forts in the world, and cost (as I was informed) thirty million dollars. When the King of Spain heard of its vast price, he took his telescope at once, and told his courtiers that so expensive a building ought to be plainly seen from the top of his Madrid palace. White-stoned cottages lined the waters to the left, and decorated the slopes of the hills, which were full of cacti, century plants and thousands of other floral beauties. Everything around us reflected the poetry of color and motion. The great walls of the prison (el Carcel) appeared at the rear of the Punta, and the hoary, weather-stained walls and towers of the cathedral were conspicuous amid the many highly-colored houses of the city. The sight of this strange and picturesquely colored town made me feel like visiting the queer and lovely old Moorish cities of Spain, so charmingly described by Washington Irving.

Havana has two quarters, the intramural and the extramural; the former lies along the bay. It has the narrowest streets and the oldest buildings, dim, dusty, but poetic. The latter quarter spreads along the ocean, and has the newest structures and widest streets, adorned with palm and Indian laurel trees. The contrast from the moving ship appeared very fine, and the glowing panorama was enriched by the presence of stately men-of-war and merchant vessels from the United States, France, Spain, Italy and other nations. Every mast, spar, flag and rope was reflected on the dazzling waters. Through the vast collection of masts, golden vistas were seen up the bay. Lovely isles and emerald shores presented their wealth of waving palms, bananas, and tropical growths. The fact of the thermometer being up to eighty degrees on this February morning added immensely to the sense of enjoyment derived from these luxuriant scenes. The booming of cannon from the Morro, the sound of trumpets calling soldiers to their posts, and the whistling, laughing and shouting of boatmen contributed no little interest to the picture. Numerous boats sped here and there over the bay as our vessel anchored in the basin outside the custom-house. Each one had some lively Cuban boatmen and messengers from hotels, who came to row passengers to shore, and solicit patronage for particular houses. The whole scene presented a most animated picture, and the green, red, blue and yellow boats, with the white-dressed, broad-hatted, dark-eyed occupants looked uncommonly grand. When the health-officer came on board, each person was inspected as to his sanitary condition, and then left to excited crowds, who delivered their solicitations for patronage in excellent Spanish mixed with a little broken English. Cards, bearing pictures of "the Hotel de San Carlos," "El Teleprafo," "Hotel de Inglaterra," "de Europa," and others were tossed rather than handed to us by white-clad characters who thronged the decks. Among the smaller brown-faced, curly-headed boatmen were some lithe and powerful Cubans dressed in simple white shirt and pants, blue neck-ties and Panama hats. Having agreed with one of these to go from the vessel to the city at the rate of fifty cents apiece in gold, our party passed down the companion-ladder and entered a well-built bumboat, painted in green, blue and yellow, adorned with carpets, cushions, one sail and a gorgeous awning. The soft, tropical sun shone down on this poetical scene, and as the powerful arms of the oarsmen propelled the boat, the breezes played over us and the green waters.

On embarking at the custom-house, an unpretending wooden structure, our luggage was carefully overhauled by a courteous officer, attired in spotless, light-blue linen. Passing through the building I emerged on the street where crowds of negroes, Cuban and foreigners were engaged in smoking, chatting, and watching the newly-arrived travellers. Numerous coaches were drawn up in this neighborhood, and a person could visit any part of the city in one of them for a trifling sum. The Hotel de Europa, where I intended to stay, was only a few minutes' walk from the custom-house, and was delightfully situated on the Plaza de St. Francisco, facing the bay.

The first sight of Havana reveals to the United States visitor, who never saw a Spanish city, a style of architecture, habits and scenes entirely characteristic of Spain. The streets through which I passed were but wide enough for one vehicle; the sidewalks could only accommodate one foot passenger, and the houses, usually of one story, were built of stone as thick, solid and gloomy looking as fortresses. On my way I noticed that the windows had no glass, but were as large as doors, fortified within by iron bars like those of a prison, and additionally defended by heavy, wooden shutters generally painted green. The shops were on a level with the pavement, and their rich and rare collection of goods were all exposed to the view of the public. Awnings now and then extended overhead across the street. Now some darkies and Chinamen moved along bearing big burthens on their heads, and announcing their wares in loud tones in the Spanish language. These were followed by what appeared to me to be mysterious moving stalks of corn. As the latter came nearer, the heads and legs of donkeys were seen amidst the green mass. Then came a Cuban chicken vender from the country, with a great big hat and blue shirt, leading his mule by the reins, while the panniers on each side of the animal's back were filled with live fowl. Immense wagons, laden with hogsheads of sugar and molasses, rattled over the rough pavements as they were drawn by huge oxen, that were steered by stout ropes, which were cruelly passed through their nostrils. I was not a little surprised to see three or four cows walking silently on and stopping at the doors of the houses to be milked before the public. Customers need have no fears that any adulteration could take place on such occasions, as the liquid comes from the pure and natural fountain right before their eyes. Two old sailors, each minus an arm, were singing patriotic songs and the signors, signoras and signoritas who listened to them at the doors and balconies, seemed thrilled with delight, at the musical recital of the grand victories of old Spain. Peddlers moved along with an immense heap of miscellaneous wares fixed in boxes on the backs of their mules. Tall, stately negresses, with long, trailing dresses, of flashy green and yellow, walked along quite independently, as at Key West, smoking cigars which in New York would cost twenty-five cents a piece. One or two Cuban ladies hurried by, wearing satin slippers, silken dresses and mantillas of rich black lace. The Hotel de Europa, which I soon reached, is a large, plain, solid building adorned by a piazza, which runs along the second story, and by numerous little balconies higher up. It is a very well-managed institution, has an agreeable interpreter in its office, an excellent table, and on the hottest day a cool, refreshing breeze from the bay sweeps through the rooms. The office on the second story is reached by a large stone staircase. The house is built around a spacious courtyard, in the centre of which is a beautiful fountain, encircled by choice native flowers. The music of the fountain and the shade of the trees have a pleasing and cooling effect.

After securing my room I was shown to it by a bright-eyed, garrulous Cuban youth named "Josepho," who was well acquainted with his own, but lamentably ignorant of the English language. He tried to compensate for this drawback by a copious and intelligent use of gesture. Josepho soon led me to my room, which stood at the end of a corridor, that was flanked on one side by the courtyard, and on the other by sleeping apartments. Two great jars, of Pompeian style, stood on a side-board outside the door, and were full of cold water. These were for the use of the guests on the corridor. When I entered my room I found it had a floor of red and yellow tiles, immense, thick rough rafters overhead, painted blue and white, an iron bedstead, a great chest of drawers, no carpet, and shutters as heavy and ponderous as those of some old European prison. Yet everything was pleasant and cool. The view from the window of the bay, forts, shipping and houses was very beautiful, and, surely, I had keener apprehension of it than the lazy mulateers, whom I saw sleeping in their ox-carts below on the square, their red-blue caps and white jackets flooded in sunshine. The visitors to Cuba need not expect the luxury of a feather bed or a mattress. Neither was visible in my room. The couch consisted of a piece of canvas tightly spread over the iron frame, and strongly attached to it. A single sheet constituted the only covering, and the stranger will find that the pillow, filled with the moss of the island is not at all too soft. The nights are so pleasant that Cuban hotel keepers think this amount of bed furniture quite sufficient.

After a little rest, I decided that the famous Jesuit College, "De Belen," would be the first institution worth seeing. I went alone, and soon found it on the corner of Lutz and Compostilla Streets. A stranger cannot miss it, as it is one of the most formidable buildings in Havana. Though its style has something of the barbaric about it, yet it is chiefly so on account of its ruggedness, vastness and stern grandeur. It is built of stone, cemented and brown in color. The main arched entrance is very lofty, and on the steps as I passed by I noticed a gaunt, diseased and ragged negro, with outstretched arms soliciting alms. I rang the bell. A porter admitted me, and after asking for one of the priests in fair Spanish, I was conducted to a grand saloon up stairs and politely requested to await the arrival of Father Pinan who was conversant with English. The saloon was a magnificent apartment, about one hundred feet long by thirty wide. Its walls were adorned with splendid paintings done by ancient masters, and all represented dear, religious scenes. The lofty white pillars and the blue mouldings of the saloon produced a charming effect. Several rows of rocking-chairs, placed in pairs so that those occupying them would face one another and converse freely, were in this saloon, as is the custom in all others in Cuba. As I was admiring the pictures Father Pinan entered, and at once welcomed me very cordially to the college. The news, from the States interested him, and he promised to give me all the information he could regarding the college. "Ah," said he, "it is good to hear that there are so many good Catholics and converts in the United States. I do hope that they will persevere earnestly."

Father Pinan's frankness, intelligence and hospitality charmed and encouraged me. Passing from the saloon through a lofty arch, we entered the Museum of Natural History, which was very large and contained a splendid collection. Here I saw gorgeous stuffed birds from tropical lands, ostriches' eggs, skins of boas, the maha (a large, harmless snake), porcupines, sea bulls, flying fish, immense sword fish, jaws of enormous sharks, brilliant big butterflies from South America, and an immense sea cockroach caught by Spanish men-of-war and presented by a general of the navy. Very large sponges, natural crosses of white rock from Spain, splendid pearls, magnificent shells from the Pacific Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, ivory baskets and miniature churches from China, beautiful Oriental slippers, Chinese grapes and apples, royal green birds from Mexico, relics of Columbus from St. Domingo, fragments of the stone on which General Pizarro sat after his victories, cannon balls used by Cortez in his conquest of Mexico, dust from the streets of Naples, lava from Vesuvius, pebbles from Mount Ararat, fragments from the homes of the vestals of Pompeii, and some of the ruins of Ninevah. Here Father Pinan was obliged to take his leave to attend class, and his place was splendidly filled by Father Osoro, a young and engaging Spanish priest, who was passionately attached to the sciences of Natural History and Philosophy. He introduced me at once to the relics with the spirit of an enthusiast. He pointed out to me some of the remains of Babylon, grand illuminated copies of the Holy Bible and of the office of the Blessed Virgin, done on parchment by the monks in 1514, and handsomely embellished with gold. He showed me gifts from kings and princes of marvellous precious stones, opals, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, agates, amethysts, cups of agate, golden snuff-boxes, natural crosses in agate, skulls made into cases and pocket books, brilliant mosaics and rosaries of gold. Father Osoro directed my attention to the paper money of the French Revolution, of the Cuban (so-called) Republic and of St. Domingo. He showed me Roman, Spanish, Lusatanian, English, French, Belgian, Australian, German, Swedish, Danish, Chinese and Japanese coins. Here were immense stone earrings of Indians, mineral and geological relics of Guatamala, grand green crystals, teeth of antedeluvian beasts, fossils of various kinds, sulphur and iron ore of Cuba, and specimens of one hundred and eight different kinds of wood that grow on the island. I saw hundreds of other rare and lovely curiosities, but it would take a volume to describe all of them. Father Osoro next introduced me to the hall of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy, a fine room, full of all the modern instruments designed to practically illustrate the workings of these useful and interesting systems.

From there we went to the refectory, which was capable of seating five hundred pupils. Everything here was remarkable for neatness, solidity and order. The dormitories, containing five hundred beds, were very lofty and airy. I saw handsome crucifixes in conspicuous places here, and holy pictures, also, all to remind the pupils of the spirit of devotion which they owed to God and his saints. We noticed men washing and ironing in the large laundry; no women were employed in the house. Here were several grand marble swimming basins for the boys, with large apparatuses for hot and cold water, splendid gymnasiums, forty or fifty feet long by thirty wide, with pillars painted sky blue, and supporting a magnificent ceiling. Swings, dumb-bells, Indian clubs and instruments for raising weights were strewn all over the sawdust floors. We passed by six court-yards adorned with statues, flowers, fountains and ponds full of gold fish. I noticed in front of the church entrance a large and splendid representation of the grotto of Lourdes made by one of the Jesuit Fathers. Two noble palm-trees which grew near the grotto, added greatly to its beauty. The exterior of the church was plain, but massive in its appearance, and the interior with its handsome marble floor, paintings, frescos and altars, formed a sight of no little interest to the stranger. Soft vermillion, pink, rosy and violet reflections from the stained glass windows filled the sacred edifice, and gave an exquisite coloring to the superb old pictures. On the right, a grand and costly crucifix looked down with life-like agony on the priests who were vesting in the sacristy. Enormous chests lined the walls of several rooms, and in those were stored gorgeous vestments, wonderfully beautiful in color and material, and enriched with gold and precious stones. Costly presents from kings and Spanish grandees were shown to me by the brother sacristan, who took an honest pride in exhibiting those blessed things. Magnificent society banners, used during processions on great festivals, were subjects of intense interest to the good brother. I saw lace albs there, with crotchet work marvellously executed by hand, and adorned with brilliants. Each of these cost $1,500. The chapel of St. Placidus, attached to the church is a perfect gem with its pillars of white and gold. While in Havana, I had the pleasure of saying Mass in the Jesuit Church. Other priests were celebrating at the same time, and a magnificent congregation of men and women attended. The music was exquisitely rendered, but I could not see how the people could continue standing and kneeling so patiently all the time. In this, as in the rest of the Cuban churches, there are but a few pews. The majority of the people, who bring neither seats nor cushions with them, stand, kneel, or sit on their heels at intervals. I do not think our Catholics in the United States could muster up sufficient courage to endure all this.

