As an advocate, Daniel O’Connell had been greatly in demand. In those days he stood six feet tall, with a head of fox-red curls and a face that had irregular, almost ugly features. They said his voice could be heard a mile off and was like music strained through honey. Reckless, cunning, generous and vindictive, O’Connell had fought for Ireland. They threw him in jail when he challenged Robert Peel to a duel. It never came off. He finally apologized, thinking to propitiate the Englishman in the matter of his Catholic Relief Bill that was up before Parliament. Now Robert Peel was Prime Minister of England, and misery still lay like a shroud over all Ireland. O’Connell shook his head. Garrison was mistaken. There was nothing he could teach his young man. At seventy, one’s work is finished, and he, Daniel O’Connell, had failed. After a while the girl brought in a lighted lamp and set it on the table. O’Connell said nothing. He was waiting. Then he heard voices in the hall and he stood up, his keen eyes fixed on the door. It opened to admit Frederick Douglass. The dark man stood a moment where the lamplight fell on him; then he smiled. And something in the Irishman’s tired heart ran out to meet that smile. O’Connell strode across the room. He placed his two hands on the younger man’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. “My son, I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. So Frederick Douglass saw Ireland and came to know its people. He learned why women’s faces beneath their shawls aged so quickly. He watched children claw the débris on the coal-quays of Cork. He saw the rich grasslands of the Golden Vale where fine, fat cattle fed while babies died for milk. Looking out over the Lakes of Killarney, he saw on the one side uncultivated tracts, marshy wastes studded with patches of heather, with here and there a stunted fir tree; and on the other, along the foot of the mountains beside the lovely lakes, green, smiling fields and woods of almost tropical vegetation. He learned that in Ireland there were only rich and poor, only palaces and hovels. “Misrule is due to ignorance and ignorance is due to misrule.” O’Connell tapped the short stem of his pipe on the table. “Few Englishmen ever visit Ireland. When they do they drive in a carriage from country house to country house. The swarms of beggars in Dublin only fill them with disgust.” “But--But why don’t these beggars work?” “There are no industries in Ireland. Our wool and wheat go into English mills. In Ireland, in order to work, one must have a plot of land.” Frowning, Douglass grappled with the problem. Oppression then was not confined to black folks! There was some common reason for it all. O’Connell nodded his head. “Possession of the land! This is the struggle, whether we’re talking about the Gaels of Scotland and Ireland, the brown peoples of India, or the blacks of South Africa. Indeed, where are your red men in America?”