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I have heard Jim Meagher, the chief poultry boy, boast of a single day's gathering of four hundred and sixty-eight eggs; but eggs, save when stolen, pricked, and sucked raw, never figured in our bill of fare.

"Perfectly safe from all war steamers, gunboats, and floating batteries; standing on the frontiers of the three best fighting counties in Ireland Waterford, Wexford, and Tipperary the peasantry of which could find no difficulty in pouring to its relief; possessing from three to five thousand Confederates, most of whom were understood to be armed; the most of the streets being narrow, and presenting on this account the greatest facilities for the erection of barricades; the barracks lying outside the town, and the line of communication between the powerful portions of the latter and the former being intercepted by the old bridge over the Nore, which might be easily defended, or, at the most, very speedily demolished; no place," says Meagher, "appeared to us to be better adapted for the first scene of the revolution."

Larry Magee had coined one of his best whimsies on the subject of the shape of the captain's mustache. "No wonder," he said, "old Meagher never has any luck he wears his horseshoe upside down on his face!" Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took their seats the trial deputy spoke. "Is that all, Captain Meagher?" he asked sonorously. "That's all," said Meagher.

Travelling from place to place, I saw the surviving heroes of the defeat: Meagher looking very yellow and prosaic; Slocum, small, indomitable, active; Newton, a little gray, a trifle proud, very mercurial, and curiously enough, a Virginian; Meade, lithe, spectacled, sanguine; and finally General McCall, as grave, kindly odd and absent, as I had found him four months before.

A week later the last of the national papers was suppressed, and the Nation went down, sword in hand as a warrior might fall, with the words of defiance upon its lips, and a prayer for the good old cause floating upwards with its latest breath. O'Brien was in bed, when Meagher and Dillon arrived at Balinkeele where he was stopping.

O'Donohoe confined himself to a few words concerning his trial. MR. MEAGHER. "My lords, it is my intention to say a few words only. I desire that the last act of a proceeding which has occupied so much of the public time should be of short duration. Nor have I the indelicate wish to close the dreary ceremony of a State prosecution with a vain display of words.

Meagher stood in the dock at Clonmel a week after O'Brien had quitted it a convict. He was defended by Mr. Whiteside and Isaac Butt, whose magnificent speech in his defence was perhaps the most brilliant display of forensic eloquence ever heard Within the court in which he stood.

"Ran foul of the big end of a handspike," answered Captain Benson, quietly; "he'll carry his arm in splints all the way home, I think. His name is Gunner Meagher. I don't know how they got their names, but they signed them and will answer to them. They are unique. Look at that outlaw down there by the bitts. That is Poop-deck Cahill. Looks like a prize-fighter, doesn't he?

John O'Connell interrupted and interfered with the speaker. It was plain that freedom of speech was to be had no longer on the platform of the Association, and that men of spirit had no longer any business there Meagher took up his hat and left the Hall, and amongst the crowd that accompanied, him, went William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Devin Reilly, Charles Gavan Duffy, and John Mitchel.

Of these I can remember a tall, fine-looking young man, a schoolmaster from the North of Ireland, whom I then met for the first time, my old school-fellow, John Ryan, and John Meagher, a tailor, possessing the amount of eloquence you generally find in Irish members of the craft. There was also present, if I remember rightly, Tom Gates, of Newcastle.