After seeing the handsome, dark-eyed boys of the college, its fine library and other interesting apartments, I ascended with Father Osoro to look at the observatory en the top of the building.

This solid and business-like structure possesses the newest and most complete astronomical and meteorological instruments, and the accuracy of the scientific results arrived at by the Fathers, has become justly celebrated. They received a manifestation of merit from the Centennial Exposition of '76, on account of their meteorological observations, and the Parisian Exhibition presented them with a magnificent medal. Father Benito Vines, the president, communicates regularly with Washington and nearly every civilized nation. After viewing the interior of the observatory, we came out on the roof, and here I beheld a novel and wonderfully lovely sight. Stone and brick walks, four or five feet wide, with railings at each side spread away, intersecting each other at different points, and all were above the dark, red-tiled roofs of the institution. Strong little edifices like watch towers, painted in blue and white, stood out prominently near the walks, and no sooner did the eye turn from these immediate objects, than it was dazzled by the superb panorama of city, ocean, bay, sky and woodland that spread before it.

Father Osoro enjoyed the expressions of admiration that escaped me, as I gazed on the high and low roofs on every side, the black turrets, the walls of houses, red, green, blue, crimson, yellow, and white all mellowed by age. Down below us were the narrow streets, the iron-barred windows, the curious shops, verandas, balconies, flag staffs, flying pigeons, flowers blooming on the roofs, and bananas growing. Away to the north-east stood the grand Morro Castle, the sentinel of the harbor, with its frowning guns, and its grand, revolving light shining like a gem above the sea. Behind it, Fort Cabaña looked long, bold and ancient, backed on the east by evergreen hills, and decorated on the south by palms and other tropical trees. The harbor, which glittered with sunlight, was full of ships, buoys, sail-boats, music and sailors. On this side of the bay appeared the old cathedral, with its dark gray walls and black and brown roof. Yellow pillars, old towers, picturesque wind-mills, brown iron stairs running up to the roofs of mansions, palaces, domes, cupolas, plants of great beauty in vases on roofs, and numerous old spires intervened. On the right, near the bay, could be seen the old church, de San Francisco (now a customs storehouse), the church de San Augustin, the church de Sancto Spiritu, and the palace of the admiral to the south, the church de Mercede, that of St. Paul, the arsenal, military hospital, gas houses, the Castello de Princepe, and the suburban gardens of the captain-general. On the north, we beheld the ocean, the Castello de Punta and the Casus de Benefecentia. The Campo de Marte, Parque de Isabella, the parade grounds, trees, statues, fountains and hotels appeared to the west. A refreshing breeze stirred an atmosphere of seventy-eight degrees, and not a particle of dust arose on street or house-top as the rain which fell on the preceding night made all things clean. I would have remained on the top of the college 'till dusk, contemplating that superb prospect, but I had no time, so bidding good-by to the kind Fathers I determined to see more of the city. Before leaving them, however, I could not help reflecting upon the immense amount of good which they were doing in Havana. Before the Liberals got hold of the Spanish government, the constitutional authority of the church in Cuba was not interfered with, but since the accession of Freemasons and Freethinkers to power, ecclesiastical property has suffered violence from the hands of the State, and the nomination and appointment of priests and bishops to place has been arrogantly wrested from those appointed by God to legislate in spirituals, and assumed by a class of irreligious despots. Though the State pays the clergy, still it owns the church property, and entirely cripples the power of the bishop, who cannot remove a bad and refractory priest, if it suits not the pleasure of the civil authorities. Such a state of things naturally caused some demoralization among the clergy, and, as a consequence, much religious indifference among the people. Societies like the Jesuits, who have been but a few years in Havana, are gradually removing pernicious influences like these by the learning, piety and zeal which they exhibit from the pulpit and among the people. Hundreds of men, as well as of women, are drawn to the sacraments by their persuasive eloquence and self-sacrificing, holy lives. The good work will continue and bear glorious fruit, if these noble men be not persecuted in Havana. My earnest hope is that the glorious influence of Catholic Spain will protect them from danger.

Rev. M. W. Newman.

A Valiant Soldier of the Cross.

By the Author of "Leaves from the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy."

In describing scenes over which mine eye has wandered, I have kept so faithfully to the land of the sun, where winter seldom or never leaves his icy footprints, that my discursive papers were not improperly styled "Southern Sketches." Yet other latitudes in America are not wholly unknown to me. Month after month have I gazed on the white monotony of unthawing snow. No one could admire more than I the chaste beauty of the feathery flakes, or the gorgeous sparkle of trees bereft of leaves and covered with crystals that flashed every hue of the rainbow. But even in this bright September day, with the mercury among the eighties, I get chilled through and through, and shake with the "shivers" when I imagine myself once more among the hard frosts of New Hampshire. Unlike the brave soldier of Christ whom I am about to introduce to the readers of the "Irish Monthly," and who found the heat of a short Northern summer simply "intolerable," the tropics and their environs rather allure me. True, soldiers and old residents speak of places between which and the lower regions there is but a sheet of non-combustible tissue paper. Nevertheless, the writer who has lived in both places would rather, as a matter of choice, summer in the Tropics than winter in New Hampshire.

Though this State, in which my hero passed the greater part of his holy life, be the Switzerland of America, a grandly beautiful section, full of picturesque rivers, tall mountains, and dreamy-looking lakes, attracting more tourists than any other place in America save Niagara, yet I will pass over its stern and rugged scenery to write of a man whose titles to our admiration are wholly of the supernatural order.

To me, the finest landscape is but a painted picture unless a human being enliven it. Just one fisherwoman on a sandy beach, or a lone shepherd on a bleak hill-side, and fancy can weave a drama of hope and love and beauty about either. Faith tells of a beautiful immortal soul imprisoned in forms gaunt and shrunken; a prayer that we may meet again in heaven surges up in my heart. The landscape is made alive for me in the twinkling of an eye, and stretches from this lower world to the better and brighter land above. Father MacDonald was for forty-one years the light of a manufacturing town. And when I think of its looms and spindles and fire-engines, and forests of tall, red chimneys, and tens of thousands of operatives, Father MacDonald is the figure which illumines for me the weird and grimy spectacle, and casts over it a halo of the supernatural. Little cared he for the sparkling rivers, or bewitching lakes, or romantic mountains of the Granite State; his whole interest was centred in souls.

Some fifty years ago, Irish immigrants began to come timidly, and in small numbers, to the little manufacturing town of Manchester which rises on both sides of the laughing waters of the Merrimac. Here, in the heart of New Hampshire, one of the original thirteen States, and a stronghold of everything non-Catholic, these poor but industrious aliens knocked at the gates of the Puritan[6] for work. Strong and willing arms were wanted; and Bishop Fitzpatrick, of Boston, learning that some hundreds of Catholics working in the Manchester factories were sighing for the ministrations of a parish, sent Father MacDonald, in July, 1844, to take charge of their spiritual interests.

William MacDonald was born in the county Leitrim, in 1813, being the youngest of a family of six sons and one daughter, whose parents were John MacDonald and Winifred Reynolds. The now aged daughter is the sole survivor of this large family. They were very strictly brought up by their virtuous, pious parents, and through long and chequered lines, were upright, honorable citizens, and thoroughly practical Catholics. Years ago, the writer was told that no descendant of Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald had ever seen the inside of a non-Catholic school. Charles and William became priests, the former emigrating when quite young. William attended the school of his native parish, where he received a solid rudimentary education, after which he pursued his classical studies in Dublin. In 1833, he joined his brother Charles, who was pastor of a church at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Father Charles died in his prime, with a high reputation for sanctity. William always carried about him a little Latin Imitation of Christ, which had also been the vade mecum of his beloved brother. The spiritual life of both was formed in that wonderful book, and Father William was wont to prescribe a suitable chapter in the same for every mental trouble, difficulty, or temptation referred to him.

Father MacDonald's education was finished in the College of Three Rivers, Canada, under the Sulpician Fathers. After his ordination he exercised the ministry in several places till sent by the Bishop of Boston to Manchester. Here he found his co-religionists and countrymen regarded as Helots, and far more despised by Yankee and Puritan than the slaves in the South by their rulers. The Irish were denied the privilege of sidewalks, and obliged, in order to avoid perpetual quarrels, to walk in the middle of the streets. Wherever they appeared, they were hissed and hooted, and "blood-hounds of hell" was the affectionate epithet the ubiquitous small boy bestowed on them. Previous to Father MacDonald's arrival, Father Daly, whose parish included nearly all New Hampshire and Vermont, used to say Mass in Manchester with unfailing regularity every three months. On one of these occasions, the floor of the temporary chapel gave way, and priest, altar, and congregation, were precipitated into the cellar. Providentially, beyond a few bruises and abrasions, no one was injured. The previous day, the bigots having heard that Mass was to be said in the room, had cut the supports from under the floor.

To these people, a priest was an object of hatred and scorn, whom they believed it would be a good work to kill, and Father MacDonald settled among them at the risk of his life. But when duty was in question, he knew not fear. The servant is not greater than his master, he would say: If they have persecuted me they will persecute you also. It was in vain they used every means their perverse ingenuity suggested to intimidate this dangerous papist. They even began to like him. Slowly but surely, he won his way among them, and within a year of his arrival he was able to hire the Granite Hall as a temporary chapel. In 1849, he built a church on a square purchased with his own patrimony, at the corner of Union and Merrimac Streets.

Besides the theological virtues which the "natives" valued not, Father MacDonald possessed all the natural virtues which they pretend to canonize. He was most frugal. To great objects he would give royally, but it was doubtful if he ever wasted a dollar. He sought to live on as little as possible, but it was that he might have more for the needy. He was industrious; not a moment of his day was lost. For many years, he was one of the only two priests in the State; but when his parochial duties left him a little leisure, he was seen to handle the trowel and use the broom. He paid cash for everything he bought, and whoever worked for him received full pay on the day and hour agreed upon: no cutting down of rates. If they wished to give to the church, very well; but they must take their pay from him to the last farthing. He was neatness personified. The fresh complexion and fine physique common among his countrymen he did not possess. Barely reaching middle height, his spare form, sharp features, sallow complexion, and keen, spectacled eyes, made him look like a son of the soil. As for energy, no Yankee ever had more, or perhaps so much. Non-Catholics knew that his power over his flock was absolute. But they admitted that his wish, his word, and his work, were always on the side of order, sobriety, frugality, and good citizenship.

When Father MacDonald's beautiful church was finished, the Know-Nothings, or Native American Party, by way of celebrating in a fitting manner the independence of the United States, burst upon the defenceless Catholics, July 4, tore down their houses, destroyed their furniture, dragged their sick out of bed into the streets, and finally riddled the beautiful stained glass windows of the church. For these damages no compensation was ever made. An Irishman having some dispute with a native, the latter seized a monkey-wrench that was near, and killed him. Father MacDonald asked for justice, but the officials refused to arrest the murderer. Through his wise counsels, the Catholics, though boiling with indignation, did not retaliate, and, as it takes two parties to make a fight, the Know-Nothing excitement having spent itself, soon subsided. But for years, the Irishmen of Manchester and their brave pastor had to take turns at night to guard the church buildings from sacrilegious hands.

So far from being frightened at the lawlessness of the mob, Father MacDonald, at the height of the excitement, announced a daring project. He would bring nuns to Manchester, and he called a meeting of his parishioners to devise ways and means. But, for the first and last time, they strenuously opposed him. "It would be madness. They had frequently heard their employers say they would never allow a nunnery in the city." He soon saw that if he waited for encouragement from any quarter his object would never be accomplished. He built his convent. It was set on fire when completed, but he was not to be baffled. He repaired the damages. Though he declined some compensation offered on this occasion, he was not slow to express his opinion as to the effect such evidences of New England culture might have on his beloved and most generous flock. He invited Sisters of Mercy from Providence, R.I., and had the pleasure of welcoming them, July 16, 1858.

