The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell Vol - I

54 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL [1869-71
Avondale—who had witnessed the scene—would say how the man shrieked in his agony and cried for mercy, calling upon the colonel of the regiment— Colonel Yeo—until his lacerated body fell, bleeding and torn, lifeless to the ground. Parnell seems to have had some knowledge of the rebel Holt, picked up, no doubt, from the tradition of the peasants rather than the memoirs of the insurgent himself. Holt was a Wicklow man and Protestant, and had led the rebels in his native county with courage, skill, and chivalry. Parnell always felt that if there had been many chiefs like Holt the rebellion might have had a different termination. But Parnell was very proud of Wicklow and Wicklow men. ' I am,' he would say, ' an Irishman first but a Wicklow man afterwards/
In 1871 he went to America on a visit to his brother John, who had settled in Alabama, and there he remained a twelvemonth. ' While he was with you at that time,' I asked John, ' did he show any inclination to go into politics or take up any career ? ' John said : ' No, he never talked politics. But he was never a good man at conversation; and you could never very easily find out what he was thinking about. If something turned up to draw him, then he would talk ; and I was often surprised to find on those occasions that he knew things of which he never spoke before. Something practical was always necessary to draw him. One day we called to see a State Governor. When we canie away, Charlie surprised me by saying, " You see that fellow despises us because we are Irish. But the Irish can make themselves felt everywhere if they are self-reliant and stick to each other. Just think of that fellow. Where has he come frono? and yet he despises the Irish." That always stuck in Charlie—that the Irish