seller of the people were stricken with sudden and unexpected paralysis. Dillon and O'Hagan were the men whose advice I had always sought in trouble; MacNevin was the friend who could be counted on whenever promptitude was necessary to do any literary work in the Nation, or submit an opinion to the Association on the briefest notice, and at the moment I lost Davis these three friends were lost almost simultaneously. Dillon was languishing under the effects of the ruptured blood-vessel, of which the reader has heard, and was under orders to winter in a warmer climate, under penalty of speedy death. He attempted to come to Dublin on receiving the news of Davis's death, but his doctor and family absolutely prohibited him. He wrote something for the Nation, but the stamp of his malady was on it, and for the first time, and when his aid was most needed, he found himself a rejected contributor, and thanked me for rejecting him. MacNevin complained that he was suffering from an unaccountable lethargy which made work a torture. He would always do what he could for the Nation, but never again enter Conciliation Hall. He did not know and none of us suspected the cause of this mysterious trouble. The spirit so gay and loving, the large heart and large intellect were soon stricken with the most painful disorder under which a human creature can suffer, and after a brief eclipse of his faculties he followed Davis to the grave. John O'Hagan had made the preliminary arrangements to enter a pleader's office, and he and his comrade, John Pigot, were about to start for London when Davis died. No distance, I was well aware, could break his affectionate ties to the Nation, but he would no longer be at hand ready, as of old, for every emergency. MacCarthy and Barry wrote only verse and occasional criticism, and counted for little in the political counsels of the party. Doheny, who had remarkable power of popular oratory, was a speaker rather than a writer, and, moreover, belonged to an elder generation, and Richard O'Gorman was exclusively a speaker, having never written in the journal before or after. O'Neill Daunt gave us sympathy and good-will, but he could not be counted on to pursue any policy not previously sanctioned at Conciliation Hall. The defamation with which Davis had been assailed was now directed against his comrades, and it