He received them in his own house, which they mistook for their convent. Great was their surprise when they heard that the handsome pillared edifice in the next square was theirs. "I will conduct you thither," said he; "but first we will visit our Lord in the church." The Rev. Mother, M. Frances Warde, and the Sisters, admired the exquisite church, and the extreme neatness and beauty of the altar. "No hand," said he, "but mine has ever touched that altar. No secular has ever been admitted within the sanctuary rails even to sweep. I myself sweep the sanctuary, and attend to the cleanliness of everything that approaches the Blessed Sacrament. But my work as sole priest here is now so arduous, that I will resign this sweet and sacred duty to you."

Schools were immediately opened for boys, girls, adults. Night schools and an academy for the higher studies followed. On account of the superior instruction given in this institution, it has always been well patronized by the best Protestant families in New Hampshire. Indeed, the success of the Sisters of Mercy in this stronghold of Puritanism has been phenomenal. During Father MacDonald's incumbency, Catholics increased from a few despised aliens to more than half the population of Manchester. He was never obliged to ask them for money; they gave him all he needed. He never failed to meet his engagements; and in one way or another every coin he handled went to God's church or God's poor. He laid up nothing for himself. He had the most exalted ideas of the priesthood, and he carried them out to the letter in his daily life. Thousands of young men have been enrolled in his sodalities. As an example to them, he totally abstained from tobacco and from intoxicating drink. St. John's Total Abstinence Society was the pride of his heart. One of his "Sodality Boys," Right Rev. Denis Bradley, became first bishop of Manchester, and many have become zealous priests. From the girls' schools and the sodalities, too, many religious vocations have sprung, and the number of converts under instruction is always very large. This worthy priest brought free Catholic education within the reach of every Catholic in his adopted city. As soon as he finished one good work he began another, and splendid churches, convents, schools, orphanage, hospital, home for old ladies, etc., remain as monuments of his zeal. These institutions are not excelled in the country. They are all administered by the Sisters of Mercy, to whom he was a most generous benefactor.

During the forty-one years of Father MacDonald's life in Manchester, he never took a vacation but one, which his bishop compelled him to take. He was so methodical in the distribution of his time that it was said he did the work of six priests, and did it well. He knew every member of his flock, and was to all friend and father as well as priest, their refuge in every emergency. Every day he studied some point of theology, visited his schools and other institutions, and went the rounds of his sick and poor. Every home had its allotted duty, and grave, indeed, should be the reasons that could induce him to deviate one iota from his ordinary routine. His charities were unbounded, yet given with discrimination, nor did his left hand know what his right hand gave. With the sick and the aged, he was like a woman, or a mother. He would make their fires, warm drinks for them, see that they had sufficient covering. Though they all doated on "Father Mac," they must not thank him, or even pretend they saw what he was doing for them, so well did they know that he worked solely for Him who seeth in secret. Monday, August 24, 1885, this holy man was stricken with paralysis of the brain, and died two days later, while the bishop and the Sisters of Mercy were praying for his soul. It is almost certain that he had some presentiment of his death, as he selected the Gregorian Requiem Mass for his obsequies, and asked the choir to practise it. August 28, his sacred remains were committed to the earth, the funeral sermon being preached by the bishop, who had been as a son to the venerable patriarch. In real, personal holiness, Father MacDonald possessed the only power that makes the knee bend. Over twenty years ago, his sexton said to the writer: "I never opened the church in the morning that I did not find Father MacDonald kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament." What time he entered it, no one knew. How edifying this must have been to the poor factory hands, who were wont to beg God's blessing on their daily labor, in the short, scorching summer, and the bitter cold of the long winter, for at that time the church was not heated. Never did these children of toil miss that bent and venerable form, absorbed in prayer before the hidden Jesus, of whose august presence he had such a vivid realization.

Before such a life of toil and prayer, no bigotry could stand. By sheer force of virtue alone, this holy man wrought a complete change in the sentiments of his adversaries. Hence the extraordinary respect shown to his memory. The non-Catholic press says that no man ever exercised so much influence in Manchester for forty years as Father MacDonald, and that he was the man whom Manchester could least afford to lose. The mayor and the city government attended his obsequies in a body, and the governor of New Hampshire wrote to express his regret that absence hindered his paying the last tribute of respect to a priest he so highly revered. Business was suspended and all the factories closed, that the whole city might follow his remains to the tomb. On Sunday, August 30, the non-Catholic pulpits of the thrifty city resounded with the praises of this humble priest, whose chief characteristics were stainless integrity, an entire absence of human respect, burning zeal for God's glory, and life-long efforts to promote it. He feared no man and sought the favor of none, and his noble independence of character won him the admiration of all who had the privilege of knowing him. His death was universally deplored as the greatest calamity that ever befell Manchester. Among the Protestant ministers who eulogized him in their sermons, August 30, was Rev. Dr. Spalding, who thanked God for raising up a man whose life was remarkable "for its large consecration to Church and people, for its high earnestness, its sacrifices and unselfishness, its purity and truthfulness. God grant unto us all," he continued, "a desire to imitate this life in its devotion to others, and its trust in Him."

As a preacher, Father MacDonald was rather solid than brilliant. In manner, he was somewhat blunt. He conversed pleasantly and sensibly; but people given to gossip or foolish talk soon learned to steer clear of him. Hospitality was with him a Christian duty. If he heard that some ecclesiastic was at the hotel—and he heard everything—he would at once go for him, and place his own neat, comfortable house at his disposal. "Many a time," he would say, "has a young priest acquired a taste for card-playing by spending but one night in a hotel." So fearful was he of the least thing that might disedify the weaklings of his flock, that, when the writer knew him, he was accustomed to send to Boston for altar wine. "If I buy it here," he said, "some poor fellows will think I don't practise what I preach. They will want stimulants as well as I. Even the people who sell will never think of altar wine." Father MacDonald had a great love for the South. Its material advancement gave him pleasure, but his chief interest lay in its spiritual progress. Six years ago, the writer met him after an interval of sixteen years. After the usual greetings, he began to question: "Now, tell me, how is religion in New Orleans? Are the priests zealous? Have you a live bishop? Are the public institutions well attended by priests and religious? But, above and before all else, are your Catholic children all in Catholic schools? And have you superior schools, so that children will have no excuse for going to the godless schools? How are the Masses attended? Are the people well instructed? Do many lead lives of piety?" He was then in his sixty-seventh year, rather broken from incessant labors, but as active as ever. His hair had changed from black to white since last we met. When I gave some edifying details, he would say: "God be praised. I am so glad of what you tell me. Thanks be to God." And he called the attention of a young priest at the other end of the room: "Listen! Hear what they are doing in the South for the school-children, and the waifs and street arabs. And all that is done for the sick and the prisoners. Oh, blessed be God! How happy all this makes me."

I felt as though I were listening to St. Alfonso, so irresistably did this remind me of him. I was no longer among the crisp snows of New Hampshire, that had crackled beneath my feet that morning. Fancy had transported me to the genial clime of Naples. I stood by the bed-ridden Bishop of St. Agatha, in the old Redemptorist's Convent at Pagani, and listened to the touching dialogue between Mauro, the royal architect, and the saint: "And the churches in the city of Naples, are they much frequented?"—"Oh, yes, Monsignor, and you cannot imagine the good that results from this. All classes, especially the working people, crowd them, and we have saints even among the coachmen." At these words the saint rose from his recumbent position, and cried out in tones of joy and triumph: "Saintly coachmen at Naples! Gloria Patri." He could not sleep for joy at this intelligence, but during the night would frequently call for his attendant: "You heard what Don Mauro said? Saints among the coachmen at Naples! What do you think of that?" Associated in our mind with the great St. Alfonso, we keep this holy priest, whom Bishop Bradley so justly styled, "The pioneer of Catholic education in New England." His flock universally regarded him as a saint, and a great saint. And, in all humility, and in perfect submission to the decrees of Holy Church, the writer is able to say, of her own knowledge and observation, that this humble, hard-working, mortified Irish priest, William MacDonald, practised in a high, a very high, degree, every virtue which we venerate in the saints of God. I never met a holier soul. I could not imagine him guilty of the smallest, wilful fault. I feel more inclined to pray to him than for him; it seems incredible that he should have anything to expiate in purgatory. May his successors walk in his footsteps, and his children never forget the lessons he taught them more by example than by word. May our friendship, a great grace to me, be renewed in requie æterna et in luce perpetua. Amen.

Dublin Irish Monthly.

The Avaricious Man can not enjoy riches, but is tormented by anxiety or sickness. Others are worn out by the jealousy or envy which consume them. Others, again, wrapped in their pride, are being continually galled by the supposed indignities offered to them, and there is no sharper crown of thorns than that worn by the proud man. There is one sin which seems to be rampant in our day, and that is scepticism, or doubting God and revelation; and this also brings its own punishment in the present. On the other hand, to those who are tempted, suffering, or afflicted, Jesus Christ promised, "Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life."

Gerald Griffin.

Leal heart, and brave right hand that never drew
One false note from thy harp, although the ache
Of weariness and hope deferred might shake
Harsh discords from a soul less clear and true
Than thine amid the gloom that knew no break—
The London gloom that barred the heaven's blue
From thy deep Celtic eyes, so wide to take
The bliss of earth and sky within their view!
On fleet, white wings thy music made its way
Back o'er the waves to Ireland's holy shore;
Close nestled in her bosom, each wild lay
Mixed with her sighs—'twas from her deep heart's core
She called thee: "'Gille Machree'[7] come home, I pray—
In my green lap of shamrocks sleep, asthore!"
Rose Kavanagh, in Irish Monthly.

Mary E. Blake.

Two years ago we concluded a slight notice of the poems of "Thomasine" (known in Ireland as Miss Olivia Knight, and in Australia as Mrs. Hope Connolly), with the following words: "A writer in the Irish Fireside said lately that Eva and Speranza had no successors. We could name, if we dared, three or four daughters of Erin whom we believe to be singing now from a truer and deeper inspiration and with a purer utterance." Happily, since these words were printed, two of these unnamed rivals whom we set up against the gifted wife of the new M. P. elect for Meath, and against the more gifted widow of Sir William Wilde, have placed their names on the title pages of collections of their poems. We allude, of course, to Katharine Tynan and Rosa Mulholland. Not only these whose place in literature is already secured, but higher than some to whom the enthusiasm of a political crisis gave prominence, we should be inclined to rank such Irish songstresses as the late Attie O'Brien and the living but too silent "Alice Esmonde." And then of Irishwomen living outside Ireland we have Fanny Parnell, Fanny Forrester, Eleanor C. Donnelly, and the lady whom we claim as our own in the title of this paper—Mrs. Mary E. Blake. Though the wife of a physician at Boston, she was born at Clonmel, and bore the more exclusively Celtic name of Magrath.[8]]

Boston claims, or used to claim, to be the literary metropolis of the United States. A prose volume by Mrs. Blake and a volume of her poems lie before us, and for elegance of typography do credit to their Boston publishers. "On the Wing"—lively sketches of a trip to the Pacific, all about San Francisco and the Yosemite Valley, and Los Angeles, and Colorado, but ending with this affectionate description of Boston aforesaid:

And now, as the evening sun drops lower, what fair city is this that rises in the east, throned like a queen above the silver Charles, many-towered and pinnacled, with clustering roof and taper spire? How proud she looks, yet modest, as one too sure of her innate nobility to need adventitious aid to impress others. Look at the æsthetic simplicity of her pose on the single hill, which is all the mistaken kindness of her children has left of the three mountains which were her birthright. Behold the stately avenues that stretch by bridge and road, radiating her lavish favors in every direction; look at the spreading suburbs that crowd beyond her gates, more beautiful than the parks and pleasure grounds of her less favored sisters. See where she sits, small but precious, her pretty feet in the blue waters that love to dally about them; her pretty head, in its brave gilt cap, as near the clouds as she could manage to get it: her arms full of whatever is rarest and dearest and best. For doesn't she hold the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" and Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall, and Harvard College? Do not the fiery eloquence of Phillips, the songs of Longfellow, the philosophy of Fisk, the glory of the Great Organ, and the native lair of culture, belong to her? Ah! why should we not "tell truth and shame the devil"—doesn't she bring us to the babies and the family doctor?

