are turned out to wander on the wide world, houseless and penniless. And
all these things we might have done, had we been but true to ourselves."
I drank in all he said with avidity. The bearing of his arguments on my
own fortunes gave them an interest and an apparent truth my young mind
eagerly devoured; and when he ceased to speak, I pondered over all he
told me in a spirit that left its impress on my whole future life.

It was a new notion to me to connect my own fortunes with anything in
the political condition of the country; and while it gave my young heart
a kind of martyred courage, it set my brain a-thinking on a class of
subjects which never before possessed any interest for me. There was a
flattery, too, in the thought that I owed my straitened circumstances
less to any demerits of my own, than to political disabilities. The time
was well chosen by my companion to instil his doctrines into my heart.
I was young, ardent, enthusiastic; my own wrongs had taught me to
hate injustice and oppression; my condition had made me feel, and feel
bitterly, the humiliation of dependence; and if I listened with eager
curiosity to every story and every incident of the bygone Rebellion, it
was because the contest was represented to me as one between tyranny on
one side and struggling liberty on the other. I heard the names of those
who sided with the insurgent party extolled as the great and good men of
their country; their ancient families and hereditary claims furnishing
a contrast to many of the opposite party, whose recent settlement in the
island and new-born aristocracy were held up in scoff and derision. In
a word, I learned to believe that the one side was characterized by
cruelty, oppression, and injustice; the other, conspicuous only for
endurance, courage, patriotism, and truth. What a picture was this to a
mind like mine! and at a moment, too, when I seemed to realize in my own
desolation an example of the very sufferings I heard of!

If the portrait McKeown drew of Ireland was sad and gloomy, he painted
France in colors the brightest and most seductive. Dwelling less on the
political advantages which the Revolution had won for the popular party,
he directed my entire attention to the brilliant career of glory
the French army had followed; the triumphant success of the Italian
campaign; the war in Germany; and the splendor of Paris, which he
represented as a very paradise on earth; but above all, he dwelt on
the