A few weeks ago I attended a performance of Sheridan’s comedy, “The Rivals,” very ably interpreted by a new company of players. One of them, an excellent performer, taking the part of Sir Lucius O’Trigger, interpolated a “gag,” as it is called in theatrical parlance, to the effect that modesty is a word which has no equivalent in the Irish language. It was an interpolation to make the unthinking laugh—but to make the judicious grieve. For the Irishman is not immodest, not as the word is meant to imply—impudent. Thackeray, the shrewd judge of character, rather condemns the Irishman for his national bashfulness. The Irishman, at home and abroad, has ever been shamefully apologetic for his race and himself. He, the proudest of mortals, is always depreciating his nation’s glory before the world. The most successful of Irish soldiers, as we gauge success, was Wellington, a man of Irish birth, whose family had lived in Ireland for three hundred years. Yet, if we may believe biography, he always called himself an “Englishman.” If he with three hundred years of Irish ancestry behind him was English, is there, on all this continent, such a being as an “American,” since not many of us can call ourselves “natives” by much over one century of heritage? Quite recently, in Boston, a wise and patriotic Irishman, though not a Home Ruler, said, in presenting his case before an American audience, that his family was not exactly “Irish,” since they had been in Ireland only six hundred years! And the patriotic poet, Doctor Sigerson, of Dublin, talking with my dear lamented friend, the late Alfred Williams, himself a descendant of the great Roger Williams, of Rhode Island, remarked, incidentally, in regard to a mutual friend, that “there was an old feud between his family and mine—but we have agreed to forget it.” The “feud” dated back to the Danish invasion—many centuries ago—when Doctor Sigerson’s ancestors fought against Brian Boru! I mention this incident merely to show that it is possible to go back—too far—in the path of genealogy. Let us be content with reasonable research. If we can prove that St. Brendan was the first discoverer of America, and that a seaman named “Patrick Maguire” was the bow-oar who set the first foot on the strand of the New World, from the boat of Columbus—what of it? Any clumsy forger will come forward at once and declare that Brendan was a “Scotch-Irishman” and Maguire an “Anglo-Saxon,” as their names imply. For have they not demonstrated, to their own entire satisfaction, that St. Patrick was not only a Scot, but also a Calvinist—centuries ere Calvin was born? We can afford to ignore the fables of what is, to us, comparative antiquity.