But it is not as a writer of prose that Mrs. Blake has secured a niche in our gallery of literary portraits. Indeed, without knowing it, we have already introduced her poetry to our readers: for we are pleased to find in her volume of collected poems an anonymous piece which we had gathered as one of our "Flowers for a Child's Grave," from a number of The Boston Pilot as far back as 1870. We should reprint page 171 of this volume if it were not already found in our eighth volume (1880) at page 608. The division of Mrs. Blake's poems to which it belongs contains, we think, her best work. Her muse never sings more sweetly than in giving expression to the joy and grief of a mother's heart. The verses just referred to were the utterances of maternal grief: a mother's joy breaks out into these pleasant and musical stanzas:—

My little man is merry and wise,
Gay as a cricket and blithe as a bird;
Often he laughs and seldom he cries,
Chatters and coos at my lightest word:
Peeping and creeping and opening the door,
Clattering, pattering over the floor,
In and out, round about, fast as he can,—
So goes the daytime with my little man.
My little man is brimful of fun,
Always in mischief and sometimes in grief;
Thimble and scissors he hides one by one,
Till nothing is left but to catch the thief;
Sunny hair, golden fair over his brow—
Eyes so deep, lost in sleep, look at him now;
Baby feet, dimpled sweet, tired as they ran,
So goes the night-time with my little man.
My little man, with cherry-ripe face,
Pouting red lips and dimpled chin,
Fashioned in babyhood's exquisite grace,
Beauty without and beauty within,—
Full of light, golden bright, life as it seems,
Not a tear, not a fear, known in thy dreams;
Kisses and blisses now make up its span,
Could it be always so, my little man?
My little man the years fly away,
Chances and changes may come to us all,—
I'll look for the babe at my side some day,
And find him above me, six feet tall;
Flowing beard hiding the dimples I love,
Grizzled locks shading the clear brow above,
Youth's promise ripened on Nature's broad plan,
And nothing more left me of my little man.
My little man,—when time shall bow,
With its hoary weight, my head and thine,—
Will you love me then as you love me now,
With sweet eyes looking so fond in mine?
However strangely my lot may be cast,
My hope in life's future, my joy in life's past,
Loyal and true as your loving heart can,
Say, will you always be my little man?
My little man! perchance the bloom
Of the hidden years, as they come and pass,
May leave me alone, with a wee, wee tomb
Hidden away in the tangled grass.
Still as on earth, so in heaven above,
Near to me, dear to me, claiming my love,
Safe in God's sunshine, and filling his plan,
Still be forever my own little man.

Perhaps our Irish poetess in exile—Boston does not consider itself a place of exile—would prefer to be represented by one of her more serious poems; and probably she had good reasons for placing first in her volume the following which is called "The Master's Hand."

The scroll was old and gray;
The dust of time had gathered white and chill
Above the touches of the worker's skill,
And hid their charm away.
The many passed it by;
For no sweet curve of dainty face or form,
No gleam of light, or flash of color warm,
Held back the careless eye.
But when the artist came,
With eye that saw beyond the charm of sense,
He seemed to catch a sense of power intense
That filled the dusky frame.
And when with jealous care
His hand had cleansed the canvas, line by line,
Behold! The fire of perfect art divine,
Had burned its impress there!
Upon the tablet glowed,
Made priceless by the arch of time they spanned,
The touches of the rare Old Master's hand,
The life his skill bestowed.

O God whom we adore!
Give us the watchful sight, to see and trace,
Thy living semblance in each human face
However clouded o'er.
Give us the power to find,
However warped and grimmed by time and sin,
Thine impress stamped upon the soul within,
Thy signet on the mind.
Not ours the reckless speed
To proudly pass our brother's weakness by,
And turning from his side with careless eye,
To take no further heed.
But, studying line by line,
Grant to our hearts deep trust and patient skill,
To trace within his soul and spirit still,
Thy Master Hand divine!

Mrs. Blake in one point does not resemble the two Irish woman-poets—for they are more than poetesses—whom we named together at the beginning of this little paper. Ireland and the Blessed Virgin have not in this Boston book the prominence which Miss Mulholland gives them in the volume which is just issuing from Paternoster Square. The Irish-American lady made her selection with a view to the tastes of the general public; but the general public are sure to be won by earnest and truthful feeling, and an Irish and Catholic heart cannot be truthful and earnest without betraying its devotion to the Madonna and Erin.

Irish Monthly, edited by Rev. Mathew Russell, S.J.

George Washington.

HIS CELEBRATED WHITE MULE, AND THE RACE IT MADE AWAY FROM A DEER RIFLE.

Washington has generally been credited with the introduction in America of mules as a valuable adjunct to plantation appurtenances; but very few people know that one of his favorite riding animals was a white mule, which was kept carefully stabled and groomed along with his blooded horses at Mount Vernon. In the year 1797, there was published at Alexandria for a brief period, a weekly paper called Hopkin's Gazette. A few numbers of this sheet are still extant. In one of them there is an account of an exciting adventure, in which Washington, the white mule, and one Jared Dixon figured. It is evident that the editor of this paper did not have an exalted opinion of the great patriot, as he speaks of him as "a man who has the conceit of believing that there would not be any such country as America if there had not been a George Washington to prevent its annihilation." From this account it appears that Jared Dixon was a Welshman, who lived on a hundred-acre tract of land adjoining the Mount Vernon plantation. Washington always claimed that the tract belonged to him, and made several efforts to dispossess Dixon, but without success. According to the Gazette, Washington's overseer had, on one occasion, torn down the Dixon fence and let the cattle into the field, and various similar annoyances were resorted to in order to force Dixon to move away. But Dixon would neither surrender nor compromise, and kept on cultivating his little farm in defiance of the man who had been first in war and was now first in peace.

"It was last Thursday about the hour of noon," says the Gazette, "when General Washington rode up to Mr. Dixon's gate. He was mounted on his white mule, which had come down the broad road on his famous fox-trot of eight miles an hour. There was fire in the General's eye and his under lip protruded far, betokening war. His riding-boots shone in the sun, as did his gold spurs. His hair was tied with a gorgeous black ribbon, and his face was pale with resolution. Mr. Dixon and his family were adjusting themselves for dinner, when they heard the call at the gate. There was a most animated conversation between these two neighbors, in which the General informed the humble settler that he must receive a certain sum for his disputed title or submit to be dispossessed. Whereupon Mr. Dixon, who was also a Revolutionary soldier, and felt that he has some rights in this country, informed the lordly neighbor that the land was his own, that he had paid for it and built houses thereon, the children were born to him on it, and that he would defend it with his life. Continuing, he charged the general with inciting his employés to depredate on the fences and fields. It was natural that this should arouse the mettle of the modern Mars. He flew into a towering rage, and applied many epithets to Mr. Dixon that are not warranted by the Ten Commandments. He even went so far as to raise his riding-whip and to threaten personal violence. Mr. Dixon is a man of few words, but a high temper, and, not caring to have his home and family thus offended, he gave the general one minute to move away while he rushed into his house for his deer rifle. There are none who doubt the valor of the general; but there may be a few who do not credit him with that discretion which is so valuable a part of valor. Suffice it for the ends of this chronicle to say that it required only a few moments for him to turn the gray mule's head towards Mount Vernon, and, in less time than it takes to here relate, the noble animal was distancing the Dixon homestead with gallant speed. It was no fox-trot, nor yet so fast as the Derby record, but most excellent for a mule. At any rate, it was a noble race, which saved a settler's shot and a patriot's bacon, and averted a possible catastrophe that might have cast a gloom on American history."

If this narrative is strictly accurate, Washington might have replied to his refractory neighbor, on being warned away, in the language of the Nevada desperado who was put on a mule by a committee of vigilants and given ten minutes to get out of town; "Gentlemen," said the desperado, "if this mule don't balk, I don't want but five."

Washington's Mother.

Mrs. Washington found little difficulty in bringing up her children. They were disciplined to obedience, and a simple word was her command. She was not given to any display of petulance or rage, but was steady, well-balanced, and unvarying in her mood. That she was dignified, even to stateliness, is shown us by the statement made by Lawrence Washington, of Chotauk, a relative and playmate of George in boyhood, who was often a guest at her house. He says—"I was often there with George—his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own parents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was indeed truly kind. I have often been present with her sons—proper tall fellows, too—and we were all as mute as mice; and even now, when time has whitened my locks, and I am the grandparent of a second generation, I could not behold that remarkable woman without feelings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen that awe-inspiring air and manner, so characteristic in the father of his country, will remember the matron as she appeared, when the presiding genius of her well-ordered household, commanding and being obeyed.

A Child of Mary.

An old general was once asked by a friend how it was that, after so many years spent in the camp, he had come to be so frequent a communicant, receiving several times a week. "My friend," answered the old soldier, "the strangest part of it is, that my change of life was brought about before I ever listened to the word of a priest, and before I had set my foot in a church. After my campaigns, God bestowed on me a pious wife, whose faith I respected, though I did not share it. Before I married her she was a member of all the pious confraternities of her parish, and she never failed to add to her signature, Child of Mary. She never took it upon herself to lecture me about God, but I could read her thoughts in her countenance. When she prayed, every morning and night, her countenance beamed with faith and charity; when she returned from the church, where she had received, with a calmness, a sweetness and a patience, which had in them something of the serenity of heaven, she seemed an angel. When she dressed my wounds I found her like a Sister of Charity.

"Suddenly, I myself was taken with the desire to love the God whom my wife loved so well, and who inspired her with those virtues which formed the joy of my life. One day I, who hitherto was without faith, who was such a complete stranger to the practices of religion, so far from the Sacraments, said to her: 'Take me to your confessor.'

"Through the ministry of this man of God, and by the divine grace, I have become what I am, and what I rejoice to be."

Dead Man's Island.

THE STORY OF AN IRISH COUNTRY TOWN.

T. P. O'Connor, M. P.

CHAPTER XIX.

MAT BECOMES A FENIAN.

Shortly before this, the Widow Cunningham had received the news that her poor boy had been killed in a colliery accident in Pennsylvania. This stopped the allowance which he used to send her out of his own scant wages.

The destruction of her daughter now came as the last blow that broke her long-enduring spirit. There had been a time when she would have died rather than have gone into the workhouse, but she had nothing left to live for now, and she became a pauper. The Irish workhouse soon kills what little spirit successive misfortunes have left in its occupants before their entrance, and in a few years there was nothing left of the once proud, high-spirited and splendid woman, whom we knew in the early days of this history.

Meantime, the fate of the girl had been the final influence in deciding the fate of another person. Mat Blake had fluctuated for a long time before he could make up his mind to join the revolutionary party; but on the very evening of the day on which he had seen Betty in the streets of Ballybay he made no further resistance, and that night was sworn in as a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

It is not my purpose in this story to enter at length into his adventures in his new and perilous enterprise. He had not been long in the ranks when he was recognized by Mr. James Stephens as one of the most promising members of the conspiracy, and he was chosen to do important and serious work. The funds of the organization were nearly always at the lowest ebb, and during this period of his life Mat had to pass through privations that could only be endured by a man of passionate purpose and unselfish aims. Many and many a time he had not the money wherewith to buy a railway ticket. His clothes were often ragged, and he frequently had to walk twenty miles in a day in shoes that were almost soleless. The arrangement usually was for the members of one circle to supply him with the money that would take him to the next town; and though he saw many instances of abject cowardice and hideous selfishness at this period—especially when the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act left the liberty, and to some extent, the life of every man at the disposal of the police. He also witnessed many proofs of heroic courage and noble devotion.

At length the time came when everybody expected the blow to be struck at British tyranny, and the star of Irish liberty to arise. Mat, owing to his fiery and impatient temperament, naturally belonged to that section of the Fenian Brotherhood which demanded prompt action, and still in the age of illusions and of blinding rage, he would admit no difficulties, and feared no obstacles. Mat had sworn in hundreds of members. He had passed through the town of Ballybay on the memorable night when an Irish regiment, as it was leaving for other quarters, cheered through the town for the Irish Republic, and some of the men on whom he relied most strongly were in high authority in the police force. He knew nothing of the almost total want of arms, taking it for granted that all the wild boasts of the supplies from America and other sources were founded on facts. He was one of the deputation that finally waited upon the leaders in Dublin to hurry on the struggle.

He went down to Ballybay on the night of the 17th of March, 18—, which had been fixed for the rising. The head centre of the province had arranged to meet the men there that night with arms. The Ballybay Barracks were to be surrendered to them through one of the sergeants who belonged to the Brotherhood; and it was hoped that by the evening of the next day, the green flag would float over the castle which for three centuries had been garrisoned by the soldiers of the enemy.

Two hundred men met at the trysting place, close to the "Big Meadows." They were kept waiting for some time; impatience began to set in, and demoralization is the child of impatience. At last the head centre appeared; he had five guns for the whole party. Then the men saw that their hopes were betrayed. Most of them quietly dispersed towards their homes. That night Mat was seized in his bed, and within a few minutes afterwards was in goal. He felt that the game was up, that all his bright hopes, like those of many another noble Irish heart before him, had ended in farcical nothingness. Disaster followed upon disaster. When he made his appearance in court he saw upon the witness table one of his most trusted friends, who was about to give the evidence that would ensure his conviction.

