department of the preparations.  On Saturday evening the carpenters, in a body, immediately after their day’s work was over, instead of seeking home and rest, refreshment or recreation after their week of toil, turned into the Nation office machine rooms, which they quickly improvised into a vast workshop, and there, as volunteers, laboured away till near midnight, manufacturing “wands” for the stewards of next morning’s procession.

Sunday, 8th December, 1867, dawned through watery skies.  From shortly after day-break, rain, or rather half-melted sleet, continued to fall; and many persons concluded that there would be no attempt to hold the procession under such inclement weather.  This circumstance was, no doubt, a grievous discouragement, or rather a discomfort and an inconvenience; but so far from preventing the procession, it was destined to add a hundred-fold to the significance and importance of the demonstration.  Had the day been fine, tens of thousands of persons who eventually only lined the streets, wearing the funeral emblems, would have marched in the procession as they had originally intended; but hostile critics would in this case have said that the fineness of the day and the excitement of the pageant had merely caused a hundred thousand persons to come out for a holiday.  Now, however, the depth, reality, and intensity of the popular feeling was about to be keenly tested.  The subjoined account of this memorable demonstration is summarised from the Dublin daily papers of the next ensuing publication, the report of the Freeman’s Journal being chiefly used:—­

As early as ten o’clock crowds began to gather in Beresford-place, and in an hour about ten thousand men were present.  The morning had succeeded to the hopeless humidity of the night, and the drizzling rain fell with almost dispiteous persistence.  The early trains from Kingstown and Dalkey, and all the citerior townlands, brought large numbers into Dublin; and Westland-row, Brunswick, D’Olier, and Sackville-streets, streamed with masses of humanity.  A great number of the processionists met in Earlsfort-terrace, all round the Exhibition, and at twelve o’clock some thousands had collected.  It was not easy to learn the object of this gathering; it may have been a mistake, and most probably it was, as they fell in with the great body in the course of half an hour.  The space from the quays, including the great sweep in front of the Custom-house, was swarming with men, and women, and small children, and the big ungainly crowd bulged out in Gardiner-street, and the broad space leading up Talbot-street.  The ranks began to be formed at eleven o’clock amid a down-pour of cold rain.  The mud was deep and aqueous, and great pools ran through the streets almost level with the paths.  Some of the more prominent of the men, and several of the committee, rode about directing and organizing the crowd, which presented a most extraordinary appearance.