The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1896-06-27
In .THB Old PARNELL DAYS.
Wilton o'Brien Drops Into a Remi1is-
cent Mood About Lon 1
don. s s5 \
WHEN OLD MEMBERS NET AND D1HED
Those Times contrasted With the
Present and It's Con-
flicts.
Mr.. William o'Brien contributes YER

Mr. William O'Brien contributes very
interesting article entitled London Re-
yisited-Some "reminiscences, to the
current number Of the Contemporary Re
vnew. 1t opens with a description Of the
| Parnell commission, to which Mr.. O'Brien
and other Nationalists, then imprisoned
under the coercion law, were brought
! over as witnesses. After touching brief
! iy on his personal experience in the court,
| the writer says:
The time has perhaps come when one
may safely tell another curious incident
of those times. Two Of the members for
! Tipperary-Mr. Condor and Mr.. John
O'Connor-were among the prisoners
| pstroled for the day, and there being no
chance of their evidence being reached.
| whiled away the time by strolling over
to the Office of the Freeman's Journal at
the opposite end Of the Strand. There
! they met "a famous Irish singer, upon
! whose voice opera gocrs hung with rap
| ture at the time in Drury Lane But the
| great baritone is never half SO thrilling
as in an Irish rebel ballad. He simply
| rises in a glorious insurrection OF song.
(; AS the two Irish prisoners have capital
voices as well, their greetings naturally
warmed into melody. The great singer
burst into the best of all his songs, The
| Wearing Of the Green" The windows
were open; the traffic On the Strand was
at high tide. The singers glorious chest
notes tloated across the street against the
| Gothic sound board Of the Law Courts.
People stopped TO listen, and other people,
and then the cabs and busses. The inev-
liable Irish element turned up in the
crowd, and regardless OF the policenlan's
half-hearted order to move on, would
fam join in the chorus, and go into costa
cies of applause. Soon the street, in
which English "justlce" was engaged in
its back room strangling the Irish cause,
was ringing with the tremendous chorus
! ssW1en laws can keep the blades of grass
! from growing as they grow,
And when the leaves at summer time thelr
color dare not show
| Then we will change the color, too, we wear
in our caubeen,
But til that day, l please God Wen STICK TO
III was perhaps as eloquent sign in its
way as Piggott's suicide. of the hopeless
ness Of beating down the Irish cause by
larnell commission methods.
Alas! But it has its woeful commission
court No freshman can, without emo
tion. contrast the position OF the Irish
marty in that hour Of triumphant, vindi-
Gated, irresistible, only waiting the signal
of the general election to have the seal
put ON their triumph for ever-Wlth our
broken ranks today, when the tate that
has sundered into opposite camps the TWO
Tipperary members who started that
! chorus of stThe Wearing OF the Green" is
| but type of the tragic sundering OF their
comrades. The traversers' counsel ct
those old days have undergone transfer
nation as sharply in contrast With that
of their clients as Engiand's sunshlnny
| history is with Ireland's. Sir Charles
Russell is Lord Russell Of Killowen and
! lord chief Justice of England; Mr.. Reed Is
| Sir Robert Reed late attorney general;
| MIR. Lockwood is Sir Frank Lockwood,
late solicitor general; Mr.. AsqUth, then
plain Junior counsel, has been home
secretary, and may be prime minister
Mr.. George Lewis has become the Ia
nous Sir George. There is none CT
their Old clients who does not heartily
rejoice in their happier faith, but what
a scattering of these same clients; what
shipwreck of their hopes; what gloom1er
than Greek tragedy has shattered the
unity which used to be the wonder OF their
foes
I entered the House of Commons at a
moment when mutual prejud!ces were All
their blackest-in the beginning OF 1883
The dramatic incidents of Carey's reveal
| tions Of the conspiracy Of the lnvinclbles
were In full swing. 1t seems an odd in
stance of English simplicity now; but you
could every day read in the papers, and
even see in mems faces, the expectation
that tomorrow or the day after would
bring some revelation which would Involve
the fate, perhaps even the lives, OF the
Irish party. What whirligig is politics!
| The day took my seat, the first English
man land, except Mr.. Joseph Cowen, the
only EnglishmaD who shook hands with
me and welcomed me was Mr.. Joseph
Chamberlain.
Man by man, the House of Commons is
! full of bonhom:e. It's judgments OF men
are often wrong, but they are never wrong
by reason of any undue regard for the
length of mans purse or the number Of
his u1larterings. But when the hearty, toll
Grant (once in a way stupid) EngIishmenl
of the smoking room or the terrace flock
in at the division bell to speak, as it We're,
ey cathedra, as England, ruler Of the
waves. they even yet call up before my
memory the cruel, unteachable, repellent
power of those old days when to me the
NEST delightful prospect in all great Lon
don was the Euston railway platform.
Not that life was without it's compensa-
tons in those far off times when we only
knew cabinet ministers as our ja1}ols.
There is no wine Of France to compare
with the Joy of the forlorn hope. Few Of
us can survey our present thinned and di-
vided ranks without sigh for the days
when, if practically all the world was
against us, all the world was young; and
| there was at least one small corner OF the
| world, shamrock spangled, that was with
| us to the brave and loving heart OF it, and
that to us was worth more than all the
! world besides. Then the under-dog had