blood-lettin', and patchin' up the
sick and ailin', fevers an' all. I've got a few years left to enjoy
meself--an' I'm seventy come November--an' I mane to do it."

"How did ye find me?"

"Who should I meet in the sthreet this mornin'--an' me here a week--but
Patrick Kinsella, big as a house and his face all covered in
whiskers--him that I took into me own home the night they cracked his
skull up beyant the hill when O'Brien came to talk to us."

"'What are yer doin' here at all?' sez I. 'Faith, it's the foine thing
I'm in,' sez he. 'An' what is it?' sez I. 'Politics!' sez he, with a
knowin' grin. 'Politics is it?' I asks, all innocent as a baby. 'That's
what I'm doin',' sez he. 'An' I want to tell ye the Irish are wastin'
their time worryin their heads over their own country when here's a
great foine beautiful rich one over here just ripe, an' waitin' to be
plucked. What wud we be doin' tryin' to run Ireland when we can run
America. Answer me that,' sez he. 'Run America?' sez I, all dazed.
'That's what the Irish are doin' this minnit. Ye'd betther get on in
while the goin's good. It's a wondherful melon the Irish are goin' to
cut out here one o' these fine days,' an' he gave me a knowin' grin,
shouted to me where he was to be found and away he wint."

"There's many a backslider from the 'Cause' out here, I'm thinkin',"
continued the doctor.

"If it's me ye mane, ye're wrong. I'm no backslider."

"Kinsella towld me where to find ye. Sure it's many's the long day
since ye lay on yer back in 'The Gap' with yer hide full o' lead, and
ye cursin' the English government. Ye think different now maybe to what
ye did then?"

"Sure I think different. Other times, other ways. But if it hadn't been
for the methods of twenty years ago we wouldn't be doin' things so
peaceably now. It was the attitude of Irishmen in Ireland that made
them legislate for us. It wasn't the Irish members in Westminster that
did it."

"That's thrue for ye."

"It was the pluck--and determination--and statesmanship--and
unflinchin' not-to-be-quieted-or-deterred attitude of them days that's
brought the goal we've all been aimin' at in sight. An' it's a happier
an' more contented an' healthier an' cleaner Ireland we're seein'
to-day than the wun we had to face as childhren."

"Thrue for ye agen. I see ye've not lost the gift o' the gab. Ye've got
it with ye still, Frank O'Connell."

"Faith an' while I'm talkin' of the one thing in the wurrld tha