intimate connection with most of the Irish political leaders.

My father came to England in one of the sloops in which our people used
to "come over" in the old days. They sometimes took a week in crossing.
The steamers which superseded them, though an immense improvement as
regards speed, had often less accommodation for the deck passengers than
for the cattle they brought over.

Most of the Irish immigration to Liverpool came through the Clarence
Dock, where the steamers used to land our people from all parts. Since
the Railway Company diverted a good deal of the Irish traffic through
the Holyhead route, there are not so many of these steamers coming to
Liverpool as formerly.

The first object that used to meet the eyes of those who had just "come
over," as they looked across the Clarence Dock wall, was an effigy of
St. Patrick, with a shamrock in his hand, as if welcoming them from "the
old sod." This was placed high upon the wall of a public house kept by
a retired Irish pugilist, Jack Langan. In the thirties and forties of
the last century, up to 1846, when he died, leaving over £20,000 to his
children, Langan's house was a very popular resort of Irishmen, more
particularly as, besides being a decent, warm-hearted, open-handed man,
he was a strong supporter of creed and country.

I am old enough to remember hearing Mass in what was an interesting
relic in Liverpool of the Penal days. This was the old building known to
our people as "Lumber Street Chapel." Of course, the present Protestant
Church of St. Nicholas (known as "the old church") is a Catholic
foundation. Lumber Street chapel was not, however, the first of our
places of worship built during the Penal days, for the Jesuits had a