usual, and yet,
here was I delightedly talking to strange people every day. It was many
years before I understood that I had surrendered myself to the chief
temptation of the artist, creation without toil. Metrical composition is
always very difficult to me, nothing is done upon the first day, not one
rhyme is in its place; and when at last the rhymes begin to come, the
first rough draft of a six-line stanza takes the whole day. At that time I
had not formed a style, and sometimes a six-line stanza would take several
days, and not seem finished even then; and I had not learnt, as I have
now, to put it all out of my head before night, and so the last night was
generally sleepless, and the last day a day of nervous strain. But now I
had found the happiness that Shelley found when he tied a pamphlet to a
fire balloon.

II

At first I asked no help from prominent persons, and when some clerk or
shop-assistant would say "Dr So-and-so or Professor So-and-so will have
nothing to do with us" I would answer, "When we prove we can gather sheep
shepherds will come." Presently, come they did, old, middle-aged, or but
little older than myself, but all with some authority in their town: John
O'Leary, John F. Taylor, and Douglas Hyde, and Standish O'Grady, and of
these much presently; Dr. Sigerson who has picked a quarrel with me and of
whom I shall say nothing that he may not pick another; Count Plunkett,
Sinn Feiner of late and Minister of Dail Eireann; Dr. Coffey, now head of
the National University; George Coffey, later on Curator of the Irish
Antiquities at the Museum of the Royal Dublin Society; Patrick J. McCall,
poet and publican of Patrick Street, and later member of corporation;
Richard Ashe King, novelist and correspondent of _Truth_, a gentle,
intelligent person, typical of nothing; and others, known or unknown. We
were now important, had our Committee room in the Mansion House, and I
remember that the old Mansion House butler recognised our importance so
fully, that he took us into his confidence once in every week, while we
sat waiting for a quorum. He had seen many Lord Mayors, and remembered
those very superior Lord Mayors who lived before the extension of the
municipal franchise, and spoke of his present masters with contempt. Among
our persons of authority, and among the friends and followers they had
brought, there were many who at that time found it hard to refuse if
anybody offered for sale a pepper-pot shaped