O'Connell was in the
front band of men striving to arouse the sleeping nation to a sense
of its own power. And nothing was going to stop the onward movement.
It pained him to differ from Father Cahill--the one friend of his
youth. If only he could alter the good priest's outlook--win him
over to the great procession that was marching surely and firmly to
self-government, freedom of speech and of action, and to the
ultimate making of men of force out of the crushed and the hopeless.
He would try.
"Father Cahill," he began softly, as though the good priest might be
wooed by sweet reason when the declamaory force of the orator
failed, "don't ye think it would be wiser to attend a little more to
the people's BODIES than to their SOULS? to their BRAINS rather than
to their HEARTS? Don't ye?"
"No, I do NOT," hotly answered the priest.
"Well, if ye DID," said the agitator, "if more priests did, it's a
different Ireland we'd be livin' in to-day--that we would. The
Christian's heaven seems so far away when he's livin' in hell. Try
to make EARTH more like a heaven and he'll be more apt to listen to
stories of the other one. Tache them to kape their hovels clean and
their hearts and lives will have a betther chance of health.
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