"Why, Adlai, do you know me?" was the prompt response.
"Know you," said I, "didn't we go to school together to Mr. Caskie right here at Blue Water, when we were boys?"
"Yas, of course we did," slowly answered by sometime school-fellow, "but you been 'sociatin' with them big fellows down about Washington so long, that I didn't know but what you had forgot us poor fellows down in the Pennyrile."
Assuring him that I never forgot my old friends, I inquired, "John, where is your brother Bill?"
"He's here," was the instant reply. "Me and Bill started before daylight to get to this barbecue in time. Bill 'lowed he'd ruther go forty miles on foot to hear you make a speech, than go to a hangin'."
XXXII A TRIBUTE TO IRELAND*
[*Footnote: Speech delivered by Mr. Stevenson at a banquet of the United Irish Societies of Chicago, September, 1900.]
THE WRITER'S VISIT TO NOTABLE PLACES IN IRELAND—HIS TRIBUTE OF PRAISE TO HER GREAT MEN—AMERICA'S OBLIGATION TO IRISH SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN.
I accepted with pleasure the invitation to meet with you. For the courtesy so generously extended me I am profoundly grateful.
Within late years it has been my privilege to visit Ireland; and I can truly say that no country in Europe possessed for me a deeper interest than the little island about whose name clusters so much of romance and of enchantment. I saw Ireland in its beauty and its gloom; in its glory and in its desolation. I stood upon the Giant's Causeway, one of the grand masterpieces of the Almighty; I visited the historic parks and deserted legislative halls of venerated Dublin; threaded the streets and byways of the quaint old city of Cork; listened the bells of Shandon; sailed over the beautiful lakes of Killarney, and gazed upon the old castles of Muckross and of Blarney, whose ivy-covered ruins tell of the far-away centuries. What a wonderful island! The birthplace of wits, of warriors, of statesmen, of poets, and of orators. Of its people it has been truly said: "They have fought successfully the battles of every country but their own."