e I took him by the hand and
said, "How are you, John?"

"Why, Adlai, do you know me?" was the prompt response.

"Know you," said I, "didn't we go to school together to Mr. Caskie
right here at Blue Water, when we were boys?"

"Yas, of course we did," slowly answered by sometime school-fellow,
"but you been 'sociatin' with them big fellows down about Washington
so long, that I didn't know but what you had forgot us poor fellows
down in the Pennyrile."

Assuring him that I never forgot my old friends, I inquired, "John,
where is your brother Bill?"

"He's here," was the instant reply. "Me and Bill started before
daylight to get to this barbecue in time. Bill 'lowed _he'd ruther
go forty miles on foot to hear you make a speech, than go to a
hangin'."_

XXXII
A TRIBUTE TO IRELAND*

[*Footnote: Speech delivered by Mr. Stevenson at a banquet of
the United Irish Societies of Chicago, September, 1900.]

THE WRITER'S VISIT TO NOTABLE PLACES IN IRELAND--HIS TRIBUTE OF
PRAISE TO HER GREAT MEN--AMERICA'S OBLIGATION TO IRISH SOLDIERS
AND STATESMEN.

I accepted with pleasure the invitation to meet with you. For the
courtesy so generously extended me I am profoundly grateful.

Within late years it has been my privilege to visit Ireland; and
I can truly say that no country in Europe possessed for me a deeper
interest than the little island about whose name clusters so much of
romance and of enchantment. I saw Ireland in its beauty and its
gloom; in its glory and in its desolation. I stood upon the Giant's
Causeway, one of the grand masterpieces of the Almighty; I visited
the historic parks and deserted legislative halls of venerated
Dublin; threaded the streets and byways of the quaint old city
of Cork; listened the bells of Shandon; sailed over the beautiful
lakes of Killarney, and gazed upon the old castles of Muckross and
of Blarney, whose ivy-covered ruins tell of the far-away centuries.
What a wonderful island! The birthplace of wits, of warriors,
of statesmen, of poets, and of orators. Of its people it has been
truly said: "They have fought successfully the battles of every
country but their own."

Upon occasion such as this, the Irishman--to whatever spot in this
wide world he may have wandered--lives in the shadow of the past.
In imagination he is once more under the ancestral roof; the
vine-clad cottage is again a thing of reality. Again he wears the
shamrock; again he hears the songs of his nati