Forrester was a young man of great eloquence, and, like his mother and
sister, a poet. Mrs. Ellen Forrester's "Widow's Message to her Son" is,
I think, one of the finest and most heart-stirring poems we possess. I
have often listened with pleasure to Arthur Forrester, when he used to
come to address the "boys" in Liverpool. On one of those occasions
Michael Davitt was with him, a modest, unassuming young man, with but
little to say, although he was to make afterwards a more important
figure in the world than his friend. Forrester was a young fellow full
of pluck, and made a desperate resistance when, a boy, he was first
arrested in Dublin.

One night, just before Christmas, 1869, he left fifty revolvers with me.
Early next morning I read in a daily paper that he had been arrested the
previous night in a Temperance Hotel where he had been staying. There
were no arms found upon him or among his belongings. He had left them
with me;--indeed, as I read the account of his arrest, they were still
in my possession. You may depend upon it I quickly got them into safer
hands than my own. Some compromising documents were found in Forrester's
possession, including a certain letter with which Michael Davitt's name
was connected. This same letter was brought forward in evidence some
years afterwards, in the famous "_Times_ Forgeries Commission," with a
view to showing that the Irish leaders had incited to murder. As I
expected, I was not long without a visit from Laurence Kehoe's
lieutenants. Horn and Cousens, detective officers, called upon me to
make enquiries about the revolvers which, they said, "Arthur had left
with me." I need scarcely say they gained nothing by their visitation. I
fully expected that the matter would not end here, and that I was likely
to find myself in the dock along with Forrester.