"Your article said that an action for divorce had been entered by a Captain O'Shea who named Parnell as corespondent." "Well, what of it? Everybody knows it." "I don't know it. We don't know it here. Nobody knows it." "And you 're an editor, Jeffrey! Is that the way you keep the run of the news?" "Such a case has never been tried." "It has not _yet_ been tried, you mean. Of course not; it has to take its turn. It will come on in the autumn." "Who is O'Shea?" I stared at Roche in amazement. And then I laughed. "Jeffrey," said I, "you do it very well." "Do what? No," said he, "it is n't acting. Who is he?" I told him, and added that the question had been put differently by the Irish members of Parliament a long time ago. They asked at one time--"Why is he?" After a while they asked nothing. "And your article said that the Irish party would turn against Parnell if the case were tried, and that the English Liberals would throw him over, and the Home Rule cause would go to pieces." {249} "Pardon me, Jeffrey, my article said that those would be some of the results if O'Shea won his case, not if the case were tried." "Gladstone would n't turn against Parnell!" "Jeffrey, if that's all you know about the Irish Question, take my advice and return to Ireland by the next ship and study it on the spot. Then go to Westminster and study it there. Learn what the Unionists think, what Liberals think, and what Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the Liberal Party, has to think, and--" "It's another Piggott trick! Parnell's defence will show it all up." "Suppose he should n't defend himself?" "That's unfair!" "Let me tell you a thing or two. Make a note of 'em, and see what happens within a year!" In the course of the next two hours Roche heard more of the inside of Irish and English politics than I would have supposed could previously have escaped an editor's mind. It was clear that the comings and goings of Irish parliamentarians bent on propaganda and money-raising had not left behind much information that could guide a distant editor over a course abounding with obstacles. My experience with Roche that evening resembled all the experiences I have ever had in the United States when talking on the Irish question with persons who seemed really anxious for information. And the situation is much the same at this hour, differing only in kind, not in degree.