Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/36

 county of Armagh, the Catholic farmers who possessed profitable farms were ordered to abandon them to their Protestant neighbours; a notice was served on them at night by a secret society called Peep o' Day Boys, fixing the date at which they must betake themselves " to hell or Connaught," and for a long time the Government at Dublin refused them protection, and they had no choice but to fly or have their houses burnt over their heads. In the acrimonious epigram of the time, the emigrants selected Connaught and left the alternative locality for their oppressors. My immature judgment was naturally inflamed with rage at these crimes; a rage which did not abate when I came to read history later and found the tragic story was substantially true. These, it may be said, were not teachings calculated to pro mote- tranquillity and good will; but whether does the blame belong, to the men who committed or to the men who narrated the offences?

My three brothers died before I reached manhood. Of John, the brother nearest my own age, I heard recently a story from a grey-haired kinsman, a landowner in Buenos Ayres, which I think will touch generous hearts. " I was present, a boy in my first breeches, when my elder brother was sharply called for by our father, a strict disciplinarian with his sons. 'Mick,' he cried, 'bring me your pocket-knife.' Michael was in consternation, and whispered, 'What shall I do? I've lost my knife.' 'Take mine,' says John Duffy, '&apos;tis the same colour.' 'No, no,' my brother muttered, 'the blade of my knife was broken, and father will know the difference at a glance.' Cousin John, without a word spoken, put the blade of his knife under his heel and broke it off.' The tears, concluded my friend, ran down my face at the time, and after sixty years they could run down still when I think of that generous transaction."

The early death of my brothers seemed to presage mine. In all my nonage my health was feeble and uncertain, and dyspepsia came so early that it must have been hereditary. I can gauge the sharpness of my dolor by remembering that when literary ambition began to awake, and I had written some chapters of a novel, and some scenes of a play, I confessed that if I had the choice of producing a romance equal