Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/306

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JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

To call the globe a fruit is rash and risky;
But if it be, its juice is Irish whisky!

Stick well to this, old friend, and you will take
With graceful ease the Consul's largest cake.
Good-by! God speed you! On the other side
We know that you will take no bastard pride
In aping foreign manners, but will show
That Democrats are Gentlemen, who know
Their due to others and what others owe
To them and to their country—that you will.
When years bring out our Mugwumps, turn your face
Toward home and friends to fill your old-time place
The same old-time Papyrus-Yankee still.

O'Reilly's speech at the dedication of the monument to J. Edward O'Kelly, on November 23, attracted wide attention, and provoked a brief but spirited controversy. A rash critic, who yet was not rash enough to write over his own name, wrote to the Boston Herald, informing "the editor of the Pilot that long before his day the sentence of hanged, drawn, and quartered was done away with; and, although it may not be a matter to be pleased about, the writer can to-day say where are to be found the 'gallows-irons' in which hung the corpse of the last man so condemned in Great Britain. That was long before Mr. John Boyle O'Reilly became a Fenian . . . . Such an unchristian style of sentence as that of the culprit being hanged, drawn and quartered had ceased to exist before Mr. O'Reilly was born; and I can only say that I believe he indited that epitaph for the same purpose he addressed the audience at the meeting of the National Land League recently, that is, to stir up dissent, if his power could do it, between the two greatest countries upon the earth."

O'Reilly replied very conclusively to this critic, who had signed himself "Mancenium":

To the Editor of the Herald:

A writer in your paper of to-day questions the accuracy of my definition of the English capital sentence for high treason. The writer is evidently ignorant of the question, and is only filled with a desire to