nd; and at a moment when an attempt, that
came to nothing, was being made to combine once more our constitutional
and unconstitutional politics, I had been asked to represent them at some
convention in the United States. I went to consult Johnson, whom I found
sitting at a table with books about him. I was greatly tempted, because I
was promised complete freedom of speech; and I was at the time enraged by
some wild articles published by some Irish American newspaper, suggesting
the burning down of the houses of Irish landlords. Nine years later I was
lecturing in America, and a charming old Irishman came to see me with an
interview to write, and we spent, and as I think in entire neglect of his
interview, one of the happiest hours I have ever spent, comparing our
tales of the Irish fairies, in which he very firmly believed. When he had
gone I looked at his card, to discover that he was the writer of that
criminal incitement. I told Johnson that if I had a week to decide in I
would probably decide to go, but as they had only given me three days, I
had refused. He would not hear of my refusal with so much awaiting my
condemnation; and that condemnation would be effective with Catholics, for
he would find me passages in the Fathers, condemning every kind of
political crime, that of the dynamiter and the incendiary especially. I
asked how could the Fathers have condemned weapons they had never heard
of, but those weapons, he contended, were merely developments of old
methods and weapons; they had decided all in principle; but I need not
trouble myself about the matter, for he would put into my hands before I
sailed the typewritten statement of their doctrine, dealing with the
present situation in the utmost detail. He seemed perfectly logical, but a
little more confident and impassioned than usual, and I had, I think,
promised to accept--when he rose from his chair, took a step towards me in
his eagerness, and fell on to the floor; and I saw that he was drunk. From
that on, he began to lose control of his life; he shifted from Charlotte
Street, where, I think, there was fear that he would overset lamp or
candle and burn the house, to Gray's Inn, and from Gray's Inn to old
rambling rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and at last one called to find his
outer door shut, the milk on the doorstep sour. Sometimes I would urge him
to put himself, as Jack Nettleship had done, into an Institute. One day
when I had been very urgent, he spoke