The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell Vol - I

322 CIIAULES STEWART FARNELL [1882
close to my car, and, holding up a copy of the " Freeman's Journal" at the same time, whispered : " Another blackguard swept." ' A landlord or a tenant had been shot for disobeying the popular decrees. Dennis had become completely demoralised under the coercion regime. The ' Old Whig' had been converted into a rampant Land Leaguer.
Apart from the inevitable monotony of a prison, life in Kilmainham was not severe. The place itself, for a jail, is not particularly repulsive.
Passing the portals, which are dark and gloomy, you
enter a magnificent hall, through the glass roof of
which, on the day in August 1897 when I visited it,
the sun shone brightly. In this cheery-looking place
there was scarcely a suggestion of a prison. A number
of little rooms—cells about twelve feet by six—rising
iu three storeys, open off this central hall, and you
ascend to the top by iron staircases. I went into one
of the cells. A prisoner was working hard making
sacks; he was bound to get through a certain
number in the day, and he plied his needle with fierce
industry. He was a forbidding-looking individual, and
<3yed the warder and myself rather savagely. Yet he
had literary tastes, and a book by Rolf Boldrewood
rested on a little shelf in his cell. The man was in
for theft. I learned subsequently that it was in this
cell that Parnell slept his first night in Kilmainham.
He was, however, immediately transferred to good
quarters in another part of the building. They consisted
of two large rooms, one of which he used by day, the
other by night. Nothing could be more comfortable
within the walls of a prison. The day room was
indeed excellent—large and plenty of light.
It has sometimes been said that Parnell chafed