trongly denounced the stenographer who took down his speech, or the
parts of it which I told him I had seen in Dublin.

"Why, just think of it," he exclaimed; "it took the clerk just eight
minutes to read the report given by that stenographer of a speech which
it took me an hour and twenty minutes to deliver! I do not speak from
the lips, I speak from the heart, and consequently rather rapidly; and a
stenographer who can take down 190 words a minute has told me I run
ahead of him!"

I suggested that the report, without pretending even to be a full
summary of his speech, might be accurate as to phrases and sentences
pronounced by him.

"Yes, as to phrases," he answered, "that might be; but the phrases may
be taken out of their true connection, and strung together in an
untruthful, yet telling way. Even my words were not fully set down," he
said, with some heat. "I was made to call a man 'level,' when I said in
the American way that he was 'level-headed.'" _A propos_ of this, I am
told that the American word "spree" has become Hibernian, and is used to
describe meetings of the National League and "other political
entertainments."

When I told Father M'Fadden I had just come from Rome, where, as I had
reason to believe, the Vatican was anxious to get evidence from others
than Archbishop Walsh and Monsignore Kirby, of the Irish College, as to
the attitude of the priests in Ireland towards the laws of the United
Kingdom, he said he knew that "some Italian prelates neither understood
nor approved the 'Plan of Campaign,' nor is the Irish Land question
understood at Rome;" but this did not seem to disturb him much, as he
was quite sure that in the end the "Plan of Campaign" would be legalised
by the British Government. "I think I see plainly," he said, "that Lord
Ernest's government is fast going to pieces, though I can't expect him
to admit it!" Lord Ernest laughed good-naturedly, and said that Father
M'Fadden saw more in Donegal than he (Lord Ernest) was able to see in
Westminster. Upon my asking him whether the "Plan of Campaign" did not
in effect abrogate the moral duty of a man to meet the legal obligations
he had voluntarily incurred, Father M'Fadden advanced his own theory of
the subject, which was that, "if a man can pay a fair year's rent out of
the produce of his holding, he is bound to pay it. But if the rent be a
rack-rent, imposed on the tenant against his will, or if the holding
does not produce the rent, then