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JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.

(1844-1890.)

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY was born at Dowth Castle, County Meath, June 28, 1844. His father was a scholar and an antiquarian, and his mother a woman of rare and beautiful nature. "He was," says

one of his biographers, "brought up in an atmosphere of legend and story." Early in life he began as a printer and worked at his trade in England. He became a journalist in early manhood; at twenty-one he was a revolutionist. He had enlisted in a hussar regiment, where he disseminated Fenianism and gained adherents for the cause. He was arrested and sentenced to transportation for treason-felony, and after some time in Australia managed to escape amid circumstances of daring and peril, on board a coasting vessel, and made his way to this country. It should be mentioned that while in England he contributed poems to The Dark Blue, an Oxford University periodical.

He soon acquired celebrity here, where he not only attained a very high position as littérateur and journalist, but also took an exceedingly prominent part in all Irish movements. He was, besides, a distinguished citizen of his adopted country, and was greatly esteemed for his abilities and character. He became part proprietor and editor of the Boston Pilot in 1876, and made it a notable exponent of Irish-American opinions and a high-class literary journal. He died suddenly on Sunday morning, August 10, 1890, having taken an overdose of chloral to induce sleep. He left a widow and four daughters. A fund was inaugurated for a public statue to his memory in Boston, and a bust was placed in one of the Catholic universities. At his death he had two works in preparation-one entitled The Country with a Roof' and another on 'The Evolution of Straight Weapons.'

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His published works are: Songs from the Southern Seas, and other Poems,' 'Songs, Legends, and Ballads,' 'The Statues in the Block, and other Poems,' and 'In Bohemia,' poems. He was the author also of Moondyne,' a novel, and Ethics of Boxing,' and he edited the first edition of 'The Poetry and Song of Ireland.'

THE COMMON CITIZEN SOLDIER. 1

DECORATION DAY ADDRESS, 1886, EVERETT, MASS.

From John Boyle O'Reilly, His Life, Poems, and Speeches.'

Veterans of the Grand Army: You are the orators of Decoration Day, no matter who may be the speakers. You and your flowers and your medals, your empty sleeves and 1 Copyright. Reprinted by permission.

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your graves, thrill all hearts into patriotism by your silent and visible eloquence. Yours is the sorrow that makes us forget the dismal countenance of death. When you enter the graveyards they become gardens through which we walk with smiles, not with tears. You do not march to the graves of your comrades with black feathers and gloomy faces, but laden with blossoms, and smiling at the effacing fingers of death.

The war is behind you like a sunset, and we must stand and see the glory from the hill. "The sun is down, and all the west is paved with sullen fire."

Millions of Americans stand full grown who were not born when you fired your last shot. Year by year that "sullen fire" sinks into the west, and wider and wider the gaps in your ranks show against the light.

In a few more years the evening will have descended and the figures will disappear, and the night of history will have closed upon the war. For the middle-aged and the old, you still unroll the memory of the great diorama. The deep-lined pictures that are darkened in their memory for the other days of the year are unveiled by your hands today.

The Rebellion was no accident.

It was not unnecessary.

It could not be avoided. It had to be. It was the seventeenth century fighting the nineteenth. It was the issue of two hundred and fifty years' growth.

And again, it was the mixing of the elements that go to produce the perfected American. Cavalier and Puritan would never have drawn together of themselves. God dashed them together till their blood mixed in the flow if not in the circulation.

Marvelous alchemy of Providence! Down there to the proud autocrat of the plantations went the trading Yankee with the rights of man shining on his bayonet points; and he smashed the barriers of caste and destroyed the palaces that were built on the necks of men. And here to the land of the Puritan Pilgrims follows the impulsive and imaginative Catholic Irishman, raising the cross of his beautiful church side by side with the severe gable of the meeting house. Down there the cavalier has learned that it was wicked and lawless to enslave men: up here the modern

Puritan knows that it was criminal and cruel to whip Quakers and Catholics.

So in the mysterious alembic of God are the bloodstreams mingled and unified. Out of this transfusion and amalgam of the strongest men on the earth is to come the future American-the man fit to own a continent.

The war marks the maturity of the Republic. Before 1862 the American youth had to look abroad for great ideals-for memorable battles, for illustrious commanders, heroic stories of patriotism, strife, and sacrifice.

But the four vast years of the war threw into shadow all foreign representatives of patriotism.

Henceforth, the American kept his attention at home; the dignity of sorrow, power, and responsibility were American. Henceforth only the weak and the vapid American sought models in other countries. These words of Emerson began to be appreciated:

"They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. The soul is no traveler; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, or any occasion calls him from his home into foreign lands, he is still at home, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes the missionary of wisdom, of virtue, and visits cities like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet."

Foremost among the teachers of true Americanism were the veterans of the war, both North and South.

The vast armies disbanded and came back to the works of peace. In any other country the victors would have had to keep a million men in arms for self-protection; and rapine and disorder would follow such a disbandment. But here the words of the great American poet were true: "Over the Carnage rose prophetic a Voice

Be not disheartened, affection shall solve the problems of freedom yet:

They who love each other become invincible,

They shall yet make Columbia victorious.

One from Massachusetts shall be a Missourian's comrade,

From Maine and hot Carolina, and another, an Oregonese, shall

be friends together

More precious to each other than all the riches of the earth.

To Michigan Florida perfumes shall tenderly come

Not the perfume of flowers, but sweeter, and wafted beyond death."

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