Once more I left the Hall and spoke my rugged friends. Yes, it was after eight, but the people wanted a bit of margin. Half-past eight was the time intended. Half-an-hour's march around, and back again. The crowd was swelled from two to three persons. Fifteen minutes more, and further inquiry.
"When will the meeting begin."
"When the people comes."
"But they're an hour late already."
"Sure ye can't hurry thim."
At 9.15 I went again.
"Meeting begun yet?" I asked.
"Just startin' now. The praste's afther goin' in."
"You're rather unpunctual."
"Arrah, how would we begin widout his Rivirince!" This was unanswerable. Once more into the breach, up the lonely shivery steps. This time I heard voices, and opening a door found a narrow room with about twenty people therein. The show was just agoing to begin, for, as I entered, somebody proposed that the Priest should take the chair. A short, stout, red faced man, with black coat and white choker, seemed to expect no less, and moved into the one-and-ninepenny Windsor with alacrity. He spoke with the vilest, boggiest kind of brogue, and the hideous accent of vulgar Ulster; calling who "hu" with a French u, should "shoed," and pronouncing every word beginning with un as if beginning with on—ontil, onless, ondhersthand, ondhertake. "Ye'll excuse me makin' a spache, fur av I did I'd make a varry bad one," said the holy man, and the audience seemed to believe him. Enrolment was the order of the day, and the thousands were requested to come forward. A man next me went to the front and paid a shilling, receiving in return a green ticket, with Ireland a Nation printed at the top. He twirled it round and round, and seemed disappointed to find there was nothing on the other side. The secretary encouraged the meeting by the official statement that the local Featheration now numbered nearly sixty members, whereat there was great rejoicing, the masses (to the number of twenty) working off their emotion by thumping their heels on the floor. The meeting, after this exultant outburst, got slower and slower, and threatened to expire of inanition. Divil a mother's son could be got to shpake a single wurud. Some malevolent influence overhung the masses. His Rivirince sent down a messenger to me with the request that I would say a few wuruds. Declined, with thanks, as being no speaker. Uncertainty as to my colour and object still prevailed; and silence, not loud, but deep, succeeded this artful feeler. Father O'Murtagh (or words to that effect) to the rescue! The Rivirind Gintleman arose and delivered a bitter attack on Parnell, whom he characterised as mean, base, untruthful, treacherous, and contemptible. The foinest pisintry in the wuruld could not be soiled by contact with anybody like Parnell, and therefore the Catholic bishops had been compelled to give him up, and to say, Get thee behind me, Satanas. The dear Father did not tell the meeting why the bishops waited sixteen days after the verdict of the Court, and until Mr. Gladstone had delivered judgment, before deciding to cut Parnell adrift. Father O'Murtagh (I think that was the name) made some allusion to the present crisis of public affairs—(he called it cresses)—and assured his masses that the Tories were about to be for ever plucked from the pedestal on which they had long been planted by ascendency and greed! This was not so racy as the mixed metaphor of a Galway paper, which assures its readers that "the Unionist party will soon be compelled to disgorge the favouritism which for so long has been centred in their hands;" but it might pass. His Rivirince made some feeble jokes, and the audience tried to laugh, but failed. "They say that whin we luck at ourselves in the lucking lass, we see nothin' but Whigs," said the funny Father, and the audience sniggered. This was his masterpiece. He finished with "It's wondherful what a spache ye can make whin ye have nothin' to say;" and the masses sniggered again. Ten minutes more of silence broken only by whispered confabulations of the secretary and chairman, and I grew tired of obstructing the march to Freedom. I left the chair, the only one at my end of the room, with considerable regret. Part of the back, one upright, was still remaining, and although the thing had evidently been used in argument at some previous meeting, it hung together, and good work might still have been done with the legs. A gentleman with a complexion like a blast furnace, and a facial expression which looked like a wholesale infraction of the Ten Commandments, was smoking moodily on the steps.