This Constitution was more fun than anything else. Parnell undoubtedly put it before certain members of the Irish Party instead of one drafted by his own hand. He told me afterwards that they looked "absolutely ill" when they saw my handwriting, so he would not withdraw it in favour of his own--till later. I was sitting on the doorstep of our new house one day, idly watching Parnell build a bank that was to be turfed over to keep us from prying eyes, when he stopped suddenly and, leaning on his spade, said: "I am a poet! And descended from the poet, Thomas Parnell." "Not a poet," I answered gently, "even though descended from one." "I am a poet myself; give me a pencil and paper." And, throwing himself down beside me, he wrote down the following verse proudly. "It came to me while I was digging," he said as he tossed it over to me, "and it is a {243} real poem, and makes me a real poet. It's as good as any of Tom Parnell's stuff!" I was forced to confess that I agreed with him, as I do now, that it was and is as good as, and better to me than, any of Thomas Parnell's stuff, or "the stuff" of any poet who ever graced the world with song. This is it:-- "The grass shall cease to grow, The river's stream to run, The stars shall ponder in their course, No more shall shine the sun; The moon shall never wane or grow, The tide shall cease to ebb and flow, Ere I shall cease to love you." CHAS. PARNELL. One evening in 1886, on his return from town, Parnell told me about Mr. O'Brien's Plan of Campaign. He did not approve of it, and said that he did not wish to have anything to do with the working of it, adding: "I shall let O'Brien run it by himself." Parnell was looking and feeling very ill at this time, and when Mr. O'Brien took upon himself to call at my house to see him, entirely uninvited, Parnell was not really well enough to see him. He was suffering from nervous breakdown, chiefly brought on by gastric trouble, which in its turn was produced by overwork and the strain of political life. All through his life Parnell was delicate. From 1880, when I first met him (and nursed him into health) to 1891, when he died, it was only by incessant watchfulness and care that I was able to maintain his health at all. It is certainly the fact that only his indomitable will and power of mind rendered him capable of enduring the strain of his public life and of the feats {244} of strength that few men of far greater physique would have attempted.