HIS LIFE, POEMS AND SPEECHES
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Something of a tempest in a teapot was stirred up in New York on St. Patrick's Day of this year, when Mayor Abram Hewitt refused to let the Irish flag be floated over City Hall, a courtesy which had been practiced for over ninety years. Mr. Hewitt had decorated the same building with bunting on the occasion of Queen Victoria's jubilee, as he had shown himself a pronounced Anglomaniac on many other occasions. The Irish-Americans, of course, did not claim as a right that which they had so long enjoyed as a courtesy. Mr. Hewitt's animus was unmistakable; but when a branch of the Irish National League in Dublin, Ireland, passed a resolution condemning the conduct of the New York Mayor, O'Reilly pronounced their action "a folly and an impertinence, also." He said:
Mayor Hewitt, sneaking into the office of the British Minister at Washington to explain why he had moved an anti-British resolution in Congress, proved himself to be an unreliable and unfriendly man, to be distrusted particularly by Irish- Americans.