nce told me that a friend of his
asked one of these how they could live in such places? "Because," was
the reply, "we live so much _out_ of them." The answer showed, at any
rate, that their lot was borne cheerfully.

Nevertheless, there are Irishmen too--men who know how to keep what they
have earned--who, by degrees, get into the higher circles of the
commercial world, so that I have seen among the merchant princes "on
'Change" in Liverpool men who, themselves, or whose fathers before them,
commenced life in the humblest avocations.

Liverpool has, on the whole, been a "stony-hearted stepmother" to its
Irish colony, which largely built its granite sea-walls, and for many
years humbly did the laborious work on which the huge commerce of the
port rested. But, perhaps, in years to come Liverpool will realise the
value of the wealth of human brains and human hearts which it held for
so long unregarded or despised in its midst.

CHAPTER II.

DISTINGUISHED IRISHMEN--"THE NATION" NEWSPAPER--"THE HIBERNIANS."

I have met, as I have said elsewhere, most of the Irish political
leaders of my time in Liverpool, but I will always remember with what
pleasure I listened to a distinguished Irishman of another type, Samuel
Lover, when he was travelling with an entertainment consisting of
sketches from his own works and selections from his songs. Few men were
more versatile than Lover, for he was a painter, musician, composer,
novelist, poet, and dramatist. When I saw him in one of the public halls
he sang his own songs, told his own stories, and was his own
accompanist.

His was one of a series of performances, very popular in Liverpool for
many years, called the "Saturday Evening Concerts." He was a little man,
with what might be called something of a "Frenchified" style about him,
but having with it all a bright eye and thoroughly Irish face which,
with all his bodily movements, displayed great animation. I can readily
believe his biographers, who say he excelled in all the arts he
cultivated, for his was a most charming entertainment.

Lover undoubtedly had patriotism of a kind, and some of his songs show
it. It certainly was not up to the mark of the "Young Irelanders," one
of whom attacked him on one occasion, when he made the clever retort
that "the fount from which _he_ drew his patriotism was a more genuine
source than a fount of Irish type"--alluding to the plentiful use of the
Gaelic characters in "The Spirit