Armoured Car.
From the hotel the car proceeded to the Bank of Ireland, and took over £10,000 in silver, and started on its round to all the post offices, delivering the money in perfect safety. I will try and send you a photograph of one of these most ingenious conveyances.
After it had started on its round I went with H. to see the temporary sorting offices. H. had secured an enormous skating rink at the back of the Rotunda, and here all the sorting of letters was going on, with no apparatus whatever except what the men had contrived for themselves out of seats, benches and old scenery. They were all hard at work—a regular hive of bees. We think it is greatly to the credit of the Post Office staff that in twelve days from the outbreak of the rebellion and three days after the actual cessation of hostilities the whole service was reorganised, with two deliveries a day in Dublin, besides the ordinary country and mail deliveries. The engineers and telegraphists were no less wonderful. Indeed the staff from top to bottom of the office have worked splendidly, and H. is very proud of them. We looked in at the poor G.P.O. on our way back. It is still smouldering, and it will be quite a fortnight before any excavations can be begun, but H. hopes to get the safe that contains many of our treasures out of the wall and opened in a few days.
To-day a Dr. C. who is staying in the hotel told me of an extraordinary escape he had had during one of the days of the rebellion. He was walking through one of the squares, which he had been told was clear of snipers, with an old friend of about eighty, when suddenly a bullet struck the pavement at the feet of his friend and ricochetted off. It was within an inch of the old gentleman's feet, and he was greatly interested, wanting to find the bullet to keep as a memento. While they were looking about for it a man who had been walking just behind them passed them on the pavement, and had only gone a few yards when they heard a second rifle shot, and the man dropped like a stone, shot through the heart. Dr. C. ran up to him, but he was quite dead. There was absolutely no safety anywhere from the snipers; man, woman, or child, nothing came amiss to them. It was dastardly fighting, if it could be called fighting at all.
A few days after St. Stephen's Green was supposed to have been cleared of rebels, we were told of a young woman whose husband was home from the war wounded and in one of the hospitals. She was going to see him, so took a short cut through the Green, when she was shot through the thigh; it is supposed by a rebel, in hiding in the shrubberies.
I am sending off my other letters to you to-morrow, as we hear the censorship is no longer so strict, and as from the papers the position here seems now to be known in England private letters are not likely to be stopped. I will keep this till the safe is opened and tell you the result.
15th.
To-day Mr. O'B. brought his wife to see me, and they have offered us their lovely house, Celbridge Abbey, about ten miles from Dublin, for five or six weeks from June 1st as they are going abroad again, and they thought we should like it for a change. We are more than grateful, as all our plans for going to Greystones for June and July are knocked on the head; but to Celbridge there is a good train service, and H. can come into Dublin every day, while I can revel in the lovely garden and grounds and recover in the peace and quiet my lost powers of sleep. What a kind thought it is, and how welcome at such a time! Celbridge Abbey was the home of Swift's "Vanessa," and later of Grattan, Ireland's greatest orator, so is a most interesting and historical place.
17th.