The iniquitous exploits of "Boycott" propagandism in Land League days, which possessed at least a semblance of political motive underlying them, were respectable when compared with the foul and wanton killings of the Molly Maguires in America—a body, it may here be said, which derived its peculiar name from the fact that to every warning its agents addressed to an intended victim there was invariably attached the generic signature "Molly Maguire." An unfriendly attitude towards the Mollies, the least suspicion of being anxious to uproot them, common race feeling, and, as we have said, simple personal dislike were each and all sufficient to bring upon any man visitation from the band in the form of a card bearing the fateful name. Private and public denunciation and the dispatch of threatening letters invariably preceded the killing which was not only not to be denounced, but which was to be treated by all who knew of its commission as if it had never taken place. The mangled Molly Maguire corpse came, accordingly, to rank in a class by itself among all other corpses, enshrouded as it usually was with a general and sacrosanct mystery regarding the manner in which life had come to leave it. Murders were commonly committed during the dinner-hour of the miners who, so frequent was a crime, would go on calmly eating their meal while a fellow-man was being dispatched to a happier world than this not fifty yards away; and if his bloody passing called up a feeling of pity in the breast of one of the diners, it was only to be squelched at once with the chorus "Shure wasn't the man war-rned"—meaning that a man might be warned of possessing too ambitious a wife, or the fact that he was "putting on th'airs iv a jintleman," or that he may have been trying to ingratiate himself into the favour of a capitalist who happened not to be in sympathy with Irishmen, or, indeed, perhaps that he had been seen "iv a Sunda' wearin' peg-top throusers, no less." On receipt of a card bearing the signature of doom, if the recipient did not desist from "anny of the said coorses," he had only himself to blame if a band of Mollies visited him one fine night and bludgeoned his body into releasing the soul.