after the Convention
assembled, a very able priest said to me that he regarded Redmond as "a
worn-out man." The genuineness of his regret was proved by the delight
with which he heard what I could tell him. Never in my life did I find
so much cause for admiration of Redmond as in the early stages--which
were in many ways the most important--of our meetings. Never at any time
did I know him exert so successfully his charm of public manner. At the
second day's meeting, when the new Chairman took up his place and
function, there were several small points to be settled, each capable of
creating friction; and it has to be admitted that in the technical
aspect of his duty Sir Horace Plunkett did not shine: business quickly
became involved. Fortunately he was of a temper to welcome help, and it
was quickly to hand. Archbishop Crozier showed himself to be
accomplished, resourceful, and most tactful on all points of procedure:
and Redmond then for the first time did with extraordinary skill what he
had to do at many stages later. By a series of questions to the Chair he
suggested rather than recommended a way of clearing the involved issue;
and all this was done with a precision of phrase which was none the less
exact because it was easy, and with a dignity which was none the less
impressive because it had no pretence to effect. His mastery both of the
form and substance of procedure was conspicuous. One of the ablest among
the Southern Unionists said to me in these days: "He is superb: he does
not seem able to put a word wrong."

I think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this,
that within the Convention he was happy. There was a note in it that I
never felt in the House of Commons, even when he was at his best. There
he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar
faces. Here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in
his life in an assembly in no way sectional. For from the first it was
plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of
normal, ordinary Irish life: farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord,
tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer--all were there in pleasantly familiar
types. The atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it
resembled rather some casual assemblage where all sorts of men had met
by accident and conversed without prejudice. Everybody met somebody whom
he had known in some quite different relation of life and with w