Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/354

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JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.
But when a resolution is passed in Ireland demanding that the Mayor of New York should hoist the Irish flag on the City Hall, as a right of "the Irish race throughout the world," we take sides with Mayor Hewitt; and we advise the Dublin branch of the National League that it has made a grave mistake that ought to be amended; and that the person who drafted the above resolution ought not to be trusted with the wording. of its withdrawal.

Mr. Hewitt failed of re-election, not because the Dublin National League had disapproved of his conduct, but because sensible Americans regarded him as a fidgety nuisance.

"In the month of May, 1888, two sunburned white men, in cedar canoes, turned at right angles from the broad waters of the Dismal Swamp Canal, and entered the dark and narrow channel, called the Feeder, that pierces the very heart of the swamp."

The two sunburned white men, thus mentioned by one of them, were Edward A. Moseley and John Boyle O' Reilly. It was their last canoeing trip together, and is picturesquely chronicled by O'Reilly's pen and Moseley's camera in the former's volume on "Athletics and Manly Sport," published in the same year by Ticknor & Co., Boston, and republished in a second edition, two years later, by the Pilot Publishing Co. It has a frontispiece portrait of Donoghue's statue, "The Boxer," and is dedicated:

TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT A LOVE FOR
INNOCENT SPORT, PLAYFUL EXERCISE,
AND ENJOYMENT OF NATURE,
IS A BLESSING INTENDED NOT ONLY FOR
THE YEARS OF BOYHOOD, BUT FOR
THE WHOLE LIFE OF A MAN.

In his introduction, recognizing the prejudice which exists against boxing, he quoted Bunyan's lines:

Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;
Some said. It might do good; others said. No.

The book is a cyclopaedia of the history and evolution of pugilism, defending the exercise for its value as a