g presumably extremely short
of what he would term 'copy,' he proceeded to make observations about me
after this fashion:--

'Over here Mr. Hussey is something of a fish out of water. It would be
hazardous to say that if he was to begin his career as an agent again he
would eschew the system that has made him famous, but his present frame
of mind is unquestionably one of doubt as to whether, after all, the
game was worth the candle.'

That young man will go far as a writer of fiction.

I received, among more pleasant welcomes on my return to my native land,
the following delightful blast of vituperation from the _Irish Citizen_,
and beg to tender the unknown author my profound thanks for the
diversion his ink-slinging afforded me:--

'Here is something about a man who ought to have been murdered any day
since 1879--indeed we don't know that he should have been let live even
up to that date, and as for his family, their translation to the upper
regions by means of a simple charge of dynamite, which nobody of any
sense or importance would even think of condemning, has been most
unaccountably deferred to the present year. This man is Mr. S.M. Hussey,
the miasma of whose breath, according to a well-informed murder organ in
Dublin, poisons one-half of the kingdom of Kerry. Let any man read the
speeches delivered in Upper Sackville Street, and the articles in
_United Ireland_ against Mr. Hussey, and he must ask why the fiend
incarnate has not been murdered long since. The infamy of persistently
turning hatred on a man like Mr. Hussey, and then escaping the
consequences of having thereby murdered him, has no parallel in any
country in the world. Inciting to murder is practically reduced to a
science in Ireland. That Mr. Hussey has not been murdered years ago is
not the fault of the scientist, but the watchfulness of the police.'

My experience while in England had been that few people I met really
appreciated what boycotting was like, so how are my readers of twenty
years afterwards to do so? Yet when I went back to Ireland, it seemed to
me even more cruel than when I had grown comparatively accustomed by
sheer proximity to it.

Mr. Parnell had himself given the order in a public speech:--

'Shun the man who bids for a farm from which a tenant has been evicted,
shun him in the street, in the shop, in the marketplace, even in the
place of worship, as if he were a leper of old.'

This was done with the thoroughness whic