Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu/357

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HIS LIFE, POEMS AND SPEECHES
317

boat. If you are down there in time, look out for this fellow. Perhaps it would be well to go to the Swamp to get him. It is only an hour's ride there from Norfolk.

We will have a memorable time, old man.

Bring lots of good quinine. I will bring some also.

Faithfully,

Boyle.

June 6, 1888.

Dear Ned:

If there be a map of the Dismal Swamp anywhere in Washington, please get it for our article. We need it badly.

Send me any other notes you may think of.

Send for the map at once. It must be engraved here.

Faithfully,

J. B. O'R.

June 27, 1888.

Dear Ned:

.... Please see King and thank him for the antlers and maps (which I shall return safely in a week or two). Also ask him if he sent or instructed any one to send me a keg of wine. A keg of delicious wine came to me last week—no letter, no bill. I want to pay for it.

My article (four pages of Herald and Sun) will appear on Sunday, July 1—copious illustrations. I shall reproduce all the good plates in my book directly from the negatives. Send me everything you can about the Swamp.

My little Blanid has been very ill, dying almost, for two weeks. I could not write. I was up day and night. She is better now, thank God.

My love to you, dear Ned.

Faithfully,

Boyle O'Reilly.

He enjoyed his trip through the Swamp amazingly, and was especially interested in its quaint human inhabitants, nearly all fugitive slaves or their descendants.

"His wonderful ability to place himself en rapport with all classes of men, and adapt himself to the capacity of others to understand him," writes his companion, Mr. Moseley, "was well illustrated in our Dismal Swamp trip, when the half-civilized blacks of that lonely region, many of whom had never been outside the dark recesses of the