-their parents being
willing? Out of some 250 boys there were about a dozen who did not hold
up their hands.

It is unnecessary for me to say that my mother was there again with her
afflicted boy and the rest of her children, and again she pleaded in
vain. She was a courageous woman, with great force of character--and a
_third_ time she went to Father Mathew's gathering. This was in St.
Anthony's chapel yard, and amongst the thousands there to hear him and
to take the pledge she awaited her turn. Again she besought him to touch
her boy's foot. He knew her again, and, deeply moved by her importunity
and great faith he, at length, to her great joy, put his hand on my
brother's foot and gave him his blessing. My mother's faith in the
power of God, through His minister, was rewarded, for the foot was
healed.

I had an aunt--my mother's sister--married to a good patriotic Irishman,
Hugh, or, as he was more generally called, Hughey, Roney, who kept a
public house in Crosbie Street. The street is now gone, but it stood on
part of what is now the goods station of the London & North Western
Railway. Nearly all in Crosbie Street were from the West of Ireland,
and, amongst them, there was scarcely anything but Irish spoken. I have
often thought since of the splendid opportunity let slip by O'Connell
and the Repealers in neglecting to revive, as they could so easily have
then done, so strong a factor in nationality as the native tongue of our
people. My Aunt Nancy could speak the Northern Irish fluently, and, in
the course of her business, acquired the Connaught Irish and accent.

After a time Hughey Roney retired, and the house was carried on by his
daughter and her husband, John McArdle, a good, decent patriotic
Irishman, much respected by his Connaught neighbours, though he was from
the "Black North." It used to be a great treat to hear John McArdle, on
a Sunday night, reading the "Nation," which then cost sixpence, and was,
therefore, not so easily accessible, to an admiring audience, of whom I
was sometimes one, and his son, John Francis McArdle, another. This
younger McArdle, originally intended for the Church, became in after
life a brilliant journalist, and was for a time on the staff of the
"Nation," the teaching of which he had so early imbibed. The elder
McArdle was a big, imposing looking man, with a voice to match, who gave
the speeches of O'Connell and the other orators of Conciliation Hall
with such effect that th