This place of my birth, Ross Carbery, is famed in Irish history as the seat of learning in the early centuries. Shrines of St. Fachtna, holy wells and holy places are numerous all around it. Distinction of some kind--special good fortune or special misfortune--belongs to the life of every one born there. It is the birthplace of Maurice J. Power, the right-hand man of ex-President Grover Cleveland, in the city of New York. It is the birthplace of Richard Croker, the right-hand man of the Government of the Tammany Hall Society, in the city of New York. Of the Fates that hover over my life I have no reason to complain. They have mixed my fortunes; given me a strong constitution, a light heart, and a light pocket, making my struggle for existence active enough to keep the blood in a healthy state of circulation, fortifying me with strength to stand firm under difficulties, and filling my mind with strong hope in the future if I do all that I deem right in the present. The Maurice J. Power in New York that I speak of is the same family of Powers as the Father John Power at whose tomb the people pray to God for relief from their infirmities. And the belief is that many have obtained relief through their prayers there. I know that I have gone through that Abbey field the day after a St. John’s eve, and I have seen, propped up by stones, a pair of crutches that were left there by a man who came into the field on those crutches the previous day. The holy words say, “Faith will move mountains,” the whole world is the temple of God, and the pilgrim cripple, full of faith, praying to Him in that Abbey-field, became able to walk away without his crutches, and leave them standing there as monuments of the miracle. Father Jerrie Molony, the priest of the parish, discountenanced the rush of people to Father Power’s tomb every St. John’s eve: he spoke against it from the altar on Sundays. All to no use; the people came; came in thousands. Of course, where people congregated in such numbers, abuses began to grow; the votaries of sin came into his parish as well as the votaries of prayer, and very probably the good priest thought it better to stop the gathering altogether than have it made the occasion of shame and scandal. I will here leap some years ahead, to record my recollection of one St. John’s eve that I was in Ross. It was in the year 1858.