revealed sympathy of my old nurse for the rebels whose cheering she
remembered when the French landed at Killala in '98; or perhaps but
through the natural breaking of a younger child of the house from
the conservatism of her elders. So when we were taken sometimes as
a treat the five mile drive to our market town, Loughrea, I would,
on tiptoe at the counter, hold up the six pence earned by saying without
a mistake my Bible lesson on the Sunday, and the old stationer, looking
down through his spectacles would give me what I wanted saying that
I was his best customer for Fenian books; and one of my sisters, rather
doubtfully consenting to my choice of _The Spirit of the Nation_
for a birthday present, qualified the gift by copying into it "Patriotism
is the last refuge of a scoundrel." I have some of them by me yet,
the little books in gay paper or in green cloth, and some verses in
them seem to me no less moving than in those early days, such as Davis's
lament.

We thought you would not die, we were sure you would not go
And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell's cruel blow;
Sheep without a shepherd when the snow shuts out the sky,
O why did you leave us Owen? Why did you die?

And if some others are little more than a catalogue, unmusical, as:--

Now to begin to name them I'll continue in a direct line,
There's John Mitchell, Thomas Francis Meagher and also William Smith
O'Brien;
John Martin and O'Donoghue, Erin sorely feels their loss,
And to complete their number I will include O'Donovan Ross--

yet there is in them a certain dignity, an intensity born of