Page:A Memorial of John Boyle O'Reilly from the City of Boston.djvu/29

Rh recognition in this city. His fame as a poet soon became national, and finally coextensive with the domain of the English language. He made friends without conscious effort, and often without even intending it.

His domestic life developed the more tender qualities of his nature and the deeper emotions of the heart. He was a devoted husband and a model father of a family. It was my privilege to know intimately the domestic side of his life, because I was for years his pastor. Apart from this fact, there were certain natural reasons why we took kindly to each other.

We were both Irishmen in a strange land,—he an exile perforce, I an emigrant, seemingly of my own free will, but really driven from home by the results of landlord exaction and bad laws. We were both born about the same time and in the same county, almost in the same parish, in full view of the royal hill of Tara, beside the historic River Boyne, whose banks are studded with the monuments of Ireland's golden age of nationhood and religion. The crumbling castle of Irish chieftain or Saxon lord, the Danish rath, the round tower, the huge Celtic stone cross, the ivy-mantled ruins of church and cloister, school and abbey, are found in its vicinity. The daily contemplation of these historic scenes awakened in us common sentiments of patriotism and religion. From our doors we could see the croppies' mound, the grave of the men who died for Ireland in '98, and the Hill of Slane