County Durham, England,
May 9, 1872.

My dear Rossa—Twenty times within the past four months, I have sat down with the intention of writing you a long letter; but as often those circumstances over which one has no control interposed their ill-favored presence. Even as it is, I cannot catch time for an interchange of thoughts, and only scribble a few lines to ask you to get our friend whom it concerns to look after two gentlemen of my acquaintance, now on your side of the Atlantic, and who complain they can’t get credit among you. Their names and addresses are as follows: Thomas Smith and Owen Murray, late of the North of England. Address, under cover, to John Kelly, Spuyten Duyvil, Westchester County, N. Y. If you would kindly see after this I would be obliged.

I duly received your card, per favor of Mr. Scanlan, to whose letter, by the way, I have never since replied, and about which you must apologize for me, should you see him, as he is an old and valued friend.

I address this to the private address on your card—under cover, to Mrs. Kelly.

I have been reading your letters to the Dublin Irishman with great interest, and having the misfortune to know something about the United States, through two visits made during your imprisonment, I can thoroughly appreciate and feel for your unenviable position of nineteenth century knight-errant and Paladin in the cause of distressed virtue.

Be assured that if ever I take up such a rôle—and you must pardon my saying so—I will display greater discrimination in the choice of a sphere of action. I know well the retort that will spring to your lips—that those “who live in glass houses should not throw stones”—and, that those who constitute themselves champions of a lot of “coundfounded, hairy, greasy foreigners” should not talk of wisdom. But, after all, you know what the United States Germans say—“the longer a man lives, the more he finds out,” and I can only say in the words of the immemorial schoolboy, “I’ll never do it again, sir.”

I was a prisoner of war in Bavaria when I read of your release, and, would you believe it, it was a Roman Catholic clergyman who brought me the news, and was actually—he said—glad to hear of it.

Truth, they say, is stranger than fiction—and as the Turcos used to exclaim, “Be chesm, on my head and my eyes be it,” if what I tell you isn’t correct.

Time, paper and nonsensical ideas being all run out—with best respects to Mrs. O’D. and all old friends, I remain ever yours,

E. O’Donovan.