A final outrage was in store for him. The Government had resolved, when once it had entered upon the campaign against the conspiracy, to pursue it with vigor, and judges were selected who might be relied upon to show the accused no justice during the trial, and no mercy after the conviction. Crowe, who had been made a judge shortly after his last election for Ballybay, was naturally chosen as the chief and most useful actor in this drama. During all the years that had elapsed since his treason he had distinguished himself, even above all the other judges of the country, in the unscrupulous violence of his hostility to all popular movements. Trial before him came to be regarded as certainty of conviction. The fearlessness of the man made him inaccessible to the threats that were everywhere hurled against him, and his rage became the fiercer and his violence the more relentless on the day after he found a threatening letter under a plate on his own table. He brought to his task all the ferocity of the apostate. Under all his apparent independence, his quick vanity and his hot temper made him sensitive to attack, and the Fenian Press had made him the chief target of its most vehement and most constant invective.

Mat Blake was known as one of the bitterest writers and speakers of the movement, and some of the writings in which he had attacked Crowe displayed a familiarity with the incidents of Ballybay elections which could only have come from the pen of one who had been intimately associated with those struggles.

The two men now stood face to face—the one on the bench and the other in the dock. Crowe did not allow himself to betray any sign of previous acquaintance with the prisoner before him. The jury was selected; every man who might be supposed to have the least sympathy with National movements was rigorously excluded from the box, and Mat was tried by twelve men, of whom nine were Orangemen and the other three belonged to that Catholic-Whig bourgeoisie against which he had always waged unsparing war. Anthony Cosgrave was the foreman. Mat was convicted, and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

The sufferings he underwent during this period I will not attempt to describe. After a very short stay in Ireland he was transferred to Portland, and there the English warders exhausted upon him all the insolence and cruelty of ignorant and triumphant enemies. One suffering, however, was in his case somewhat mitigated. He had not a large appetite, and the prison food, though coarse, was sufficient for his wants. With the generosity which characterized him, he was even ready to divide his food with those whose appetites were more exacting. Among his companions were two men, tall, robust, red-haired, who belonged to a stock of Southern farmers, and who were possessed of the gigantic strength, the huge frame, and the sound digestion of Cork ploughmen. Every day these hapless creatures complained of hunger and of cold, and Mat and Charles Reilly, another member of the Irish People staff, sometimes found a sombre pleasure in finding and gathering snails for them. Whenever either of them brought a snail to Meehan or to Sheil the famished men would swallow it eagerly, without even stopping to take off the shell. Meehan is now a prominent member of the Dynamite Party in New York. Sheil became insane shortly after his release, and threw himself into the Liffey.

One day, after four years' imprisonment, the Governor called Mat into his room and told him that he was free. He was transferred to Milbank, then he was supplied with a suit of clothes several times too large for him, and he went out and by the Thames, and gazed on that noble stream with the eyes of a free man.

He wandered aimlessly and listlessly along, unable yet to appreciate the full joy of his restoration to liberty. As he was passing over Westminster Bridge he was suddenly stopped by a man whom he had known in the ranks of the organization, and whom the fortune of war had not swept into gaol with the rest. The stranger looked at Mat for a few moments; gazed on the hollow eyes, the pale cheeks, and the worn frame, and, unable to restrain his emotions, burst into tears. This was the first indication Mat received of the terrible change that imprisonment had wrought in his appearance. The next day he set out for Ballybay.

Meanwhile, vast changes seemed about to come over Ireland. The Fenian conspiracy had been the death-knell of the triumphant cynicism and corruption that had reigned over the country in the years succeeding the treason of Crowe. The name of Mr. Butt, as the leader of a new movement, was beginning to be spoken of. An agitation had been started which demanded a radical settlement of the land question. Demonstrations were taking place in almost every county, and the people were united, enthusiastic, and hopeful. Several of the worst of the landlords had already been brought to their knees, and there had been a considerable fall in the value of landed property. The serfs were passing from the extremity of despair and demoralization into the other extreme of exultant and sometimes cruel triumph.

Even the town of Ballybay was beginning to be stirred, and the farmers all around joined the new organization in large numbers.

By a curious coincidence a monster demonstration was announced in Ballybay for the very day of Mat's arrival.

As Mat passed along the too well remembered scene between Ballybay and Dublin, he could not help thinking of the time when he had gone over this road on his first visit to Ireland after his departure for England. He had then thought that desolation had reached its ultimate point; but in the intervening period the signs of decay had increased. It appeared as if for every ruin that had stared him in the face on the former occasion ten now appeared. For miles and miles he caught sight of not one house, of no human face; he seemed almost to be travelling through a city of the dead.

As the newspaper containing tidings of the new movement lay before him, he leaned back in reflection, and once more thought of the days in which Crowe figured as the saviour, and then as the betrayer of Ireland. It had been a rigid article of faith with the Fenian organization that no confidence was to be placed in constitutional agitations and agitators. Mat retained in their full fervor the doctrines he had held for years upon this point; and he turned away from the accounts of the new movement as from another chapter in national folly and prospective treason. Looking out on the familiar grey and dull sky, he could see no hope whatever for the future of his country. Irish life appeared to him one vast mistake; and so far as he had any plans for the future they were of a life removed from the chaos and fret and toil and moil and disappointments and humbug of politics. He thought of returning once more to his profession; but he resolved that it would be neither amid the incessant decay of Ireland, nor surrounded by hostile faces and unsympathetic hearts in England. His thoughts were of the mighty country which had extended its hospitality and generosity to so many of his race, and had bestowed upon them liberty, prosperity, and eminence. In all these visions one figure, one sweet face mingled itself. With Mary Flaherty by his side he felt that no career could be wholly dark, no part of the world wholly foreign, and as he once more indulged in waking dreams he hummed to himself the well-known air,—

"Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I see,
Still wherever thou art shall seem Erin to me."

At last he was at the railway, and there were his poor old father and his mother standing before him, their hair bleached to whiteness, trembling, feeble, with tears rolling down their cheeks. Mat was in his mother's arms in a moment.

Ballybay, even on this occasion, was true to itself. The arrival of Mat in Dublin had been announced in the newspapers, and the heart of the people throughout the country went forth to him, as it always does to those whose generous rashness has been punished by England's worst tyranny. He had been accompanied to the railway station at the Broadstone by a crowd; thousands cheered him, and shook him by the hand, and wept and laughed. The word had mysteriously gone along the line that the patriot was returning, and at every one of the stations, however small, there was a multitude to greet him warmly.

But at Ballybay, still deep down in the slough of its eternal despond, a few lorn and desolate-looking men stood on the platform. There they were once more, as if it were but yesterday, with their hands deep down in their pockets; the wistful, curious glance in their eyes, and the melancholy slouch in their shoulders. They tried to raise a cheer, but the attempt died in its own sickliness.

And then Mat left the train, walked over the station as one in a dream, and was placed upon the sidecar almost without knowing what he was doing.

There was a terrible dread at his heart; he asked his mother a question; she answered him; and then, and for the first time since he had left prison, his heart burst, his spirit broke, and he entered his father's house pallid, trembling, his eyes suffused with bitter tears.

CHAPTER XX.

THE DEMONSTRATION.

And thus it came to pass that the chief characters of this story found themselves in Ballybay again on its closing day, on exactly the same spot as they were on the day when it opened.

The Land League demonstration was not prepared with any particular care or organization, the Irish people being still, even in the matter of political demonstration, in a state of childish immaturity. It turned out to be better so, for the spontaneous inventiveness of the moment suggested a programme far more dramatic and picturesque than could have occurred to the mind of the most ingenious political stage-manager. The platform had been erected on the spot where the cabin had stood which the son of the Gombeen man had overthrown so many years ago. The field now was laid in grass, which, before the demonstration waved long and green; but as the hours went on and the thousands of feet passed over it, the grass was all crushed and torn. There were half a dozen bands—two of them dressed in the showy uniform which descends from the pictures of Robert Emmet in the dock—and they played continuously and for the most part discordantly. There were also many banners, there was a long procession of men on horseback, and the heads of the horses were covered with green boughs. Green, indeed, was everywhere; there were green banners, green scarves, green neck-ties, and the greater part of the men displayed the green ticket of the Tenant League in their hats. The air of the crowd was in no way serious, the whole affair was rather like a fête than a grave political demonstration. The multitudes, too, had the absence of self-control which characterizes popular demonstrations; their feelings seemed to express themselves without thought or premeditation, speech overflowed rather than fell from their lips. The result was that the cheering was continuous; now it was the arrival of a band; then the erect walk of a sturdy contingent from a distant point; sometimes it was simply the exchange of a look, that, though mute, spoke volumes, between the people in the procession and those on the sidepaths, that brought forth a wild cheer, in short the temper of the crowd was bright and electrical—the mood for unusual ideas and passionate scenes.

The good humor was hearty rather than inventive or articulate, but one man had had the genius to invent a comic device. This was a very wild creature, half beggar, half laborer, the last of a rapidly dying class in Ireland. He had got hold of a wretched nag of whom the knacker had been defrauded for many years and seated on this in fantastic dress he cudgelled it unmercifully, amid screams of laughter, for around its neck was a placard with the words, "Dead Landlordism."

About two o'clock, there was seen making a desperate attempt to penetrate through this teeming, densely-packed, and noisy multitude, a stout figure, with a face ugly, irregular, good-humored. He was dressed in a long and dull-colored and almost shabby ulster. His hat was as rough as if it had been brushed the wrong way, and he wore a suit of tweed that was now very old, but that even in its earliest days would have been scorned by the poorest shopman of the town with any pretensions to respectability, and the trousers were short and painfully bagged at the knees. But the divine light of genius shone from the brown eyes and the ample forehead. The enthusiasm of the multitude now knew no bounds. There was first a strange stillness, then, when the word seemed to have passed with a strange and lightning-like rapidity from mouth to mouth, there burst forth a great cheer, and it was known that Isaac Butt had come.

But even the Irish leader was destined to play a subordinate part in the proceedings of this strange day. It was a local speaker that stirred the hearts of the people to the uttermost, for he told the story of the eviction of the Widow Cunningham, of the death of her husband, the exile of her son, the shame of her daughter.

While he was speaking some one cried, "She'll have her own agin," and then a few of the young fellows disappeared from the platform. In the course of half-an-hour they returned. They ascended the platform, and after a while, and another pause, a strange and audible thrill passed through the multitude; and then there were passed in almost a hoarse whisper the words, "The Widow Cunningham." And she it was; acting on the hint of the speaker, she had been taken from the workhouse; and she was brought back to her old farm again and to the site of her shattered homestead and broken life. The multitude cheered themselves hoarse; hundreds rushed to the platform to seize her by the hand; a few women threw their arms around her neck, and wept and laughed. Finally, the enthusiasm could not be controlled, and, in spite of the entreaties of the political leaders and of the priests, a knot of young men caught the poor old creature up, and carried her around the field in triumph; the crowd everywhere swaying backwards and forwards, divided between the effort to make a way for the strange procession and the desire to catch sight of the old woman. Probably few of the people there could understand the strange effect which this sight had upon them; but their instincts guided them aright in the enthusiasm with which they hailed this visible token of a bad and terrible and irrevocable past.

And how was it with the chief actor in the scene? Five years of life in a workhouse had left no trace of the handsome, long-haired, and passionate woman who had cursed the destroyer of her house and her children with wild vehemence, and had resisted the assault of the Crowbar Brigade with murderous energy. She was now simply a feeble old woman, with scanty grey hair; the light had died out of her eyes; and there was nothing left in them now but weariness and pain; her cheeks were sunk and were dreadfully discolored; in short, she was a poor, feeble, old woman, with broken spirits and dulled brain. The revenge for which she had longed and prayed had come at last; but it had come too late.

She went through the whole scene with curious and unconscious gaze, as of one passing through a waking dream, and the only sign she gave of understanding anything that was going on was that she gave a weak and weary little smile when the people cried out to her enthusiastically, "Bravo, Widow Cunningham!"—a smile as spectral as the state of things of which she was the relic. She was very wearied and almost fainting when she was brought back to the platform; and then she said, in a voice that was a little louder than a whisper, and with a strange wistfulness in her eyes, "I'd like a cup of tay."

But there was no tea to be had, and the thoughtless good-nature of the day helped to precipitate the tragedy which the equally thoughtless enthusiasm had begun. A dozen flasks were produced; a tumbler was taken from the table, and a large quantity of whiskey was poured down her throat. She became feeble, and the rays of intelligence almost disappeared from her face.

