While Ned had been chief editorial editor of the Toronto Mail and the Toronto Globe, he was also on the Winnipeg Times, succeeding me as editor-in-chief in 1882, and in later years he became a free lance and wrote for many papers, chief amongst which was the London Economist, and he was also employed by large corporations on account of his grasp of subjects and the readiness of his pen. A better writer I never knew who could put a case more clearly and succinctly than he could, and his great mind could see both sides of a question, so that he could reply to his own arguments without any difficulty, and then controvert them to the Queen’s taste. His style was incisive and telling.
Once when Chief Justice Wallbridge, of the Manitoba bench, who had reached a good old age, fiercely denounced the reflections of the Winnipeg Times on the court, Ned made very brief reference to it, and concluded: “Senility has its privileges.” That repartee has been quoted to me many a time since. He had been in earlier years on the New York press, but wandered to Canada where his services were always in demand.
So greatly were his talents appreciated, and so esteemed was he by Sir John Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier that, it is said, he wrote the platforms for both political parties on one occasion. While we were most intimate for more than forty years he never admitted it to me, but what he didn’t tell of himself was monumental. No one except his wife and myself knew that he was the Honorable Edward Farrer, and that he was a nephew of Archbishop O’Donnell of Cork.
Many is the story he has told me of how he was the intermediary between the Archbishop and the chief of the Irish Constabulary in dealing with the Fenians when they were the disturbing element in Ireland. If the suspect was a pretty decent, harmless fellow the Archbishop would arrange for him to be freed and sent home; if he was a dangerous character and an undesirable, he would be shipped to America, with passage paid and sufficient money to give him a fair start in the new world.
How he himself happened to come to America is a queer story and has never before been told in print, for I promised not to tell it until he had passed away. While at college in Rome where he was studying for the priesthood, he, with a brother student, as remarkably clever as Ned, were taking a stroll the afternoon before the day of their ordination.
One asked the other: “Do you want to be a priest?” and both agreed they didn’t. Just then, a little breeze blew a piece of an Italian newspaper against Ned’s leg and picking it up he read an advertisement for two interpreters—English and Italian—applications to be made to the captain of a ship, then in port. They hastened to the vessel, but the captain seeing their student’s garb at first refused to engage them on the ground that the college authorities missing them would search and find them before they could get away. They, however, persuaded him that they could hide in the forecastle until the ship sailed, which they did. Shortly before the advertised time of departure, the captain saw the searching party heading for the ship, and, although the tide was unfavorable, immediately cast off ropes and started—landing the two young men in New York almost penniless.
They, however, quickly procured employment, and later Ned became one of the most powerful newspaper writers in Canada, sought after by prominent politicians of both parties. Besides Sir John and Sir Wilfrid, Sir Richard Cartwright was a close personal friend, and many members of the different cabinets sought his sound advice and pleasant company. At Washington, he had many friends in high political positions, Jas. G. Blaine, Senator Hoar and Congressman Hitt being amongst those most intimate with him.