“Notwithstanding Matignon and Cheverus, and the Protestant Governor Sullivan, Catholic and Irish were, from the outset, simply interchangeable terms—and terms of odium both—in the popular New England mind; in vain the bond of a common language, in vain the Irishman’s prompt and affectionate acceptance of the duties of American citizenship. To but slight softening of prejudice even his sacrifice of blood and life on every battle-field in the Civil War, in proof of the sincerity of his political profession of faith. He and his were still hounded as a class inferior and apart. They were almost unknown in the social and literary life of New England. Their pathetic sacrifices for their kin beyond the sea, their interest in the political fortunes of the old land, were jests and by-words. Their religion was the superstition of the ignorant, vulgar and pusillanimous; or, at best, motive for jealous suspicion of divided political allegiance and threatened “foreign” domination. Their children suffered petty persecutions in the public schools. The stage and the press faithfully reflected the ruling popular sentiment in their caricatures of the Catholic Irishman.” She accepted O’Reilly’s call and stood by his side with Roche, Guiney, Blake, until the hard fought battle against the prejudice to Irishism and Catholicism, planted in New England by the bigoted literature of Old England, was abated, if not destroyed; until its shadows, if cast now, are cast by the lower rather than the higher orders in the world of intellect and refinement. “And the shortening of the shadow is proof that the sun is rising,” proof that her work has been far from vain. And when from the grey dawn of prejudice will come forth the white morrow of charity and truth, the singer and her songs will not be forgotten. LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. In speaking with the author of a “Dream of Lilies,” I casually mentioned the name of another Boston poetess, “one of the _Pilot_ poets,” as the gifted Carpenter was wont to speak of those whose genius was nursed by Boyle O’Reilly. For a few years previous to my coming, little waif poems, suggestive of talent and refinement, had seen light in the columns of that brilliant journal. They had about them that something which makes the reader hazard a bet that the youngster when fully fledged would some day leave the lowlands of minor minstrelsy for a height on Parnassus. From this singer Miss Conway had that morning received a notelet. It was none of the ordinary kind, a little anarchistic, if one might judge from the awkward pen-sketch of a hideous grinning skeleton-skull held by cross-bones which served as an illustration to the bantering text that followed, in a rather cramped girlish hand. The notelet was signed Louise Imogen Guiney.