At last, as the evening fell, the crowd dispersed; the old pauper was left by the men who had brought her to the platform, and there were but a couple of women more watchful than the rest to take care of her. They tried to bring her home, but she showed a strange kind of obstinacy, and refused for a long time to move. When she was got to make a stir she seemed most unwilling to go in the direction of the workhouse, she would give no reason—for indeed she seemed either unable or unwilling to speak at all, but with the silent obstinacy of an animal she tried to go in an opposite direction. At last the two women thought it wisest to humor her, and let her go where she wished. By this time night had completely fallen, and in going down a dark boreen she managed to escape from her companions altogether. They searched everywhere around, and at last frightened, they went home for their husbands. A party of five people—the husbands, the son of one of them, and the two women came along the boreen, guided by the dim light of the farthing dip which is the only light the Irish farmer has yet been able to use. After a long search they came to a spot well known to all of them, and then the truth burst suddenly upon them. One of the women had been at the funeral of the Widow Cunningham's husband when she was a little girl, and remembered the spot where he was buried. They all followed her there in a strange anxiety, and their anticipations proved right. On the grave of her husband they found the Widow Cunningham, and she was a corpse.

CHAPTER XXI.

DEAD MAN'S ISLAND.

There was one person in Ballybay at least who envied the woman that lay forever free from life's fitful fever. The day's demonstration in the town had brought no joy to Mat's heart. He had not yet learned to make any distinction between the agitators who had broken his own life and murdered the hopes of his country, and the very different class of men who had brought new life and hope to the Irish nation. The whole business of the meeting to him, therefore, appeared nothing but gabble, treason, and folly. He spent his hours, after a scornful look or two at the preparations for the speeches of the day, in wandering through the fields and streets which he had known in boyhood, and appeared to have left so very, very long ago. Every sight deepened his depression. He thought of the first day he had spent in the town long ago, when he visited Ballybay for the first time after years of absence. Then he thought that he had exhausted the possibilities of grief over the waste of a nation's life; but he now found that there were deeper depths and larger possibilities of suffering in the Irish tragedy. Famine, plague, a whirlwind, or an earthquake could not, as he thought, have worked mischief more deadly, more appalling, more complete. He saw, with a curious sinking of the heart and an overwhelming sadness, that nearly every well-remembered spot of his boyhood was marked by the ruins of a desolated home. Here was the corner where he used to turn from the one to the two mile round—as two of the walks around Ballybay were called—but where was the house with its crowd of noisy children, which he saw every morning with the same confident familiarity as a well-remembered piece of furniture in his own house? Yes: there was the little road where he remembered to have stood one day so many years ago. It was a bright, beautiful day in summer, the sky was blue, and the roses bloomed; but everything was dark to him, for Betty, his first nurse, the strongest affection of his childhood, had retired to her mother's home the day before. And as he recalled how all the world seemed to be over for him on that day, he felt the full brotherhood of sorrow, and in one moment understood all the tragic significance of the separation which emigration had caused in more than a million Irish homes. The road had changed as though the country had been turned from a civilized to a savage land. The grass was growing thick and rank, the roses had gone, thick weeds choked festering pools, and of the little cottage in which Betty had dwelt there was not even a vestige.

And so, alas, in the town. At its entrance a whole street had disappeared, black and charred the walls stood—silent and deserted. This constant recurrence of the symbols of separation, desertion, silence, death, produced a strange numbness in his mind, and he walked along in a dream that became deeper and deeper. But he saw everything with the obscurity, and still with the strange, piercing look, of the dreamer. Turning from the houses to the people, he saw as it were in a flash the true meaning of that weary look which he had first observed as the prevalent expression of most faces; he loathed and at the same time he understood the prematurely bloated and blotched faces of so many of the young men whom he met everywhere, and read the story of the hopeless struggle against daily deepening gloom which had sought desperate relief in whiskey. He understood the procession of sad, and, as in his exalted mood he thought, spectral, men and women, that flowed in a noiseless stream to the chapel. It was May, "the month of Mary," as it is so touchingly called in Ireland, and in that month there are devotions every night in honor of the Mother of God. It was with difficulty he restrained his tears as there rose from the voices of the congregation the well-known and well-remembered hymn to the Blessed Virgin—the fitting wail of a people who dwell in a land of sorrows.

"Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy. Our Life, Our Sweetness, and Our Hope, to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears." How well he recalled the evening long ago, when the hymn first struck him as the wail from the helpless agony of a dying nation.

Then Mat went home, and, as he entered the house, he noticed with the new-born light in his eyes many things that had escaped his attention when he first entered there in the morning. His father, as he answered the door, seemed to him to have aged ten years since he had looked at him in the morning, and he saw with a pang that seemed to squeeze his heart as in a vice that his clothes were shabby, and that even his boots were patched and broken. Then he went upstairs, and, entering the parlor noiselessly, caught sight of his mother. She turned sharply around, and to his horror and surprise he saw a fierce, violent blush overspread her pale cheek. He could not help looking at the table, and there he saw the same dread sight that had met him at so many painful crises in his life, for his mother was examining bank bills and pawn tickets. Then he rushed back in memory to the days of his own childhood, when he had wondered why it was that his mother occasionally wept as she turned over these mysterious slips of blue paper and small pieces of stiff card. The abject failure of his life never appeared to him so clearly as it did at that moment, and the sense of complete disaster was aggravated by the awful feeling that he had made others suffer even more bitterly than himself. And for a moment it seemed, too, as if his mother were resolved that he should taste the full bitterness of the moral, for she looked at him fixedly as the blush died from her cheeks; but her heart was too touched by his look of pain, and in a moment she had kissed him on the cheek, after the frigid and self-restrained fashion of Ballybay.

Mat had a battle with himself as to whether he should visit Mary on this day; but after a while he felt that it would be a sort of savage triumph if he could fill the whole day with all the pain that could be packed within its hours. He had no idea as yet what he was going to do with the morrow, but it would certainly bring some new departure; this day he was, for this reason, the more resolutely ready to abandon to the luxury of woe.

Mary was alone when he visited the house; her husband had left town, for he did not dare, with all his courage, to aggravate the popular hatred by being visible on the day of the demonstration. She came into the room and shook hands with him, to his surprise, without any appearance of embarrassment. He looked at her without a word for a few moments, while she asked a few questions in a perfectly natural tone of voice about the meeting, his imprisonment, etc. As he looked he thought he saw a strange and mournful change in her face. The features seemed to have grown not merely hard, but coarse. He remembered the time when her upper lip had appeared to his eyes short, expressive, elegant; now it seemed to have grown long and vulgar. Her dark eyes were cold and impenetrable.

For a while they talked about indifferent things, but though he had sworn to himself a thousand times that he would never utter a word about her broken troth, his nerves were still too shaken and unsteady, after his sufferings in prison and the wearing experiences through which he had passed, to allow him to maintain complete self-control.

"And so you married Cosgrave," he said, as a beginning.

She looked at him sharply, and then answered, in the same cold and perfectly collected voice, "Yes, I married Cosgrave."

"Are you happy?"

"Yes."

"You never cared for me?" he said with bitterness; and then the venom, which had been choking him from the hour when he heard that his betrothed was gone, overflowed. He went on, in a voice that grew hoarse in its vehemence: "Look! I have been four years in prison; in the company of burglars, pickpockets, murderers; I have been kept in silence and solitude and restraint; and yet in all these four years I never suffered a pang so horrible as when I heard that you had proved untrue."

"No," she answered, with a stillness that sounded strangely after the high-pitched and passionate tones of his voice; "I was not untrue, for I was faithful to my highest duty." Then she paused, and when next she spoke her voice was also passionate; but it was passion that was expressed in low and biting, and not in a loud tone. "You have known the life of a prison: but you have not passed through the hell of Irish poverty."... Then, after a pause, in which she seemed buried in an agonizing retrospect, she said—"I would marry a cripple to help my family."

She had scarcely said these words when her father entered. The father was as much changed in Mat's eyes as the daughter; he could scarcely walk; his feet seemed just able to bear him; and his hand was palsied. He did not at first recognize Mat; and when at last he knew who it was, said in the old voice, the familiar words which Mat so loathed, "Ah! the crachure! Ah! the crachure!"

Mat now had the key to the hideous tragedy which had separated him from the woman he loved, and who loved him. He looked quickly at her; but the light of momentary excitement had died out of the face, and the expression was now perfectly serene. Several reflections passed rapidly through Mat's mind. He saw clearly that the girl had not a particle of self-reproach; not a doubt of the rectitude or even the nobility of her conduct; she had immolated herself with the same inflexible resolve and unquestioning faith as the sublime murderer of Marat. Then passing rapidly in mental review the history of so many self-murdered hearts, he asked which was the more cruel—the Irish or the Indian suttee. Perhaps in that moment Mat gained more knowledge than is given to other men in years of that strangest of all, even feminine, problems—an Irish girl's heart.

For a moment the two were left alone, for the first and only time in all their lives.

"What?" said Mat, in an audible soliloquy, "is Irish life?" And then he answered the question himself as she remained silent. "A tragedy, a squalid tragedy!" But she looked at him cold, irresponsive, defiant, and he rushed away before the old man came back with the whiskey.

The wreck of this girl's nature; her acceptance in full faith of the sordid and terrible gospel of loveless marriage; the omnipotence of even a little money in a land of abject and hopeless and helpless poverty, brought the realities of Irish life with a clearness to his mind more terrible than even uprooted houses and echoless streets.

He accepted the invitation of a friend to take a row up the river, beautiful with its eternal and changeless beauty amid all this wreck of hopes and blasting of lives.

They passed a small island.

"What is that called," asked Mat of the boatman.

"Dead Man's Island."

"What did you say?"

"Dead Man's Island."

"A——h,——Dead—Man's—Island!"

The End.

Going on Foot to Rome.—In these days, when pilgrims go to Rome and Jerusalem by railway and steamer, it is refreshing to hear that the old-fashioned pilgrim may still be found. The last of these appears to be Ignacio Martinez, a native of Valladolid, who has nearly completed his pilgrimage to the Holy Place begun two years ago.

The Boys in Green.

After reading the Reminiscences of the Ninth Massachusetts, Volunteers, published in late numbers of Donahoe's, it occurred to the writer that a few incidents which came under my own personal observation, in which that regiment figured, occurring over twenty-three years ago, may be of interest to the survivors of the gallant Ninth, or their descendants. It may also interest the general public, and your Irish-American readers in particular, for my experience will speak more particularly of the corps with which my fortunes were cast—Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher's Irish Brigade. It was originally composed of three regiments, viz., Sixty-Third New York, Eighty-Eighth New York, and Sixty-Ninth New York, all organized in New York City, but some of its companies hailing from Albany, Boston, etc. The writer of this was connected with the Albany Company K, Sixty-Third Regiment, in the capacity of "high private" when the regiment was organized. This paper is merely intended to give an account of a few incidents in which the brigade participated, not by any means as a history of that organization.

It is well known to those familiar with events at the beginning of the war, that the Washington authorities decided to change McClellan's base of operations in the movement against the rebel capital (Richmond, Va.), to the Peninsula. Accordingly, in the spring of 1862, over one hundred thousand men and material of the Army of the Potomac, at that time, and subsequently, the largest and best disciplined body of troops in the service of the Republic, were sent by water to Fortress Monroe, Ship Point, and adjacent places for disembarkation. Very few people in civil life have any conception of the labor attending an operation of this kind. Not alone was this immense body of men carried by water, but all the material as well: heavy and field artillery; animals for the same; horses for the cavalry; and baggage, ammunition and supply trains. Thanks to the superiority of our navy at the time, the movement was entirely successful. It is true a few sailing crafts, and some armed rebel vessels showed themselves; but they took refuge up the York, Pamunkey, Elizabeth and James Rivers, to be afterwards destroyed as the Union Army advanced.

The writer was at the time on detached service (recruiting) in New York City; but at the period the advanced vessels of the Flotilla reached the Peninsula he received orders to rejoin his regiment. Accordingly I left Albany (depot for recruits) April 11, 1862, in charge of twenty-two men, eleven for Sixty-Third and eleven for Eighty-Eighth Regiments, reaching Fort Monroe April 14, by steamer from Washington. I shall never forget the impression made on my civilian mind as we steamed under the frowning guns of the weather-beaten Fort, in the gray of the morning. It impressed me with awe, as the black muzzles of the "War Dogs" bade defiance in their silent grandeur to rebels in arms and European enemies, who, at the time, entertained anything but friendly feelings towards the Republic.

The achievement of the famous Monitor was, at the time, in everybody's mouth. Your older readers will remember how the "Yankee Cheese-Box," the gallant Worden in command, put in appearance in Hampton Roads, a day or two after the finest wooden war ships in the government service were sent to the bottom, by the guns and ram of the rebel Merrimac. When the saucy, insignificant-looking craft boldly steamed for the victorious rebel iron-clad, the officers on board could not believe their senses, never having seen anything like the mysterious stranger before; but when fire and smoke belched forth from the Monitor's revolving turret, they were reminded that they had better look to their guns. Not being able to damage the stranger with their British cannon, the rebel tried the effect of its powerful ram; but the "cheese-box" divining its intentions, nimbly got out of harm's way. Its powerful eleven-inch guns in the turret continued to pound the iron sides of the Merrimac, until the latter thought "discretion the better part of valor," and sought safety in flight by ascending the Elizabeth River to Norfolk, not before being badly damaged in the encounter. Notwithstanding the rebel had numerous guns of the most approved pattern, their shot glanced harmlessly from the Monitor's revolving turret, the only object visible above water. You may think we looked upon the champion with no little pleasure as she peacefully lay in the channel, with steam up, waiting for the appearance of its powerful adversary, which never came. (The Merrimac was so badly damaged in the encounter, its commander, Jones, blew her up sooner than see her in the enemy's hands.) The masts of the ill-fated Cumberland and her consorts were plainly visible in the distance, where they sank with their brave tars standing nobly by their guns.

