Secretaries.—Patrick Haley, Peter O'Connell, and John Green.
John Boyle O'Reilly was present, and Captain Anthony was the guest of honor. Mr. Smith, the Catalpa's mate, and Thomas Hassett, one of the rescued men, were also present.
Dr. Hayes expressed his gratitude that the political prisoners were now in the land of the free, where the flag which protected them on the Catalpa would continue to protect them as long as it waved.
O'Reilly's address on this occasion was one of his most eloquent efforts, and it is to be regretted that it is not preserved in its entirety. The summaries which were printed in the newspapers do him very inadequate justice.
He said that it was with no ordinary feelings that he had come. He owed to New Bedford no ordinary debt, and he would gladly have come a thousand miles to do honor to New Bedford whalemen. Seven years of liberty, wife, children, and a happy home in a free country were his debt of gratitude, and when the close of his sentence came, in 1886, his debt to New Bedford might be grown too heavy to bear.
They were there, he said, to do honor to Captain Anthony, to show their gratitude to the man who had done a brave and wonderful deed. The self-sacrifice and unfailing devotion of him who had taken his life in his hand and beached his whaleboat on the penal colony, defying its fearful laws, defying the gallows and the chain-gang, in order to keep
