Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1896-08-27

America, my heart turns to Ireland,
for there live the five children who
have been left to me out of family OF
II. l am very old woman, and 1t is
right that should end my days among
them. l have not been in Ireland since
1892, when l visited the grave that is
said to contain the body of my son.
/ saw the grave, but 1t stirred no emo
ton within me. II the body which re-
poses within the grave be that of my
son, Charles Stewart Parnell, then !
am firm and answering in my belief
that he was the victim of British NAL
ice, which instigated his murder in
order to remove from the field the
greatest champion Of Irish free
dom, and thus clear the way for that
species of perpetual quietly carried on
oppression which was renewed in Ire
land from the very day Of his disap-
pearance. / was in America at the
time my son died, but have been
often told since that no one who knew
| the face of Charles Stewart Parnell was
allowed to see him after he was said
to have died. have letter from his
wife, who had been Mrs. O'Shea, which
tells me that even she did not see the
body of her husband and my son after
his supposed death; that she was for
chilly kept from seeing the body. She
wrote me that on the night before he
is supposed to have died Parnell com
planned of rheumatism in his left arm.
She did not see him after he retired
that night, and never looked upon his
features again.
But the physicians who examined
the body, from the sight Of which
every one who had known Parnell was
kept, pronounced that he had died OF
rheumatism of the heart Who ever
heard of rheumatism travelling from
the left arm to the heart and killing
man in a single night? There was q
reason for all this. Either Charles
Stewart Parnell was the victim Of an
English assassin, who so mutilated the
body that it would have been impossi'
BILE for his friends to have looked upon
it without forming suspicious, Of
Charles Stewart Parnell did not die a.
all, and the body of another man wa'
substituted for his in his coffin, while
he himself disappeared.
81 myself firmly believe that my sor
is alive today This belief is shared by
some Of my children and by many o.
the friends who knew and loved hin
before his disappearance, An lrisf
lady of very high standing and charac
ter, and very old friend Of my fam
ily has written to me that not Ions
after he was supposed to have beer
buried she herself saw Charles Stewar
Parnell standing within the shadow o
vault in the cemetery sadly watching
the friends of his other days whil'
they covered with flowers the gray,
, which the world imagines to be hie
: She was so overcome that she sanl
back fainting upon one Of the cemeter!
benches, and when she recovered her
self my son had disappeared.
= MANY other circumstances combin
to add to my determined belief tina
my son lives. There are two ways o
} accounting for his disappearance. TIL
first is that, having exhausted all of hi
= means in assisting the Irish cause
= and, indeed, he was f25,OOO in deb
when his death is said to have takel
e place-and saddened and overburdenet
5 by the undeserved disgrace which ha
Q befallen him, he resolved to voluntarily
disappear, after devising means t
make it appear that he had really died.