I am afraid the editor of the Magazine will get impatient with my description before coming to the Ninth. The writer goes into these particulars because another generation has come on the scene since they happened, and it may interest them.

After landing with my detachment of twenty-two men, we turned our faces landward to find the army then moving towards Richmond. On the way we passed through the village of Hampton, and subsequently were much interested in looking over the battlefield of Big Bethel, where Magruder made his first fight on the Peninsula, not long previous, and where the Union troops were roughly handled. Gen. Joseph B. Carr, of Troy, N. Y., in command of the Second New York Volunteers, one of the most successful Irish-American soldiers of the late war, took a prominent part in this battle. It is thought he would have retrieved the blunders of some of the Union officers, if he had not been ordered to retire by Gen. B. F. Butler, who was in command. Gen. Carr is now serving out his third successive term as Secretary of State of New York. He recently ran for Lieutenant Governor on the Republican ticket; and although he failed to get elected, he ran nearly nine thousand votes ahead of his ticket. The rebel field works were just as they left them. The neighboring forests told the story of the desperate conflict by the manner in which they were torn from the effects of the artillery.

It was a long and tedious journey before we struck the army of "Little Mac;" and when the shades of night began to envelope us, the little squad was footsore, tired and hungry, having covered twenty-four miles since leaving the steamer. To add to our inconvenience, we had eaten nothing since leaving the vessel, and then a limited supply of "hard tack," washed down with coffee. The location of Meagher's Brigade was among the uncertainties. All our inquiries of troops in the vicinity were fruitless.

Learning from the men of a battery, encamped on the edge of a clearing, that an Irish Regiment was not far distant, inquired the name (State and number).

"I think, sergeant," said the officer addressed, "that it is an Irish Regiment from Massachusetts, but I do not know the number; they have an Irish flag anyhow." Thanking the captain for the information, we sought the locality of the Irish boys and their green flag.

"Halt! who comes there?" demanded a sentinel, pacing his beat, a few yards from the road, as the squad approached in the twilight.

"Friends!" was the response.

"Advance, friends, and give the countersign!"

We had no "countersign," and could not give it. I did the next best thing, and addressed the sentinel thus:

"We are Union soldiers, trying to find our regiment, having landed this morning at Fortress Monroe. We are tired and without anything to eat, since early this morning. Be good enough to tell us the name of that regiment yonder."

"That is the Ninth Massachusetts, Col. Tom Cass," was his response.

"Call the corporal of the guard; I would like to see the colonel."

"Corporal of the guard, Post Five!" he lustily called out, at the top of his voice.

"Corporal of the guard, Post Five!" was repeated in succession by the respective posts; bringing that officer on the run, in a few minutes to the post designated.

I repeated the request to the "corporal of the guard," a bright little man, about twenty-four years old. He requested us to remain where we were until the "officer of the guard" was consulted, "for ye know we are in the enemy's counthry, and we must be cautious." We assented, of course. Presently a lieutenant made his appearance, and after hearing our story, told us to follow him. We passed the guard and made our way to the colonel's quarters, before which a soldier was leisurely pacing. The lieutenant entered, but returned in a moment and desired me to follow him. I did so, and found myself in a group of officers. I saluted and came to "attention."

"Well, sergeant, what can we do for you?" kindly asked an officer with the eagles of a colonel on his shoulders.

"We are benighted, sir; my men and I landed at the Fort this morning, and are on the way to find our regiments. We have had nothing to eat in twelve hours. We're hungry and tired, and claim your hospitality for the night."

"May I ask what command you belong to, sir?"

"My regiment is the Sixty-Third New York, colonel, and the detachment is for that regiment and the Eighty-Eighth New York."

"What! Gen. Meagher, the Irish Brigade! Consider yourself at home, sergeant. The best in our camp is at your service. You can have all you can eat and drink, and a place to rest. Orderly," addressing a soldier in front of the tent, "send Sergeant —— to me."

"I see by your chevrons you are a non-commissioned officer. May I ask your name?" addressing me.

"Sergeant J—— D——, Company K, colonel," was my response.

The sergeant made his appearance, and Col. Cass (for we learned, subsequently, it was he) gave him directions to take Sergeant D——and his men, and give them everything they wanted for the night, and their breakfast before leaving in the morning. As we were about retiring the colonel remarked:—

"The night is chilly, sergeant; fog is heavy, malaria abroad, and you are tired. Wouldn't you like something in the way of liquid refreshments?"

"Thanks, colonel," I replied; "but the Sixty-Third is a temperance regiment.[9] We took the pledge from Father Dillon, last January, on David's Island, New York Harbor, for the war."

"Is it possible? I am glad to hear it! God bless you. I trust you will keep your pledge, not only for the war, but for all future time." I thanked him, gave him a salute and retired.

We certainly found ourselves in "the hands of our friends." Sergeant ----(unfortunately my diary is silent as to his name) took us to his quarters, and that being inadequate, lodged out some of the strangers. Coffee was made for us at the company's kitchen, and in less than half an hour there was enough of that delicious beverage steaming hot before us, with a mountain of "hard tack," to feed a company, instead of twenty-three men. The wants of the inner man being attended to (and we did the spread full justice) brier wood and tobacco were called into requisition. We found ourselves the centre of an interested crowd, for it got noised abroad that a squad of Gen. Meagher's men was in Sergeant ----'s quarters. "Taps" were sounded at the usual hour, but, by permission of the "officer of the day" the lights in the sergeant's tent, and others adjoining, were not extinguished, out of respect to the New Yorkers. During the evening song and story were in order, and at this late day it will not be giving away a secret to say that the "liquid refreshments," so kindly offered by the colonel were not ignored by many present, for the Ninth had a sutler with it, whose supply of "commissary" was yet abundant to be taken as an antidote against the malaria.

At day-break the regiment was roused from slumber by the soul-stirring sounds of the "reveille" which reverberated through the dark pine woods of the "sacred soil." The strangers were prevailed on to take a hasty cup of coffee, and as the men were forming for company drill, we bade them "good-by," and sought our own regiments, which we found in camp in a clearing, at Ship Point, nine miles from Yorktown, then held by the enemy.

The writer did not see the Ninth again until the 27th of June following (1862), and the occasion was a sad one. When McClellan's right wing was crushed like an egg shell under Gen. Fitz John Porter, on the north bank of the Chickahominy, two brigades of Sumner's Second Corps (Meagher and French's) were ordered from the centre of our lines at Fair Oaks to check the victorious march of the overwhelming masses of the enemy. After fighting like Spartans for two days, the twenty-seven thousand men under Porter were outflanked by the enemy who were sixty-five thousand strong. Porter's troops were compelled to retire, and by sundown they were in full retreat towards the temporary bridges constructed by our troops, over the Chickahominy. At this juncture the two brigades mentioned were ordered from our centre to check the advance of the now victorious enemy.

The force engaged at Gaines' Mill was: Union, 50 Regiments, 20 batteries, 27,000 men. Confederate: 129 Regiments, 19 batteries, 65,000 men. Losses: Union, killed, 894; wounded, 3,107; missing, 2,836; total, 6,837. Confederate: Somewhat larger, especially in killed and wounded. Perhaps in the whole history of the war there was no battle fought with more desperation on both sides than that of Mechanicville (June 26), and Gaines' Mill (June 27). Fitz John Porter handled his army with such ability that his inferior force repelled repeated attacks of the flower of the rebel army under Lee and Jackson; and if it were not for the blundering of the cavalry, under Gen. Cook, through whose instrumentality Porter's lines were broken, he would have repelled all efforts to drive him to the river. As an evidence of the desperate nature of the conflict, it may be mentioned that one Rebel regiment (Forty-Fourth Georgia) lost three hundred and thirty-five men.

We got there, about eight miles, at eight o'clock, having pushed on by forced marches all the way, but too late to change the fortunes of the day. We did check the advancing and exalting Rebels, who supposed a large part of the Union army had come to the rescue. Forming our lines on top of the hill (Gain's) with an Irish cheer we went down the northern side of the hill pell-mell for the enemy. The pursuers were now the pursued. The Rebels broke and fled before Irish steel. To advance in the darkness would be madness. The regiments were brought to a halt. So as to deceive the Confederates as to the number of reinforcements, the position of each regiment was constantly changed. In one of these movements, the right of the Sixty-Third struck a rebel battalion, halted in the darkness, and for a time there was temporary confusion. The grey coats were brushed aside instantly, getting a volley from the right wing of the Sixty-Third as a reminder that we meant business.

Fitz John Porter pays this tribute to the brigade as to the part it took on this occasion: "French and Meagher's brigades of Sumner's corps, all that the corps commanders deemed they could part with, were sent forward by the commanding general.... All soon rallied in rear of the Adams House behind Sykes and the brigades of French and Meagher sent to our aid, and who now with hearty cheers greeted our battalions as they retired and reformed."

While resting on our arms the dead and wounded were thick all around—friend and foe. Alas! not a few were our brothers of the Ninth Massachusetts. They told us in whispers how they repelled the enemy all day, and not until they were flanked by the Rebels did they give way before their repeated charges. The remnant of the regiment I subsequently saw next morning, in the rear, few in numbers, but with its spirit unbroken.

Having held the enemy in check to permit our broken battalions and the wounded to recross the Chickahominy, the two brigades silently left the field before dawn the next morning, blowing up the bridge behind us, thus stopping the pursuit. The two brigades occupied their old places behind the breastwork, at four the next morning, completely exhausted, but gratified that we were instrumental in checking the enemy, and saving from capture a large part of the army.

Four days later, July 1st, the bloody conflict of Malvern Hill was fought—the last of the Seven Days' Battles. Meagher's brigade, at that time consisting of the Sixty-Third, Eighty-Eighth, and Sixty-Ninth New York and one regiment from Massachusetts (Twenty-Ninth), had arms stacked in a beautiful valley, in the rear of the struggling hosts. All day long the storm of battle raged, and the men of the brigade were congratulating themselves that for once, at least, we would not be called upon to participate. Each regiment was ordered to kill several sheep and beeves, found the same day on the lands of a rich Virginian. While the companies were being served, a staff officer was seen riding at full speed to Gen. Meagher's head-quarters, his horse wet with foam. The men knew what that meant. We had seen it before. In a few minutes the "long roll" sounded in every regiment, and in less time than it takes to write these lines, the brigade was on the march. We knew from the sound of the guns that we were not going from but nearing the combat. Turning a ridge in the south-east, a fearful sight met our view. Thousands of wounded streamed to the rear, in the direction of Harrison Landing, on the James. Men with shattered arms and legs, some limping, all bloody and powder-stained. Many defiant, but the badly wounded moaning with agony. The head of the column, with Gen. Meagher and staff in front, turned sharply to the right, with difficulty forcing our way through the wounded crowds. We learned, subsequently, that after repelling the enemy with fearful slaughter all day, towards nightfall they pressed our left and attempted to seize the roads on our line of retreat to the James. Not till then were Meagher's men called on, and promptly they responded. While hurrying to the front, the Sixty-Third being the third regiment was halted. At this moment a volley from the left between us and the river, swept through our ranks. Seventeen men of the regiment fell, among them being Col. John Burke, who received a ball in the knee. He fell from his horse, but the mishap was for the moment kept from the men. Lieut.-Col. Fowler assumed command, and before the Rebel regiment had time to reload, four hundred smooth bores sent a withering volley crashing through their ranks. This put a quietus upon them.

"What regiment is this?" demanded an officer on horseback, surrounded by his staff, who came galloping up as the men reloaded.

"This is the Sixty-Third New York, general," responded Lieut.-Col. Fowler of that regiment.

"I am Gen. Porter, in command of this part of the field. I order you to remain here to support a battery now on its way to this spot. Do you understand, sir?"

"Yes, general; the Sixty-Third always obeys orders," was the lieutenant colonel's prompt response, and Gen. Porter disappeared to the front.

