“It’s a bit rough on your compatriots,” said my host. “You look as if you feel it.”
“I do,” said I; “I feel it to be rather sad that a story that a fellow takes the trouble to invent and to print in a pamphlet, should be picked up by an English correspondent in Dublin, printed in one of his letters from Ireland, and afterwards published in a London evening paper without any acknowledgment being made of the source whence it was derived.”
And that is my opinion still. The story was a pure invention of my own, and it was printed in an anonymous skit, only without the brogue. It was left for the English Special Commissioner to make a feature of the brogue, of which, of course, he had become a master, having been close upon two days in Dublin.
But the most amusing thing to me was to find that the sub-editor of the newspaper with which I was connected had actually cut the paragraph out of the London paper and inserted it in our columns. He pointed it out to me on my return, and asked me if I didn’t think it a good story.
I said it was first rate, and inquired if he had ever heard the story before. He replied that he never had.
That was, I repeat, the point of the whole incident which amused me most; for I had made the sub-editor a present of the original pamphlet, and he said he had enjoyed it immensely.
He also hopes to be one day an ordained clergyman.
When in Ireland during the General Election of 1892, I got a telegram one night informing me that Mr. Justin M’Carthy had been defeated in Derry that day by Mr. Ross, Q.C.
It occurred to me that if a quatrain could be made upon the incident it might be read the next day. The following was the result of the great mental effort necessary to bring to bear upon the task:—