Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/136

 with Ireland made her well-known to me, proffered me the law library of her uncle, Judge Bowen, and proposed to meet me in London to hand it over. "My dear husband has just escaped with life," she said, "and is still so weak I would not leave him for any other cause on earth than that to which you have devoted your life."

It adds a flavour of rare magnanimity to Mr. Geheoghan's offer, that he did not agree with me in the contest which had brought about my exile.

"There is not on the face of God's earth," he wrote, "a more pious and self-sacrificing priesthood than yours, and as an Irishman I am proud of them. Often and often, through the by-lanes and boreens at all hours and at all seasons, I have seen the young curates hurrying to watch over, to pray beside, to cherish, and to comfort the parting hours of the wretched and the poor. But while I silently admired them on their errands of mercy, I thought that their reward should not be of this world, and grieved when I reflected that the dignitaries of your Church in return for such acts should require from a grateful peasantry the surrender into their hands of their rights as citizens or privileges as freemen.

"I differ from you on many points, but on none more so than that it is either desirable or expedient for the clergymen of your Church to take an active share in politics. That O'Connell hastened Emancipation some years by their assistance there is no doubt; but equally true it is that they have most habitually checked and retarded, either directly or indirectly, the growth of a free and manly opinion in Ireland ever since."

Michael O'Grady, applauding my refusal of a testimonial, entreated me to accept from the Irish workmen in London the carved fittings of a library in Irish bog-oak. Of these proffered favours, I accepted only that of Mr. Geheoghan to a limited extent, because it could be repaid.

My diary at this time recalls some memorable and pleasant transactions. During the period when I had constant Parliamentary responsibility I thought of nothing else. I never went to theatres or exhibitions, and boat races and Derby Day appealed to me in vain. But when I had no longer public duties, I determined to see something more of th e