While halted here for the appearance of the battery, a crowd of men coming from the front, in the now gathering darkness, attracted my attention. I should say there were not more than fifty men all told—perhaps not more than thirty. They were grouped around their colors, which I discovered to be a United States flag and a green standard. The men were the most enthusiastic I ever saw. They were cheering, and their voices could be plainly heard over the roar of battle. Some were without caps, many were wounded, and all grimy from powder, and every few moments some one of them called for "three cheers for the stars and stripes."

"Let us give three for the green flag, boys."

"Give the Rebels h—— boys!" To one officer in front cheering, who had his cap on the point of his sword, I inquired:

"What regiment is this, captain?"

"Why, don't you know?

"This is all that is left of the old Ninth Massachusetts—all that is left of us boys!

"Our dead and wounded are in the woods over there!

"Oh! we lost our colonel, boys; the gallant Cass, one of the best fighters and bravest man in the army!

"We saved our colors, though, and we had to fight to do it!

"Go in, Irish Brigade! Do as well as the Ninth did!

"Three cheers for the stars and stripes!

"Give three for the old Bay State!

"Hurrah!"

And the remnant of the splendid regiment filed to the rear in the darkness; but still their cheers could be heard for quite a distance over the rattle of musketry and the sound of the guns.

"The battery! The battery! Here comes the battery!" was heard from a hundred throats, as it wildly thundered and swept from the rear, regardless of the dead and dying, who fairly littered the field. God help the dying, for the dead cared not! The iron wheels of the carriages, and feet of the horses, discriminate not between friend and foe. It will never be known how many were ground to pulp that July evening as Capt. J. R. Smead's Battery K, Fifth United States Artillery came in response to the command of the gallant Porter, who saw the danger of having his left turned. Three batteries were ordered up by Gen. Porter, viz: Capt. J. R. Smead; Capt. Stephen H. Weed, Battery I, Fifth United States Artillery; and Capt. J. Howard Carlisle, Battery E, Second United States Artillery.

"Forward, Sixty-Third! Double quick! march!" shouted Capt. O'Neil, the senior line officer, who was now in command.

"Forward! Double quick!" was repeated by each company commander, and the Sixty-Third followed the lead of the battery into the very jaws of death, many of them to meet their brothers of the Ninth, who just passed over the silent river, on the crimson tide of war![10]

Had the repeated and desperate efforts of the enemy succeeded in turning the Union left, as was feared towards nightfall, a dire disaster awaited the splendid army of McClellan. How near we came to it may be judged from the fact that all the reserves were brought into action, including the artillery under Gen. Henry J. Hunt. The instructions to Smead, Carlisle and Mead, when hurried up to defend the narrow gorge, with their artillery, through which the Confederates must force their way on to the plateau, were to fire on friend and foe, if the emergency demanded it. This is confirmed by a letter to the writer from Fitz John Porter. "These batteries were ordered up," he says, "to the narrow part of the hill, to be used in saving the rest of the army, if those in front were broken, driven in and pursued, by firing, if necessary, on friend as well as foe, so that the latter should not pass them. I went forward with you to share your fate if fortune deserted us, but I did not expect disaster, and, thank God, it did not come!"

These are the words of as brave and loyal an American as ever drew his sword for the Republic. Few men, perhaps none, in the army at that time, with our limited experience in war, could have handled his troops as Gen. Porter did at Gaine's Mill and Malvern. He desperately contested every inch of ground on the north bank of the Chickahominy, although his force was only twenty-seven thousand against sixty-five thousand of the enemy. Again at Malvern, the Rebels, maddened with successive defeats, were determined to annihilate the grand army of the Potomac with a last superhuman effort. They probably would have succeeded had a less able soldier been placed in command at that critical point. But, as will be seen from the above extract, the General never for a moment lost hope of being able to successfully repulse the enemy, for no man knew the material he had to do it with better than he.

What a pity that the services of such an able soldier should have been lost to the army and the country, a few weeks later, through the petty jealousies of small men, who wanted a scape-goat to cover up their own shortcomings. For over twenty years this grand American soldier, the soul of honor, who would at any moment sacrifice his life sooner than be guilty of an act inconsistent with his noble profession, has been permitted to live under the unjust stigma cast upon him. The day will surely come, and it is not far distant, when the American people will blush for the great wrong done Fitz John Porter. They will agree with the late general of our armies, a man whose memory will be forever held in grateful remembrance by his country (U. S. Grant), who, after careful and mature investigation of his conduct at the Second Battle of Bull Run, said deliberately, that Fitz John Porter should not be censured for the mismanagement of that ill-fated battle. In military affairs Gen. Grant was always a safe guide to follow.

After a careful review of Gen. Porter's case, Gen Grant wrote President Arthur, under date of December 22, 1881, as follows:

"At the request of Gen. Fitz John Porter, I have recently reviewed his trial, and the testimony held before the Schofield court of inquiry held in 1879.... The reading of the whole record has thoroughly convinced me that for these nineteen years I have been doing a gallant and efficient soldier a very great injustice in thought and sometimes in speech. I feel it incumbent upon me now to do whatever lies in my power to remove from him and from his family the stain upon his good name.... I am now convinced that he rendered faithful, efficient and intelligent service.... I would ask that the whole matter be laid before the attorney-general for his examination and opinion, hoping that you will be able to do this much for an officer who has suffered for nineteen years a punishment that never should be inflicted upon any but the most guilty."

It was many months before I again saw the Ninth Massachusetts; but what a contrast to its appearance on that glorious April morning, in 1862, when I was the recipient of its warm hospitality among the pines on the threshold of the advance on the rebel capital.

John Dwyer.

Leo XIII. has sent to the Emperor of Germany and to Prince Bismarck copies, specially printed and bound, of the Encyclical. His Holiness adds to the present to the Chancellor a copy of the Novissima Leonis XIII. Pont. Max. Carmina. A note of very emphatic and reverent praise of the poems has been communicated to the official German press.

A Christmas Carol.

Ah, weep not, friends, that I am far from ye,
And no warm breathéd words may reach my ears;
One way is shorter, nearer than by sea,
Prayers weigh with God and graces wait on tears;
As rise the mists from summer seas unseen,
To fall in freshening showers on hill and plain,
So prayer sent forth from fervent hearts makes green
The parched bowers of one whose life was vain.
Pray for me day and night these Christmas hours,
This the one gift I value all beyond;
Aid me with supplication 'fore those powers
Who have regard for prayer, th' angelic bond—
All ye who love me knock at Jesus' gate,
As for one standing outside deep in snow,
Tell him a sorrowing soul doth trembling wait,
And none but He can ease its load of woe.
Ah, friends! of whom I once asked other things,
Refuse me not this one thing asked again;
Shield me, a naked soul, with sheltering wings,
From rush of angry storms and bitter rain—
I cannot stand the gaze of mine own eyes;
That I escape myself implore our Lord—
Ah, me! I learn he only's rightly wise
Who seeks in all th' exceeding great reward.
From self that I be freed, O Father will!
Lord Jesus from the world protect me still,
Spirit paraclete, over the flesh give victory,
And o'er the devil a lasting crown to me!
James Keegan.

The Catholic Review: Irish-America contributes to the new Parliament one of the strongest members of the Nationalist party, Mr. T. P. Gill, for some years past assistant editor of the Catholic World, and previously a prominent journalist in Ireland, where, during the imprisonment of Mr. William O'Brien, he took the editorial chair of United Ireland until Mr. Buckshot Forster made it too hot for him. In the cooler climate of New York he still did good service to his party, in disabusing numbers of many ill-grounded misapprehensions and misconceptions, and in strengthening the sympathies, by increasing the information, of all well-wishers of Ireland. His work will be felt in England.

The Late Father Tom Burke.

Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., of London, have published, in two volumes, the "Life of the Very Rev. Thomas N. Burke, O.P.," by William J. Fitzpatrick, F.S.A. We give a few extracts:

"Some one complained to Father Burke one day that his sermons were too 'flowery;' but it was not just criticism if the term was intended to imply that they were florid. His answer was characteristic. 'And what should they be but floury—seeing my father was a baker?' It was also in allusion to his father's calling that he was wont to boast, when questioned as to his family, that they were 'the best-bread-Burkes' of Galway.

"'When I hear him preach,' said Bishop Moriarty, 'I rejoice that the Church has gained a prize; when I hear him tell a story, I am tempted to regret that the stage has lost him.'

"A Protestant lady listening to his lecture on divorce said: 'I am bound to become a Catholic out of self-respect and self-defence.'

"During the visit of the Prince of Wales to Rome His Royal Highness went to the Irish Dominicans and to the Irish College. Father Burke was asked to guide the prince through the crypt of St. Sebastian, his Royal Highness being, it was understood, particularly anxious to see the paintings with which the early Christians decorated the places where rested their dead. Some English ladies, mostly converts, in Rome at the time, were divided in their devotion to the Prince and to the catacomb pictures—the most memorable religious pictures of the world. That evening they begged Father Burke to tell them exactly what His Royal Highness said of the frescoes. The question was parried for some time; but when the fluttered expectation of the fair questioners had risen to a climax, Father Burke showed hesitating signs of his readiness to repeat the soul-betraying exclamations of the Prince. 'Well, what did he say?' they cried, in suspense. 'He said—well, he said—'Aw!'"

"In 1865, Father Burke succeeded the present Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster in the pulpit of Sta Maria del Popolo in Rome; and it is a little coincidence that the famous Dominican, a year or two earlier, when Prior of Tallaght, succeeded also the Cardinal's relative in the pulpit of the Catholic University. 'Father Andedon,' says Mr. Fitzpatrick, 'had been for some years a very popular preacher in the church of the Catholic University. On the retirement of Father Andedon to England, to which he was naturally attached by birth and belongings—for Dr. Manning was his uncle—Father Burke took his place in the pulpit.' It was here, by the way, that the 'Prince of Preachers' introduced the class of sermons known as 'Conferences,' and associated with Lacordaire and the pulpit of Notre Dame. Father Burke had never seen Lacordaire; but the Dean of the Catholic University, who had been listening to Lacordaire for years, was greatly struck by Father Burke's resemblance, as a preacher, to his great brother Dominican in France. The likenesses between preachers, as between faces, are sometimes subtle things! Bishop Moriarty, returning from Rome, paused in Paris, where he heard yet another Dominican orator, Père Monsabré, preaching at Notre Dame. When next he saw Father Tom, he said to him—'Do you know Monsabré reminded me very much of you?' 'Now,' said Father Tom—telling the story to his friend, Father Greene—'this was very gratifying to me. Père Monsabré was a great man, and I thought it an honor to be compared to him, and I told the Bishop so, adding, 'Might I ask you, my lord, what was the special feature of resemblance?' Now 'David' (the Bishop's Christian name) had a slow and deliberate and judicious way of speaking that kept me very attentive and expectant. 'Well,' he said, 'I'll tell you what struck me most. When he went up into the pulpit, he looked around him deliberately and raised up his hand and—scratched his head.'"

"In the maddest sallies of Father Tom there was generally to be found a method. His exuberances when he was Prior of San Clemente, for instance, were attributed to his desire that his tonsure might not be made to bear the weight of a mitre: 'It got whispered among the cardinals' (writes Canon Brownlow), 'that their eminences were at times the objects of his jokes, and that he even presumed to mimic those exalted personages. Some of them spoke seriously about it, and asked the Dominican Cardinal Guidi to admonish him to behave with greater gravity. Cardinal Guidi repaired to San Clemente, and proceeded to deliver his message, and Father Burke received it with becoming submission. But no sooner had the cardinal finished than Father Burke imitated his manner, accent and language, with such ludicrous exactness that the cardinal burst into a fit of laughter, and could not tell him to stop.'

"The venerable Father Mullooly was equally foiled by another phase of the young friar's freakishness, when, on being remonstrated with for what seemed to be an undue indulgence in cigars, Father Tom represented it as rather dictated by a filial duty, for the Pope, he said, had sent him a share of a chest of Havanas, worth a dollar each, which a Mexican son had forwarded to the Vatican.

"But the other side of the man came out in his sermons when he succeeded Dr. Manning—hurriedly called to England to attend the death-bed of Cardinal Wiseman—as occupant of the pulpit of Santa Maria del Popolo, and on many subsequent occasions: 'When I lift up my eyes here (he said in speaking of the 'Groupings of Calvary'), it seems as if I stood bodily in the society of these men. I see in the face of John the expression of the highest manly sympathy that comforted and consoled the dying eyes of the Saviour. It seems to me that I behold the Blessed Virgin, whose maternal heart consented in that hour of agony to be broken for the sins of men. I see the Magdalen as she clings to the cross, and receives upon that hair, with which she wiped His Feet, the drops of His Blood. I behold that heart, humbled in penance and inflamed with love—the heart of the woman who had loved much, and for whom he had prayed. It seems to me that I travel step by step to Calvary, and learn, as they unite in Him, every lesson of suffering, of peace, of hope, of joy, of love."