Page:The Gael Vol XXII January to December 1903.djvu/159

166 times since sleeping on a plank bed and starving on prison fare.

He has done more than a man's part in helping undermine landlordism. A peaceful agitator nominally, he considers all Parliamentary effort a means to an end merely. There is thought behind every line he pens, every phrase he utters. Flamboyant rhetoric and he are not even on speaking terms. "I'm nothing but an old gradgrind, Wall," I've often heard him say. All very fine, but the more gradgrinds of his stamp in the service of Ireland the better for Ireland.

Under a native Parliament, It would be impossible to ignore such a man as Tully, for he is fitted to command in any department of the public service. He has the industry and tenacity of Joe Biggar; and anyone who has followed current Parliamentary history knows that it was this sturdy Belfast Presbyterian who made Parnell himself possible.

I know of no more fitting manner to refer to Jasper Tully, this tireless fighter for Ireland, than by describing him as a Boer. He may be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, as were the Boers; but to vanquish Tully in argument, even the cleverest Member of the House of Commons would find it essential to arise before the sun was seen peeping from behind the hills. Irishmen should not fail to recognize the disinterested and loyal service he has rendered from the day when, a mere boy, twenty-two years ago, he quitted Summer Hill College, Athlone, to this very hour.

As a brother newspaper man, I have followed his fight for Ireland, as recorded in the newspapers on both sides of the ocean, and I am enabled to tender this voluntary tribute all the more freely, in that I have neither seen Tully nor heard from him during all that time. I hope, however, I may not die before I have a chance of again taking him by the hand and squeezing it good and hard.

Parnell was quartered in a section of the great building separated from the main body of the "suspects"; but it was his custom, two or three times a week, to come into the yard and march round the ring with the rest of us, taking exercise. Sometimes he absented himself for long periods, showing himself then for only a few minutes at a time; so that there were some among the new arrivals who never got a chance to see him at all.

What I may call the Kerry delegation was numerous, aggressive and picturesque, and were the subject of as much comment among the city chaps, who thought that they themselves were "the whole thing," as Shane O'Neill and his followers were said to be when they foregathered at the court of Elizabeth. Among them was a big, brawny fellow named Ned Hussey, whom I remember well. If he could only get a good look at Parnell, whom he had never seen, he would, so it was declared, "die aisy."

"Ned," said I to him one day, "would you like to see Parnell?"

"Would I like to see Parnell," he echoed. "Would a monkey climb a tree!"

"Very well then; come along," and I led him from the exercise yard into what was known as the association hall. This was a spacious indoor apartment, roofed with glass, where those who were not robust, or who wished to avoid the crowd, elected to remain until the bell warning us back to our cells rang out. Parnell, wrapped as usual in his dressing gown, happened on this occasion to be wrapt also in a game of chess with P. J. Murphy, of Cork. Sitting around were Dr. Cardiff, a prominent Wexford physician, whose efforts to sustain a wholly inequitable allotment of adipose tissue and look dignified at the same time, made his movements seem cumbersome and languid; "Long John" O'Connor, of Cork; William O'Brien, William Abraham, of Limerick; Mr. Carew, who used to show a gold snuff-box the Empress of Austria gave him when she had a hunting box in Meath; Dr. Kenny, M. P., of Dublin, and a number of others.

"There's Parnell now," said I.

"Which wan, Misther Wall?" said Ned eagerly.

"The man playing there. He's facing you now; see."

"Do ye mane th' man wid th' bedtick around him?"

A nod was all the response I was able to make; I couldn't trust myself to speak. As it was, I had as much as ever I could do to hold in.

"Glory be to the Heavenly Father!" he ejaculated, loud enough for everybody to hear; "an' do ye tell me for a fact that that's Parnell?"

"That's the very man, Ned, me boy," I said.

He seized my hand on the moment, giving it a firm and, can I not say, vicarious squeeze.

"Shure, man alive," exclaimed the poor fellow, tears of genuine delight streaming down his cheeks, and a quiver of nervous enthusiasm throbbing through every part of his big body; "shure, man alive, I wouldn't ask bether fun, Misther Wall, than fightin' an dyin' for a man like that!"

"And so would every one of us, Ned," I said.

"An' so we ought, Misther Wall," he whispered, still gripping me hard.

"And so we ought, Ned, me boy," I repeated, the enthusiasm of this simple Kerry peasant infecting me as quickly as living organisms stir the blood, or a measure of strong drink urges the heart to unwonted activity.

"Shure, Misther Wall," he resumerresumed [sic], "Parnell med most o' thim Mimbers of Parliament, that thinks they're such great fellows; so he did. Oh, I know. I tell ye, I wouldn't ask bether fun than dyin' for a man like that, Misther Wall," he repeated.

There was a certain prophetic eagerness in the poor fellow's words which impressed me as well as startled me. Within a few brief years there came, not alone to every man who had been in Kilmainham jail, but to every man in Ireland as well, an opportunity, not, indeed. If you please, of dying for Parnell, but of living for him and of fighting for him. But, alas! the opportunity was suffered to pass unheeded. All of a sudden this mighty leader himself died. They gave him in Dublin the greatest funeral ever given an Irishman. Of course, they did; and as the tearful tens of thousands followed the body to the National Cemetery in Glasnevin there came over the Cromwellians a broad grin, and they whispered each to the other: "There goes one more English difficulty that the Irish themselves have settled for us."

"Do not," he pleaded passionately, in his memorable manifesto "To the People of Ireland," "do not throw me to a pack of English wolves who are howling for my destruction." It was a vain appeal. They did throw him to the wolves; and, what is more remarkable, it was the Irish themselves who turned out to be the wolves, and not the English. It was a cowardly and ignoble abandonment of a great man,