Page:The ways of war - Kettle - 1917.pdf/71

 member several years ago he went to a political meeting at Newcastle West. A faction party took possession of the platform. The intending speakers were for abandoning the meeting, but Tom declined to give in without at least a fight, and led the attack on the platform. After a nasty struggle they captured their objective. Mr. Gwynn, who was one of the speakers, was so impressed with my husband's daring that he wrote me his admiration, saying that he led the attack "with nothing but an umbrella and a University degree." His moral courage, too, never failed. When occasion demanded it, he could always be counted on to say "the dire full-throated thing."

For the memory of Parnell he had a deep reverence. This is his vision of him—

"A flaming coal Lit at the stars and sent To burn the sin of patience from her soul, The Scandal of Content."

A life, or rather an impressionist study, of "the Chief's" career was a work he frequently projected but unfortunately never accomplished. The plinth at the back of Parnell's Statue in O'Connell Street should, he maintained, have been broken to symbolise the wrecking of Parnell's career. "Parnell," he wrote, "died with half his music in him." Once in a discussion on the eighties he remarked: "What is the history of the eighties? It is the