Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/159

 AN ADDRESS TO CATHOLICS

is with no small degree of self-congratulation that I at length find myself in a province which every glance of the eye and every throb of the heart tell me is truly Irish; and that congratulation is not a little enhanced by finding that you receive me not quite as a stranger.

Tho we never met, you hail in me the sweet association, and I feel myself among you even as if I were in the home of my nativity. But this my knowledge of you was not left to chance; nor was it left to the records of your charity, the memorials of your patriotism, your municipal magnificence, or your commercial splendor; it came to me hallowed by the accents of that tongue on which Ireland has so often hung with ecstasy, heightened by the eloquence 149