’"If I am reconducted to my chamber by this steel-clad spectre and allowed to sleep undisturbed until morning, I promise never to relate this adventure while any harm can happen to you by my telling it.”

’To this the coiners after consultation agreed.  He was led back to bed, and next morning ridiculed all spectral stories to his officers.  It was not until the world of coiners was finally broken up that he related his experiences.’

In that story I wonder who went bail for the Marshal’s truth.  Veracity and gallantry may not have gone hand in hand, or perhaps they were affianced, and therefore took care not to come near one another.

Another sort of gallantry was noteworthy in what was known as Young Ireland, for in ‘the set’ were several ladies, Eva, Mary, and Speranza, all prone to write seditious verse.  Eva was Miss Mary Kelly, daughter of a Galway gentleman, who promised her lover to wait while he underwent ten years penal servitude, and kept her word, marrying him at Kingstown two days after his release.  ‘Mary’ was Miss Ellen Downing, whose lover was also a fugitive after the outbreak; but he proved unfaithful, and she was one of the last I heard of who died of pining away.  It used to be much talked of in my young days.  Perhaps now that it is not, it more often occurs.  ‘Speranza’ was Lady Wilde, a fluent poet and essayist, who survived her husband the archaeologist.  One of her children inherited much of her talent, but bears a chequered fame.  I always thought the wit of Oscar Wilde anything but Irish, and was always glad it possessed no national attributes—­unless impudence was one.

At one of his own first nights in London (I think it was on the occasion of the production of An Ideal Husband at the Haymarket) he was summoned before the curtain by the customary shouts for ’Author, author.’

He stood there for a moment amid the cheering, and then, in response to cries for a speech, calmly took a cigarette case out of his pocket, selected one of the contents, and, having very deliberately lighted it, said:—­

’Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know what you have done, but I have spent a very pleasant evening with my own play.  Good night.’

His brother, known as ‘Wuffalo Will’ among his friends, is the hero of many stories.

Once he went up to a policeman and said:—­

‘Which is the way to heaven?’

‘I don’t know, sir; better ask a parson.’

’What do you think I pay taxes for?  It’s your business to be able to tell me the way to heaven.  As for the bally parsons, they don’t understand.’

A broad smile came over the constable’s face.

’Were you asking where you could get blind drunk comfortably, sir? because if so—­’

And out came the hint with a wink.

Wilde was fond of that tale at one time.

The affair of ‘’48’ was a farce.  Stimulated by the French Revolution, John Mitchel wrote rabid sedition, but received short shrift at the hands of the Government, who arrested him, sentenced him to fourteen years’ transportation, and almost from the dock he was taken manacled in a police van, escorted by cavalry, and put on board a steamer, which at once put out to sea.