If the magpies’ nest was robbed; if their young ones were taken away from them, they would kill every chicken and gosling that was to be found around the farmyard. That is the way my grandfather’s magpies would have their vengeance for having their homes and their families destroyed; and it made every one in my grandfather’s house “keep the peace” toward them. I have often thought of my grandfather’s magpies in connection with the destruction of the houses and families of the Irish people by the English landlords of Ireland. Those magpies seemed to have more manly Irish spirit than the Irish people themselves. But there is no use of talking this way of his childhood’s recollections. I’ll stop. If childhood has pleasure in plenty, I had it in this house of my grandfather, from the age of three to the age of seven. I am publishing a newspaper called The _United Irishman_. In it, I printed the two preceding chapters. Ex-Congressman John Quinn, whom I have spoken of in them, sends me the following letter: DEAR ROSSA--I read with delight in the last issue of your truly patriotic journal what to me is the most interesting of all stories; namely, “Rossa’s Recollections.” The traveling along with you, as it were, carries me back to the early morning of my life in that dear land beyond the sea, and I feel that I hear over again the tales as told by a fond mother to her listening, her wondering children, of saintly Ross Carbery, and the wild, the grand country from there to Bantry Bay. Yes, I have heard her tell of the miracles which were performed at the tomb of Father John Power, and, I feel that if ever the afflicted were healed of their infirmities on any part of this earth, they were, at the grave of that saintly priest. I was not born in that county, for “under the blue sky of Tipperary” my eyes first saw the light of day, but, as you say, my mother was born in Ross Carbery; and where is the son who does not love the spot where his mother was born? I do, with a fondness akin to veneration. Oh, what memories you will call up in those recollections of yours! How the hearts of the sons and daughters of Ireland will throb as they feel themselves carried back in spirit to the abbeys, the raths and, alas! the ruins, around which in infancy their young feet wandered. For to no people on earth are the loved scenes of childhood half so dear as they are to the sons and daughters of our Green Isle.