Besides Barry Sullivan and Falconer, other Irish actors I knew were Barry Aylmer, James Foster O’Neill, and Hubert O’Grady.  They were impersonators of what were known as “Irish parts,” and being genuine Irish Nationalists, as well as actors, did much to elevate the character of such performances.  For with them, all the wit and drollery were retained, while they helped, by their example, to banish the buffoonery that used to characterise the “Stage Irishman.”

I am reminded by a criticism on one of his pieces in a London daily paper that we can claim, as a fellow-countryman, perhaps the most brilliant writer at the present time for the British stage—­George Bernard Shaw.  From a conversation I had with him once, I would certainly gather that he was a patriotic Irishman.

I have done something in the way of dramatic production myself, one of the pieces I wrote being at the request of Father Nugent, to assist him in the great temperance movement he had started in Liverpool.  He engaged a large hall in Bevington Bush, where every Monday night he gave the total abstinence pledge against intoxicating liquors to large numbers of people.  I was then carrying on the “Catholic Times” for him, and he asked me to be the first to take the pledge from him at his public inauguration of the movement.  Although, as he was aware, I was already a pledged teetotaler to Father Mathew, I was greatly pleased to agree to assist him all I could in his great work.

He believed in providing a counter-attraction to the public house, and each Monday night, in the Bevington Hall, he provided a concert or some other kind of entertainment; giving, in the interval between the first and second part a stirring address and the temperance pledge.  As there was a stage and scenery in the hall, we often had dramatic sketches.  The drama I wrote for Father Nugent had a temperance moral.  It was called “The Germans of Glenmore.”  It was played several Monday nights in succession, and was well received.

Some years afterwards I made it into a story, calling it “The Reapers of Kilbride.”  This appeared over a frequent signature of mine, “Slieve Donard,” in the “United Irishman,” the organ of the Home Rule Confederation.

Singularly enough, I found that part of it had been changed back again into the first act of a drama by Mr. Hubert O’Grady, the well-known Irish comedian.

That gentleman was giving a performance for the benefit of the newly released political prisoners at one of our Liverpool theatres.  Being somewhat late, I was making my way upstairs in company with Michael Davitt, and the play had commenced.  I could hear on the stage part of the dialogue, which seemed familiar to me, and, sure enough, when I took my seat and listened to the rest of the act, the dialogue was pretty nearly, word for word, from “The Reapers of Kilbride.”  The compiler of the play being acted had also drawn upon another drama of mine for his last act, “Rosaleen