the secluded man of letters for a life of endless toil than the affection he awakens in youthful breasts?
Father Tom Maguire, who was then exceedingly popular as a successful controversialist, was another unexpected visitor; a vigorous, agile man, with abounding life in every limb. He looked like a weather-beaten missionary who had encountered, and triumphed over, all the storms of life. Modern taste would probably pronounce him unclerical, but he stood above convention, and was in spirit and endowments a genuine tribune of the people.
A brief visit to my mother first brought me into personal contact with a friend destined to largely influence my life. Thomas O'Hagan, whom hitherto I had only known as a young editor, was now a practising barrister at the outset of a prosperous career, and was on circuit at Monaghan when I reached that town. The good old parish priest, Dean Bellew, invited us to his table tête-à-tête, and from that day a friendship commenced which was only interrupted by his death half a century later. He was four years my senior in age, and many more years in discipline and experience, and I can well recall that he looked as much the ideal of a nobleman then in his early manhood as when afterwards he wore the ermine of a chancellor and the coronet of a peer. Wig and gown were not yet worn on circuit, but in the evening dress which was substituted for them his sweet, serene countenance (in which I afterwards so often found comfort and confidence in the troubles of life) seemed to me an ideal of intellectual and manly beauty. I loved and trusted him entirely from the outset, and his influence on my character constantly tended to make me more considerate and circumspect, that I might be less unworthy of my friend.[1]
Shortly afterwards a transaction occurred in my native county in which the value of a man of the character and capacity of O'Hagan became manifest. The High Sheriff of Monaghan appointed as his sub-sheriff, on whom the busi-
- ↑ A few months later I made a second visit to Monaghan, summoned to the death-bed of my mother. I saw death face to face almost for the first time when the pale phantom struck the dearest and best of mothers. That last scene is very familiar to my memory, and there is perhaps no incident in my life which I have recalled so often or with such contentment as her last words, "God bless my son Charles."
