CHAPTER XV.
DOCTOR JERRIE CROWLEY, DOCTOR ANTHONY O’RYAN, CHARLES KICKHAM, THE PHŒNIX SOCIETY.
After my marriage, my late employer moved into a new house he had built. I rented the house in which I had lived with him the previous four or five years, and I carried on the business of hardware and agricultural seeds merchant. I prospered, pretty fairly, every way. I had my advertising bills and posters printed in the Irish language. One side of the house fronted a square, and on that side, I had painted the words:
“Here, honest value you will find
In farm seeds, of every kind;
If once you try, so pleased you’ll be,
You’ll come to buy again from me.”
The business language of the shop was mostly Irish, as that was mostly the business language of the farmers around who dealt with me. The first Irish-language book I came to read was a book of Irish poems with translations by Edward Walsh. I was able to read these Irish poems without any previous book-study of the language. The man who gave me the book was John O’Driscoll—a grandson of the Irish poet, John Collins, of Myross. When O’Driscoll was a national school-teacher, he had been up in Dublin in the training school, and brought the book home with him.