Page:A Memorial of John Boyle O'Reilly from the City of Boston.djvu/61

Rh office and had no title. The man was larger than any office, and no title could ennoble him. He was born without an atom of prejudice, and he lived and died without an evil or ungenerous thought.

He was Irish and American; intensely both, but more than both. The world was his country, and mankind was his kin. Often he struck; but he always struck power, never the helpless. He seemed to feel with the dying regicide in "Les Miserables," "I weep with you for the son of the king, murdered in the temple; but weep with me for the children of the people—they have suffered longest."

Numbered and marked and branded; officially called rebel, traitor, convict, and felon, wherever the red flag floats; denied the sad privilege of kneeling on the grave of his mother—thus died this superb citizen of the great Republic.

But his soul was always free—vain are all mortal interdicts.

By the banks of that lovely river, where the blood of four nations once commingled, in sight of the monument to the alien victor, hard by the great mysterious Rath, over one sanctified spot dearer than all others to him, where the dew glistened on the softest green, the spirit of O'Reilly hovered, and shook the stillness of the Irish dawn on its journey to the stars.

, Esq., then introduced the following Resolutions in memory of John Boyle O'Reilly:—