< Page:Life of John Boyle O'Reilly.djvu
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JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

industries on the rushing streams to employ their children. The fertile country, unsurpassed in the world for natural wealth, supports a miserable, unhappy, rebellious people, whose children are scattered in all lands. Ireland is a victim in the hands of its destroyer. While we condemn the dynamiters who trample under foot the laws of God and man, we ask all who have power to speak to urge justice on the strong as well as forbearance on the weak.

A few days afterward, on January 31, an Englishwoman, giving the name of Yseult Dudley, called on the famous "dynamiter," O'Donovan Rossa, at his office in New York, and professed herself anxious to help along his operations against England. Meeting him by appointment the following Monday, she walked with him along Chambers Street, then suddenly drawing a revolver, stepped behind him, and fired five shots, one of which took effect in his back. When asked why she had committed the crime, she answered, "Because he is O'Donovan Rossa." The exploit evoked admiration from the Englishmen who had just been raving over the dynamite outrages. The London Standard advised Mr. Parnell to take the shooting of Rossa well to heart: "Stranger things have happened than that the leader should share the fate of the subordinate." The Times compared Mrs. Dudley to Charlotte Corday. She was in danger of becoming a national heroine; but she was sent to a lunatic asylum, and soon afterward released.

It was while this frenzy of race hatred was at its height that O'Reilly, always ready to speak the wise word in the right time, wrote a strong appeal—"Is it Too Late?"

The startling news from Egypt has diverted attention, for the hour, from the dreadful relations fast growing between England and Ireland. The madmen were at the helm a week ago, and the nations seemed to be rapidly drifting into a war of races more appalling than the world has ever seen, for the limits of such a conflict, should it ever come, will extend round the planet, wherever there are Irishmen and English interests. The madmen are at the helm yet. When thirty million English people wildly cheer a half insane and wholly disreputable murderess, and thirty million people of Irish blood half sympathize with the des-
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