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toward us," observed my monitor, "is Uncle Jake Anderson. He has a hat bet that you will know him." Thus advised, I was ready for trial, and warmly grasping the hand extended me, I earnestly inquired, “Uncle Jake, how are you?” “Do you know me, boy?" was his immediate response. "Know you?" I replied. "You and my father were near neighbors for years; how could I help knowing you?" "Yes, of course," he said, "but you being gone so long, and now running for President, I did n't know but what you had forgotten all about the old neighbors down on the Lick." Assuring him that I had forgotten none of them, and congratulating him upon the hat he had won, I passed on to the next.

The interview described was repeated with slight variations, many times, when my attendant remarked:

"That man leaning against the tree is John Dunloe; do you remember him?"

"Certainly," I replied, "I went to school with him." Immediately approaching my early classmate I took him by the hand and said, "How are you, John?"

"Why, Adlai, do you know me?" was the prompt response. "Know you," said I, "did n't we go to school together to Mr. Caskie right here at Blue Water, when we were boys?"

"Yas, of course we did," slowly answered my sometime school-fellow, "but you been 'sociatin' with them big fellows down about Washington so long, that I did n't know but what you had forgot us poor fellows down in the Pennyrile."

Assuring him that I never forgot my old friends, I inquired, "John, where is your brother Bill?"

"He's here," was the instant reply "Me and Bill started before daylight to get to this barbecue in time. Bill 'lowed he'd ruther go forty miles on foot to hear you make a speech, than go to a hangin'."

XXXII

A TRIBUTE TO IRELAND*

THE WRITER'S VISIT TO NOTABLE PLACES IN IRELAND HIS TRIBUTE OF PRAISE TO HER GREAT MEN AMERICA'S OBLIGATION TO IRISH SOLDIERS AND STATESMEN.

I

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ACCEPTED with pleasure the invitation to meet with you. For the courtesy so generously extended me I am profoundly grateful.

Within late years it has been my privilege to visit Ireland; and I can truly say that no country in Europe possessed for me a deeper interest than the little island about whose name clusters so much of romance and of enchantment. I saw Ireland in its beauty and in its gloom; in its glory and in its desolation. I stood upon the Giant's Causeway, one of the grand masterpieces of the Almighty; I visited the historic parks and deserted legislative halls of venerated Dublin; threaded the streets and byways of the quaint old city of Cork; listened to the bells of Shandon; sailed over the beautiful lakes of Killarney, and gazed upon the old castles of Muckross and of Blarney, whose ivy-covered ruins tell of the far-away centuries. What a wonderful island! The birthplace of wits, of warriors, of statesmen, of poets, and of orators. Of its people it has been truly said: "They have fought successfully the battles of every country but their own."

Upon occasion such as this, the Irishman - to whatever spot in this wide world he may have wandered - lives in the shadow of the past. In imagination he is once more under the ancestral roof; the vine-clad cottage is again a thing of reality. Again he wears the shamrock; again he hears the songs of his native land, while his heart is stirred by memories of her wrongs and of her glory.

What a splendid contribution Ireland has made to the

*Speech delivered by Mr. Stevenson at a banquet of the United Irish Societies of Chicago, September, 1900.

world's galaxy of great men! In the realm of poetry, Goldsmith and Tom Moore; of oratory, Sheridan, Emmett, Grattan, O'Connell, Burke, and in later years Charles Stewart Parnell, whose thrilling words I heard a third of a century ago, pleading the cause of his oppressed countrymen.

The obligation of America to Ireland for men who have aided in fighting her battles and framing her laws cannot be measured by words. In the British possessions to the northward, in the old city of Quebec, there is one spot dear to the American heart that where fell the brave Montgomery, fighting the battles of his adopted country. What schoolboy is not familiar with the story of gallant Phil Sheridan and "Winchester twenty miles away"? Illinoisans will never forget Shields, the hero of two wars, the senator from three States. It was an Irish-American poet of a neighboring State who wrote of our fallen soldiers words that will live while we have a country and a language:

"The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo;

No more on life's parade shall meet
That brave and fallen few."

The achievements of representatives of this race along every pathway of useful and honorable endeavor are a part of our own history. We honor to-day the far-away island, the deeds and sacrifices of whose sons have added so brilliant a chapter to American history. From the assembling of the First Continental Congress to the present hour, in every legislative hall the Irishman has been a factor. His bones have whitened every American battlefield from the first conflict with the British regulars to the closing hour of our struggle with Spain.

The love of liberty is deeply ingrained into the very life of the Irishman. The history of his country is that of a gallant people struggling for a larger measure of freedom. His most precious heritage is the record of his countrymen, who upon the battlefield and upon the scaffold have sealed their devotion to liberty with their blood. With such men it was a living faith that

"Whether on the scaffold high
Or in the battle's van

The fittest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man."

With a history reaching into the far past, every page of which tells of the struggle for liberty, it is not strange that the sympathies of the Irishman are with the oppressed everywhere on God's footstool. Irishmen, in common with libertyloving men everywhere, looked with abhorrence upon the attempt of a great European power to establish monarchy upon the ruins of republics.

May we not confidently abide in the hope that brighter days are in waiting for the beautiful island and her gallant people? I close with the words: "God bless old Ireland!"

XXXIII

THE BLIND CHAPLAIN

DR. MILBURN'S SOLEMNITY IN PRAYER

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Milburn, the blind chaplain, can ever forget his earnest and solemn invocation. When rolling from his tongue, each word of the Lord's Prayer seemed to weigh a pound. His venerable appearance and sightless eyes gave a tinge of pathetic emphasis to his every utterance. He was a man of rare gifts; in early life, before the entire failure of his sight, he had known much of active service in his sacred calling upon Western circuits. He had been the fellow-laborer of Cartwright, Bascom, and other eminent Methodist ministers of the early times.

Dr. Milburn was the Chaplain of the House during the Mexican War, and often a guest at the Executive Mansion when Mr. Polk was President. He knew well many of the leading statesmen of that period. He possessed rare conversational powers; and notwithstanding his blindness, poverty, and utter loneliness, he remained the pleasing, entertaining gentleman to the last.

It was the custom of the good Chaplain, with the aid of a faithful monitor, to keep thoroughly advised as to the health of the senators and their families. The bare mention, in the morning paper, of any ill having befallen any statesman of whom he was, for the time, the official spiritual shepherd, was the unfailing precursor of special and affectionate mention at the next convening of the Senate. Moreover, in the discharge of this sacred duty, his invariable habit was to designate the object of his special invocation as "the Senior Senator" or "Junior Senator," carefully giving the name of his State. It is within the realm of probability that since

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