THE MAILED FIST

In the afternoon the curtain went up on a matinee performance of The Mailed
Fist.

The first act was in the home of Madame Gonne-McBride. It was, properly, an
exposition of the power of the enemy.

With Madame Gonne-McBride, once called the most beautiful woman in Europe,
Sylvia Pankhurst, and the sister, of Robert Barton, I entered the big house
on Stephen's Green. Modern splashily vivid wall coloring. Japanese screens.
Ancient carved madonnas. Two big Airedales thudded up and down in greeting
to their mistress. I spoke of their unusual size.

Madame Gonne-McBride, taking the head of one of them between her hands:
"They won't let any one arrest me again, will they?"

She is tall and slim in her deep mourning--her husband was killed in the
rebellion of 1916. Her widow's bonnet is a soft silky guipure lace placed
on her head like a Red Cross worker's coif. On the breast of her black gown
there hangs a large dull silver cross. Beggars and flower-sellers greet her
by name. It is said that a large part of her popularity is due to her work
in obtaining free school lunches. Anyway, there was great grief among the
people when she was thrown into jail for supposed complicity in the
unproved German plot. The arrest, she said, came one Sunday night. She was
walking unconcernedly from one of George Russell's weekly gatherings, when
five husky constables blocked the bridge road and hurried her off to jail.
At last, on account of her ill health, she was released from prison--very
weak and very pale.