In the skurreechting company at the fireside was an old man who had a lot of stories about wars and battles. One story he’d tell of one battle he was in that I could not thoroughly understand at the time, nor did I thoroughly understand it either, until several years after I heard it. It was a story of some battle he was fighting, and he’d rather have the other side win the battle than his side. One Summer’s day I had my wheel-and-runners outside the door winding quills; an old man with a bundle on a stick on his shoulder came up the street and asked me who lived there in my house. I told him. And who lives in that house opposite? Jillen Andy. And in the next house? Joannie Roe. And the next? Paddy Lovejoy. That Paddy Lovejoy was the father of the rich man Stephen Lovejoy, of the Seventh Ward, New York, who died last year; and Joannie Roe was the sister of the old man Dan Roe, who was making the inquiries of me. He was an English pensioner soldier coming home to Ireland. He had joined the North Cork Militia when a young man, just as many an Irishman joins the Irish militia to day, for the purpose of learning the use of arms for Ireland’s sake; the war of ’98 broke out; the North Cork Militia were sent into Wexford; the battle that Dan Roe was speaking about at my father’s fireside, wherein he’d rather the other side would win than his side, was the battle of Vinegar Hill. “Oh!” he’d say, “if they had only done so and so they’d have gained the day.” Cork has got a bad name in Wexford on account of this North Cork Militia going into Wexford in ’98. But the same thing could occur to-day, not only as regards Cork and Wexford, but as regards all the other counties of Ireland. Those militia regiments are officered by the English, who live in Ireland; by the landlords of Ireland, and by the office-holders of the English Government in Ireland. In ’98 the North Cork Militia were officered by the lords and the landlords of Cork; they were English; the rank and file of their command were the plundered Irish; the regiments were ordered into active service, and, under the military discipline of England the victims of England’s plunder were made to fight against their brother victims in Wicklow and Wexford, who were battling against the common plunderers. ’Tis a condition of things that the Irish nationalist of to-day has to take into consideration in connection with a fight for the independence of Ireland. Every day you will hear some good Irishman say “We will have the Irish police and the Irish soldiers with us when we take the field.” All right; but you must all be reasonable, too; you must first let the Irish policeman and Irishman red-coat soldier see that you are in earnest--that you mean fight--that you have fought a battle or taken a stand which will show him there is no turning back from it, and that if he turns over with you there is some chance of success.