consequence from a financial point of view, the proceeds
of these gatherings help to provide the sinews of war for carrying on
the Home Rule campaign in Great Britain. For over half a century, from
the time when I assisted Father Nugent with his first celebration, I
took an active part in organising these gatherings in many places.

I said at the commencement that I knew little of Ireland from personal
contact with it. Born there, I was too young to remember being brought
to England. For some months I was there again, as I have already
mentioned, as a boy of twelve, under the care of my uncle, the Rev.
Michael O'Loughlin. I had often desired to see more of Ireland, and,
singularly enough, it was the Crimean War that gave me the opportunity
of spending another three months there in the summer of 1855.

A large firm in Liverpool had part of the contract for erecting the
wooden houses and other buildings at the camp being erected on the
Curragh of Kildare at the time of the war. I made application, and, with
my brother Bernard, was employed to go there. Reaching the Curragh, we
found that many of the men slept in the huts they were erecting, being
supplied by the contractors with the requisite bed and bedding. The
contractors also erected a large "canteen," to be used afterwards by the
military where the workmen could be supplied with food and drink--too
much drink sometimes. These arrangements for food and sleeping were
somewhat necessary, as the nearest towns, Kildare, Kilcullen, and
Newbridge were each some three miles off.

But we were anxious to see as much of the country and of the people as
we could, and, besides, did not care for the mixed company sleeping in
the huts. We therefore managed to secure lodgings with the Widow Walsh,
on the road leading from the Curragh to Suncroft. The widow's husband
had but recently died, leaving her a pretty good farm, and, with the aid
of her family--one of them a fine, grown-up young man--she was able to
hold on to the land. But the ready cash she got from the Curragh men who
came to lodge with her was useful too. It was a good big house of the
kind, and the widow made use of every available inch of it, so that she
had about a dozen of us in all. Mrs. Walsh, though an easy-going soul
herself, had a fine bouncing girl to help her, but, with a dozen hungry
men coming with a rush at night, it used to be a scramble for the
cooking utensils, as we were largely left to our own device