our advanced Nationalist friends.

He at once said "I should like to go there." I told him I was sure they
would be delighted to see him, and that, as theirs was a dance, and it
would be kept up pretty late, I would come back for him after the
banquet, and take him to the other celebration. Our friends were well
pleased at his wish to attend, and asked me to go back and bring him to
where a hearty _cead mile failte_ awaited him. In due time I brought him
over, and they gave him an enthusiastic reception, he being quite as
delighted to be present as they were to receive him, and they were
still more pleased when he addressed a few words to them.

But that was as far as Parnell would go, and his answer to Davitt that
day at St. Helens pretty well indicated the course he intended to pursue
in connection with the cause of Ireland.

Indeed, it is on record that in later years Michael Davitt altered his
own view to such an extent that he would no longer have made that
proposition to Parnell.

There was no man whose regard I more valued than that of Michael Davitt.
Amongst all the vicissitudes of Irish politics our friendship was an
unbroken one. He was little more than a boy when I first met him at a
small gathering to which none but the initiated were admitted. From the
first I was strongly drawn towards that tall, dark-complexioned,
bright-eyed, modest youth, with his typical Celtic face and figure. He
was in company with Arthur Forrester, who was a fluent speaker and
writer, and who on this occasion did most of the talking, Davitt only
throwing in some shrewd remark from time to time. We know since that he
had in him the natural gift of oratory, though it was not that so much
as other qualities which gave him the commanding position in Irish
politics which he afterwards reached.

He had then spent several of the best years of his life in penal
servitude for his connection with the physical force movement. Thinking
long and hard in the solitude of his prison cell, Davitt resolved that
the first vital need of Ireland was to plant firmly in the soil of
Ireland the people who were being uprooted--in other words, the land
system must be changed.

The result of his convictions was the formation of the Irish National
Land League, which dated its birth from the great meeting projected by
Davitt and held at Irishtown in April, 1879. Mr. Parnell was elected
President of the new organisation, Mr. Patrick Egan treasurer, and
Mi